International Colloquium
30 Oct - 1 Nov 2009
Institute of Romance Studies at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany

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Christian Kupke
In Fertile Thinking – the Ineffable. Or what is beyond.

During the congress we will be talking about “fertile thinking”. But is there, actually, any infertile thin­king? What is infertile thinking? And what is in fertile thinking, its complement and imple­ment: the ineffable? Kristeva’s post-structuralist critic on Lacan’s theory of the symbolic order cul­minates in a suspicion: the symbolic order, as an order, is infertile, or: the symbolic is nothing, in­effectual, with­out its complement: the semiotic. And the semiotic nothing, ineffectual, without its implement: the real? The ineffable? The last instance of negativity? The stance, where negativity, in a dialectical turn, transcends into a last(ing) positivum? Into the thing?

In my lecture, let us hope: driven by the ineffable, spoken and unspoken, I will try to state – in the use of English as a foreign language for me, as French has been a foreign langu­age for Kristeva – that there is no fertility, no fertile thinking without any transcen­dence, with­out going beyond or what is beyond – thinking, subjectivity, the self, even if it is another / an other. What seems to be neglect­able for a theory tracing back to the linguistic turn: the ineffable, in fertile thin­king, is inneglectable. The in here stands for the immanent negation: The linguistic turn is or has to be its negation: a semi­o­tic turn. And the semiotic turn is or has ever been its negation: a real turn / turn of the real.

The questions I want to deal with are: First, what transcendence is the transcendence of the in­eff­able? Is transcendence a necessary logical assumption? Second, is there any difference bet­ween pro­ductive or creative thinking on the one and fertile thinking on the other side? What is fer­tility owing to materiality or maternity? And third, what kind of theory is a theory that reminds us of the ineff­able in fertile thinking? Is it, or is there in general, some­thing like a depressive theo­ry of depres­sion? To all these questions I’ll try to give – not only logical, psychological or psychopathological but – phi­losophical answers.