Review: Traps of Representation

Author(s): Milad Doueihi

Review by: Milad Doueihi
Source: Diacritics, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring, 1984), pp. 66-77
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/464570
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TRAPS
OF
REPRESENTATION
MILADDOUEIHI
Louis Marin. LEPORTRAITDU ROI. Paris:Editionsde Minuit, 1981.
Marc Shell. MONEY, LANGUAGE,AND THOUGHT. Berkeley: Universityof
CaliforniaPress, 1982.
Once insertedinto anothernetwork,the "same"
philosophemeis no longerthe same,
and besidesit neverpossessedan identityindependentof its functioning.
-Jacques Derrida,"Economimesis"

In the opening lines of his most recent study of the relationships between
representation and power, more specifically absolute power as manifested and
personified by the Kingin seventeenth century France, LouisMarintells us that
this work is "the sequel and consequence" of his earlier study, La Critique du
Discours. Indeed, Le Portraitdu Roi can be seen as carryingout the implications
of the previous book and applying them to a variety of texts having in common
either the fact that they address the issues and problems informingthe relationship between political authority, power, and representation, or else that they
feature certain rhetorical strategies relevant to the problematic and theoretical
limitations of representation. Although the book discusses only seventeenthcentury texts, its central thesis lays claim to a largerfield of application. It contends to have discovered, in the specific example of seventeenth-century
French royal power and its representations, a general model on which absolute
power is founded. Thus the examination and analysis of the manifestations of
Louis XIV'smonarchy is to be considered as a contribution to a critique of
political power in general. But before embarking on a detailed discussion of the
issues raised by Le Portraitdu Roi, it is essential to review the main import and
the theoretical framework that emerge from the earlier work, La Critique du
Discours, and to locate and evaluate its most importantconclusions that are of
relevance to our purposes in this essay.
LaCritiquedu Discours, as its subtitle indicates, is primarilya readingof the
texts of the logicians and grammariansof Port-Royal,and of Pascal's writings.
This critical reading finds its point of departure in two curious features of the
texts of Port-Royal.Marin sets out to discover what sort of model informs and
constitutes the theory of language that emerges from those texts, and the manner in which this model functions in relation to the theoretical construct it
makes possible. The first curious feature consists in the fact that, although the
Fathersof Port-Royaldevelop a comprehensive theory of language in their texts,
they neglect or fail to discuss or to address the problem of the sign directly and
explicitly. Instead, they relegate this importantquestion to the status of a mere
example or a simple and unproblematic illustration.One such example is the
enunciation of the Eucharist,the hoc est corpus meum. But the Eucharistis not
an example among others; it is the basis and the foundation of the theology of
Port-Royal. Why then ignore its importance and present it in a way that
dissimulates its relevance to the conception of language developed by Port-

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Royal? Marin'sthesis is that the eucharistic enunciation is the substratum of the theory of
representation of Port-Royal,and that its appearance in their texts in the form of an example
is a manifestation of the ideological mark of representation at work and, at the same time,
the blind spot of the representational model. To find the model of a theory in what is supposed to demonstrate it and illustrateit is to operate a radical inversion of positions and to
reveal the imposture at the basis of that theory. Moreover, it implies that between a fully
developed theory and the model on which it is founded there exists a radicaldifference, or,
more precisely, a divergence that deflects any abstract exposition of that theory from its
logical field of application. What is undermined then is the close identification of a model
and its products. In order to overcome this difficulty, the Port-Royaltheorists move in the
direction of surreptitiouslycovering up and ignoringthe status of the Eucharisticenunciation
as the foundation of their linguistic theory. In doing so, they develop and expand a general
discourse on language. Thus, it is the necessity to forget its founding gesture that constitutes
Port-Royal'smetadiscourse. And, in general, any theory or metadiscourse is that which
forgets that it is a story (a recit), that is to say that it has an origin it cannot accept and account
for. Marin's reading, which has obvious affinities with the observations advanced by JeanFrancois Lyotard in texts such as Instructionspaiennes, brings out these conclusions with
great insightfulness and clarity. He also dwells extensively on this particulardissimulatory
aspect of theoretical discourse and formulates some general reflections illuminatingthe connections between the representationaltheory of language and models of language, and the
manner in which representation invites and accommodates its theoretical discourse by
enforcing its misrecognition of its origin. Theory, then, through the powers of representation,
tends or tries to become absolute, that is to say independent and autonomous, by operating
a violent and repressive closure that hides what makes any closure incomplete.
Another feature of the texts of Arnauld and Nicole reproduces the same gesture and
points to the same problems in their general theory of language. This time, it is the status and
the position of Pascal'sdiscourse as it surfaces, in the forms of a short citation, a simple allusion or an evocation, in the Grammaire and the Logique of Port-Royal. As with the
eucharistic enunciation, Pascal's name or texts appear rarely, and yet, whenever they do,
they divulge the same efforts aimed at hiding the fundamental importance of Pascal'stext for
Port-Royal'stheory of language. Marin's reading is situated between those two gestures,
drawing on them and formulating what they repress in the texts of Port-Royal.More than a
critical assessment of those texts, Marin'swriting turns out to be a rewritingof Port-Royal's
texts that reiteratestheir dominant problematic while situating it in the context of its inherent
theoretical limitationsand exploiting its differences with its main sources (Pascal). It will suffice here, for our present purposes, to treat only the problems raised by the eucharistic enunciation, since the question of Pascal'sstatus and subversive insight will be encountered and
dealt with in our discussion of Le Portraitdu Roi.
Arnauld and Nicole, in developing their ideas about language, had to try to capture in
theoretical terms the unbridgeable distance separating God's word and its representative
sign. They had to come up with a formula that would capture God's word in its performance,
or rather that would express and present the divine word as the realization of a perfect
exchange between spirit and matter, between infinity and finitude, as that exchange is
invoked and exemplified by the Eucharist.What they needed, then, was a magic formula
that would make it possible for them to support an unthinkable idea, that of a pure and transparent signifier.This perfect signifierwould have to be simultaneously (a) visible and material
in order to articulate the signified, and (b) invisible and immaterial in order not to obstruct
the presence of the signified itself. This double requirement leads the Fathersof Port-Royalto
develop their theory of language in the shadow of an inevitable impossibility.The quest for a
theory of language that would accommodate this impossibility prompts the theoreticians of
Port-Royalto construct a general model of the sign that reveals very clearly the two contradictoryand mutually exclusive orientations governing the relation of substitution between
the represented thing and the representing sign. It becomes clear then why the eucharistic
enunciation is not a mere illustrationof Port-Royal'srepresentational model of language. In
fact, the eucharistic enunciation, with its overarching theological significance and authority,
turns out to be the original prototype of this model of the sign. It can assume this role
especially since it performs actively and efficiently the ideal and perfect interchangeability
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between object and sign. Moreover, with its daily enforcement in the ritualof the mass, it is
the absolute proof, given by the son of God and the authority of the divine Word, of the
possibility of a transparent substitution and exchange between thing and word. Yet, the
eucharistic enunciation does not only support and found a theory of representation, it also
brings out the inherent imposture and the strategies at its basis. A detailed analysis of the
linguistic and grammatical properties of the eucharistic enunciation will help clarify this.
The lhocl or Ithisl is a neuter demonstrative pronoun. It is a pure gesture of indication
that points to or draws attention to an object at the precise moment of utterance. Therefore it
does not signify; it only shows. On the other hand, as in the case of the Eucharist,Ithisl
signifies being (I'etre)in general in the absence of any individualdetermination. Thissignifies
this, what is here and now, graspable as a moment of privileged presence. Thus Ithisl both
signifies and points to something. In Port-Royal'stheory of representationthe co-existence of
these two incompatible aspects that manifest themselves and are produced by Ithisl calls for
an assimilation of the object designated to the signified. In this way, the other of language,
what cannot be said or represented because it simply exists as a universallypresent, is to be
transformedthrough representation into a double (into a signified-signifierand not an object
of designation) that is easily representable. This doubling is realized through a circularity
thanks to which what is exterior to the system of language is accommodated as interiorto
the linguistic machine. The effect of this circularityis to cancel out the remainder,that which
lies outside the field of representation, and to replace it by a representativedouble. Forthis
whole operation to be feasible, it is necessary that the consciousness seeking to grasp the
present moment, the here and now designated by Ithisl, be able to deploy a unified and
universal logos that makes that privileged moment intelligible. And it is through this logos
that consciousness is able to posit itself as an I, a subject. Thus, in the last analysis, the doubling of representation and the substitution it makes possible achieve the institutionof a subject always present as a unifying and synthesizing factor in its speech.
The second problem presented by the eucharistic enunciation is that of the verb 'to be,'
in the form of lisl. How is it possible that the neuter Ithisl is the subject of the verb lis/? Ilsl
here may take a double value: (1) it can signify"itis"in which litl is a neuter pheme, an indifferent and unmarked one where the emergence of Being in general, signified by Ithisl, is
manifested; (2) it can also signify lisl as the present of the indicative, as positioning a subject
in a referential utterance. In this context-and here is one of the strongest points in Marin's
analysis-a double movement of exchange is at work. This movement, in its duplicity, is
situated, so to speak, on both sides of language. The proliferationof this exchange between
what is an internal product of the linguisticsystem and an exterior element untransferableto
language is the direct result of the double value of lisl. This in turn leads to a situation where
Ithisl and /is/ become inversely interchangeable so that Ithisl signifies, in the linguistic
system, what lisl indicates and locates outside the limits of language. In other words, when
Ithisl is signifying being in general, the here and now, in a referentialutterance, lisl is pointing to this same here and now as an object of designation and not signification.The riftin this
exchange attests to the failure of the circularityof representation to recuperate efficiently
what is its total other. And so it is this failurethat maintainsthe movement through which the
"body"(or, in general, the thing or the object) is signified as belonging to a holder, a subject.
Therefore, Ithis is! can terminate with /my body/.
Hoc est corpus meum proves to be the foundation of the theoretical model of representation developed by Port-Royal. It also exposes the blind spot of this theory, namely its
reliance on a mystical exchange that hides all its contradictionsthrough the authorityand the
power of the divine Word. And the tremendous power and authority of representation
derives from its blindness, from its concealed ignorance of its own limitationsand shortcomings. Representation, then, is a double activity; on the one hand it is the operation through
which an object is represented by a material sign; on the other hand it is that which
represents its own operation as the only economically efficient way of relating things and
words, thus suppressing the impossibility at its origin by means of a violent misrecognition.
This violence surfaces in Port-Royal'sdiscourse at the moment when it seems to be at its
strongest. That is to say, at the moment when the mystery of the divine Word of which the
eucharistic enunciation is the most importantexpression invites its assimilationto a function
of representation, it instead reveals representation as inadequate and makes impossible the
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totalization it wants to achieve. What returns in this failure of representation to accommodate its founding gesture is that which cannot be represented to representation, the
impr6sentable.The achievement of the eucharistic enunciation then is the actual realization,
through metaphor, of the transformation of the human body into the divine body. That
which escapes representation is the function and the status of the figure as operating a problematic and necessary mediation. For through the figure, being is presented as a partial
retreat and is revealed through concealment. The divine body is accessible to man only
through the mediation of that which hides it. And it is Pascal's discovery that it is only
through the figure- in this case Jesus Christas a metaphor mediating between God and his
people-that being lends itself to knowledge and reveals its nature, albeit in a fragmentary
and effacing way. The Hidden God lets itself be known in a partialrevelation that the figure
conveys. The importance of Pascal's discourse and its repression in the Port-Royaltexts
require a new reading and invite new evaluation of the representational model of language
elaborated by Arnauld and Nicole. Marin'swork is situated at this critical juncture in the
effort it deploys in order to reveal and exploit the hidden foundation of such a theory of
representation. Pascal'stext, in Marin'shands, turns out to be the element which disruptsthe
order legitimated by Port-Royal:a delegitimation that has great impact and that questions
radicallyany effort, be it that of Port-Royalor a modern one, at elaborating a metadiscourse
or a general and comprehensive theory of language. The lesson to be learned from Pascal is
that of the impossibility and futility of any such project.1
In Le Portraitdu Roi Marinexamines a set of texts that manifest royal power as absolute,
and that simultaneously, through various rhetorical strategies, legitimate and institute this
power as absolute. This whole process of dissimulated legitimation is worked out and realized through representation. Thus the examination of these texts has a double purpose. On
the one hand it aims at discovering the strategical-tacticaldevices deployed in order to sustain a valid and economically efficient representation of power. On the other, it tends to
reveal this absolute power as an effect, and only an effect, of representation itself. Therefore,
it is in this double bind between representation and its products that the legitimating
discourse of absolute power is situated. Pellisson'stext Projetde I'histoirede LouisXIVoffers a
compelling illustrationof this problematic. Although Marindevotes several chapters to other
seventeenth-century texts, it seems reasonable to focus our attention on this partof the work
for the simple reason that the discourse on and of the King,as the contemporary mediation
between the divine and the human, is crucial to our understanding of all the cultural products of seventeenth-century absolutism. Moreover, as we shall observe later on, the writing
of history is a fundamental problem that bears on Marin'sown discourse and critical practice
in Le Portraitdu Roi.
Pellisson's essay, as its title indicates, is only a project, a plan for a history to come, a
future history. For this history to be written, this proposed project has to be approved and
legitimated by the political power it wants to represent:the King.This is a determining aspect
of Pellisson's position that dictates to him certain tactical moves. The notion of history
expressed in the Projet is revealing here. Pellisson considers the king to be the sole agent of
history. He is the creator and maker of history, and to write the true and universal history is,
consequently, to narratethe king'sactions. But this reciprocity between the king and history
introduces an obstacle that threatens Pellisson's project, for under such conditions only the
king is able to write his own history. It is thus the enabling condition of the king's legitimate
history that endangers any actual realization of that history. This forces Pellisson to ask for a
limited and temporary transferof power from the king to himself as the narratorof the future
history. It is clear that he cannot be the permanent author of that history, because that is the
position and the function of the king himself. That is why a Projetis required. Since an immediate writing of history is not possible, an agent for the transferof authority is needed so as to
open the way to and legitimate the actualization of the proposed history. The temporary
exchange of positions between the king and his historiancannot be total or absolute. Forthe

1Thelast
partof LaCritiquedu Discoursis devotedto Pascaland dealsin detailwith the questionof
metalanguageand its relationto politicaldiscourse.A shorterEnglishversionof this partof the book

appeared in Textual Strategies (Cornell, 1980).

diacritics / spring 1984

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narratorof the future history of the king has to produce a narrativein which the king is present everywhere and in which his own position is constantly concealed and dissimulated. He
has to write in such a way that the reader will read the text as if it were written by the king
himself. The historyof the king, the story of his actions and achievements, must enact itself in
and through the narrative,and must act in the same way as absolute power controls its subjects. In other words, the history of the king must not be perceived by the readers as a written transcription of the monarch's activities. Rather, it must present itself as a direct and
unmediated expression of the king's power. That is to say that the history of the king has to
subject the reader to the same laws the absolute monarch exercises on his subjects. Thus,
the future history of the king can only be a simulation of his absolute power, a simulation
that is hidden and concealed through fiction and the rhetorical strategies it displays.
What this fiction conceals is a double simulation. On the one hand it is the inabilityof
the king to write his own historywhile at the same time being its creator that is dissimulated
through the fictitioustext of historyto be produced by the historian.On the other, the power
of the official historian,delegated to him by the king, is presented to the reader as that of the
king himself. In this complicity between the king and his historian, which is to remain concealed, we have one of the necessary conditions of absolute power. For, in the same manner
that the king'sdiscourse does not recognize any other possible agent of history but the king
through the fiction of its narrative,so Pellisson's history, thanks to the temporary transferof
power between him and the king and its simulation in the text, delegitimizes any other possible history of the king. What we have here is a unique substitution:the king is Pellisson in
that he is the sole author of his own history, and Pellisson is the king so that he can write the
only possible history of the absolute monarch. This complicity is made possible through a
model of representation that allows the unproblematic identification between the
representer and the represented. But, most importantly, it is this complicity and the fiction
and simulation it generates that sustain and support this model of representation.
The substitutionand identification between the king and the historianis not totally arbitrary. It is supposedly based on a certain naturalsympathy. It is perhaps relevant to point out
here that Pellisson's Projet makes use primarily of the figure of litotes. The litotes is a
periphrastic combination of emphasis and irony. Irony is not total in the litotes, but
graduated. The litotes is a variationof metalepsis. It consists of negating absolutely the opposite of that which is to be affirmed. This disguised affirmationis grounded in an implicit and
prior understanding of the implied meaning of the litotes. Thus, the litotes is usually
understood in its intended meaning on the basis of a pre-established sympathy between the
speaker and the addressee. It is on this sympathy that Pellisson founds his project, and the
irony displayed in his text shows the relative power of his position as the future historianof
the king. So then it is not surprisingto find that the proposed project of the future history has
already produced all the intended effects of the historyto be written. The planned historyis a
simulacrum of the history to come. It is a simulacrum generated by Pellisson's theoretical
discourse on the writing of the historyof the king, of his body and his actions, as history itself.
This simulacrum plays a double role. Firstof all, it simulates, through narrative,the king,
the archiactor of history, as the simulacrum of all simulacra. The king, therefore, as a
presence in the narrativecreated by him, is not the real king, but an imaginarydimension
that is alone capable of encompassing all the manifold effects of its own history. This is the
primaryand foundational aspect of all absolute power: the origin and the beginning of the
claim to be absolute are dispersed and dissolved into an imaginary position, an imaginary
body, which is sustained by and through representation. Consequently, the narrative of
history is no longer an actual retelling of the facts of history, but rathera simulated produc70

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tion of the effects of that history. The potential narrativeof Pellisson's"Projet"is thus a series
of effects generated by the conditions and requirements of this project itself. And here the
strategical end of the proposed plan meets the tactical devices deployed in the effort to
legitimate its own rhetorical position. We can now see that the authority and the powers of
the king invoked in the "Projet"have already been reproduced in simulation in the gesture
that seems to be inviting them. Thus, Pellisson, in asking the king to grant him the power
necessary to write his "real"history, traps that power into representing its possible effects in
his own discourse. What is revealed in this trap is the fact that royal power has always
already been the prisoner of its own representation. And it only becomes an absolute power
when it forgets, ignores, or suppresses this reality. Absolute power is exclusive of reality
because it can only function properly and efficiently in the imaginaryrepresentation of that
reality. Here we arrive at the second function of history as simulacrum. The narrativeof this
history has to constitute and to institute its readers as subjects of the absolute power it
represents. Once this reading subject is instituted, it can only play the game of simulation
and so reads itself in the text of the historyof the king as an effect of his creation. The institution of the reader as such is necessary since it makes possible and legitimatesthe recognition
of the absence of the real king, of his presence as an imaginaryeffect of representation, as the
all-powerful monarch, the ruler and originatorof all simulations. In this way representation
recapitulates in its own mechanisms its imaginary products and thus recuperates its own
effects.
It is in this circularityof representation that what is hidden-that is to say, the fact that
the real king is absent, that his seat (siege) is empty, and that his absence and this emptiness
can only be filled through a concealing and dissimulating imaginary and phantasmatic
representation-can be forgotten or at least distorted and covered up. Thus, the reality of
representation is the product of a forgotten and concealed imaginary.And as such, the real is
that which loses access, once and for all, to its origins and to its foundation. Reality, then,
constitutes itself as (or is constituted by) the abolition of its origins, of all its origins. Reality
becomes the play or the play-fullness of fiction and simulation. That is why the transferof
power between the king and his historian has to be an exchange without any remainders or
leftovers. Because what is left over is that which cannot be said, that which has to remain
hidden. And the circularity of representation, as we have noted earlier, supports this
exchange by making impossible any access to that which is concealed and buried under its
infinite effects.
As with the eucharistic enunciation, the generator of the representativesimulacrum has
either to be suppressed totally or to be recognized as the product of a divine miracle. Forthe
ultimate achievement of the historyto be written by Pellisson is the identificationof the royal
body with the body of history, of the body of historywith the reader-simulacrum,and finally
of the real reader with his mannequin.
The absolute power of Louis XIVis revealed, thanks to Marin'spenetrating analysis, to
be imaginary. This discovery applies to absolute power in general and to all political
discourses. Political discourse in general, while claiming to address the issues of reality, produces a set of screens or a series of simulacrathat represent and replace that realityand thus
force the subject to enter into a domain of representation. Political discourse compensates
for the lack of the real, for the impossibilityof dealing directly with it, by generating an imaginary construct that is totally cut off from reality and that becomes an excess or a surplus in
relation to the lack of the real. In this closed universe where representation functions to
delimit access to the real, absolute power exerts itself, unquestioned and unchallenged. And
this inviolabilityconstitutes the essential and fundamental requirement of all absolute power.
Another example, coextensive with and stemming from the relationship established
between the king and his historian as described earlier, is the question of the royal medals.
This issue relates directly to the problems of writing the history of the king, and is worth
examining here. To begin with, it is important to remind ourselves of the last sentence of
Pellisson's"Projet":"Ifone does not know how to forge and combine all this together in one
solid body, full of variety, force and brilliance, how to paint ratherthan narrate,to make visible to the imagination all that one puts down on paper, thereby to attract readers and interest them in what is happening, then it is no longer history [Histoire];it is, quite to the condiacritics / spring 1984

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trary, registeror chronicle."2 It is evident that in order to make the Historyof the king valid
and legitimate, the narratorhas to make the reader see the facts and the actions, make him
believe that he is participatingin them as a subject of his king, and thus subject him, surreptitiously, to the monarchic power. The royal medal is the ideal means for accomplishing this
purpose. For in the medal, what the subject sees is not the written history, but the inscribed
one. The inscription on the medal perfects the work of representation in that it presents the
absent monarch as a symbolized presence. Thus, instead of the imaginary absence of the
king in his history, the subject perceives and sees his symbolic presence. The main value of
the medal is that it functions and presents itself as the memory of the absent monarch. And
in doing so, it attains its essential validity not in its limited value as money but rather in the
aesthetic relationship it establishes between the king and his subjects. Because the historyof
the king is unique, and because it is the only history permissible in his (symbolic) presence,
the medal on which his trace is inscribed retainsa surplus value that constitutes it as the second text of history. Likethe eucharistic enunciation, the medal reveals what it hides, and at
the same time it is a real presence of the royal power, and thus is complementary to its written history. The medal is, in a sense, the tomb of the king. Its secret is that it is never seen as
such. Instead, it is regarded as the real presence of the king's power. In this secret substitution between the king and his power is revealed the most importantcondition pertainingto
the legitimacy of absolute power. The king is recognized as an absolute monarch only in his
own absence, and his power can only legitimate itself by denying him real presence and by
substitutingfor it a symbolic presence that validates itself as law. Once again we encounter
representation as the producer of the simulacrum that takes the place of the real and institutes and enforces the laws of absolute power.
The History of the king, both the written and the engraved one, is the History of his
representation and the representationof his powers in a field delimited by his imaginaryand
symbolic presences. This representation, instead of writing a real history, produces a
sophisticated network of substitutionsand exchanges that institute both the king and his subjects as subjects of its own simulacrum. In this fashion, the tyrannical effects of representation enforce and legitimatethe absolute power they bringto bear on their simulated subjects
of history. And here, it should be noted, it is the king himself who is the firstto be the victim
of his own imaginary and symbolic powers. For the king has to be always absent, his seat
(siege) has to be always empty and vacant, for him to be an absolute monarch. His only
possible presence is the inscriptionon the medal, an inscriptionthat heralds his death while
celebrating and commemorating his eternal powers. What representationthus achieves is a
sort of "hallucinatory,"yet quite efficient, legitimation of absolute power. Pascal, in his Trois
Discours sur les conditions des Grands, as well as in his Pensees, offers a penetrating critique
of the legitimation of absolute power that makes explicit the secret and hidden transformations and substitutionscarried out by representation. For Pascal, tyranny is a violent effort to
satisfy"a desire of universal domination outside its order"("cedesir de domination universel
et hors son ordre").Absolute power is tyrannical in that it tries to achieve its domination by a
violent enforcement of its laws. Pascal's question is, what constitutes the authority of the
king, and by what is this authority enforced and legitimated? In short, as Marin puts it,
Pascal's question is this: "What is a king?"In order to work out an answer to this question,
Pascal produces the following fiction:
A man was cast by a tempest upon an unknown island the inhabitants of which
were anxious to find their king who was lost; and bearinga strong resemblance both
corporally and facially to this king, he was taken for him and acknowledged in this
capacity by all the people. At firsthe knew not what course to take; but he finally
resolved to give himself up to his good fortune. He received all the homage they
chose to render, and suffered himself to be treated as king. [TextualStrategies241]
Pascal'sexample illustratesquite economically all the elements involved in the legitimation
of royal power. Firstof all, it is clear that the origin of this power is arbitrary.It has no natural
2Fora historical study that confirms the general analysis of Marin see Jean-MarieApostolides, Le Roi
Machine (Editionsde Minuit, 1981).

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or divine foundation. It relies completely on circumstantialconditions. The castaway knows

that he is not a king. And yet, because it happens that he resembles the lost king very closely,
he is recognized and instituted as a monarch by the people of the island. Here we have an
answer to Pascal'squestion: a king is a man who is recognized as such by his people. The
source of the legitimationof a political power, as in the example of the castaway, is a consensus. This consensus expresses the desire of the people to be subjected to a power. What
problematizes the whole question is the radical difference between the castaway and the
inhabitantsof the island. Forthe castaway knows that he is not the king. He only resembles
the lost king and therefore has at the foundation of his institutionas the rulerof the island the
fact that he is a portraitof the king. He is only the projection of the representation of the
desire of the people. In the last analysis, as Marin quite rightly points out, the determining
factor is that the castaway, as a portrait of the king, does not resemble the king, but
resembles the portraitof the lost king, since, in the first place, the inhabitants of the island
never recognized their king, but only recognized their king as a portrait.It is in this cleavage
between what the castaway conceives of himself and what the inhabitantsof the island see
in him that the sacred transubstantiationof the Eucharistis reproduced. Pascal discovers that
the King-Portrait,the infinite representation of power, is nothing but a parody of the
Eucharist.A parody, because man can never achieve what only divine power is capable of
performing,that is, of transformingbread into body (or the portraitof the king into the King).
The truth of political discourse, as Pascal shows, can only be reached by a roundabout way.
And that truth is that power is not what it claims to be, that the king is always absent from his
seat (siege) because it is his image and his portrait,in short, his figure, that occupy his position. Truth can indeed be found in political discourse, but not where one might think it is.
Truth is what is not said, what cannot be said, and the only reason why the discourse of
power can lead us to it is that for this discourse it is impossible to forget what it represses,
what it does not say. Pascal'sanalysis of political discourse reveals the ideology of representation as an aporia, an impasse that cannot be recuperated. In the same way that political
discourse, as a product of representation, proves its truth to be a lacking and an absent one,
so the seat of the king hosts the dead body, a dead body that is not a body, that is the king.
What Marin'sstudy shows is the importance of the figure, as both the means of repressing
the lack of the real and the only possible way to think what cannot be thought, what cannot
be said. And the Eucharistoffers a figure par excellence that situates itself on the borderline
separating two domains and thus allowing a certain discourse to proliferate. As we have
seen, the eucharistic enunciation was not only the prototype of the theory of representation
at Port-Royal, it was also transferred to the political discourse in order to carry out the
substitution of the portraitof the king for the King himself, thus giving way to an absolute
power.
Marinsituates and defines his own discourse in Le Portraitdu Roi as "a representationof
an episode of the historyof representation and power."The narrativethat Marin produces is
a double and ironic repetition of the power of representation. For in Marin'stext, what we
read is, in a sense, an inverted history of the representation of power that reveals the power
of Louis XIV'smonarchy as that of its representation. But an inverted history is still a history
that relies on certain notions and conceptions of History. In Marin'stext there emerges a
dominant and problematic category that regulates the narrationof this historyof representation. This category is that of force. Indeed, the whole book traces, in a specific context, the
mechanisms that transformforce into power and locates force as the generating element of
the proliferationsof the representational machine. Here is an early passage in which Marin
discusses the operative dynamics of force:
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But what is the doing (le faire)of a force? It can be quite clearly grasped in the process of struggleand clash of one force againstanother, and this process, even if it is a
matter of an abstractionthat has the value of an ideal-typicalmodel of intelligibility,
has no other objective than the annihilation of the adverse force. A force is a force
only through annihilation and in this sense every force is in its very essence absolute,
since it is such only by annihilating every other force, only by being without an
exterior, being incompatible. [11]
Two things must be noted here. First,we encounter the necessary gesture of establishing an
ideal model through which an understandingof the largerproblems in all their details can be
achieved. This move is inevitable because of the structuringrequirements of the narrative
Marinweaves. As a representation and as a history, his discourse retraces, although on a different level, the same path followed by the apologists of Port-Royalin their reliance on the
eucharistic model and re-establishes a theoretical construct similarto the one that permitted
the historiansof LouisXIVto transferideological categories into the political domain. To the
eucharistic enunciation there corresponds here a concept of force. What matters, for our
present purposes, is simply the necessity of an ideal model that organizes the functioning of
the discursive machine and not the perfect correspondence between the two models.
Although it is clear that the notion of force advanced by Marin is quite differentfrom that of
Port-Royal'sEucharist,it must be remarked that they both function, on a structurallevel, as
grounds for similarschemes. One noticeable and importantdifference is that Marinexplicitly
acknowledges the status of force as an organizing model for his historyof representation. For
Marin'stext is a representation that is aware of itself as such and that tries to disrupt and
rechannel its own powers. We could think of this text as a description of the traps of
representation. But there is always the danger that such revelation of the weak points of
representation is the ultimate trap devised by the representational machine. So then the
question that has to be answered is whether Marin'stext is yet a more sophisticated trap or
whether it is an ironic overcoming of the traps of representation. Moreover, we will have to
discuss the relevance and the implications of the self-awareness on the part of Marin, as to
the effectiveness and conclusions of his analysis in Le Portraitdu Roi. It is strikingthat Marin,
in order to justify his historyon theoretical grounds, has to referto the notion of a model. But
how does this model function and how does it influence the discourse on/of representation?
Here we come to the second important aspect of the passage just quoted. It is clear that
Marin presents force as a Hegelian category engaged in a constant struggle reminiscent of
the master-slave dialectic. Actually, Marin, throughout the book, makes various references
to Hegel's Phenomenology and demonstrates the close relationship between Pascal's
analysis of power and Hegel's analysis of absolute monarchy. But beyond this, and more
importantly, there is definitely in Marin'stexts what could be called the Hegelian moment
that is related directly to the generating model of his historyof representation. Ifforce is the
primary concept informing this history, and if it is understood as sheer annihilation (or
perhaps we should say re-presented as such), we are then inclined to think of it as a clear
instance of the Hegelian Aufhebung. For what the force, that of royal power for example,
tries to annihilate (in Marin'sterminology), it tends in fact to neutralize and control. The
monarch, instead of totally destroying the power of his Noble subjects, disqualifies and
preserves it as subservient to his own power. So that the annihilation of the adverse force is
only virtual.What in realitytakes place is a negation and a preservationof that which is supposedly annihilated. This movement of negating and at the same time preserving is
characteristic of Aufhebung. In its operation, Marin's force, then, takes the form of the
Aufhebung.
Marin'stext on this point has great affinitieswith Hegel's analysis of the language of flattery. In Hegelian terms, the language of flatteryis the alienation of the power that legitimizes
absolute monarchy as the form of the remainder of appearance of that power. In Marin'sterminology, flattery is a means for realizing absolute monarchy as the imaginaryeffect of its
own power of representation. What the Hegelian analysis shows is that power (or force),
because it is Aufhebung, has, so to speak, to acknowledge and revere that which it controls.
The King as the symbolic representation of the power of his monarchy, derives his power
from the universal and explicit recognition he receives from his subjects.
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Now that we have noted the affinity of Marin's concept of force with the Hegelian
Aufhebung, we have to draw out the implications of this fact for the structuringof Marin's
own discourse. Firstof all, the history of representation Marin presents us with is dialectical.
It is a History that cannot but be an integral and constitutive part of representation, and as
such, it confirms the powers of that which it seeks to contain. Itderives its authorityfrom the
same operations it works to reveal as unfounded. This is assuredly not to say that Marin'stext
is uncritical or naive. Rather, we are pointing to the apparent displacement of a "concept,"
Aufhebung in this case, and the side effects it generates in the discourse that operates this
displacement. And Marin'smain innovation probably consists in this subtle displacement of
the problematics of representation and power out of a self-enclosed and self-contained
dynamic into an open-ended space. Ifthis is nothing other than another trap of representation, it is doubtless a trap into which Marinfalls shrewdly and happily. In doing so, he invites
us both to question the generalizations and the potential extensions of his analysis and to
become forcefully aware of the powers of representation. The outcome, in the last analysis,
is the discovery that the apparently total and complete interpretation of representation is
inevitably caught up in the work of representation itself, and that any effortaimed at containing the power of representation has to do so through a certain positioning involving power.
The Hegelian moment in Marin's text prompts us, then, to reflect on the internal
organization of a theoretical discourse concerned with power. Or, in more specific terms, it
directs our attention toward certain revealing moments in such a discourse that are
manifestationsof the powerful potential of internalizationand recuperationthat constitute its
most radical aspect. For Marin'sdiscourse turns out to be a staged rehearsalof powerful old
discursive "tricks"that derives its power from the theatrical repetition and enactment of that
which it tries to unmask. So is, it must of course be noted, our own discourse. A representation of the power of representation is an exhibition of that power and a public display of all
its features that have the effect of strippingit of the enigmatic aura surroundingit. So, Marin's
engaging theoretical discussion constitutes itself through a double gesture of concealment
and revelation. Such a gesture is not unique to Marin'swork. Rather,it characterizes much, if
not all, of western philosophy.
Plato affords us a critically decisive example with his condemnation of the Sophists, of
both their teachings and their practice. Because they levied fees in exchange for their ideas,
he charged that they had deprived themselves of the freedom to choose their pupils, and
thus made their teachings available to all those willing to pay the price for it. So the first
aspect of Plato'scondemnation is concerned with the marketingof knowledge and wisdom
and the correlation of the realm of ideas to that of monetary exchange. The second, and
more revealing aspect of the condemnation is directly related to certain implications of
sophistic practice.
One of the main methods of the sophists, antilogike, described by Plato as a rhetorical
art of deception, consists of opposing one argument (or logos) to another, and/or showing
that such mutually contradictory or exclusive arguments are present in every theoretical
statement or state of affairs.The practice of antilogike, in short, drives constantly toward an
aporia that is unacceptable to Plato. Actually, the economy of the platonic dialectic is
founded on the rejection of the premises of the sophistic movement as such. That is to say
that both the suppression of the "social"aspect of sophistics - as degrading to philosophy and
as leading to a loss of argumentative control and decision-making capacity on the partof the
philosopher- and the dismissal of antilogike as nondialectical and unproductive, make up
the constitutive gesture of Platonism and the whole of the tradition that stems from it.
Indeed, sophistics, from Plato'spoint of view, is nothing but the constant and deceiving concealment of truth-a concealment that inaugurates a movement of repetition, that of the
undecidability of theoretical discourse, founded on the loss of an absolute origin. For antilogike diverts philosophy from the search for truth and directs it toward a futile and useless
wandering and indecision. What is at stake in Plato's double rejection of sophistics is precisely the possibility of directly attaining truth or an original and unadulterated Signifier.As
Derridaputs it:"Thedifference between signifierand signified is no doubt the governing pattern with which Platonism institutes itself and determines its opposition to sophistics. In
being inaugurated in this manner, philosophy and dialectics are determined in the act of
determining their other" [Dissemination 112]. It is, then, the economy of a discourse that
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Platonism tries to recuperate and neutralize. Such a move involves necessarily the recognition of the status of the other or the internal assimilation of the repressed.
Marc Shell argues, in his Money, Language,and Thought, that "the upsetting confrontation of thought with its own internalizationof economic form motivated thought to become
the self-critical discourse of philosophy" [2]. The economic form in question here is
monetary form. The historicalchange in the form of money and the subsequent transformation in the ways and methods of exchanging it, constitute the story of the displacement and
the movement away from adequation as a regulator. That movement is particularlyimportant to philosophic discourse (as long as philosophy is thought of as the discourse about
truth, and truth is understood as a form of homoiosis or adequatio). The old coins derived
their values directly from the ingot they were made of, whereas our paper money derives its
value from a complex network of factors unrelated to the matter it is made from. Adequation
between face and substantialvalue is no longer the determining factor on the market. The
riftbetween inscriptionand matter points to and confirms the tremendous generative power
of representation. This representation puts the emphasis on the inscriptionof the money and
enforces the power of the issuing authority.3Shell's thesis is that this representation informs
the philosophical dialectical methods. For example, in Hegel's dialectic, the Aufhebung
represents the association of some logical procedures with some monetary categories. Shell
draws on what he calls "three traditions" [142] that connect Aufhebung to accounting,
exchange and interest.
The first of these traditions is that of eighteenth-century practice of accounting in Germany. The relevant factor here, from Shell's point of view, is the special way of using equation and reduction to zero in a manner that "the tallies or counters used for working out
problems on a board were picked up (aufgehobene) when dealt with, thus if one was picked
up from either side, the result that remained was unaffected" [143]. That is to say that the
total or the whole remained unchanged despite the cancellation of a part. The possibility of
attaining or preserving the unity of the whole via a negative cancellation of the part is here
associated with the movement of Aufhebung in Hegelian dialectics. Shell insists on the
similarity between the method of accounting and the philosophical category. The second
analogy between Aufhebung and monetary exchange relatesthe former to a cancelled bond
that still has a positive value and can be used as a receipt or discharge from debt. Here,
Aufhebung is, like the bond, both null and positive. This bringsus to the last association. The
word Aufhebung, as Shell points out, is sometimes used to mean the collection of interest on
a mature bond. In Hegel, the collection of monetary interest is extended to the conceptual
level. The interest, then, is the deduction drawn from a hypothesis (or principal sum).
Although Shell cautions against direct association and explanation of philosophical
categories by some contemporary accounting practice, he thinks that "the modern concept
of sublation (Aufhebung) indeed, seems to express the historical fact of interiorization of
economic form" [133].

3PierreBourdieu in his Ce que parler veut dire (Fayard, 1982) discusses the question of authority and

of conventions.Bourdieu's
powerin language,and how it effectsthe normalization
theoryrelieson the

analogy between the linguistic exchange and the monetary market, although his analysispoints to a different direction than the one adopted by Shell.

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But the economics of Hegelian dialectics is not simply an assimilation of monetary

methods of accounting and exchange. Rather,it is a discursive economics that organizes and
coordinates the (w)hole of absolute knowledge around a problematic and necessary
moment that is the Aufhebung. Shell seems reluctant and ultimately unwilling to extend the
field of application of the analogies he draws, and appears uninterested in discussing how
the internal structuration of Hegelian dialectics is informed by monetary models. For in
Hegel, the Aufhebung is the connecting element between two negative moments that must
be neutralized in order for the system to function properly. This process of neutralization
makes of the Aufhebung the sustaining principle of the Hegelian structure.That is to say that
despite all appearances, the Aufhebung is that upon which the recuperation of the moments
that exceed and threaten the structureand the continuity of the Hegelian system is founded.
The Aufhebung is the crucial means of conceptual control devised by Hegel. What is lacking
in Shell's discussion is the manner in which this vital moment, if it is founded on an
economical model, becomes what it is and functions in the specific way it does. Especially
since what is radicalabout the Aufhebung is not simply what it achieves in its Hegelian context but its form. Aufhebung, as Derridahas shown, is the foundation of a restrictedeconomy
that is the (back)ground of History. What is essential and productive is the active displacement of Aufhebung in discourse so that it breaks out of the circle of absolute knowledge and
opens up new margins of interaction. Shell's work, although it does not try to effect such a
displacement, points to its necessity. The force of Marin'sdiscourse in Le Portraitdu Roi
achieves successfully such a displacement. For the theoretical discourse of Marin is not
presented as a neutral and detached meditation on the power of representation. On the contrary, Marin'sstrategy derives its effectiveness and power of persuasion from the fact that it
understands its own involvement in the traps it discloses. Thus Marin is led to try to test the
limits and the limitations of the founding model of representation. Such an effort consists
primarilyin the reflection on the necessary deviations involved in the act of theorizing. The
rehearsal of the elusive moment at the origin of every theory reveals the theoretical
discourse as the combination of a set of "conceptual" elements that are borrowed from
various practices and put together and presented as a unique and distinct product. The
power of theory lies perhaps not in its capacity to account for all the elements of the corpus it
is applied to, but ratherin the manner in which it makes possible the use and application of
certain "conceptual moments" that it integrates. Marin's example reveals Aufhebung as a
necessary moment that must be encountered and that necessitates an ironic repetition. It is
this repetition that displays the aberration sustaining every theoretical effort.

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