Asterios Polyp, Derrida, and a table full of things which are not things

I was amused by the idea that it was purportedly Kant who first used the phrase "always already," though it is more amusing that, at least according to this blogger, Gayatri Spivak in his introduction to Of Grammatology currently holds the record for the most number of instantiations of said phrase. I would have wanted to verify that for myself were I younger, but presently that would require me to read pages ix to lxxxvii of the book's John Hopkin's paperback edition (1976), and ain't nobody got time for that. (Suffice it to say, though, that the semantic evolution of the phrase itself speaks very strongly based on who uses it most famously: first Kant, then Marx, then Heidegger, then Derrida).

I would also, apart from being a lazy pedant, be careless and say that it needs one more "al-" in it: almost. The beauty of that word, apart from lending a necessary uncertainty to the monolithic formulation of "always already," is that it can occur as a modifier in the phrase, and by adding it, you, ever so slightly, like the almost imperceptible brush of a butterfly wing, change what it is you're describing. Almost always already. Always almost already. Always already almost.

For if, following Derrida, or one of my almost unforgivable bastardizations of him at least (but what else could be forgivable, if not the unforgivable?), an always already does not speak of an essence so much as it does of a fluctuating thing which is not a thing but almost a thing. (It only becomes a thing because it is always already a representation, at the very beginning, which is not a beginning, and hence the representation is not a representation but an almost-presentation.) As such, it is almost always already a thing, but is not, will never be, but this "never" is almost also.

I was re-reading Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp this morning, and, perhaps like all things we read (or experience, really), we superimpose ourselves into it, believing that the one who created it understands us so well when in reality, ("reality," like "things") it is by virtue of who we are that the creation speaks to us so resoundingly.

It is one of the themes in the book, in Derrida, and incidentally - or is it? - in some interpretations of quantum physics: What we are like colors - no, conditions -  the very things that we experience (not just how experience them, but what we do experience). Not leading strictly into existentialism and its tenets, however, the book forks off into that which undergirds the human necessity and predilection for opposites, and the systems that we put in place to make sense of what otherwise would be a chaotic mess of brute facts. We, seeing ourselves as being binary creatures, (masculine/feminine, good/bad/, material/mental, right-handed/left-handed) impose this duality in things. For instance, either this book/art/song/person/place/any goddamned noun is good or bad - not so much by virtue of its properties but by who it is that's looking at them. (The technical term for it is "parallax" - which Asterios lost, also having lost one eye.)

Derrida, unlike the book, however, does not put a sphere of possibilities in place of "the linear spectrum" above (or in Derridean parlance, "a binary and oppositional logic") by claiming that it is only a way of conveniently representing what is instead a "sphere of possibilities"; he problematizes the idea of possibility altogether. What is possible, if it were to be always already possible, should be almost possible, but not quite: thus it has to remain impossible. (Jesus Christ, in order to remain an icon of hope for salvation in the second coming, should never arrive.) What is forgivable, for it to be always already be forgivable, must almost be forgivable, but not quite: thus it has to remain unforgivable. (If you forgive a friend for something that's always already forgivable, then you did not really forgive: what your friend did is always already not an offense. For otherwise, what does "friendship" mean?) The "almost" puts everything that is always already on unsure footing, and that is what footing should be - unsure - otherwise it would not be footing: it would be immutable rootedness allowing for not-movement and no other footing whatsoever.

That is a gross simplification, and impossible (in the colloquial sense) to stand by. However we try to hold a sphere of possibilities, a movement and a shifting, an almost, in our heads, we come down to one thing or another. The book is full of these oppositions which we construct/confront: Dionysus/Apollo, reason/emotion, destiny/choice. The book itself is about an architect so renowned in inverse proportion to the number of times his designs get constructed (never), married to a sculptor whose creations speak in inverse proportion to how she asserts herself (just once, and only then metaphorically). Either/or. Humanly speaking, an almost is ultimately impossible. An is should be an always already. The human mind almost demands it.

(If you want to problematize the terms themselves in a higher order-level, a person cannot be almost pregnant. A person cannot, however, also be always already pregnant. But that's a different discussion altogether. But. No matter how many order-levels you go you will always, always, always already butt against an either/or, if you use the order-level below it. [Einstein eloquently said it better than I ever will: "You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."])

(But how could you not? That page above is rigged: it is a clever illustration of how irony eats itself in the course of elucidating what appear to be and what is. And my example is also rigged: the problem involved in being pregnant is time. )

Time. 

That's always the problem. Or always already almost the problem. Time punches essences in the face, that's why we construct/confront essences to begin with.

Let me correct that. Time is almost always already the problem.

It was raining this afternoon. Had it not been raining I would have barreled through the entire day like a thoughtless conglomeration of carbohydrates wasting time and space, but as things go when it rains, my conscious awareness of time, scant as it is, became a bit bigger. When I become conscious of time, though, I became conscious of things. Literal things, in front of me. (So literal I had to take a picture of it, which is also a thing, which is a representation of things, yada yada yada.) 

This is my now. Which is not a now, strictly speaking, for it is not my now now. It is an always already (those things will be there tomorrow, except maybe that wine), it will be an almost (because it is a picture and even then occur as image-words in your head), but these constitute my now at present, for a given meaning of "present."

These things, no matter their representationality and their being almost (i.e., not really things, as per Kant and Derrida and Heidegger) always (i.e., they are instantiations of the essences of things, as per Plato and slightly Heidegger to his horror) already (i.e., having been constructed by laborers worldwide, as per Marx and slightly Heidegger also) make my reality and ground me to time. (Jesus Christ, goddamn that Heidegger, he is and will always be everywhere.)

Even those three words - always, already, almost - speak of time. (And of memory, but that is a different discussion also. Aha, another "al-".)

You will also always already almost have been and are in time. We cannot compare this being in time to anything else, except when we compare things that time differentiates: states of things, that which is the case now, which is not a now, for we are almost in time, always already in time, never in time, because we anticipate and remember. For apart from being in and having time, we also are and have hope and memory.

Time is almost always already the problem, but it is memory (which is also temporal), that makes things things. That we are in time is why things are in the spaces in between the words "almost," "always," and "already," for time is change; and that is why we are, for we remember.

It took Asterios Polyp losing one eye (representing that he came down to one thing or another) to choose/be in between all of the dualisms that he has been struggling with for all of his life. If I may have the almost unforgivable liberty of translating this metaphor hyperbolically, it is only when we have one vantage point that we see everything we can and will, and it will take a person both time and memory to be a person. This last and ultimate vantage point is memory. As such, we are almost persons, because we are already persons, and from this last thing we have always been persons. But that last "always been" will always be tempered with the insecurity of time, of an almost - for as long as we continue living we are never completely persons. And yet we have always already been persons because we remember not being anything else.

My point? 

Nothing. Almost always already nothing, as is usually the case, but since it is nothing, it is a non-point, and you could have already read the book and Derrida, and would have had always already read it, since I am speaking now, in your time of reading this but not my time of writing it (and therefore it is an almost coincidence that we did both at the same time), but then you can always read it again, in which case you will also almost have read it, on and on, until you can no longer, having had almost always already done so. What else can we hope for, if not also almost always already having done things, which are not things, but still things that will remain as things in the memory?

Image credit:

http://www.fibra.hr/katalog/izdanja/kolorka-specijal-3-asterios-polyp/197/