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Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities
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Figures in (De)composition: The genesis of the
paradoxical self in paul auster's moon palace (a fuzzy
grammar of subjectivity)
Salah el Moncef

a

a

Associate Professor of American Culture , University of Nantes , 4, rue du Général
Meusnier, 44000, Nantes, France
Published online: 04 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Salah el Moncef (1999) Figures in (De)composition: The genesis of the paradoxical self in paul auster's
moon palace (a fuzzy grammar of subjectivity) , Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 4:3, 75-91
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09697259908572057

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Angelaki: journal of the theoretical humanities 4:3 1999

Hamlet.

Do you see yonder cloud that's
almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius. By the mass, and it's like a camel
indeed.
Hamlet. Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius. It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet. Or like a whale?
Polonius. Very like a whale.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet

salah el moncef

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Apart from the pulling and hauling stands
what I am
I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul,
My course runs below the soundings
of plummets.
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

I

f we were to formulate Paul Auster's conception
of subjectivity and its field of action in terms of
a dominant rhetorical practice, his sustained use of
the paradox in Moon Palace would stand out as the
key figurai device in his critical account of the
subject and its foundation, both as self-determining
actor - the subject of actantial self-realization - and
as cognitive ego - the "I" of perception and enunciation.2 One of the most evocative expressions of
this critique comes from M.S. Fogg's grandfather,3
as he reconstructs his esthetic and existential experience in the desert of the American West. When it
comes to describing the effects of Western landscape on subjective cognition, on ontological selfdefinition, and on painting as a medium of
representation, Thomas Effing can only account for
it in negative terms: not only are the sublime
expanses of the Western desert beyond the grasp of
cognitive and esthetic apprehension, their dimensions lie beyond the realm of "human" expression:4
The mountains, the snow on top of the mountains, the clouds hovering around the snow.
After a while, they began to merge together
and I couldn't tell them apart.... It didn't feel
human anymore.... The land is too big out
there, and after a while it starts to swallow you
up.... You try to find your bearings in it [but]
the dimensions are too monstrous, and eventually ... it just stops being there. There's no

75

FIGURES IN
(DE)COMPOSITION
the genesis of the
paradoxical self
in paul auster's
moon palace
(a fuzzy grammar
of subjectivity)1
world, no land, no nothing.... [I]n the end it's
all a figment. The only place you exist is in
your head.... [It's] a dream world, all ...
contorted rocks, tremendous structures rising
out of the ground.... [E]verything was at once
recognizable and alien, you couldn't help
seeing familiar shapes when you looked at
them, even though you knew it was all
chance.... It was like pictures out of clouds....
It's all too massive to be painted or drawn....
Everything is so distorted, it's like trying to
reproduce the distance in outer space: the
more you see, the less your pencil can do. To
see it is to make it vanish. (Auster, Moon
Palace^ 155-57)
More than an esthetic or geographical comment on
the sublime dimensions of the West, Effing's
conception of the desert as a paradoxical topos — a
topology which is at once a formless "nowhere" and
a tangible locus of "familiar shapes" (M 126, 156) is essentially an ontological pronouncement on the
genesis of a self-founded subjectivity. The most
striking characteristic of this mode of subjectivity is

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figures in (de)composition
not just the fact that it is an imaginary "figment"
autonomously engendered "in [one's] head"; more
important is the fact that it is a shifting figment,
unfolding indefinitely within a virtual space of
endless dimensions (M 156). Viewed from this
perspective, Effing's paradoxical perception of
space amounts to a multidimensional topology in
which both the subject and its acts of self-realization
evolve, as it were, in mimetic continuity with the
chaotic morphogenesis at work in Western landscape itself: they emerge and vanish in a vertiginous
dynamic of transformation played out within an
atopian field - the nowhere of the imaginary as it
unfolds in a polymorphous terrain of "monstrous"
dimensions and chaotic "contortions]" (M 156).*>
Thus, very much like Effing's drift in the complex
"folds" of desert space, the ontological and actantial
development of the subject in Moon Palace is
fundamentally paradoxical insofar as it is acted out
within a fluid field of chance emergences which
mark the subject's existence as a shifting series of
indeterminate acts in an indefinite project of selfrealization.7 As far as Effing is concerned, his major
formative moment occurs when he comes to grasp
the implications of such a project: a coming-toawareness which results in his vision of his opus, as
well as of his own identity, as an indeterminate and
fluid composition. In this sense, his experience is
crucial in understanding Fogg's development and,
more generally, the novel's critical questioning of
the discursive foundation in which the subject
grounds its acts of self-realization. In trying to come
to terms with the antinomies and ambiguities of his
quest - finding a medium that would represent the
sublime complexities of "pure space" and finding a
fixed niche of self-identity in a world of flux —
Effing manages to transform the multidimensional
topology of the desert into an instrument of philosophical and esthetic contemplation (M 150). The
essential paradox underlying his vision of space ultimately, an existential, pragmatic, and cognitive
vision - centers upon the affirmation of indefinite
becoming as a form of being.8 Thus, more than an
esthetic instruction in the desert's topological
complexities and the limits they impose on representation, what Effing leams during his artistic
initiation is the use of difference, negativity, and
spatial disjunction as the basic categories of a paradoxical ontology — an ontology whose ultimate

expression lies in this aporetic definition of the
subject and its actantial scene: a "nothing" in "the
middle of nowhere" (M 146, 126) ? Symbolically
enough, during his trek in quest of existential and
esthetic self-realization, it is a topographer, his sole
companion in the desert, who allows Effing to
acquire such an insight into the paradoxical selfdefinition of the subject - its apprehension of self
and being in terms of absolute otherness, negativity,
and disjunction. For a man who has definitively
abandoned a pregnant wife and an established life in
New York, the negative terms in which he interprets the topographer's account acquire a particular
signification:
Byrne [the topographer] told me ... [a] man
can't know where he is on the earth except in
relation to the moon or a star.... If you think
about it long enough, it will turn your brain
inside-out. A here exists only in relation to a
there.... There's this only because there's
that.... We find ourselves only by looking to
what we're not. (M 153-54)
If Effing's topological conception of the Western
desert culminates in a paradoxical ontology - the
aporetic affirmation of the self as other and of being
as indefinite becoming - Fogg's parallel experience
with the drift of métonymie contiguity in discourse
can be said to develop into a paradoxical pragmatics: the aporetic affirmation of "the act of doing
nothing" as a category of "action" (M 32, 20).10
Indeed, upon contemplating the Moon Palace sign
and its vertiginous effect of métonymie drift, Fogg
finds himself confronted with the "transfix[ing]"
power of the sublime - which he perceives as an
impossibility to come to cognitive terms with the
"series" of associations generated by the neon sign
flashing the name of the Chinese restaurant; "I had
never experienced anything so sudden and
absolute," Fogg notes, as he watches from his
window: "[my] bare and grubby room had been
transformed into a site of inwardness, an intersection point of strange omens and mysterious, arbitrary events" (M 32, 17). This particular moment is
highly significant in that it profoundly transforms
Fogg's development at three levels of increasing
complexity. First, at the level of his being-inlanguage, his experience of the sublime signals the
beginning of an engagement with the differential

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el moncef
slippage of discourse, which he conceives as a set of
random bifurcations in the chain of signification a fuzzy "series" of discursive associations disseminated en abyme A^ Second, at the level of his effective self-realization, Fogg's confrontation with the
sublime corresponds to his paradoxical decision to
adopt a passive mode of action: "I decided that the
thing I should do was nothing: my action would
consist of... a refusal to take any action at all.... I
would turn my life into a work of art, sacrificing
myself to ... exquisite paradoxes" (M 20-21).12
Third, at the level of his ontological self-definition,
Fogg's contemplation of the Moon Palace sign coincides with his uncle's sudden death, his Odyssey
through the latter's book collection, and the subsequent collapse of the boundaries of his ego. In
effect, his phantasmagoric reading bout prefigures
one of the most complex aspects of his development
in the sense that it announces the "vanishing]" of
his actual ego into the virtual boundaries of a fuzzy
one, a process which operates in the narrative as a
genuine mise en, abyme of the self.13 This mise en
abyme signals Fogg's involvement with the shifting
modes of subjectivity that he adopts through his
readings, an imaginary dynamic that can be
described in terms of fluid ego-inflections reflecting
his loss of a definite sense of selfhood (M 21).
(According to the Deleuzean theory of subjectivity,
the indefinite self and its modes of subjectivity can
only be conceptualized by means of a grammar and
a "psychological cartography" in which the subject
figures as the complex sum of a "polyphony of
modes of subjectivation" [Guattari 26].14)
As with Effing's account, metaphors of space,
movement, and complexity are very important in
determining Fogg's paradoxical position: a passive
actor in a world of flux and a self-engendered
subject who experiences himself as "no longer real,"
eventually resolving to sell his belongings and to
start wandering into the undefined topos of homelessness (M 30).15 Echoing his grandfather's perception of space, Fogg defines his existential condition
in reference to his shifting position within a "white
page of uncertainty," an atopian field where the
chain of signification loses its one-dimensional
transparency, bifurcates into "spiraling ... masses of
connectedness," and becomes a condensed discursive locus in which a host of chance references are
"mixed up at once" (M 41, 32).16 As in Effing's

77

experience, this "nowhere" in which Fogg decides
to act out the drama of his self-realization is first
and foremost an imaginary "site of inwardness" the atopian "intersection point" from which the
métonymie drift of discourse branches out into a
fuzzy "series" of random associations (M 32). His
experience with the multidimensional complexities
of desert space begins as an odyssey through the
referential complexities of discourse:
[T]he act of doing nothing seemed important
to me.... I would plant myself between the two
windows and watch the Moon Palace sign....
[I]t always seemed to generate a series of interesting thoughts.... [Clusters of wild associations.... [T]he lights of the sign had transfixed
me.... Everything was mixed up in it at once....
One thought kept giving way to another,
spiraling into ever larger masses of connectedness: Uncle Victor and China, rocket ships and
music, Marco Polo and the American West. I
would look out at the sign and start to think
about electricity... The idea of voyaging into
the unknown ... and the parallels between
Columbus and the astronauts. (M 32)
Viewed from an ontological perspective, Fogg's drift
through the condensed masses of discursive associations parallels Effing's drift in the desert to the
extent that it evolves into a paradoxical conception
of the self as a passive actor and a "burgeoning
emptiness" dwelling in a "nothing":
The signs pointed to total eclipse, and grope as
I did for another reading, the image of that
darkness gradually lured me in.... The moon
would block the sun, and at that point I would
vanish.... I was no longer real, and the result
was that all reality began to waver for me....
My mind had begun to drift.... I had turned
myself into a nothing.... I've made my nothing,
and now I've got to live in it. (M 24, 21, 30, 5354)
Strangely reminiscent of his reference to his father
- he describes him as a "space traveler who had
passed into the fourth dimension" - the vanishing
of Fogg's ego refers us to two related elements that
conspire to make him envision his self-realization in
the passive mode rather than in the active or reflexive modes: the first element, his "drifting" away

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from "reality," marks his imaginary peregrinations
through a sort of virtual space, a process which he
envisages as a projection of his own ego beyond the
confines of his "skin"; the second element has to do
with his understanding of reading itself as an act of
imaginary drifting, literally a random "line of
pursuit" which allows him to launch out on a series
of "jaunts" in the virtual space of his consciousness
(M 4, 112, 22).
Thus, when he starts working his way through
Victor's books, Fogg first finds himself "occupying"
his uncle's "mental space" (M 22). Soon, however,
his imaginary projection of his ego within the
mental space of the other evolves into a fuzzy type
of projection. Immersed in discursive "chaos," his
virtual "journey" becomes an indeterminate line of
pursuit, as he appropriates the mental space of an
imaginary "explorer" drifting along a disjunctive
trajectory:
[The books formed] a strange mixture, packed
with no apparent order or purpose ... an
absolute chaos of print.... The journey was
made up of discrete, discontinuous jaunts.
Boston to Lenox.... Minneapolis to Sioux Falls.
Kenosha to Salt Lake City. It didn't matter to
me that I was forced to jump around the map.
(M 21-22; my emphasis)
At this point, we come to the second aspect of
Fogg's paradoxical perception of his subjectivity:
the indefinite articulation of his acts between the
reflexive, active, and passive modes. Whether in his
abstract reflections on his own identity or in his
effective acts of self-realization, his response to his
readings is at the heart of his fuzzy sense of subjectivity because it transforms his definite selfhood —
the index of discursive self-reflection - into an
indefinite otherness projected beyond the limits of
his own skin: "there were times when I became so
engrossed in what I was reading that / hardly knew
where I was anymore, that I felt / was no longer
sitting in my own skin" (M 112; my emphasis).
Viewed in the topological perspective of the novel,
the moments during which Fogg perceives his existence in terms of displacement and disembodiment
refer us to his delirious reading frenzy — the primal
event with its constant reminders of the fundamental aporia of his subjective experience: the fact that
he perceives his status in relation to discourse - his

positions in the field of enunciation - and his status
in relation to the world - his positions in the field
of effective self-realization - as an indefinite "white
page of uncertainty" (M 41). By the same token, the
indefiniteness of the subject in Moon Palace goes
hand in hand with a plurality of selfhood which
transforms the former into a shifting "collection of
disparate strangers, a random horde" (M 24). In
Auster's novel, the nomadic "body without organs"
is primarily an atopian field of indefinite plural selfhood (Deleuze, Anti-Oedipe 100 ff.), a locus without location, and a passive "emptiness":17
[E]ach time I opened another box [of books I]
produced a physical result, an effect in the real
world.... My life had become a gathering zero
and it was a thing I could actually see: a palpable, burgeoning emptiness.... The room was a
machine that measured my condition: how
much of me remained, how much of me was no
longer there.... I could follow the progress of
my own dismemberment. Piece by piece, I
could watch myself disappear. (M 22, 24)
Announcing the actantial and cognitive mode of the
virtual self, the paradoxical identity of the subject
in Moon Palace is systematically associated with
metaphors of imaginary travel and the motif of a
nomadic subject projected beyond the material
boundaries of its "skin" (M 112). In turn, this
projection of the subject announces its Odyssey in
the virtual space of fantasy: a multidimensional
topology in which the fixed boundaries between self
and world, as they are mediated by a self-identical
individual, give way to the imaginary peregrinations of a consciousness drifting in the infinite
dimensions of a fluid topos. As if through a form of
mimetic continuity between the individual and its
imaginary element, it is this multidimensional
ground that defines the fundamental paradox of
Auster's ontology: the aporetic identity of a self
grounded not in the fixed reflection of a definite
subjectivity, but in the "fuzzy concept" of an indefinite one - an imbricated, composite image
projected en abyme (Zadeh 76).18
At this point, a brief explanatory note on
methodology is in order. While so far my reading of
Moon Palace clearly indicates that my approach is
schizoanalytic, it also shows that I incorporate in my
conceptual framework other theoretical elements

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el moncef
that appear difficult to reconcile. The strategy
behind this "methodological amalgamation" is quite
simple: to devise an analytical model that would
reflect the conflicts at work in Auster's three main
characters (Thomas Effing, his son, Solomon
Barber, and his grandson, M.S. Fogg). Indeed, my
interpretive method offers a reconstruction of their
contradictory oscillation between the temptation of
a schizoid "polyphony ... of subjectivation" - with
the mise en abyme of the unitary ego it implies and the desire to find a form of ontological anchoring through imaginary identification with an ideal
other (Guattari 26). It is mainly in order to account
for the latter tendency within the Effing-FoggBarber triangle that I refer to certain Lacanian
concepts even while developing my main line of
reflection around Deleuzean schizoanalysis.19
Accordingly, this essay relies on Derrida's theorization of the differential slippage of discourse in order
to come to conceptual terms with the three characters' existential conflicts as they are expressed in the
unstable discursive positions from which they
apprehend themselves and the world.

Besides its function in the complex network of resonances that make up the genealogical triangle FoggEffing-Barber,20 the indeterminacy of Fogg's
ontological position refers us to another important
device in Auster's novel: the critical practice of what
he terms the "poetics of absence" ("Book" 8).
Within the Austerian conception of subjectivity,
such a poetics figures as a representational medium
whereby the paradox — developed into a critical
category - makes for the complex reconstruction of
a subject poised "at the limit" of self-expression, the
vanishing point from which it projects its identity
and its discursive acts into an atopian "desert of
uncertainty": "If language is to be pushed to the
limit, then the writer must condemn himself to an
exile of doubt, to a desert of uncertainty. What he
must do, in effect, is create a poetics of absence"
(Auster, "Book" 19, 8). As Auster's dialogue with
Edmond Jabès illustrates, the creation of a poetics
of absence as the expressive mode of the indefinite
subject hinges on the endless composition of "the
book [that] remains open" - the book whose sole
justification lies in its paradoxical attempt to

79

express itself at the limit of the expressible, as the
medium where "uncertainty" and emptiness themselves find a locus of representation (Auster,
"Book" 22, 8).21 In Jabès's words:
[W]hen you call something "invisible," you are
naming something, which means that you are
almost giving a representation of the invisible.... But when you can't say the word, you
are standing before nothing. And for me this
is even more powerful because, finally, there is
a visible in the invisible, just as there is an
invisible in the visible. And this, this abolishes
everything.... "The truth is perhaps this void"
... whatever it is that stands at the limit of
truth. (Auster, "Book" 19)
Similarly, in Moon Palace the representation of a
self dwelling at the atopian limit of the expressible
is a cognitive, existential, and esthetic mode which
finds its most eloquent manifestation in the
subject's struggle to articulate the ineffable "mutability" and the sublime complexities of inner and
outer space (M 122). Not the least ambiguous aspect
of the novel, the outcome of this struggle is the
vision of an indefinite self projected in the pregnant
topology of the sublime "chaos boiling under the
surface of all things," the complex "geometric
abstractions" traversing a world "constantly in flux"
(M 122-23).22 From Effing's wanderings in the
desert to Fogg's "game of ... imaginary worlds" to
Barber's "overflowing" of his "three-dimensionality," the novel's concern with the relation between
the elusive flux of discourse and the subject's problematic consciousness of space revolves around the
experience of the limit as a cognitive journey
through a world suddenly metamorphosed into an
atopian field of "mutability" and "differences": "[I]
mined the limits of ... space until it became inexhaustible, a plenitude of worlds within worlds. At a
certain point, I realized that I was probably talking
into a void" (M 6, 235, 122, 121, 219). Echoing
Effing's comments on the chaotic folds and contortions of Western landscape, this projection of an
indefinite plural world evolving with the movement
of discourse manifests itself as an ecstatic insight
into the pregnant "plenitude" of an imbricated,
multidimensional space;23 at the same time,
however, it is a measure of the novel's paradoxical
logic that this selfsame pregnancy inaugurates the

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figures in (de)composition
subject's crippling consciousness of the atopian
"void" against which its "plenitude of worlds" is
projected (M 219).
Here it is also important to specify that Fogg's
and Effing's paradoxical perceptions of space are
strongly evocative of the aporias inherent in the two
types of the Kantian sublime: at once a terrifying
vista of a "formless[ness]" which "surpasses all
imagination," and a comprehensive synthesis of the
"totality of movements" in one moment (Deleuze,
Image 69). According to Gilles Deleuze, "Kant
distinguished] between two types of sublime: mathematical and dynamic, the immense ... and the
formless" (Image 79). In the mathematical sublime,
"the imagination ... encounters a limit" in its
attempt to grasp the "totality of magnitudes or
movements that it apprehends successively"
(Deleuze, Image 69). Still, by relying on the mathematical sublime,
the mind must [nonetheless] aspire to what
surpasses all imagination, that is, the totality of
movements as a whole, absolute maximum of
movement ... which in itself is mingled with
the incommensurable or the excessive, the
gigantic, the immense.... [The mathematical
sublime corresponds to the] characteristic of
undoing organic composition by overflowing
it.... In the dynamic sublime, it is the intensity
which rises to such power that it dazzles or
annihilates our organic being, strikes it with
terror, but also induces a thinking faculty
through which we ... discover in ourselves a
supra-organic mind. (Image 69, 79)2*
In light of this twofold definition of the sublime, we
can now better appreciate the correspondences
between Effing's comments on the complexities of
desert space and Fogg's position in discourse, especially the moment when he tries to come to cognitive terms with the series of associations triggered
by the Moon Palace sign. This event is important to
his entire development in that it brings about his
consciousness of the fundamentally paradoxical
articulation of the subject in the chain of signification. Such a realization in turn allows him to grasp
the differential dynamic of discourse in two simultaneous and inseparable ways: as a manifestation of
the infinite movement of métonymie slippage, and
as a symptomatic index of the subject's cognitive

limits within the seriate bifurcations of discourse. In
other words, through his awareness of the infinite
seriation of the system of signification, Fogg comes
to experience the two dimensions of the sublime at
once as a baffling vista of the ungraspable magnitude of sense, and as an ecstatic insight into the
potential of virtually infinite modalities of expression and subjective becoming. The problematic
coexistence of these two dimensions is central to his
reconstruction of his ontological experience as a
whole - whether it pertains to his cognitive apprehension of material reality, his effective acts of selfrealization, or his conception of selfhood as an
imaginary construct projected in the virtual space of
consciousness.
Envisioned in the context of Moon Palace's paradoxical ontology, the notion of the sublime allows us
to come to a full understanding of the symbolic and
imaginary complexities underlying the two antinomies of the Austerian subject: virtual self-definition
expressed in terms of seriate otherness (Fogg's imaginary selves); effective self-realization through a
passive opening of the subject to the world. These
two antinomies may now be elaborated in light of the
relationship between the individual's position in the
complex seriation of discourse and the negative definition of the sublime as the outer limit of the
expressible. For what obtains in Moon Palace's
complex articulation of the modalities of discourse
and subjectivity is a generalized practice of the
sublime - a practice which casts the narrative frame
in its entirety as an imaginary scene where we can
contemplate the externalized drama of a consciousness expressing its inner division between two poles:
a supra-organic field of "synchronicity ... fraught
with significance"; and the reverse side of that field,
the chaotic "world of fragments" out of which it is
synthesized (M 233, 33).25 Recalling Effing's image
of Western landscape as "pictures out of clouds,"
this constant oscillation between the métonymie
drift of fragments and their synchronie coexistence
in a symbolic totality is at the center of Fogg's cognitive and existential aporias (M 157). In my reading
of the Moon Palace scene, I have indicated that the
fuzzy existential position of the subject is a direct
effect of its problematic relationship to the symbolic
totality envisioned as an atopian field of signification
— a "desert of uncertainty" (Auster, "Book" 8). First,
viewing the synchronie moments of that field in

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el moncef
terms of complex signifying events, I have argued
that the chaotic dissemination of such events - their
dynamic' articulation as fuzzy clusters of associations
- is a function of their métonymie drift around a
"condensed" signifier (Todorov, Théories 291).26
Hence, the symbolic function of the Moon Palace
sign is illustrative of this process to the extent that
it is a tautological index, representing precisely what
it represents: an object which operates as a signifier
condensing a virtual infinity of associations. Second,
I have suggested that the fuzzy positioning of the
subject in relation to the complex signifying event is
structurally homologous with the modalities of
subjectivity as they figure in the paradoxical modes
of the virtual self and the passive actor. Accordingly,
the aporias born of the encounter with the sublime
- as semiological dissemination en abyme (Fogg) or
as chaotic desert space (Effing) - are negative indices
of a failure in the sphere of referentiality, whether
such a failure pertains to the esthetic limits of a
medium of representation (painting) or to the
process of métonymie drift experienced as an indefinite differential slippage in the chain of signification. In Fogg's case, the experience of the limit is
coupled with the sublime inasmuch as the latter is
the negative index of a disjunctive movement at
work in the system of signification and in the modalities of subjectivity. In analyzing this experience, it
has become clear that the dynamic of métonymie
contiguity is the central motive force underlying the
two forms of disjunctive movement. Indeed, from
the most isolated unit of signification to the most
complex modes of subjectivity and self-realization,
Auster manages to transform the process of
métonymie drift into a fuzzy conceptual model for
the symbolic and imaginary articulations of subjectivity. At the level of the signifying unit, the individual sign, métonymie contiguity appears in the
form of a differential movement in the chain of
signification which transforms the unit into a rich
signifying event — a semiologically condensed signifier with its "spiraling masses of connectedness" and
its immanent "differences":
I had always had a penchant for ... seeing the
similarities between things rather than their
differences.... [Now] I was piling too many
words on top of each other, and rather than
reveal the thing before us, they were in fact...

81

burying it under an avalanche of subtleties and
geometric abstractions.2? (M 41, 121, 123)
At the more complex level of subject-positioning
and character-formation, the logic of métonymie
contiguity appears in Fogg's imaginary attempts to
structure his ego around a series of constantly
displaced objects of desire.28 In what follows, I shall
deal with this particular logic as it pertains to the
existential position of the indefinite self. Almost
tragically forced into the nomadic vagaries of such
a position, the subject in Moon Palace is articulated
in two interrelated ways: as a shifting effect of
symbolic efficacy - the differential movement of the
chain of signification;29 and as a shifting effect of
imaginary projection - the "fading" of the self
within an atopian field of virtual transformations, or
ego-inflections (Lacan, Écrits 2 178 ff.). Following
Kristeva's appropriation of the Jakobsonian theory
of "shifters," we can describe the narrative application of this logic in terms of the endless movement
of "shifterization" that marks the "kaleidoscopic
subjectivity," an indefinite form of subjectivity born
of the "infinite seriation" of discourse:
A kaleidoscopic subjectivity appears in the
transitions from one articulation to another....
This status of the subjective instances in
fiction recalls [Jakobson's notion of]
shifters.... If one adds that a shifter is a class
of words whose meaning varies with the situation, one lays greater emphasis on the function
of these indices of (mobile) subjectivity... One
can say that fiction produces a ceaseless
permutation of shifters. Which means that the
signifying process is explored in all its capacity to structure itself as an act of enunciation;
and that consequently the "I" which normally
transcends this act ... ceases to be a ... fixed
point.... "I" is no longer "one".... The hero of
the modern text is a subject (an instance) in
process: a whirling proliferation of "they"
erupting from the division and condensation of
the enunciative instance.30 (317-18, 334)
Kristeya!s account of the subject's involvement in a
differential process of "infinite seriation" can also
be applied to the fuzzy modalities of subjectivity in
Moon Palace. Inaugurating the disjunctive development of a radically "decomposed" subject, these

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figures in (de)composition
modalities operate within a narrative framework in
which the identity of the paradoxical self emerges as
the effect of a shifting subjectivity — one which is
in indefinite becoming, admitting of no closure
within the boundaries of a unitary "I" (Jones 14571).31 In this respect, the paradoxical statement T
is no longer 'one'" is perhaps best rendered by
Fogg's constant references to China - the emblem
of the intrinsic difference, the displacement of a
decentered subjectivity (Kristeva 318). As he roams
the Chinatown neighborhood where he and his partner, Kitty Wu, have rented an apartment, Fogg's
defamiliarized impressions convey the sense of a
consciousness fading into the atopian realm of
fantasy and radical otherness:
I could not gain entrance past the mute
surfaces of things, and there were times when
this exclusion made me feel as though I were
living in a dream world.... I had traveled
halfway around the world to get where I was,
and it stood to reason that nothing should be
familiar to me anymore, not even myself. (M
230; my emphasis)
Earlier in Fogg's life, during his childhood and
adolescence, the differential character of the self is
reflected in a more specifically discursive form of
subject-positioning: namely, in the métonymie slippages, the shifting associations proliferating around
the name. Even at this level, the proper noun
"Fogg" is literally an expression of the fuzzy identity of the paradoxical self. For Fogg's proper name
- this primordial index of referential fixity in which
he tries to anchor his sense of selfhood - turns out
to be precisely what it is: a fuzzy nebula of shifting
associations. In a characteristically aporetic fashion,
it is by passively embodying the fuzzy becoming
inscribed in his name that Fogg is truest to his
being: "I had lived with an unanswerable question.... This was what defined me, and by now I was
used to my own darkness, clinging to it as an ontological necessity" (M 295). The fact that the ontological aporia of the "dark" self is primarily an
effect of incessant métonymie shifts within the
name becomes clear when Fogg expresses his awareness that his fragmentary "sense of who [he] was" is
strictly related to the loss of a proprietary relationship to and control over the symbolic content of his
proper name (M 7). In this respect, it is quite

instructive to consider his schoolmates' playful
appropriation of his name, and his passive acceptance of their cruel game as an "initiation" (M 7). In
this process of symbolic dispossession, the seriate
disjunction of the name - its "mutilations" - not
only expresses the differential dynamic of the chain
of signification as impersonal and abstract symbolic
system, it also expresses an ontological mise en
abyme: the differential articulation of the self within
a complex series of random associations:
Names are the easiest thing to attack, and Fogg
lent itself to a host of spontaneous mutilations: Fag and Frog ... along with countless
meteorological references.... -Once my last
name had been exhausted, [the schoolchildren]
turned their attention to the first. Marco
became Marco Polo; Marco Polo became Polo
Shirt; Polo Shirt became Shirt Face-, and Shirt
Face became Shit Face.... [This] left me with a
feeling for the infinite fragility of my name.
This name was so bound up with my sense of
who I was.... When I met Kitty Wu, she called
me by several other names [which] were her
personal property, so to speak. (M 7; my
emphasis)
Marking the loss of proprietary control over a definite sense of selfhood, the "spontaneous" disjunctions of the name inaugurate the loss of univocal
referentiality in the latter, its disintegration into a
fuzzy series of "countless ... references" (M 7).
Again, this slippage of referentiality into the atopian
dimension of random and complex seriation is not
without consequences on Fogg's apprehension of his
existential position in particular and his future
development in general. The central significance of
this dimension becomes evident when - by
métonymie association — "Fogg" is paired with the
German "Fogel," transforming the name into the
paradoxical locus of a constantly displaced line of
pursuit, a shifting index of deterritorialized flight.
The disjunctive dynamic at work in the pair FoggFogel refers us to the motif of movement and to
Fogg's imaginary identification with his fictional
and historical namesakes, Phileas Fogg and Marco
Polo: "Fogel meant bird ... and I liked the idea of
having that creature embedded in who I was.... A
bird flying through fog, I used to think" (M 3-4).
(Here it is also worth adding that in Fogg's recol-

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el moncef
lection of the film Around the World in 80 Days —
a film that he watched with Victor as a child and
that he has associated with movement ever since he recalls his uncle's description of the event as
"that strange moment ... 'when we [M.S. and
Phileas Fogg] confronted ourselves on the screen'"
[M 6].)
Besides his imaginary identification with the
other through the object and the specular medium
of the screen,32 Fogg's relation to his virtual
imagoes indexes another complex aspect of the
imaginary and its symbolic expressions: the fact that
the disjunctive seriation of the name and the specular projection of the self as a virtual other are at the
heart of the narrator's self-founded subjectivity.
From his uncle, Fogg learns that in this particular
form of identity-formation the practice of "nominalism" and the ascription of symbolic "meanings"
to random patterns become pragmatic instruments
of self-affirmation and ontological self-construction.
In concrete terms, Victor's nominalism also helps
Fogg cope with the traumas of his childhood - the
mystery of an absent father, an accident in which he
witnesses his mother get run down and killed by a
bus, and an unsettling new life in Chicago with a
single surrogate parent who supports himself and
his nephew by playing the clarinet in different jazz
bands:
Uncle Victor found meanings where no one
else would have found them, and ... he turned
them into a form of clandestine support....
[E]ven though I knew his speeches were so
much bluster and hot air, there was a part of
me that believed every word he said. In the
short run, Victor's nominalism helped me to
survive the difficult first weeks in my new
school. (M 7)
Confronted with the disjunctive mutilations of his
proper name, struggling with the anguish of a traumatic childhood, Fogg chooses to endorse the power
of nominalism, a gesture fully consummated in the
fantasy of self-engendering by means of imaginary
authorship. Through this gesture, the genesis of the
self-made subject-in-becoming acquires the dimensions of a complex imaginary design whereby virtual
selfhood, as it is envisioned in the composition,
becomes the only form of support against symbolic
disintegration. In a highly suggestive quip on his

83

nephew's initials, Victor turns M. S. Fogg into the
subject as well as the creator of his narrative. More
importantly, however, the self-authored subject - as
Fogg will later come to understand it - is a differential effect in/of "the book [that] remains open"
(Auster, "Book" 22), the atopian field where the
subject becomes a self in indefinite (decomposition:
"'Every man is the author of his own life.... The
book you are writing is not yet finished. Therefore,
it's a manuscript"' (M 7).
Considering Fogg's position in the symbolic
order and in the sphere of imaginary self-projection,
but also considering his Bildung in general, this
particular function of the narrative as a reflexive
mode of open-ended self-authorship is at the center
of Moon Palace's paradoxical conception of ontology and self-realization.33 Through the motif of selfauthorship, Auster indeed manages to dramatize his
main characters' splitting between a schizoid
"polyphony ... of subjectivation" and the urge to
achieve a fixed identity by means of imaginary identification with an ideal other (Guattari 26). In
discovering Barber's and Effing's efforts to ward off
insanity by charting new identities for themselves,
Fogg also discovers that the subject's self-engendering in the book that remains open starts with the
negative positioning of selfhood in a "'blank page of
death'" - the symbolic desert where the self
witnesses its own vanishing in an atopian field of
virtual modes of being (M 154). Effing's account of
his desert wanderings, and his symbolic rebirth
through them, is in this sense representative of the
three characters' existential conflicts inasmuch as it
posits the fading of selfhood in virtual space as the
initial condition for existential self-affirmation and
effective self-realization. More to the point,
however, concerning the status of the self-founded
subject as an effect of narrative process, it is particularly instructive to compare Barber's creative
compensation for his father's absence - his practice
of decomposition in his childhood novel - with
Fogg's imaginary relationship to his virtual imagoes
and his vision of himself as an unfinished manuscript. As a "psychological document [that] demonstrates how [he] played out the inner dramas of his
early life" (M 262), Barber's narrative stages a
fantasmic arabesque of homologies between characters whose Oedipal dilemmas allow him to act out
his unresolved Oedipal drama by creating a frame-

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figures in (de)composition
work of characterization in which paternal and filial
figures intersect, overlap, and fade into each other
indistinctly, forming obsessively repetitive variations on the flight of the paternal imago (Effing)
and the filial desire to capture it (Barber).34 Later,
confronted with the crises of unreciprocated love
and profound social alienation,35 Barber falls back
on similar strategies of imaginary acting-out when
he decides to adopt a "monad[ic]" form of selfhood
(M 242). Pushing the act of self-authorship to its
absolute limit, the subject as closed monad ends up
trapped in an internal world of autistic tautology: a
"self-created world unto himself," engendered by
virtue of an imaginary act which positions selfhood
at the margin of the "world," inaugurating its
implosion in the chaos of consciousness:
The larger his body grew, the more deeply he
buried himself inside it. Barber's goal was to
shut himself off from the world, to make
himself invisible in the massiveness of his own
flesh.... He was alone now, entirely separate
from everyone: a bulbous, egg-shaped monad
plodding through the shambles of consciousness.... By plunging into the chaos that inhabited him, he had become Solomon Barber at
last, o personage, a someone, a self-created
world unto himself. (M 242; my emphasis)
Compared with Fogg's bout of radical self-marginalization, Barber's withdrawal from the outside world
makes the similarities between the two characters
both self-evident and mutually explanatory. Thus,
from Fogg's harrowing experience with homelessness
we learn that, with the retreat of the self into the
virtual space of pure consciousness, material reality
becomes a fully internalized imaginary landscape - a
distorted hallucination canceling the possibility of
effective self-realization in the material world:
My self-absorption was so intense that I could
no longer see things for what they were:
objects became thoughts, and every thought
was part of the drama being played out inside
me.... This was New York, but it... was a place
that could have been anywhere.... [Central]
Park gave me a chance to return to my inner
life, to hold on to myself purely in terms of
what was happening inside me. (M 54, 56, 58)
Here it is also important to remark that Fogg's

retrospective assessment of his situation - his failing relation to the real, his failing position in the
symbolic order, the supersession of both real and
symbolic by the imaginary - echoes Effing's own
account of the fading of subjectivity in the chaotic
landscape of the desert and the impact of such a
fading on his perception of self and world: "There's
no world, no land, no nothing.... [I]n the end it's all
a figment. The only place you exist is in your
head.... [It's] a dream world" (M 156). As I have
suggested in my reading of the Moon Palace scene,
the cognitive and discursive self in Auster's novel
experiences its collapse into the "dream world" of
pure consciousness not as an absence of sense, but
as an unbearable density of the system of signification, an imbricated coexistence of its virtual articulations, a relentless intrusion of its disjunctive
bifurcations upon the subject's cognitive apparatus.
Similarly, when after Byrne's death Effing decides
to live in a cave in the desert, he eventually finds
himself on the verge of insanity not because he
cannot discern the chaotic landscape of the West,
but because he apprehends it as a condensed continuum of geometrically undifferentiated forms.

However, despite the important homologies within
the Effing-Barber-Fogg triangle, some of the differences between the three characters are even more
significant - especially when we consider Fogg's
reaction to the fact that Effing and Barber eventually realize the necessity to emerge from the virtual
world of the monad in order to achieve effective
self-realization in the outside world. Indeed, as Fogg
reconstructs the existential and artistic struggles of
both men, it becomes obvious that an essential
aspect of his Bildung lies in the realization that the
genesis of a self-founded subject is grounded in a
paradoxical affirmation: namely, that nomadic
unfolding is no less significant to the accomplishment of the self than monadic self-containment. In
tracing Barber's and Effing's coming to terms with
extreme alienation, Fogg implicitly realizes that his
psychotic episode in Central Park is in fact only one
extreme moment in the cultivation of autonomous
selfhood. Viewed as an end in itself, his inward
retreat represents nothing more than an implosive
retraction of the monad, a reduction of its virtual

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el moncef
potential to a set of in-folded modes of subjectivity.
By contrast, Effing and Barber recover their selfidentity and the possibility of realizing their potential by positioning themselves at the atopian limit
between the monadic containment of the self and its
nomadic deterritorialization. Having first experienced the multidimensional topology of the desert
as an unbearably dense and undifferentiated assemblage of forms where he can only witness the vanishing of his subjectivity, Effing finds the ultimate
salvation of his sense of selfhood in the pictorial
representation of the selfsame desert and its chaotic
"contort[ions]" (M 156). Eventually, he emerges
from his cave symbolically reborn through the
agency of the new-found name and eager to
construct a new identity and a new life for himself.
Similarly, after his autistic self-confinement in the
"chaos" of his body and his consciousness, Barber
finds an actantial purpose and a sense of identity by
projecting himself outward (M 242). In reasserting
the link between self and world, he allows his
constructed persona to evolve into a subjectivity in
constant becoming, a monad dwelling between the
complexities of inner space - his immersion in the
chaos of consciousness - and the complexities of
outer space - his random flight across "the heartland" as he moves from college to college (M 243).
Note how Fogg introduces his father's portrait by
condensing the twofold articulation of the monadicnomadic subject: intrinsic unfolding in an atopian
dimension (the dimension of virtual space in which
Barber "ooze[s] out" beyond the limits of his threedimensionality and deploys himself "where he [is]
not"); extrinsic movement across the expanses of
the heartland (the dimension of effective deterritorialization and discovery):
It was as though his three-dimensionality was
more pronounced than that of other men. Not
only did he occupy more space than they did,
but he seemed to overflow it, to ooze out from
the edges of himself and inhabit areas where
he was not.... For a moment or two, I almost
managed to convince myself that he was a
hallucination.... [After the collapse of his brief
liaison with Emily Fogg,] the map of his
wounds was circumscribed by points in every
corner of the heartland: Indiana and Texas,
Nebraska and Oklahoma, South Dakota and

85

Kansas, Idaho and Minnesota.... [T]he
constant movement [from college to college]
kept him from being bored. (M 235, 243; my
emphasis)
True to Effing's pronouncement, it is ultimately
in the twofold articulation of his subjectivity that
Fogg comes to grasp not only the "true purpose of
art," but also the very essence of his Bildung (M
170). That this Bildung itself is an index of the paradoxical identity of the Austerian subject is made
evident by the cryptic message that Effing addresses
to Fogg when he sends him to study Ralph Albert
Blakelock's painting in a Brooklyn museum. Even
before he learns from his grandfather that the function of art is to "pénétrât [e] the world and fin[d]
one's place in it," he interprets the "place" of
Blakelock's Indians as an embodiment of paradoxical selfhood: ambivalent compositions poised with
serene composure between the monadic self-containment of their silhouettes (the definite forms of their
contours), and their nomadic fading into the ground
formed by the dark wilderness around them (M 170).
Merging indistinctly with the ground as "illegible
shadows, the merest ideograms of life," Blakelock's
figures represent the fuzzy decomposition, the fading
of the subject into the indefinite dimensions of its
outer world; at the same time, though, they convey
the sense of being anchored in clear-cut spatial limits
proper to themselves (M 139). This paradoxical position of the subject vis-à-vis its complex world - the
monadic containment of the figure within its definite
contours and its nomadic vanishing into an atopian
dimension - fascinates Fogg even when he contemplates Kitty Wu's dancing, with its strangely
Heraclitan overtones (M 96). More pertinently, when
he analyzes his lapse into psychotic delirium, the
terms in which he formulates the fading of his
subjectivity are reminiscent at once of Effing's
errand in the desert, of Blakelock's figures, and of
Kitty Wu's measured surrender to the drift of "pure
motion":
I thought that by abandoning myself to the
chaos of the world, the world might ultimately
reveal some secret harmony to me, some form
or pattern that would help me to penetrate
myself. The point was to accept things as they
were, to drift along with the flow of the
universe.36 (M 96, 80)

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figures in (de)composition
It is with this particular context in mind that I
propose to read Fogg's symbolic rebirth - the
moment that he describes as "the beginning of [his]
life," associating it with his self-recognition in the
face of the dying Barber and with his crossing of the
desert (M I). 37 The crucial event occurs when he
witnesses his own imago gradually emerging from
the "undifferentiated air" surrounding his father's
face: "a second Barber came up to the surface, a
secret self that had been locked inside him for
years.... I found myself studying the contours of his
eyelids ... and all of a sudden I realized that I was
looking at myself (M 296). As the self merges indistinctly with the other, Fogg can finally perceive a
form of self-identity through identification - imaginary identification with the aura of the paternal
imago; but most importantly, symbolic identification
with the project of self-realization inscribed in the
paternal will. By virtue of this twofold act of identification, the effort to reappropriate the genealogical
heritage entombed in the familial cave becomes the
son's symbolic inheritance in the name of the father.
Only after his errand in the atopian field of the
virtual and the effective desert does the son emerge
with the lesson that his forbears have acted out all
along: the realization that the true purpose of an art
of self-engendered subjectivity resides in the paradoxical positioning of the subject between monadic
self-containment (territorialized being), and nomadic
movement (deterritorialized becoming). And it is
with such a paradoxical affirmation of selfhood that
Fogg brings his Bildung to a most aporetic conclusion. Articulated between two countries and, by the
same token, between two modes of subjectivity,
Fogg's final gesture is the open-ended act of a self
positioned between the mode of territorialized being
that it has found in the fixity of the moon, and the
mode of deterritorialized becoming that it
seeks in the multidimensional topology of
the desert.

notes
1 My special thanks to the reviewers of Angelaki.
The keenness and perspicacity of their critique
were invaluable during the revisions of this essay.
2 The implicit linkage that I establish between
actantial, or effective, self-realization and enunciation has been partly inspired by J.L. Austin's and

R..L Searle's work on speech-act theory, and
Gilles Deleuze's theorization of the notion of
"actual" realization (Leibniz 133-63). See also
Burke 3-20, and Deleuze and Guattari, Mille
plateaux 95-139. In this essay, I rely as often as
possible on the English translations of works originally written in languages other than English.
When that is not possible, however, I refer to and
quote from the original texts, providing my own
translation where necessary.
3 A t this point in the narrative, though, Fogg already bereft of his sole known relatives, his
mother and his uncle, and still suffering from the
profound psychic trauma of his loss — is not aware
of his grandfather's identity. Posing as the enigmatic
and highly eccentric Thomas Effing, the wheelchairbound and apparently blind esthete has employed
the Columbia graduate to read for him and accompany him on his outings. It is only later, when he
gets to know his father, Solomon Barber - himself
having spent most of his life ignorant of his father's
identity - that Fogg will discover his genealogy.
4 On the notion of the sublime as the "formless"
and the "unpresentable," see Lyotard 124 ff. (124,
139). See also Mitchell 125-29, 131-40, and Žižek,
Sublime 201-07.
5 Hereafter cited as M.
6 In this essay, I use the concept of multidimensional topology in connection with René Thom's
formulation of a model that accounts for complex
physical and symbolic phenomena by means of a
topology of "infinite-dimensional function space"
(4-10, 320-25; 6 ff.). Loose and strictly metaphoric,
my partial appropriation of Thom's topological
model is designed solely to give more concreteness to the conceptual framework of my argument. More pertinent to the latter, however, are
the conceptual terms in which Armando
Verdiglione defines his topology of "non-semiotizable matter":
The reference to a topology does not come
as an answer to a need for the systematization of analytical theory; on the contrary, it
encounters the statement [dire] that makes
every system impossible. Topology does not
provide the indices of a signification ... artic-

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ulating instead a few faults [falle].... It is
neither positivity nor negativity (no system
of binary opposition) which characterizes or
founds the dimensions [of this topology]:
structures are changeable along the dimensions, which are no longer logical registrations, but space flights [fughe di spazi]. (236)
In this essay, I use the concept of atopian field in
reference to Michel de Certeau's concepts of "atopia" and "alterity" (Absent 171-80) as he applies
them to "spaces [that are] indefinitely other [and]
unknown to the 'geometric' or 'geographic' space
of visual constructions, panoptical or theoretical"
("Pratiques d'espace" 5). See also Monique Plaza's
psychiatric approach to the textual/discursive
manifestations of atopia (38-53, 113-21, 160-98),
and Kostas Axelos's observations on nature, negativity, and "the topology of the non-place"
(Systématique 18-39, 61-71; 66). Concerning the
motifs of space, complexity, and chaotic morphogenesis in Moon Palace, see Gleick; Prigogine and
Stengers I06-I6, 146-61, 228-37, 334-43, 353-432;
Serres, Hermès IV 115-24, 282 ff.; and Thom et al.
7 In this essay, I use the Deleuzean concept of the
"fold" in an esthetic, topological and ontogenetic
context. On the theorization of these three
aspects of the fold within a multidimensional topological model, see Deleuze's analysis of the esthetics and geometry of the fold (Leibniz 20-54), as well
as his application of the complex deployment of
the fold in relation to such concepts as "virtual"
being and "actual" realization (Leibniz 133-63). See
also the similar context in which he elaborates the
notions of passive "ontogenesis" and "chaosmos"
(Logic 98-99, 176).
8 See Prigogine. Grounded in the Heraclitan
subtext of the novel, this ontological paradox is a
more abstract variation on Fogg's earlier reference to Heraclitus. After having decided that the
way to indefinite becoming lies in the relinquishment of home and property, the young man sees
his new life of homelessness in Central Park as a
first step toward a personal philosophy of relativism and permanent (self-)transformation:

Heraclitus had been resurrected from his
dung heap, and what he had to show us was
the simplest of truths: reality was a yo-yo,
change was the only constant (M 62)
See also Axelos, Héraclite 47-87.
9 On the notion of disjunction as an affirmative
category of being, see Deleuze's development of
the concept of "disjunctive synthesis" (Logic 17680; Anti-Oedipe 90 ff.). I use the concept of "negativity" in reference to Theodor W . Adorno's
negative dialectic (3-57, 135-207). But I am also
thinking of Derrida's elaboration on the figure of
the aporia - particularly his conception of the
latter as a "negative form" which "nevertheless
manifests itself in an affirmative fashion" (Apories
42 ff.) - and of Yves Bonnefoy's and Marc Favaro's
essays on the function of negativity and the subject
of psychoanalysis (Gagnebin and Guillaumin 9-18,
160-67). See also Kristeva 28 and passim; and
Žižek, Tarrying.
10 For a similar paradox, see Paul Watzlawick et
al. on "schizophrenese" and the "disqualification of
communication" (73-78). On the concept of
metonymic "contiguity," see Jakobson 254 ff., and
Lacan, Séminaire 3 248-51.
11 According to Jacques Derrida, one of the
expressions of these random bifurcations is what
he terms "spacing," a discursive process that
undermines the "metaphysics of presence" in
discourse and generates "significations, concatenations ... that no longer obey to the linearity of the
time of 'verbal representation'" (Écriture 293-340;
321). Jacques Lacan describes a similar process
when he refers to the phenomenon of discursive
"slippage" ("glissement") as the ultimate instance
of the "subject's submission to the signifier" (Écrits
2 166-70; 170, 166). See also his formulation of the
"rules which govern that other scene" in relation
to the "chain of materially unstable elements which
constitutes language" (Écrits 2 108).
12 I envision this particular paradox in relation to
Deleuze's notion of "the passive genesis" (Logic
116-17 and passim).

Causality was no longer the hidden demiurge

13 In this context, I am thinking of Robert Pujol's

that ruled the universe: down was up, the
last was the first, the end was the beginning.

conceptualization of "the specular ego" and the
"virtuality of the subject" (17 ff.).

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14 As far as Moon Palace is concerned, the
polyphony in question essentially revolves around
a "grammar of narrative" which focuses on the
analysis of the discursive and extra-discursive
effects that result from shifts in subjectivity and its
different modes of expression (Todorov,
"Poétique" 141-47). See Deleuze and Guattari's
discussion of the linkage between such grammatical categories as the indefinite article and the
infinitive, and the concept of "hecceity" as "infinitive becoming" (Milk plateaux 322 ff., 343 ff.). See
also Burke 21-58, Deleuze and Guattari, Mille
plateaux 95-139, and Guattari 11-52, 109-35.
15 Viewed in terms of an "esthetic of disappearance," such metaphors are determining in Fogg's
perception of himself as a vanishing consciousness
to the extent that they indicate how his fuzzy
vision of his ego is primarily a function of the
profound fuzziness of his perception of space - the
"annihil[ation]" of his "lived relation" to the real;
as well as of the fuzziness of his perception of time
— the "dynamic exaltation" to which he succumbs
in his readings (Virilio, Esthétique 129). According
to Paul Virilio, this subjective consciousness of a
world entirely "given up to the law of movement"
culminates in a mystique of nomadism which "ultimately creates emptiness and desert ... because
only nothingness is continuous" (Esthétique 130,
128). See also Virilio, Machine 66 ff.
16 Concerning this apprehension of the chain of
signification as a condensed discursive locus,
Tzvetan Todorov's definition of condensation is
particularly instructive: "One could ... say that
there is condensation every time a single signifier
leads to the apprehension of more than one signified; or, to put it more plainly: every time the signified is more abundant than the signifier" (Théories
291).
17 See n. 11.
18 Again, I am only appropriating L.A. Zadeh's
theory of fuzzy logic in a loose and metaphoric
fashion. More closely related to my argument,
Deleuze and Guattari's elaboration of the notion
of the "neutral infinitive" proposes a fuzzy conception of subjectivity and its different "modes of
subjectivation" (Deleuze, Logic 216 ff.; Guattari
26). See also Julia Kristeva's appropriation of

Roman Jakobson's theory of "shifters" in the
context of a "kaleidoscopic" model of subjectivity
(316-18).
19 On the complementary relationship between
Deleuzean and Lacanian theory, see Mengue 91107.
20 On the theme of genealogy in Moon Palace, see
Weisenburger.
21 In this sense, Auster develops his "poetics of
absence" in continuity with Jabès's definition of the
atopian field of discourse - the "void ... at the limit
of truth" - in which the subject defines its existence and articulates its actantial self-realization
(Auster, "Book" 8, 19). In the Lacanian theory of
subjectivity, this atopian field marks the subject's
involvement in the chain of signification and, by the
same token, the field of discursive slippages where
the "truth stammers" indefinitely (Lacan, Encore
75 ff.). Regarding the question of expression and
its limits in discourse, see also Derrida's remarks
on discursive "impotence" (Spurs 54 ff.), and
Foucault 53-67.
22 See Serres, Lucrèce; and Axelos, Héraclite.
23 For a similar argument, see Louis Marin's development of the concept of the "plural neuter" to
theorize the Utopian narrative and its potential of
proliferating imaginary "utopics" (20-27).
24 See also the relation between Deleuze's reading of Kant's "mathematical sublime" and his
conception of "disjunctive synthesis," particularly
in relation to the "illimitative" and "inclusive" function of the latter (Logic 179-80 and passim; AntiOedipe 90-91 and passim).
25 For a detailed development of these two poles,
see Deleuze on the "two poles of the delirium: the
paranoid ... and the schizoid" (Anti-Oedipe 329 ff.).
26 Appropriating a Lacanian concept, we can say
that the signifier in question is a sort of "point de
capiton" (Séminaire 3 293-306). See also Deleuze's
theorization of the "floating signifier" as "paradoxical element" (Logic 49-50, 56 ff., 66 ff.).
27 In his seminar on psychosis, Lacan appropriates
Jakobson's concept of metonymic contiguity to
describe the discourse of the psychotic as the

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symptomatic index of a particular type of referential failure in the chain of signification, one which is
marked by constant "displacement" vis-à-vis the
thing to be named or communicated:
There goes this person using huge amounts
of blah-blah-blah (sometimes rich in inflections), but always unable to get to the heart
of what he has to communicate. The imbalance of the phenomenon of contiguity [is the
dynamic] around which the whole delirium is
organized.... [L]et us not neglect... contiguity... It has to do with substitution for something that needs to be named.... One names
something by means of another ... which is in
connection with it. (Séminaire 3 251, 250)
In another context, Lacan uses Jakobson's reading
of Tolstoy's text to account for the dynamic of
metonymic drift in fiction as the movement of
surface-effects in which the "formal articulation of
the signifier dominates in relation to ... the signified" (Séminaire 3 260-61; 261). See also Roland
Barthes on the "plural passion" as a discursive
mode grounded in the "discontinuous irregular," a
mode which "forces" the subject of discourse to
"skip from one object to another" (335-36).
28 See Pujol on the schizophrenic subject's
"fantasmic fix[ation]" around a "partial object
[which] functions as the origin of a metonymic
chain" (40 ff.). See also Todorov, Poétique 100-17.
29 See Lacan, Écrits I 19-75. Interestingly, Lacan
accounts for the differential dynamic of the chain
of signification in terms of impersonal machinic
"movement":
For we have learned to conceive that the
signifier maintains itself only in a movement
[déplacement] comparable to ... our
machines-that-think-like-humans.... This is
what happens to the automatism of repetition. What Freud teaches us is that the
subject follows the series of the symbolic...
[The] movement of the signifier determines
subjects in their acts, in their destiny, in their
refusal. (Écrits I 40)
30 See Lacan, Écrits 2 159 ff. See also Deleuze's
definition of subject-formation in modernist
fiction. He refers to the subject of the modernists

89

as the effect of "shifting captures" in the "play of
the world," a "play that diverges" in a random
fashion (Leibniz Ill). In this play, "beings are torn
to pieces, kept open through the diverging series
and the incompossible sets which drag them
outward, instead of closing up on the compossible
and converging world that they express from
within.... It is a world of captures rather than
closures" (Leibniz I I I ) .
31 On this aspect of the subject's decentering, see
Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the "faceless
subject," their critical response to the Lacanian
mirror stage (Anti-Oedipe 87 ff.; 91).
32 As far as Fogg's imaginary relation to his uncle
is concerned, the projected image of the other
figures in his objectai leftover, the suit, which
becomes a displaced index of Victor's presence
and an imaginary space in which Fogg can project
a less fragmentary version of himself:
[T]here were times when I imagined the suit
was actually holding me together, that if I did
not wear it my body would fly apart. It functioned as a protective membrane, a second
skin that shielded me from the blows of life....
[T]he suit was the badge of my identity, the
emblem of how I wanted others to see me.
(M 15, 16)
On the imaginary-specular role of the image and
the gaze in the dialectic of self and other, see
Lacan, Écrits I 89-97; Séminaire I 157-63; Séminaire
II 65-109.
33 In this essay, I use the concept of Bildung in
connection with M.M. Bakhtin's essay on the
Bildungsroman. See in particular his treatment of
the hero of the Bildungsroman as a subject in
"emergence" or "becoming" (12 and passim).
34 Needless to say, Barber's narrative device is
part of an imbricated set of metanarrative frames
in which we find the narrator himself using the
same technique by staging resonances within the
triangle Fogg-Effing-Barber. See Jones 145-71; and,
on patterns of repetition within "arabesque"
narrative frames, Naddaf 39-88, 109-21.
35 After a brief liaison with Barber, Emily Fogg, his
student, disappears from his life without letting

figures in (de)composition
him know about her pregnancy. Subsequently, he
finds himself caught in a desperate struggle with
depression and the pressure to quit his position as
a professor.

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36 It is this indefinite merging of the self into its
chaotic ground that Deleuze describes when he
uses the term "chaosmos" — a concept that he
establishes as the condition of a paradoxical
"ontogenesis" (Logic 176).
37 While still keeping the secret of his paternity,
Barber suggests that he and Fogg drive out West
in quest of the cave where Effing withdrew to
weather his spell of psychic torment. On their way
to the cave, while father and son are visiting Emily
Fogg's grave, Barber confesses his kinship to Fogg.
In a fit of great anger, the latter pushes his father
away from him, forcing him to back off in confusion and to fall into an open grave. Barber sustains
severe injuries and dies in a hospital after several
days of suffering. Subsequently, Fogg decides to
push on with the westward trek.

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