Mechanical Performatives

What is it about?

In this chapter I consider de Man’s account of the ‘performative rhetoric’ generated by the random and mechanical nature of language, a notion he illustrates with reference to Rousseau. I show how de Man’s description of language as a machine (which has the incidental effect of abolishing the notion of guilt), rests on an extremely dubious reading (and re-writing) of Rousseau, in which he turns his confessions or apologies into excuses or justifications by adding a negative to a crucial sentence, and interprets the adjective machinal as machine-like rather than instinctive, allowing him to construct a general theory in which language is mechanical, arbitrary, gratuitous and irresponsible, unconstrained by human cognition or reference and detached from meaning, intentions and signifieds. Since the rediscovery and re-publication of de Man’s wartime journalism, it has been widely argued that his abolition of the notion of guilt in the essay on the Confessions is related to the opinions he expressed in collaborationist newspapers in occupied Belgium. Consequently I end this chapter with a brief account of de Man’s early writings, and a pragmatic response to Wlad Godzich’s claim that ‘the artifactness of language’ and our awareness of the falsehood of all utterances makes it impossible for us to stand by (or feel guilty about) our actions or statements.

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