Abstract

The project examines Descartes's construction of an autonomous subject against threats posed by such disjunctures in language as those manifested in Montaigne's Essais. The cogito is constituted as unity in a field of language, the latter a flux of signification not determined by an overarching principle. This field emerges in Renaissance Europe with a shift toward the vernacular--away from the auctoritas of Latin texts as the primary determination of writing. ;Montaigne addresses this phenomenon: the Essais employ borrowed language--citations from Latin texts that skew the "original" meaning, accompanied by avowals that written language evades the author's control. Montaigne constructs a subject in order to show that it is continually disrupted by the language it engages in and never achieves unity. Within the framework of modernity, this strategy of assembling a text--where the institutional determination of meaning is dislocated--is of value in considering the critical-theoretical function of the "genre" of which Montaigne is the founder, namely the essay. ;Descartes's writing responds to Montaigne. In the Discours de la methode Descartes states that he writes in French, not Latin, to appeal to reason rather than ancient books: the disjunctures of written language are unsuitable for his purposes. To achieve clear and distinct perception, he seeks an absolute determination of signification. The struggle shows in not only in his statements but his manner of assembling the book. His is an essayistic manner: the Discours comprises disparate parts, written over time, and incorporates reworked passages from, among others, Montaigne. Therefore, when the cogito is uttered, it is caught in the very flux of signification from which it would disengage. ;Fixing the cogito in a Latin inscription in the Meditations, Descartes continues the struggle: through a proof by axiom of God's existence, he arrives at the position that thought's immediate relation to itself is a written relation . The disjunctures of writing are overcome in God's writing. Through this constitution of the subject by way of what Derrida has termed an archi-ecriture, Descartes effects a gesture of institutional foundation that initiates modern delimitations of knowledge.