Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

Unravelling the Demonic Text 91open to “thematic” or “therapeutic” reading that aims at an integration, explanation,understanding; this, on the other hand, participates in the “violenceof reason” towards its other. The plural is in danger of being mademonological. From another viewpoint, however, the complete denial of integrativereading and interpretation amounts to essentialising the conflictingelements in the demonic. Ricoeur’s “dynamic identity” of a text is one wayof articulating this necessary tension and dialectic between particular interpretationsof demons or “demonic textuality” and that “reserve of otherness”that will always remain irreducible. As the “thematic” and “deconstructive”moments of analysis inform each other they do not remain immutable;the awareness of multiple centres of signification and the radical effectsof the reader’s position or his decontextualising activity shifts the focusfrom the “truth” of a text to its rhetoric. 47Derrida has explored the demonic versus the integrative aspects of languagein his essay “Plato’s Pharmacy.” The point of departure is the questionablemetaphysical status of writing in many systems of thought. As Paulwrites in the Bible: “the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life.” 48 Derridatackles the myth about writing’s origin in Plato’s Phaedrus and the condemnationit receives there. According to this story (narrated by Socrates inthe dialogue), the ancient Egyptian god Theuth first invented writing, alongwith numbers and calculation and many other things. He brought these inventionsbefore King Thamus (the representative or incarnation of Ammon,the high god of the sun), and the King blamed or praised the usefulness ofeach one. The discussion of writing was of special interest to Plato, as it is toDerrida:[…] Theuth said, “This discipline, my King, will make the Egyptians wiserand will improve their memories: my invention is a recipe (pharmakon) forboth memory and wisdom.” But the king said, “Theuth, my master of arts,[…] your paternal goodwill has led you to pronounce the very opposite of47The importance of rhetoric in the text rises from its complex status as a layer of activityand understanding that moves beyond mere syntax and grammar. Wayne C. Booth,in his classic study The Rhetoric of Fiction pays attention to the various, often indirectways the author (in the text) implies something to the reader and thereby persuades him,even if the text at the level of grammar and syntax seems to say something else. Accordingto Booth “the greatest literature” is “radically contaminated with rhetoric,” and engagesreaders with its ambiguous and indirect means. (Booth 1961, 98.) Rhetoric can begiven both pragmatic and deconstructive interpretations, the latter here exemplified byPaul de Man. In his article “Semiology and Rhetoric,” de Man admits that the exact theoreticaldistinction between the epistemology of grammar and the epistemology of rhetoricis beyond his powers; he nevertheless points to the importance of the “rhetoricalquestion” to literary studies. The undecidability between a literal meaning and a figurativemeaning marks the domain of rhetoric for de Man: “Rhetoric radically suspends logicand opens up vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration.” (de Man 1979, 10.) Thisignores the more pragmatic aspects of rhetoric in the text (the establishment of “good”and “evil,” or sympathy and distance in the use of figurative language or narration, forexample).482 Cor. 3:6.