第136页 On the Power to Construct

The space in modern linear perspective is a Cartesian space. It was in this space that Descartes's cogito emerged. Thus, the critique of perspective, that in the fine arts arose out of awareness of the slippage between this kind of perspective and perceptual space, paralleled the movement whereby phenomenology, beginning with Husserl, criticized the perspective that generated the subject-object dichotomy in modern epistemology and then attempted (as in Hei- degger's work) to move on to ontology and the analysis of Dasein or (as with Merleau-Ponty) to analysis of the body and perception. In Heidegger's case, particularly, the critique of the subject-object dichotomy takes the form of something like a history of philosophy. But what Heidegger refers to as the post-Platonic "loss of being" or "age of the world view" is nothing other than the concealment of the space of perception. It was indeed this space of perception, rather than any direct confrontation with antiquity, that he sought to grasp through the analysis of Dasein.

what must be closely noted in the establish- ment of these boundaries is the fact that madness, as well as the mad, were no longer considered to have a "saintly dimension" and that consequently that very boundary between reason and mad- ness was made possible by homogeneity. A distinction had been made, of course, between reason and insanity even in the Middle Ages. In order for this to become a spatial boundary, however, a notion of homogeneous space was necessary. Before the mad could be isolated within a heterogeneous space, it had to be recognized that they no longer belonged to an entirely heterogeneous dimension but were "human." This boundary between reason and madness is thus based on the one-point perspective system of modernity.

It was Marx who pointed out that, whereas Hegel found the cause of stratified development in conflict and contradiction, it is only from the perspective of a telos (the end understood as the goal) that conflict and contradiction can be identified. Conflict and contradiction are thus, as it were, posited through techniques of drafting (projection), as is causality. By contrast, what Marx dis- covered was a concept of becoming as natural growth, or what he envisioned as a kind of rhizomorphous structure undergoing trans- formations in the process of natural extension. In contradistinction to conceptions of history produced by the perspectival configura- tion of vertical depth, Marx's discovery was like that of the body by phenomenology. Marx's discovery was certainly not of a substra- tum, but rather was made possible by dissolving the oppositions between upper and lower, near and far, depth and surface which were effects of perspective. The so-called "death of Man" in Marx or "death of God" in Nietzsche did not mean that Man or God had ceased existing but rather were proclamations that it was nothing other than drafting's vanishing point that had made the transpar- ency of words and objects possible. But, in the final analysis, even this insight will be absorbed by a perspective, historicized. For the metaphysics which credits Marx and Freud with discovering sub- strata is not perceived by us as a specific conceptual framework but rather as natural and self-evident.

What Akutagawa perceived was not a "problem" of con- fession versus fiction, but the nature of the perspectival configura- tion as a centerless interrelationship of fragments.

However, even if Tanizaki possessed a magnificent "ability to construct" and criticized shishosetsu from that perspective, he, too, was alien to the configuration of modern literature. Let me suggest that what Tanizaki called plot can be equated with the Japanese word monogatari (tale or narrative) and that monogatari may be seen as a space that was excluded, becoming visible in the process of being excluded, by what was established as system in the third decade of the Meiji period and by the homogeneous space of one- point perspective. In this sense monogatari had certain aspects in common with the "space" of shishOsetsu. Both emerged from within, and as reactions against, the configuration of modem literature as system and therefore actually shared a common foundation. One might even say that they branched off from a common root. This is what is symbolized by the "opposition" between Yanagita Kunio and Tayama Katai. There was a striking resemblance between Yana- gita's vehement critique of Katai's shishOsetsu and Tanizaki's aggres- sive attack on Akutagawa. The vehemence revealed how closely the "opponents" were related.

In this sense one might say that neither what is shishosetsu-like nor what is monogatari-like ever served to subvert the institution of modern literature, but on the contrary, existed within an apparatus which supplemented and revitalized that institution.


The term monogatari cannot be equated with either "story" or "fic- tion." To write monogatari has nothing to do with an ability to construct. Monogatari is pattern, nothing more, nothing less. Para- doxically this fits wen with what is shishosetsu-like. Whereas the shishOsetsu lacks structure, the monogatari is nothing but a structure.

-- Afternote to Chapter 6--

In this sense Japan's modernization entailed a certain "Sinici- zation," as well as Westernization, for in it premodern patriarchy and the form of patriarchy imposed by modern industrial capital- ism were fused. Modernization as carried out by those in power entailed the creation of a modern subject who was subjected to the authority of the emperor and the state. This subject was created out of those who, up until that time, had held differing social ranks, each with its discrete ethos. Confucian thought was used to effectuate this process from above. However, if this Confucian thought can be characterized as patriarchal, the same is true of those who opposed the authority of the Meiji state. I have already described the process through which Protestant Christianity produced sub- jectivity. If, as Deleuze and Guattari maintain, modern subjectivity is produced through a process of Oedipalization whereby patri- archal norms are internalized, patriarchal thought first attained a stable form in Japan during this period.