Do reversals have a common significance?
At the moment, deconstructionism is the only method or paradigm that could even begin to grasp the illusive nature of these reversals. Derrida’s essay On Positions masterfully delineates the ‘general economy’ of deconstructionism.
These reversals present themselves as unique revelations. While the genres of each reversal are unique and wholly distinct from one another, there is a common thread that holds each of these experiences together. Whether our minds create the illusion of common significance through the innate classification of these experienced reversals, or if they really do contain a common significance that leave a potentiality for further exploration, I am not sure.
I do believe that there is legitimacy to these reversals. Deconstruction works to tease them out. As I have read over the readings I have developed a general idea of how these reversals behave. Derrida was right to say that when a reversal takes place, what is happening is a violent binary reaction between oppositions that overturn the signifier and the signified. What is created is a space within the system. Because this system is closed, this is the only option for creating new meaning, new space for exploration and new room for thought. It is when these oppositions meet that a momentary condensation expresses a coalescing visibility into the system, just before it clouds over again. This visibility, this seemingly new space that is created, allows for new shades of meaning to enter our periphery.
But what creates this binary reaction? What are the forces, or triggers, that power the overturning and create a reversal? What is the significance of this reversal after all? What it might go back to is the necessary conflict that occurs during the reversal. The temporary suspension of order involves a violent hierarchal exchange between the loci of power, representing a deeper expression of the non-intentionality detailed by Levinas in his Ethics as First Philosophy. This non-intentionality passively subsists beneath our cogito to supplement the intentional consciousness’ objectification of knowledge in the pre-reflective contemplative state. The-non-intentionality gives rise to the bad conscious as a means to assert itself through the expression of intentional thought. The resulting intentional thought posits itself through questions, which beg a response. Thus we are met with the responsibility of language.
Let us explore non-intentionality and the bad-conscious as it relates to reversal. The bad consciousness that arises from the aimlessness of the pre-reflective non-intentionality operates out of restlessness. It poses questions and demands a response. The intentionality is much less restless and much more controlled. The cogito directs this objectification of otherness to grasp for knowledge. But what happens when our conscious intentionality encounters the demands of the bad-conscious? Perhaps this is when a reversal is experienced. As we intentionally grasp about the otherness, we are preoccupied externally, leaving the non-reflective intentionality idle. While we willfully apply our intention to the objectification of things in an effort synthesize the alienating divide and construct our nests of knowledge, our bad-conscious simultaneously asserts itself in opposition. Our intention, turned outward, is surpassed from behind, so to speak, and momentarily overcome by the non-intentional bad-conscious so that we witness a sudden phenomenological change in scenery that disorients and delights, altering the landscape of the mind. The conflictual overturning lasts as long as the non-intentional is left demanding, and the intentionality is free to observe these demands objectively without weighing them reflectively. As soon as the experience is contemplated, the non-intentional pre-reflective withdrawals its assertions and demands and the reversal rights itself again.
It is in the opposing forces of intentionality and non-intentionality that we find a common significance of reversals. To examine the substance being reversed is to overlook the common significance of why the reversals occur across substances. All substances constitute otherness and are non-uniquely the same in that respect. They differ only in their present significance. As they drift to the peripheral margins of thought, the space they occupy in our mental landscape diminishes as our need to acquire knowledge of them through objectification wanes. It is only the intentional objectification of the other that the bad consciousness can assert itself through the expression of an intentional thought. It is this conflict that is presented as being commonly significant throughout the experienced reversals.
William Dare 