Don’t try and make too much of this post. I’m attempting to obtain some clarity about a concept from Derrida and Bhabha.
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How can a “lagged space open up in-between the inter-subjective ‘reality of signs…that are deprived of subjectivity’ and the historical development of the subject in the order of social symbols” (Bhabha, 1994 p. 242)?
How can signs have subjectivity in the first place of which they can be deprived? What is the nature of a sign that they can be said to be “inter-subjective”? Does this really mean that signs relate to one another? Signs relating to one another across time? What is this intersubjective reality of signs deprived of subjectivity?
This piece refers to Derrida. A structure, at the point of its definition, the point at which it is described as having a unique nature loses access to its history. It breaks with its past and is no longer what it once was. This transformation occurs in the temporal caesura, the break in time, which becomes the “historically transformative moment” the moment at which the old no longer exists and the new becomes.
What is “the historical development of the subject in the order of social symbols”? The historical development of the subject is the development of the subject through progressive historical narrative. Social symbols? Various symbols of status, power, place in society (caste?) providing symbols and signs to historical narrative?
So the lagged space exists between the narrativisation of the subject in history and
I’m thinking this all sounds a bit Deleuzian – flights to freedom? Food for thought.
Bhabha, H. (1994). Conclusion: ‘Race’, time and the revision of modernity. In The location of culture. London: Routledge.
