Vladimir Tasić

Odlomak iz romana Oproštajni dar

Religija ga je duboko interesovala; možda i preduboko. Mogao bih reći da ga je ta opsesija koštala života, no on se, verujem, ne bi složio sa mnom. Problem religioznog iskustva zaokupljao ga je do te mere da je vremenom stvorio sopstvenu veroispovest, galimatijas svih mogućih mističkih tradicija sklepan od učenja begarda, begina, bogumila, budista, donatista, ebionita, fratičela, hermetista, paracelzijanaca, rozenkrojcera, pravoslavnih isihasta (posebno se zanimao za mistku srca); bilo je tu svega, od katarizma i kabale do astečkih legendi sa primesama gnosticizma i patripasijanizma, sufizma, tantre, taoizma, džudžua i vudua, i ne znam čega još. Svojevremeno sam potrošio solidan novac na jedan od teško dostupnih primeraka Klifordove Enciklopedije jeresi kako bih u taj haos pokušao da unesem neki red. Knjigu sam uspeo da nabavim, ne bez muke, no moram priznati da mi nije pošlo za rukom da rekonstruišem bratovu doktrinu. Sa svakim narednim pogledom, ona mi se ukazivala drugačijom a ipak na neki način istom; poput šarenih kristala u kaleidoskopu. Možda je bolje da pređem na kratak opis jednog od njegovih retkih praktičnih projekata. Kada je bio u sedmom razredu, pokušao je da napravi muzički stub od šporeta. Na terasi našeg stana godinama je stajao stari štednjak koji mu je poslužio kao osnov za ovu totalno besmislenu konstrukciju. Drugi fundament ovog projekta bio je gramofon Toska 10. Roditelji su to čudo savremenog dizajna smatrali klimaksom tehničke sofisticiranosti: držali su ga u dnevnoj sobi, svečano izloženog, kao da se radilo o ordenu zasluga za narod. Brat je taj gramofon jednostavno, kako je docnije govorio, «dekonstruisao», testerom, kleštima, odvrtačima i drugim alatkama, i postavio disk za ploču na mesto velike ringle. Zvučnike je stavio u rernu. Kupio je nove prekidače za štednjak, montirao ih, i kraj njih štampanim ćiriličnim slovima ispisao reči: VOLUME, BASS, TREBLE, BALANCE. Umešao je hladnu neskafu — on je uvek pio hladnu neskafu, sa vrlo malo vode, puno mleka i zrncem-dva šećera, po mogućstvu neizbeljenog — stavio prvi album Kleša na svoj šporetofon, i seo na crvenu plastičnu hoklicu. Ja sam ostao u kuhinji (u tom se stanu na terasu izlazilo iz kuhinje), zabrinut da bi me njegova paklena mašina lako mogla odneti dođavola. Iz aparata je uskoro pokuljala nesnosna buka i na sat-dva sa terase rasterala vrapce koje je moj brat, uprkos majčinoj zabrani, redovno hranio. Nikada se više nije okušao na polju tehnike. Mislim da se njega može reći da je bio umetnik, mada je to izraz koji više ne znači ništa i koji stoga nerado koristim. Umetnik koji je za sve što je stvorio govorio da je bezvredno i da mora biti uništeno. Crtanke je, koliko se sećam, bacio u Dunav. U njima su bile savršene — minijaturne ali savrešene — reprodukcije Engra, Moroa, Blejka i drugih slikara čije sam radove viđao u knjigama iz istorije umetnosti. (Kod kuće smo imali veći broj takvih knjiga, kao i dijapozitive Radničkog univerziteta «Radivoj ćirpanov» sa izborom iz zbirki poznatijih muzeja.) Beleške, to jest ono što je od njih ostalo, nalaze se ovde. Imao sam samo jednu od pet ili šest njegovih svezaka, onu koju sam uspeo da ukradem kada je majka odlučila da je vreme za krečenje i tom prilikom izbacila sve bratove stvari u predsoblje. Na koricama je bio naslov Eseji iz okultne anatomije. Kada sam ga pitao zašto ne pokuša da objavi svoje eseje — prelistao sam samo jedny od svezaka, i to ovlaš, no bio sam uveren da se u njima nalazilo nešto u najmanju ruku kolosalno — odmahnuo je rukom. Da je Brod slušao Kafku, rekao sam, ali on me je prekinuo. Ja bosiljak sadim, rekao je, a fridrih mi niče. Dobro pamtim taj razgovor. Stojali smo na platou iznad tunela na mostu i pušili travu gajenu u šumarku na ivici Kameničkog parka; tamo zalaze samo psi lutalice i botaničari-amateri. Veče je bilo toplo, lepljivo i vlažno. Svetiljke na mostu bile su okružene narandeastim oreolima. Ti su mi oreoli delovali komično, ili tragično, nisam siguran; poput anđela čuvara kojima je dodeljeno da bdiju nad maketom sveta, jalovom konstrukcijom stvorenoj po zamisli tvorca koji je od nje davno digao ruke, ali koja ipak nastavlja da pluta, nošena tupom inercijom materije. Voleo bih, rekao sam mu, da počnem iznova. Imao sam utisak da sam u nekom odlučnom momentu načinio rđav potez i našao se na putu koji je neminovno vodio sve dublje u blato i glib. često sam se tako osećao: kao da želim novi početak čitave priče, kao da žudim da zaklopim iskrzane korice knjige postanja i pređem u neku drugu zbilju. Moj brat je tvrdio da priče žive u stvarnosti ali nisu stvarnost; da ništa nema početak i kraj; da postoje teorije prema kojima svaka odluka, svaka pomisao, prouzrokuje razgranavanja novih stvarnosti, paralelnih svetova u kojima su postvaruju alternativne mogućnosti. «Svaki trenutak», rekao je, «sadrži u sebi beskraj svetova i zato nema nikakvog početka, ni kraja, osim u bajkama popova i fizičara. Pogledaj samo sve te doktorate, monografije — čitave, čoveče, naučne institute —religije i filozofije koje pokušavaju da uobliče u priču nešto što je samo amorfna izmaglica mogućnosti.» Dopalo mi se to. Zamišljao sam da iskoračujem iz sebe i lutam kroz prazninu svemira u lakom, prozirnom telu koje se sa svakim korakom deli, nastaje i raspršuje se, kao zimski dah. Pas boje zemlje i licem kojota izvirio je iz šipražja i pogledao nas ravnodušno. Pažljivo je onjušio vazduh, podigao nogu i označio obližnji žbun kao svoju neotuđivu teritoriju, a onda se odgegao prema parku. Pre nego što je nestao u polumraku, okrenuo se ka nama i pogledao nas još jednom. Brat je pošao za njim. Ne znam zašto. Ne mogu to da objasnim. Tumarali smo kroz park, ćutke, dugo (ili mi se tako činilo), sve dok nismo došli do svetilišta pijanaca kojima je na mostu prigustilo te stoga žure stepeništem dole, da bi sa univerzalnim izrazom olakšanja mokrili i nastavili svoju odiseju. Isto tako iznenadno kao što je krenuo za psom, moj brat je stao i zagledao se u stazu. Sagnuo se i sa zemlje podigao telo mrtvog vrapca. Pogledao me je. činilo mi se da su se suze skupljale u njegovim očima, ali to je možda bio samo odsjaj narandžastih oreola. Vrapca je šakama priljubio na grudi. «Gospode Isuse Hriste, pomiluj me», šaptao je, «Sine Božji, pomiluj me. Gospode...». Pošao je ka mostu, isprva sporo, zatim sve brže i brže, sve dok više nisam mogao da ga stignem. (Uvek je bio brži od mene.) Video sam ga, kada sam izbio na most i zastao da dođem do daha, kako trči prema gradu. Hodao sam neko vreme praznim ulicama, Bulevarom 23. oktobra, Bulevarom AVNOJ-a; prošao sam pored knjižare i suda; izašao na prostrani trg kraj «Spensa». Bulevari, ulice, trgovi: oni možda nisu bili pusti, no to je utisak koji sam poneo sa sobom. Ako sam te večeri nekoga sreo, moji su saputnici sada vidljivi samo kao blede siluete, nestalni duhovi koji samim svojim kretanjem bivaju izbrisani u magli beskonačne ekspozicije. Popušio sam cigaretu na stepeništu Sportsko-poslovnog centra i krenuo ka Limanu. Kod kuće sam popio dve ili tri čaše vode. Kada sam legao, iz bratove sobe moglo se čuti samo uznemireno koračanje. Neko vreme sam osluškivao taj zvuk, a onda sam zakucao na zid koji je odvajao naše sobe. (Naš znak, poziv na razgovor.) Koračanje je na trenutak stalo, ali se odmah zatim nastavilo. Ujutro ću mu reći da je zvučao poput zatočene pume; to je, ako se dobro sećam, poslednje što sam pomislio pre nego što sam zaspao. Ne može se sa sigurnošću reći kada je otišao. Nisam to tada znao — da će otići — no ta je mogućnost, čini mi se, uvek bila u vazduhu. Sticao se utisak da je ovde u kratkoj poseti. Možda mi sada tako čini, možda je u pitanju optička varka, iluzija retrospektive. U svakom slučaju, jednostavno nas je napustio. Njegov odlazak isprva je zbližio majku i oca i mene, kao da smo se po nekom zakonu održanja porodične energije morali zgusnuti, sažeti. Ta kontrakcija je ubrzo dostigla kritičnu tačku i preinačila se u nezadrživ proces fisije. Sada ga vidim kao usporeni snimak velikog benga koji će nas rasuti po nebu, poput novogodišnjeg vatrometa, ne, poput buvlje pijace, smetlišta uspomena nošenih olujnim vetrom. Neću ulaziti u detalje istrage koja je usledila, u pojedinosti neugodnih poziva iz vojnog odseka i učestalih poseta profesionalnih tupoglavaca kojima nije bilo moguće objasniti elementarnu činjenicu da kad neka osoba nestane, onda ta nestala osoba, statistički gledano, obično ne pokazuje sklonost da se iznenada vrati samo da ne bi propustila sedmodnevno bivakovanje sa gomilom pijanih rezervista koji će za par godina, na nekom vrlo sličnom bivakovanju, izginuti ili biti osakaćeni ili završiti sa hroničnim prolivom i nesanicom. Ne želim, rekoh, u to da ulazim. To nije moja stvar, moja, da tako kažem, stvarnost, jer i ja sam ubrzo otišao i tako izbegao jedno mučno poglavlje mučnim poglavljima bremenite srpske istorije. Prihvatio sam ponudu za posao u Centru za ljudsku simulaciju (to je firma za koju i sada radim; njihovog predstavnika upoznao sam prethodnog leta, u Dubrovniku). Dobio sam vizu i kartu, i to je, jednostavno rečeno, bilo to. Trebalo je još samo otići u vojni odsek i istim onim službenim licima koja su u našem stanu pila kafu i kajsijevaču, istim onim tipovima koji su razdirali dušu mojim roditeljima naklapajući o nezamenjivosti njihovog nestalog sina u sistemu opštenarodne odbrane i (nemojmo to zaboraviti) društvene samozaštite, objasniti da napuštam zemlju; i o toj odluci obavestiti roditelje. Ujutro, nekoliko sedmica nakon njegovog odlaska, izneo sam bratove cipele iz ostave. Majka ih je tamo sklonila, uredno, kao da bi brat svakog trenutka mogao da se vrati i izjavi da je skoknuo na šahovski turnir u Subotici. Zašto sam uzeo njegove cipele? Verovao sam, ako se ne varam, da ću se u njima osećati sigurnije; iako su bile za broj ili pola broja prevelike. Uz uzdah, kao da govori sama sa sobom, kao da se ne obraća meni, majka je rekla: opet te krpare. Spenserice, ispravio sam je. Pustinjske cokule, rekao je otac, tako su to zvali u moje vreme. Sedeli su u kuhinji i pili prvu jutarnju kafu iz malenih šoljica koje su kupili još 1976. u Bratislavi. Bila je upaljena samo pomoćna lampa na aspiratoru iznad štednjaka, bez valjanog razloga. Razgovarali su tiho, u dimu. Plavičasta izmaglica davala im je izgled zaverenika, vođa nekog pokreta otpora koji su se sastali u uglu staničnog kafea kako bi razmenili poslednji pozdrav. Mislim da su razgovarali o meni. Tako su izgledali samo kada su razgovarali o meni ili o bratu, ali mislim da o bratu tada više nisu razgovarali; ako se izuzmu povremena odmahivanja glavom. Moguće je da grešim, ali sada mi se čini da je treperenje sijalice presvučene patinom isparenja goveđih supa i gulaša slično podrhtavanju plamena petrolejske lampe ili pucketavom sagorevanju cepanice bačene na vatru ognjišta. (Užasna reč: ognjište. Trebalo bi me podseća na oganj, na arhetipni plamen u peći jednog arhetipnog doma, ali me umesto toga navodi da mislim na neko ogavno njištanje.) Obuo sam cipele i uzeo gutljaj kafe od majke. Kap-dve slučajno sam prolio na stolnjak. Vratio sam šolju na tanjirić i pogledao ka staklenoj posudi sa srebrnastim poklopcem u kojoj se nalazilo slatko od lubenica. Posmatrano iz određenog ugla, ono ume da svetluca poput ćilibara. Kao dete, prejeo sam se tog svetlucavog ćilibara, toliko da mi se i danas smuči pri samoj pomisli na ćilibar, lubenice, ili male staklene posude sa srebrnastim poklopcem. čuo sam sebe kako kažem: odlazim u Kanadu. Majka je ćutala. Otac je posegao za svojom šoljicom, primakao je usnama, naglo; siguran sam da je progutao soc. Kada je progovorio, usta su mu izgledala manja nego obično. Pametno, rekao je. Majka ga je pogledala, ali nije govorila.

Reprinted with the permission of the author.

The Farewell Gift
(excerpt)

Translated by Ralph Bogert

He was deeply interested in religion, perhaps too deeply. I might even say that that obsession cost him his life, but I don't believe he would agree with me. He was preoccupied with the problem of religious experience to such a degree that in time he made up his own creed — a hodgepodge of all possible mystical traditions patched together from his study of the Beghards, the Beguines, the Bogumils, the Buddhists, the Donatists, the Ebionites, the Fraticelli, the Hermeticists, the Paracelsists, the Rosenkreutzers, the Eastern Orthodox Hesychasts (he was especially interested in «heart prayer»). Everything was there, from Catharism and the Caballa to Aztec legends and smatterings of Gnosticism and Patripassianism, Sufism, Tantra, Taoism, Ju-Ju and Voodoo, and I don't know what else. At one time I spent a goodly sum to get a copy of Clifford's Encyclopedia of Heresy, which was hard to come by, in order to make some sense out of that chaos. I was able to get the book, but I have to admit that I didn't manage to reconstruct my brother's doctrine. At each glance, it seemed different but still somehow the same, like the coloured pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope. Maybe it would be better to give a brief description of one of his rare practical projects. When he was in the seventh grade he tried to make a hi-fi set out of a stove. For years an old range was standing out on the terrace of our apartment, and he used it to make his senseless construction. Another thing he used to make it out of was a Tosca 10 record player. Our parents thought that this miracle of Yugoslav design was the zenith of technical sophistication. They kept it ceremoniously displayed in the living room as if it were a National Service Medal. My brother, as he later put it, simply «deconstructed» that record player using a saw, pliers, screwdrivers and other tools. He put the turntable on top of the large burner; the speakers he placed in the oven. He bought new knobs and installed them on the cook top. Next to them he wrote in block letters VOLUME, BASS, TREBLE, BALANCE. He mixed himself a cold Nescafe — he always drank instant coffee cold with very little water, plenty of milk and one or two cubes of sugar, raw if possible — put the first album by The Clash on his «stove-o-fone» and sat down on a red plastic hassock. I stayed in the kitchen (the terrace was just off the kitchen in that apartment), worried that his infernal machine might send me to straight to hell. Soon an insufferable roar was boiling from that contraption, and for an hour or two it chased the sparrows — the ones my brother regularly fed despite our mother's protests — away from the terrace. He never had anything to do with technology again. Although it's a term I'm reluctant to use, because it doesn't mean anything anymore, I believe you could say he was an artist. An artist who said that everything he created was no good and needed to be destroyed. From what I can remember, he threw his sketchbooks into the Danube. They contained perfect — miniature, but perfect — reproductions of Ingres, Moreau, Blake and other painters whose works I had seen in art history books. (We had a number of such books at home, as well as a collection of slides from Radivoj Cirpanov Workers University of art in famous museums.) The notes, that is, what remained of them, are here. I only had one out of five or six of his books, the one I managed to steal when mother decided that it was time to paint the apartment and threw all of my brother's things out into the hallway. On the cover was the title Essays in Occult Anatomy. I leafed through one of his volumes, only superficially, yet I was convinced that there was something in them that at the very least was colossal. When I asked him why he didn't try to publish his essays, he just waved his hand in rejection. If Brod had listened to Kafka, I said, but he interrupted me. I ask how to plant turnips, and you Schopen me hauer. I remember that conversation well. We were standing on the flat area on top of a tunnel that used to be part of a bridge, smoking grass grown in the woods on the edge of Kamenica Park. Only amateur botanists and homeless dogs ever went there. The evening was warm, humid and sticky. The lights on the bridge were surrounded by orangish halos. Those halos seemed comic to me, or tragic, I'm not sure. Like guardian angels assigned to keep watch over a scale model of the world, a sterile mock-up created according to the plan of a creator who last touched it long ago but that nevertheless kept on bobbing up and down, carried along by the obtuse inertia of matter. I told him that I would like to begin all over again. I had the impression that at some decisive moment I had taken a wrong turn and ended up on a path that was leading me inexorably deeper and deeper into mud and mire. I had that feeling often. As if I wished for a new beginning to the whole story, as if I were longing to shut the worn-out covers of the book of genesis and cross over to some other reality. My brother said that stories lived in reality but were not reality, that there was no longer a beginning and an end. That some theories say that every decision we make, every notion we have branches out into new realities, into parallel worlds where alternative possibilities are created. «Each moment,» he said, «contains endless worlds, so there is no beginning, no ending, except in tales told by priests and physicists. Just look at all those doctoral degrees and monograph studies — entire scientific institutes, man — religions and philosophies that try to make a story out of something that is nothing but an amorphous haze of the possible.» I liked that. I imagined that I was stepping out of my own self and wandering through an empty universe in a light, transparent body that divided with each step, existing and vanishing, like breath in winter. A dust-coloured dog with the face of a coyote peered out of the underbrush and looked at us indifferently. It carefully sniffed the air, lifted its leg and marked its territory on a near-by bush, then loped off toward the park. Before it disappeared into the semidarkness it turned around and looked at us once more. My brother followed the dog. I don't know why. I can't explain it. We wandered through the park in silence for a long time (at least it seemed like it to me) until we came to a spot hallowed by drunkards who got filled up on the bridge and hurried down the steps in order to relieve themselves, with a universal expression of gratitude, and continue their odyssey. Just as suddenly as he had set off after the dog, my brother stopped and stared at the path. He bent over and picked up a dead sparrow. He looked at me. It seemed like there were tears in his eyes, but that may have only been the reflection of the orange halos. With his hands cupped he nestled the sparrow on his breast. «O Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,» he whispered, «Son of God, have mercy on me. O my Lord...» He set off toward the bridge, slowly at first, then so fast that I couldn't catch up to him. (He was always faster than me.) When I got to the bridge and stopped to get my breath, I saw him running toward town. For some time I walked through the empty streets, along Liberation Boulevard and Antifascism Avenue. I passed in front of the bookstores and the courthouse and came out on the wide square next to «Spens» shopping mall. The boulevards, the streets, the squares — maybe they weren't empty, but that's the impression I had. If I did meet some people, those evening companions now seem nothing more than pale silhouettes, spirits who by their very movements have disappeared in a fog, like images that have been eternally overexposed. I smoked a cigarette on the steps of the Sports and Entertainment Centre and set off toward the Liman quarter. At home I drank two or three glasses of water. When I went to bed, I could hear only the sound of nervous pacing coming from my brother's room. I listened to that sound for some time, then I knocked on the wall that separated our rooms. (It was our signal, an invitation to talk.) The pacing stopped for a second, then continued. In the morning I would tell him that he sounded like a caged puma. If I remember right, that was the last thought I had before I fell asleep. I can't say for sure when he left. I didn't know it then — that he would leave — but it seems that that possibility was always in the air. I had the impression that he was only here for a short visit. Maybe it only seems like it to me now, maybe it's a retrospective illusion. In any case, he simply left us. At first his departure brought us closer together — mother, father and me — as if we were following some law of family energy conservation and were becoming more compact and condensed. That contraction quickly reached a critical point and changed over into an unstoppable process of fission. I see it now as a picture of the Big Bang running in slow motion as it spews us across the sky like fireworks on New Year's Eve — no, more like a flea market, a dumping ground for memories kicked up by a gust of wind. I won't go into the particulars of the investigation that followed, the details of the unpleasant calls from the military draft officials and the frequent visits by the professional dunderheads who couldn't comprehend the basic fact that when somebody has gone missing then that missing person, statistically speaking, is not inclined to suddenly return just in order not to skip a seven-day bivouac with a bunch of drunk military reservists who in a couple of years will go on a very similar bivouac only to be killed or maimed or end up with chronic diarrhea and insomnia. As I said, I don't want to go into that. That isn't my thing, my reality, so to speak, because I also soon left and so avoided a painful chapter among the painful chapters of Serbia's burdensome history. I accepted a job offer in the Centre for Human Simulation (the company I'm working for now, whose representative I had met the previous year in Dubrovnik). I received a visa and a plane ticket and that was simply it. All I needed to do was to go to the draft board and explain to those very same officials who had drunk coffee and apricot brandy in our apartment, to those same characters who had tormented my parents with stories of how their missing son was indispensable to the national defense system and (let's not forget) to the protection of society, that I was leaving the country. And I needed to inform my parents of my decision. One morning a few weeks after his departure, I took my brother's shoes out of the hall closet. My mother had kept them there neatly in order as if my brother might return at any moment and announce that he had hopped over to Subotica for a chess tournament. Why did I take his shoes? If I'm not mistaken, I believed that I would feel surer of myself in them, even if they were a size or two too large. Those broken down things again, my mother sighed as if talking to herself and not to me. Chukkas, I said correcting her. Desert boots, said my father, that's what we called them in my day. They were sitting in the kitchen, smoking and drinking their first coffee of the day from little cups they had bought in Bratislava in 1976. For no good reason, the only light they had on was the auxiliary lamp on the vent over the stove. They were talking quietly in the smoke. The bluish haze made them look like conspirators, leaders of some resistance movement who had met in the corner of a railway station cafe in order to say farewell. I think they were talking about me. They only looked like that when they were talking about my brother or me, and I don't think they spoke about my brother any more, except for an occasional shake of the head. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me now that the flicker of that stove light through the patina of accumulated particles from many evaporated beef soups and goulashes was like the fluttering flame of a kerosene lantern or the sputtering of a log thrown into a blazing fireplace. (A horrible word: «fireplace.» It should remind me of hearth and the archetypal flame in the stove of an archetypal home, the site of hearty warmth and the object of every emigre's desire, but instead it makes me think of a funeral pyre.) I put on the shoes and took a sip of mother's coffee. I accidentally spilled a drop or two on the tablecloth. I placed the cup back on the saucer and glanced at the glass jar with a silver lid that contained watermelon preserves. If looked at from a certain angle, it glistened like jade. When I was a child I ate so much of that glistening jade that even today I feel sick when I think of jade, of watermelon or of little glass jars with silver lids. I heard myself say: I'm leaving for Canada. Mother was silent. Father reached for his cup and brought it hastily to his lips. I'm sure that he swallowed some of the coffee grounds. When he spoke, his mouth seemed smaller than usual. Smart move, he said. Mother looked at him, but said nothing.

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Nikada nisam bio u Klubu književnika, no izgleda da nemam razloga da žalim. Slušajući neke bez sumnje učene i dobre ljude dok govore o domaćoj književnosti, stekao sam utisak da je taj klub sada prazan jer su se srpski pisci otisnuli u Potragu za Identitetom. Nakon što su pažljivo prepipali džepove i pregledali novčanike, zavirili ispod kreveta, borhesovski istražili biblioteku, raspitali se u komšiluku — «Izvinite komšija, da li ste videli moj identitet?» — rasuli su se širom univerzuma, kao vitezovi Okruglog stola u potrazi za Gralom. Da je živ, Maks Birbom bi mogao našoj književnoj javnosti da uputi ono čuveno (apokrifno) pitanje kojim je sjajno ironizovao idejno robovanje Dantea Gabrijela Rosetija legendama o kralju Arturu: «šta vi tačno nameravate da uradite sa Gralom kad ga pronađete?»

šta se to dogodilo pa da se pisanje počne tako učestalo opisivati u terminima mističke potrage za identitetom? Pretpostavljam da se «dogodio postmoderni narod», to jest da su se naše iluzije o identitetu raspale s pojavom poststrukturalizma i dekonstrukcije na domaćoj intelektualnoj sceni. Možda se dogodilo nešto drugo, ko zna, ali pisci po svoj prilici više nemaju identitet. Da li to treba razumeti kao tvrdnju da je pisac nekada imao identitet — na primer, pre ranih sedamdesetih — ali mu ga je neki srpski Derida dekonstruisao u paramparčad te je sada prinuđen da traga za njim, uporno, grozničavo, kao neko kome su naočare pale na podijum disko kluba? Ili pak pisac «u početku» nema identitet, već ga stiče, osvaja, u toku same potrage za istim, poput hegelovskog duha u malom? Tu se otvaraju neki zanimljivi problemi. Recimo: ako Vladimir Kazakov s početka nije imao identitet, onda on ne poseduje nikakav kriterijum prema kom bi mogao bilo šta da prepozna kao svoj identitet, pa mu se može desiti da greškom preuzme identitet Vladimira Nabokova. Kako u toj zbrci tragati za identitetom? Kako ga prepoznati i šta raditi (da se vratimo na Birbomovo pitanje) ako na njega slučajno naiđemo? Da li bi pronalaženje identiteta bilo kraj potrage za identitetom — to jest, kraj pisanja — «kraj istorije» jednog književnika? Naposletku, a to je pitanje koje me ovde najviše zanima, da li sintagma kao što je «potraga za identitetom» uopšte ima smisla u okviru diskursa postmoderniteta, i, ako ima smisla, kako bismo je mogli tumačiti? Ovo su ozbiljna pitanja i njima treba posvetiti pažnju.

Pojam identiteta je problematizovan u velikom delu one zbirke pripovesti koju bismo možda mogli nazvati Zapadnim kanonom, i odavno stvara poteškoće. Zevsov identitet poslovično je labilan — labud, zlatna kiša, bik — tako da bi prema (trenutno vrlo popularnim) teorijama «performativnog identiteta» ispalo da je već Zevs bio ponosni vlasnik jednog fragmentarnog postmodernog ega koji sebe obmanjuje verom u svoju celovitost. Slično je sa hrišćanskim bogom: njegov utrojeni identitet može se smatrati identitetom samo nakon velikih teoloških ili dijalektičkih umovanja. Kada Apolon Marsiju odere živog nakon jednog muzičkog duela, on tim stravičnim činom pokazuje upravo svoju dionizijsku stranu, trag nesvodive drugosti koja iznutra podriva monolitnu predstavu o apolonskom identitetu «hladnog» i «preciznog» boga muzike i aritmetike. čak je i identitet Odiseja, paradigme povratka izgubljenom domu, izgubljenom identitetu, implicitno doveden u pitanje u jednom eseju Itala Kalvina. Identitet koji Odisej treba da dokaže po povratku na Itaku, «dokazan» je samo gomilanjem različitih perspektiva — on je on jer je lovac, on je on jer je stolar, jer je baštovan, jer mu Telemah veruje, jer ga prepoznaje njegov pas, itd. — i stoga ostaje razuđen, umnožen, neobjedinjen, hipotetičan, nezasnovan.

Nekoliko milenijuma kasnije, nevolje sa identitetom i dalje su prisutne u «kolektivnoj podsvesti» i otud kuljaju u obliku holivudskih «arhetipova». Uzmimo kao primer nekadašnji megahit Terminator 2. Nezaustavljivi kiborg (Terminator 2) koji u maniru hegelevskog duha gazi sve pred sobom, brutalno anihilira, genetski inkorporira u svoje viskozno jastvo a potom prevazilazi sve što mu se nađe na putu — mašina u čijoj nehumanosti i nasilnosti, apsolutnoj drugosti, po čuvenoj Hegelovoj lekciji, možemo prepoznati destilovanu verziju svoje suštine — poslat je iz budućnosti kako bi sprečio sabotažu revolucionarnog izuma (u pitanju je deo ruke nekog kiborga) iz kog je docnije nastao. Terminator 2 mora, dakle, simbolički osvojiti jezgro svog identiteta, uništiti i prevazići Drugog koji ga ugrožava, obezbediti pobedu mašina nad ljudima u nekom budućem ratu, i tako osigurati završni Aufhebung u kom apsolutni duh (otelotvoren u mašini) dostiže samoidentitet i stavlja tačku na istoriju. Da mu je to pošlo za rukom, Terminator 2 bi doista bio kinematografski ekvivalent Hegelovog duha. Hegel naravno nije mogao pretpostaviti da će apsolutni duh morati da se obračunava sa Arnoldom švarcenegerom (Terminator 1), ali na određene poteškoće sa Hegelovim projektom, pa stoga i sa projektom Terminatora 2, ukazao je šeling. Naime, ako apsolutni duh nema svoj identitet još od početka — što je šelingova osnovna zamerka Hegelu — onda duh, makar bio i apsolutan, nema na raspolaganju nikakav kriterijum prema kom bi mogao bilo šta na svetu da prepozna kao sebe, tako da nikada ne može ni steći identitet. Terminator 2 ima vrlo sličan problem: kada ga švarceneger razbije na sitne deliće, a ovaj se potom, poput kapi žive koje misteriozno kližu jedna ka drugoj, skupi u celinu — hegelovskim jezikom rečeno, on na taj način «osvaja svoju istinu» jer «pronalazi sebe u potpunoj rastočenosti» — postavlja se pitanje kako je to uopšte moguće. Ako Terminator 2 nije već od samog početka u posedstvu svog identiteta, a on to nije, jer inače ne bi ni dolazio po ključni deo istog čak iz daleke budućnosti, onda nije jasno kako njegovi rastočeni delići mogu da se prepoznaju i sastave. Stoga bi zastrašujućem Terminatoru 2 lako moglo da se desi da u procesu «sakupljanja sebe» pokupi dve-tri zarđale konzerve tunjevine i karoseriju nekog «fiće», i time totalno upropasti identitet svih budućih kiborga i uprska teleološki projekat apsolutne mašine.

Ovakvo post hoc problematizovanje identiteta — od klasičnih tekstova do holivudskih tehno-fantazija i sukoba među nemačkim idealistima — moguće je upravo stoga što za nezasnovanost pojma identiteta postoje strukturni razlozi. O tome je mnogo pre poststrukturalista pisao Fihte, početkom XIX veka. Koristeći se klasičnim principom da je svaka determinacija negacija, Fihte zaključuje da se identitet jastva ne može izvesti, determinisati. Moja samoidentifikacija zahteva proces determinacije svega što nisam, svega što pruža neku vrstu otpora mojim aktivnostima. To je, naravno, neograničen proces, tako da moj identitet — kao i identitet svega do čega mogu doći putem refleksije — uvek «proklizava», nikada nije stabilan, siguran i nužan, već je uvek hipotetičan i kontingentan, uvek u nastajanju. Romantički idealizam rešava ovu poteškoću tako što identitet uzima kao polaznu osnovu, nedostižni «metafizički» temelj svake refleksije, svake nauke, filozofije i umetnosti. Početkom XX veka, u svojoj kritici «logocentrizma», o nemogućnosti logičkog zasnivanja emenata — koji smo ranije strukturno «izveli» iz diferencijalnih (intertekstualnih) odnosa — nužno ostati nepromenjen. Na primer: vrednost novčane jedinice, koja nije vezana za «objektivnu» vrednost novčanice kao fizičkog objekta već je izvedena iz međusobnih odnosa označitelja u datoj ekonomskoj strukturi, brzo će se promeniti ako topčiderska štamparija počne nekontrolisano da proizvodi nove monetarne jedinice. Strukturalistička ekonomija (kao i strukturalistička teorija jezika) zahteva, dakle, postojanje nekog višeg principa, «centralne banke», centra koji kontroliše količinu novčane mase i tako osigurava «identitet» monetarnih jedinica. čitava argumentativna taktika poststrukturalizma zasniva se na ovoj jednostavnoj primedbi. Bez neke nadstrukturne instance — koja garantuje opstanak identiteta uprkos neograničenom uvođenju novih elemenata u strukturu — bez meta-principa koji Derida naziva «centar», identitet je uvek podložan rastapanju u bezgraničnoj igri razlike. To se odnosi i na identitet jastva, jer mi sebe uvek razumevamo u kontekstu neke strukture: jezičke, tekstualne, društvene, ekonomske, itd.

U «decentriranoj» strukturi, svaki čin pisanja potencijalno bi mogao promeniti identitet koji pripisujem subjektima ili objektima rečenice. Uzmimo kao primer sledeću rečenicu: «najmanji prirodan broj koji ne mogu da imenujem koristeći manje od sto reči srpskog jezika». Upravo sam imenovao neki broj, i to na način na koji se taj broj ne može imenovati (jer navedena rečenica sadrži manje od sto reči). Pred sobom imamo takozvani Berijev paradoks. Kako ne mogu da se pozivam na neki viši, «centralni» princip da bih se oslobodio paradoksa, preostaje mi svega nekoliko mogućnosti. Mogu da ustvrdim da se moj koncept broja promenio čim sam napisao gornju rečenicu, što ukida paradoks ali se čini pomalo apsurdnim; ili da kažem da se moj koncept «imenovanja» promenio, što je takođe čudno; ili da se moje poimanje mog «ja» promenilo. U svakom slučaju, nešto se promenilo u mom poimanju nečega — a upravo mi je čin pisanja nametnuo tu promenu — pa bi se moglo reći da je u samom činu pisanja došlo do promene mog identiteta.

To je, rekao bih, jedna od bitnih odlika postmoderne poetike. Stoga mi se čini da govoriti o piscu koji «traga za identitetom» nema baš nikakvog smisla, gledano sa stanovišta poststrukturalizma i dekonstrukcije. Jer ako sam čin pisanja može da promeni identitet pisca, onda bi pisac, kao Talični Tom, morao da bude brži od sopstvene senke da bi «uhvatio» sopstveni identitet; ili bi morao da postane zen-pisac koji ne piše, ne govori i ne misli, što je, usuđujem se da tvrdim, prevelik zalogaj čak i za srpske književnike i književne kritičare (jer i oni pišu, govore, misle, to jest: tragaju za identitetom).

Uostalom, ako je autoritet autora danas doveden u pitanje (između ostalog i zbog gore navedenog argumenta, koji «autora» demaskira kao biće koje je isto toliko formirano tekstom koliko je i tekst formiran spisateljskim aktivnostima tog bića); ako je jedno od fundamentalnih otkrića postmoderne književne teorije stav da «autor ne postoji», to jest da autor ne postoji kao nadtekstualno prisustvo koje božanski udahnjuje značenje tekstu, već samo kao agens neogračene tekstualnosti čijoj igri ni sam ne može da pobegne; ako je Andreas Hajsen u pravu kad piše da «Osporavati važnost pitanja Ko piše tekst? i Ko priča ovu priču? naprosto više nije radikalan stav 1984. godine»; ako ironijski odnos prema tim pitanjima predstavlja jednu od karakteristika postmoderne literature — ako se, dakle, sve to uzme u obzir, onda se mora priznati da čitav kritički diskurs o «potrazi pisca za identitetom» više nema nikakav objekat: ko to traga za identitetom, ako autor ne postoji? Kritičar, možda? Ali i kritičar je «autor» teksta, a autor više ne postoji, pa onda ni kritičar ne postoji (mada se neki neobavešteni entuzijasti uporno pojavljuju na književnim večerima u nadi da će videti i čuti neke od nepostojećih entiteta koje mitologija vodi pod nazivima «pisac» i «kritičar»). Stoga kritika koja govori o piscu koji traga za identitetom i sama postaje tekst bez realne reference, fikcija, intertekstualna igra koja se utapa u književnost i ne može se od nje jasno razlučiti. To onda i nije književna kritika, jer se odrekla upravo one specifične moći koja kritiku (lažno?) predstavlja kao diskurs o nečemu, o (nečijem) književnom delu.

Preostaje nam, ipak, još nekoliko mogućnosti da se pisanje posmatra kao potraga za identitetom u kontekstu teorijskih okvira koji se katkad svrstavaju u široku i nejasnu kategoriju «postmodernog». Pozabavimo se prvo ponudom lakanovske psihoanalize. Tu bi identitet trebalo shvatiti kao simboličku smrt, a stalno proklizavanje identiteta koje je, kao što smo videli, posledica pisanja, trebalo bi tumačiti kao nešto što konstituiše piščevu želju za identitetom, njegov, lakanovski rečeno, «nagon za smrću». čin pisanja, posmatran u ovoj optici, bio bi nešto slično osnovnom «edipovskom» gestu kejnzijanske ekonomije večnog dugovanja. Napisati tekst značilo bi identifikovati se sa njim, pozajmiti jedan virtuelan (očinski) identitet od lakanovskog Autre da bi nas ta pozajmica obavezala da vratimo dug. Naravno, pisac vraća svoj dug upravo pisanjem, te se tako samim činom «vraćanja duga», pisanja — pardon, «potrage za identitetom» — još više zadužuje. Potpuno vraćanje svih dugova stoga je samo fikcija koja nas goni u dalje «traganje» i zaduživanje. U stvari, savršeno sređivanje računa dovelo bi do kolapsa spisateljske ekonomije, do prestanka pisanja, do simboličke smrti pisca. Ovaj pristup na zanimljiv način objašnjava fenomen «blokiranog» pisca. Pisac u bloku dobio je upravo ono o čemu potajno mašta: svoju «smrt», kolaps ega, neposredan susret sa svojim id-entitetom.

Da li je to ono na šta se misli kada se govori o pisanju kao «potrazi za identitetom»? Možda. Međutim, s obzirom da me ovde zanima da li se pisanje, u okviru diskursa postmoderniteta, može shvatiti kao potraga za identitetom, moram napomenuti da se lakanovske meditacije, iako pružaju mogućnost da se pisanje shvati na taj način, ne mogu smatrati postmodernim. Derida, na primer, Lakanovu filozofsku avanturu ubedljivo tumači kao vrlo radikalan oblik romantičke hermenutike: tu se još uvek pojavljuje mogućnost nalaženja «istinskog» značenja teksta i slične sumnjive ideje koje su ozbiljni hermeneutičari, poput, recimo, šlajermahera, napustili još u ranom XIX veku.

Preostaje nam, onda, još samo da frazu o traganju za identitetom pokušamo da interpretiramo u kranje bizarnom «teorijskom» okviru koji nude Delez i Gatari. U tom kontekstu, pisca bi trebalo shvatiti, pomalo romantičko-idealistički, kao biće koje ima neku vrstu primordijalnog identiteta — taj je identitet potpuno individualan, nesvodiv, i može se opisati samo kao «divlji tok žudnje» — ali je to biće hajdegerovski «bačeno» u hiper-tehnologizirani prostor kapitalističke ekonomije pisanja i stoga je prinuđeno, usled reduktivne prirode kapitalističkog sistema, da sebe vidi kao «mašinu» (za pisanje), kao mehanizovanog proizvođača tekstova, kiborga koji se intertekstualno «uparuje» sa drugim mašinama (tekstovima, piscima, kritičarima, kafematima, kompjuterima, pisaćim mašinama, izdavačkim kućama, itd.), i štancuje knjige u potrazi za svojim primordijalnim identitetom. Međutim, kontinuirani tok piščeve divlje želje, to jest piščev identitet, nikada se ne može potpuno predstaviti u jeziku. Jezik ne može iskazati nedeljivi kontuitet jer je diskretan, logičan, mašinski, binaran, «edipovski» (mama-tata-ja), nepotpun i neadekvatan. Na taj način, «paradoksalno», upravo je pisanje ono što pisca upoznaje sa fundamentalnim nedostatkom jezika, nedostatkom koji on oseća kao svoju želju za pisanjem a kritičari (u ovom slučaju ispravno) tumače kao potragu za identitetom. Ta sumanuta potraga može se završiti samo rastapanjem svakog smisla, razaranjem svakog sistema, to jest totalnom negacijom književnosti (jer književni tekst je na ovaj ili onaj način uređena jezička struktura). Dakle, pisci nisu vitezovi iz Kamelota u potrazi za Gralom, već, poput njihovog filmskog idola Terminatora 2, tragaju za transcendentnim simbolom sopstvene divlje želje — za veštačkim udom iz kog su nastali — i nalaze ga u «shizofrenom delirijumu» u kom se svi njihovi umnoženi, efemerni, «performativni» identiteti, kao u završnoj sceni Terminatora 2, tope u primordijalnoj vatri, stapaju u stravičan, neljudski lik i potom zauvek nestaju.

Da li je to adekvatan opis (srpske) književnosti postmodernog doba? Da li je sintagma o potrazi za identitetom jedna pre svega romantička iluzija ili se u njoj, čak i u okviru diskursa postmoderniteta u koji se katkad zaklinjemo, može pronaći daleki odblesak smisla?

Originally published in «Zlatna greda» (Novi Sad, Drustvo knjizevnika Vojvodine, November 2001). —>
Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Terminator 2: The Writer in Search of an Identity

Translated by Ralph Bogert

Where are you going?
Home, always home,
To my father's house.

Novalis

I have never been in the Writers' Club, but I don't think I have any reason to regret it. After listening to some fine and no doubt learned people talking about the literature in my country, I have the impression that that club is empty now, because Serbian writers have set off in Search of their Identity. After carefully going through their pockets and inspecting their wallets, peering under their beds, searching the libraries in a Borghesian manner, and making inquiries in their neighbourhoods» Excuse me, neighbour, have you seen my identity? «they have scattered out through the universe like the Knights of the Round Table in search of the Holy Grail. If he were alive, Max Beerbohm would ask our literary public that same famous (apocryphal) question he used with brilliant irony when referring to the way Dante Gabriel Rossetti was conceptually enslaved by the legends of King Arthur: «What precisely do you intend to do with the Holy Grail when you find it?»

What was it that happened to make writing begin to be so often described in terms of a mystical search for identity? I suppose that «post-modern man happened,» that is, that our illusions about identity evaporated after post-structuralism and deconstruction appeared on the intellectual scene at home. Maybe something else happened, who knows, but it is likely that writers no longer have an identity. Is one to understand this as an affirmation that a writer once had an identity, before, let's say, the early seventies, but that some Serbian Derrida deconstructed it, so that now the writer is forced to go looking for it, stubbornly, feverishly, like a person whose glasses have fallen off his face onto the dance floor in a disco club? Or maybe a writer simply has no identity «in the beginning,» but instead acquires or assumes one in the process of searching for it, like some miniature Hegelian spirit? Some interesting problems come up here. For example, if Vladimir Kazakov had had no identity at first, then he would have had no criteria for recognising anything as his own identity, and he could mistakenly have assumed the identity of Vladimir Nabokov. How is one to search for an identity amid in such confusion? How are we to recognise it and what are we to do (to return to Beerbohm's question) if we accidentally do stumble upon it? Would finding an identity spell the end of the search for an identity — that is, the end of writing — »the end of the history» of a writer? Finally, and this is the question that interests me most, does a phrase like «the search for identity» make any sense at all in terms of post-modern discourse and, if it does make sense, how are we to understand it? These are questions that deserve serious attention.

The problematic notion of identity is present in a large part of that collection of stories that could be labelled the Western Canon, and it has long created difficulties. The identity of Zeus is proverbially labile — a swan, golden rain, a bull — so that according to (currently very popular) theories of «performative identity» it turns out that Zeus was the proud owner of a fragmentary post-modern ego that deceived itself by believing in its own integrity. The case of the Christian God is similar: His triplicated identity can be considered an identity only after great theological and dialectical explications. When Apollo skins Marsyas alive after a musical duel, he reveals his Dionysian side by this horrendous act, a trace of irreducible otherness that undermines the monolithic image of the Apollonian identity as a «cold» and «precise» god of music and arithmetic. Even Odysseus's identity — the paradigm of return to a lost home, to a lost identity — is implicitly questioned in an essay by Italo Calvino. The identity that Odysseus needs to prove upon returning to Ithaca is «proven» only through an accumulation of different perspectives — he is who he is because he is a hunter, he is who he is because he is a carpenter, because he is a gardener, because Telemachus believes him, because his dog recognises him, and so on — and therefore he remains multi-faceted, manifold, unintegrated, hypothetical, ungrounded.

Several millennia later, troubles with identity are still present in the «collective unconscious» and pour forth in the guise of Hollywood «archetypes.» For example, let's take Terminator 2, at one time a blockbuster. Terminator 2 — an invincible cyborg that tramples everything in its path like a Hegelian spirit, brutally annihilating and genetically incorporating everything into its own viscous self and then overcoming everything in its path, a machine in whose nonhuman and violent nature, its absolute otherness, we may recognise, according to Hegel's famous lesson, a distilled version of our own essence — is sent back from the future to prevent the sabotage of a revolutionary invention (a part of some cyborg arm) from which it would later come into existence. Terminator 2, then, must symbolically conquer the essence of its identity, destroy the Other that threatens it, secure the victory of machine over man in some future war, and so insure the final Aufhebung in which absolute spirit (embodied by the machine) attains self-identity and puts an end to history. Had it succeeded in doing this, Terminator 2 would have truly been the cinematographic equivalent of Hegel's spirit. Naturally, Hegel could never have foreseen that the absolute spirit would have to confront Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terminator 1), but Schelling did point out certain difficulties with Hegel's project, and thereby also with the Terminator 2 project. Namely, if the absolute spirit does not have an identity of its own at the very beginning (which is Schelling's basic criticism of Hegel), then the spirit, no matter that it is absolute, has no criteria at its disposal for recognising anything in the world as its self, and so it can never acquire an identity. Terminator 2 has a very similar problem: When Schwarzenegger smashes it into tiny pieces and it then reconstitutes itself into a whole, like drops of mercury that mysteriously slide toward each other — in Hegelian terms, it «conquers its own truth,» because it «finds itself in complete dispersion» — one wonders how this is at all possible If Terminator 2 does not possess an identity of its own from the very beginning, which it doesn't-otherwise it would not have come all the way from the future in order to secure a key part of it — then it's not clear just how its scattered pieces are able to recognise each other and come back together. In the process of «reconstituting itself,» it might easily happen that this terrifying Terminator 2 would pick up two or three rusty tuna fish cans along with the chassis of some Volkswagon and thereby totally ruin the identity of all future cyborgs and explode the teleological project of the absolute machine.

It is possible to pose the problem of identity in such a post hoc way — from classical texts to Hollywood techno-fantasies and the conflict between German idealist philosophers — precisely because there are structural reasons that the notion of identity is unfounded. Fichte wrote about this at the beginning of the nineteenth century, long before the post-structuralists. Drawing on the classic principle that says that every determination is a negation, Fichte concludes that the identity of the self cannot be deduced or determined. My self-identification requires a process of determining everything that I am not, everything that poses some resistance to my activities. Naturally, this is an unlimited process, so that my identity, just like the identity of everything that I can establish by reflection, always «slips past,» is never stable, certain and necessary, but rather always hypothetical and contingent, always coming into being. Romantic idealism solves this difficulty by taking identity as the point of departure, the unattainable «metaphysical» basis of every act of reflection, of every science, philosophy and art. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in his critique of «logocentrism,» the French mathematician Henry Poincare (whose arguments, by the way, are similar to Derrida's) wrote about the impossibility of a logical foundation of identity, and a little later Saussure made similar observations (although this part of his lectures was censored by the editors of his posthumously published Course on General Linguistics). By formulating and elaborating the numerous consequences of this problematic «non-presence of identity» in the terms of structural linguistics and literary theory, it is not difficult to derive the framework of the «post-modern» critique of identity.

Accordingly, if a text is freed from referentiality and the textual units have an identity only with respect to their interrelationships — which is the essence of structuralism — then the «definition» of identity is circular; it defines nothing. If we define something (the meaning of a text, for example) by referring to the totality of objects that it belongs to (for example, the totality of all texts that a given text relates to intertextually), then we end up with a witches' brew. When we expand a structure through new elements, and language is a structure whose nature it is to generate new units, new texts, we have no guarantee that the identity of the «old» elements — ones we structurally «derived» earlier from differentiated (intertextual) relationships — will necessarily remain unchanged. For example, the value of a monetary unit, which is not connected to the «objective» value of a banknote as a physical object but rather is derived from the mutual relationships of signifiers in a given economic structure, will quickly change if the national mint begins to print monetary units uncontrollably. So, structuralist economics (just as structuralist theory of language) requires the existence of some higher principle, a «central bank,» a centre that controls the quantity of monetary mass and thereby insures the «identity» of the monetary units. The entire argumental tactics of post-structuralism is based on this simple observation. Without some superstructural entity to guarantee the existence of identity despite the unlimited introduction of new elements into the structure, without a meta-principle that Derrida calls the «centre,» identity is always liable to be dissolved in an endless game of difference. This is true also for the identity of the self, because we always understand ourselves in the context of some structure: linguistic, textual, social, economic, etc.

In a «decentered» structure every act of writing could potentially change the identity that I attribute to the subjects or the objects of a sentence. Take the following phrase as an example: «The smallest positive integer that I cannot specify in less than one hundred Serbian words.» I have just specified an integer, and I have done it in such a way that that integer cannot be specified (because the above sentence contains less that one hundred words). Here we have an example of the so-called Berry paradox. Since I cannot refer to some higher, «central» principle to free myself of this paradox, I am left with several possibilities. I can assert that my notion of integer changed as soon as I wrote the above phrase, which gets rid of the paradox but seems a little absurd; or that my concept of «specifying» has changed, which is also strange; or that my understanding of my «I» has changed. In any case, something in my understanding of something has changed — and it was the act of writing that forced this change on me — so that you could say that a change in my identity has come about through the very act of writing.

I would say that this is one of the essential characteristics of post-modern poetics. Therefore, it seems to me that from the standpoint of post-structuralism and deconstruction there is no sense in speaking about a writer «searching for his identity.» Because if the very act of writing can change the writer's identity, then like Lucky Luke, the writer would have to be faster than his own shadow to «catch» his id-identity. Or else he would have to become a Zen writer who neither writes nor speaks nor thinks, which I dare say is too big a bite for both Serbian writers and literary critics to swallow (since they are writing and speaking and thinking, that is, searching for an identity).

Anyway, if we recognise that today the authority of the author is being questioned (among other things because of the argument mentioned above, which unmasks the «author» as a being who is just as much formed by the text as the text is formed by the writerly activities of that being); that one of the fundamental discoveries of post-modern literary theory is that «the author does not exist,» that is, that the author does not exist as a super-textual presence that infuses the text with meaning in some divine way, but rather functions only as an agent of limitless textuality whose play he cannot escape; if Andreas Huyssen is correct when he writes that «to dispute the importance of the question Who is writing the text? and Who is telling this story? is simply no longer a radical position in 1984»; if an ironic attitude toward these questions is one of the characteristics of post-modern literature — if all this is taken into account, then we must admit that the entire critical discourse about «the writer's search for identity» no longer has an object: if the author no longer exists, then who is it that is searching for an identity? The critic, possibly? But the critic is «the author» of a text, and the author no longer exists, which means that the critic no longer exists (although some enthusiastic, uninformed souls stubbornly keep showing up at literary evenings hoping to see and hear some of those non-existent entities that mythology invests with the title of «writer» and «critic»). Thus, criticism that speaks about the writer who searches for an identity itself becomes a text with no actual point of reference, it becomes a fiction, an inter-textual game that becomes submerged in literature and cannot be clearly distinguished from it. It is, then, not literary criticism, because it has renounced precisely that specific power that criticism (falsely?) presents as discourse about something, about (someone's) literary work.

Nevertheless, we are left with a few more possibilities of considering writing as a search for identity in the context of the theoretical framework that is sometimes broadly and vaguely categorised as «post-modern.» First, let's consider what Lacan's psychoanalysis offers. Here identity should be understood as symbolic death, and the constant slipping away of identity, which we have seen as the result of writing, should be interpreted as something that constitutes the writer's desire for identity, or in Lacanian terms, his «death drive.» Seen in this light, the act of writing would be something like a fundamental «Oedipal» gesture of Keynesian economics of eternal debt. To write a text would mean to identify with it, to borrow a virtual (fatherly) identity from the Lacanian Autre, so that the loan would obligate us to pay back the debt. Of course, the author pays back the debt precisely with his writing, so that in the very act of «paying back a debt,» in the act of writing — pardon, of «searching for an identity» — he becomes even more indebted. Therefore, a complete repayment of all debts is only a fiction that drives us deeper into «searching» and indebtedness. In reality, a perfect settling of accounts would lead to a collapse of the authorial economy, to a cessation of writing, to the symbolic death of the writer. Such an approach explains the phenomenon of the «blocked» writer in an interesting way. An author with writer's block has gotten precisely what he secretly dreams of: his «death,» a collapse of the ego, a direct meeting with the entity of his id.

Is this what is meant when one speaks about writing as a «search for identity»? Possibly. However, considering that here I am interested in whether writing, in reference to the discourse of post-modernity, may be understood as a search for identity, I must note that Lacanian meditations can not be considered to be post-modern, although they offer the possibility of understanding writing in such a way. Derrida, for example, convincingly interprets Lacan's philosophical adventure to be a very radical form of romantic hermeneutics: the possibility of finding the «true» meaning of a text still appears in it, along with similar dubious ideas that serious hermeneuticists, such as Schleiermacher, abandoned early in the nineteenth century.

The only thing left is to try to interpret the phrase about the search for identity by considering the extremely bizarre «theoretical» framework offered by Deleuze and Guattari. In this context, the writer is to be understood somewhat in terms of romantic Idealism, as a being possessing a kind of primordial identity. This identity is completely individual, irreducible, and can be described only as a «savage flow of desire.» Yet this being is «thrown» in Heidigger-like fashion into the hyper-technologised space of a capitalistic writing economy. Therefore it is forced, by virtue of the reductive nature of the capitalist system, to see itself as a «machine» (for writing), as a mechanised producer of texts, a cyborg who is «paired up» with other machines (texts, writers, critics, coffee makers, computers, fax machines, publishing houses, etc.) and churns out books in search of its own primordial identity. However, this continuous flow of the writers' wild desire, that is, the writer's identity, can never be completely represented by language. Language cannot express the indivisible continuity, because it is discreet, logical, mechanical, binary, «Oedipal» (mommy-daddy-me), incomplete and inadequate. In this way, «paradoxically,» it is precisely language that acquaints the writer with the fundamental inadequacy of language, an inadequacy that he senses as his own desire to write, but which critics (in this case justifiably) interpret as a search for identity. This frantic search may come to an end with the melting away of every meaning, the destruction of every system, that is with the total negation of literature (because a literary text is, one way or another, an ordered language structure). Consequently, writers are not knights from Camelot in search of the Holy Grail. Instead, like their screen idol Terminator 2, they are looking for a transcendental symbol of their own wild desire — for the artificial limb from which they came into being — and, just as in the final scene of «Terminator 2,» they find it in a «schizophrenic delirium» where all of their manifold, ephemeral, «performative» identities dissolve in a primordial fire, merge into a dreadful, inhuman figure and then disappear forever.

Is this an adequate description of (Serbian) literature in the post-modern era? Is the phrase about the search for identity above all a romantic illusion, or is it possible to find in it a distant reflection of meaning, even in the context of post-modern discourse by which we sometimes swear?

© Vladimir Tasić
© Ralph Bogert

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