2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

F ORM AND CONTENT
pressing games, e.g. search spaces, are too weak and need a different and stronger charac-
terization in order to capture the difference.
To put it differently: the prescription of formality, although it does not seem to violate
the requirement of closure, in fact enforces it in the wrong way, by closing off what instead
should be comprehended within the scope of the “formal” structure. AI games, as a conse-
quences, are not a proper rendition of the concept of Spiel that we are after, since they miss
one of its basic feature. Moreover, the attempt to take in what the structure inevitably ex-
cludes proves impossible, because it would entail a substantial recourse to something that
lies beyond the structure itself, therefore violating closure. The situation, in fact, is even
more tangled, since the whole relationship between “internal” and “external” that Ai’s in-
terpretation of detachment as formality engenders is truly paradoxical, and of the specific
kind of paradoxes generated by the logic of the supplement. Let us define the latter by
means of a passage by Jonathan Culler:
The supplement is an inessential extra, added to something complete in
itself [e.g. self-enclosed] but the supplement is added in order to complete,
to compensate for a lack in what was supposed to be complete in itself. 17
The supplement, in other words, is both an accessory, inessential addition that forms the
core of the inside and a crucial component added from the outside. The logic of the supple-
ment is at work whenever an allegedly external element is called in “to supplement” pre-
cisely because there has always been a lack in what is supplemented. Derrida, in De la
grammatologie, discusses the logic of the supplement in a variety of contexts taken from
Rousseau’s texts. One of the most pregnant, and the one at the origin of the term, concerns
Rousseau’s definition of masturbation as a “dangerous supplement.” Masturbation, accord-
ing to Rousseau’s Confessions, is just a supplement, an addition, and a perverse one, to
“normal” sexual activity. However, Rousseau makes clear that it is a particularly adequate
addition, since it can replace or substitute quite efficiently for “normal” sexuality. As Der-
rida points out, however, in order to function as an indistinguishable replacement, mastur-
17. Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction. Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell UP)
202. and Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology…, 95-157 for a discussion of the logic of the supplement.
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