I once heard a person express wonder and delight at “sharing a world with such creatures” in relation to something that had resonated with her at the level of thought. There is a profound precision and rightness in this expression, such that I hardly know how to capture it at the level of the Notion. The indefinite article hints at a pluralism of worlds and a possibility of other worlds and other fields of individuation, expressing an awareness of the contingency of this shared world and the hope of other worlds yet to come. But the concept of the “creature”, applied to what are ordinarily referred to as persons or humans, suggests singularity, animality, mad and untamed becomings that can no longer quite be classified in terms of subjectivized positions. The creaturely evokes the irreplaceable, and functions in much the same way that Levi-Strauss’ word mana, as an empty signifier that names that which fails to be embodied in language or the contemporary system of signifiers. But above all, to inhabit a world with creatures, would this not mean that there are still things worthy of wonder, astonishment, and admiration?… That there are forces that counter-act our cynicism, holding out the hope for something more? These are powerful and traumatic words to hear… Words that bring one to tremble and fill one with envy. Perhaps the creaturely, as an empty place holder of what cannot be named is nonetheless an end that should be aimed at. This would be the affirmation of a very different Gregor Samsa.
March 22, 2007
Where The Wild Things Grow
Posted by larvalsubjects under Communication, Fractals, Jouissance, Unconscious[3] Comments
March 22, 2007 at 7:32 am
As much as I agree with your analysis, I think you are missing a key semantic component of creature, viz. “that which is created”, which of course also implies the notion of a creator. In the final analysis, then, the phrase is so evocative because it contains the promise of a higher being that oversees all those different worlds and beings. That is indeed a very different affirmation of The Metamorphosis.
March 22, 2007 at 7:50 am
Hmm… whether a creator is implied might depend on whether the person who made such a statement were committed to the concept of immanence… In terms of the recent Hegelian reflections here, perhaps we creatures might create one another in and through our relationships, and range wild through the untamed possibilities growing in and through our interactions…
March 22, 2007 at 3:07 pm
I like these thoughts as, rather than adhere to symbolic systems of signification surrounding the word “creature,” you locate the term’s imaginary possibilities — for how can we then rethink our relationship to that which has been named, taxonomized, and relegated to the realm of animality and otherness? It is by the very approach you touch on here: reclaiming the “creature” as an over-signified term, understanding the connections between ourselves and the “creature” — perhaps through a more in-depth approach to realizing the crucial meeting-place of jouissance and the death drive — and identifying with the otherness the “creature,” on the symbolic register, conveys. It would indeed shed a great deal of light on Kafka’s story, as well as the other types of animality inherent in Law and hegemony in his other works (e.g. The Trial).