Limit Experience

The concept of affirmative consent presumes a subject who is fully trans- parent to herself and who can anticipate the precise effects of her assent. This essay proposes limit consent, a concept that offers us different ways to think about the sexual—and about the analytic encounter. Limit con- sent involves a more nuanced negotiation of limits and becomes possible when the subject makes herself passible (Lyotard 1988) to an other—a condition that is neither active nor passive. Processes described in depth here suggest that passibility has ties to the rousing of infantile sexuality (Freud) and to the subject’s normative perversity (Laplanche). When the psychic economy of the infantile sexual is followed to its apex, a particu- lar kind of state is produced that I call overwhelm—a word that is used here as a noun. Overwhelm is a state of dysregulation that can be con- fused with, but is not the same as, repetition compulsion. Overwhelm entails risk, and under some circumstances it may open up space toward significant psychic transformations. A detailed clinical example illustrates how overwhelm may make itself known in the clinical encounter, and how it can infiltrate the transference/countertransference. Specific tech- nical suggestions are made regarding analytic work with overwhelm.

Nilgün Marmara’nın 1977-1987 arasında yazdığı şiirler, şiir öznelerinin hafızalarında kalan çeşitli tanıklıkları aktarma denemelerine odaklanır. Bu şiirlerde dil, anlatmanın imkansızlığıyla yeni ifade ihtimallerinin varlığı arasında gidip gelen bir geçişlilik oluşturur. Şiirlerde konuşan seslerin, kullandıkları dilin kurallarını ve alışılageldik ifade biçimlerini ihlal ederek kurmaya çalıştığı hafıza, Marmara şiiri için deneyimin aktarılamadığı, ancak aktarma çabasındaki bu imkansızlığın kendisine işaret edebilen estetik bir alan açar. Bu estetik alan, aynı zamanda 1980 darbesiyle ve Marmara’nın intiharıyla ilişkilendirilebilecek göndergesellikler taşıyabilir. Böylelikle bu okuma, üzerine yapılmış fazla çalışma bulunmayan Marmara yazınına getirilebilecek farklı yaklaşımlara imkan sağlayabilir. Bu gibi odak noktalardan hareketle makalede, dilini imkansızlıkların ve ihtimallerin sınırlarına koyan ve bu sınırları muğlaklaştıran Marmara şiirini, tanıklık bağlamında tartışmayı amaçlıyorum.

In Foucault's theoretical writings, the problem of experience occurs in two shapes: his (earlier) discussions of "limit-experience" and his (later) definition of "experience". In this article, I propose an interpretation of the concept of "limit-experience" in Foucault's historiography according to which experience is already limit-experience, and not its static and confining other. I claim that Foucault's concept of experience involves spatially and temporally indexed, rule-governed practices and that his interrogation of experience becomes critical not by referring to some other of reason but by rendering visible the flip side of the limits of our own space of reasons. The argument in support of my interpretation of Foucault develops in two parts: 1) Foucault's "methodology" should be seen not as historicizing the transcendental, but as giving it up. 2) This renunciation of the transcendental is nonetheless only intelligible and motivated against the background of the problematic of (the limits of) experience in Kant and Hegel. It thereby becomes possible to provide not a foundation but a justification for a Foucaultian critique of the limits of experience.

The essay examines the recent discussion about a “crisis of testimony” in historiography. Central to this discussion is the question of how it is possible for human testimony to convey information about the limit experiences of 20th century history. Given that the credibility of testimony is assessed by appealing to our previous understanding of what is credible, testimony to limit experiences risks being dismissed as unbelievable or implausible. This issue has recently been addressed in the work of Paul Ricoeur, Hayden White and Gert-Jan van der Heiden among others. In the first part of this essay, I show that the current idea of a crisis of testimony is a consequence of focusing too exclusively on the content of extraordinary testimony. I argue that such a focus has affinities with David Hume’s reductionist understanding of testimonial knowledge; even though the authors discussed cannot properly be labelled reductionists themselves. In the second part of the essay, I open up the issue of extraordinary testimony from a perspective that places the relationship between the speaker and the addressee at the heart of testimonial knowledge. My aim is to show that if we attend to the way in which testimonial knowledge involves dependence on the authority of another person, then the current idea of a crisis of testimony will dissolve itself. In conclusion, I argue that there is an important ethical dimension to the question of understanding extraordinary testimony.

« Il y a dans l’interrogation du sacrifice comme un point critique ou crucial, de la pensée contemporaine » (Nancy, L’insacrifiable). C’est en ces termes que Jean-Luc Nancy revient sur la notion de sacrifice comme expérience limite de la pensée contemporaine française, autour de laquelle semble s’être construite l’identité philosophique et culturelle française dans toute sa diversité depuis le début du XXème siècle et sa première rencontre avec l’objectivisation du sacré par la sociologie de Durkheim, la pensée déicide de Nietzsche, et la lecture Kojèvienne de Hegel. A la fois origine, ultime limite et sommet de la pensée contemporaine du sacrifice (ici, ‘sommet’ étant compris dans son sens Bataillien, comme point culminant de l’intensité tragique), la pensée de Georges Bataille sacrifie Hegel et Nietzsche à la dépense en pure perte pour faire naître une conception du sacrifice qui, comme Nancy le nota avec justesse, hantera toute pensée française – sinon Occidentale – qui lui succèdera. Lors de mon intervention, je souhaiterais revenir sur cette pensée Bataillienne du sacrifice afin de mettre en évidence ce que je considère comme étant le point de départ de la fascination contemporaine pour le sacrifice dans toute son ambiguïté : l’impossibilité pour Bataille de faire face à l’impasse du sacrifice et d’y renoncer durablement, condamnant ainsi la pensée française à repenser sans cesse le sacrifice sans jamais pouvoir s’en détacher, à devenir un éternel pas au-délà du sacrifice.