Thinking Under Erasure — The Origins of Sous Rature Typography & Psychotherapeutic Implications
It is incredible really. I press plastic keys with symbols on them, forming them into words that you then read and get to know what’s going on in my inner world. Well, sort of. Mystics often speak of the ineffability of truth, of spiritual experiences, of what we mean at the deepest level. It seems at closer inspection, there is a disconnect, between language and thought, on what goes on in our minds and what we say/write.
It is not uncommon for philosophers to play with language, rearranging the common usage of a word, phrase, or grammatical device to force the mind in another direction. When done properly, they can communicate an intriguing new worldview to their audience.
One such device is sous rature. Sous rature is a French phrase that means “under erasure”. I was first introduced to sous rature typography by Jacques Derrida , a French post-structuralist philosopher who came to influence in the late 1960s and 1970s. His most famous works were Speech and Phenomena, Writing & Difference, Margins of Philosophy, and his seminal 1967 work Of Grammatology upon which much of this article is based. He is best known for introducing an approach to literary analysis called deconstruction, a system of thought that attempts to discover the relationship (and also power dynamics) between text and meaning. Recently, deconstruction has been operationalized in post-Christian religious trauma recovery circles as a way of increasing awareness of the connection between sacred texts and various interpersonal value systems, power dynamics, and biases.
On the Origins of Writing ̶U̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶E̶r̶a̶s̶u̶r̶e̶
Jacques Derrida borrows the concept of writing with crossed-out text from the existentialist philosopher Marin Heidegger, although (as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak brings out in the introduction to my copy of Of Grammatology) Derrida’s use of sous rature is slightly different. Heidegger, in a letter to a friend about the nature of being, chose to write the word Being with an X through it (see below). In an attempt to define nihilism, Heidegger explained that definitions, in general, require the addition of the concept of Being (capitalized to emphasize the uniqueness of Hiedeggar’s understanding of it) to be affirmed. As Gayatri puts it, “That something is, presupposes that anything can be”.
This line of thinking led Hiedeggar to the subsequent question: “What to do about the Being that presupposes the definition of Being?”
Hieddegar was left with one solution:
“A thoughtful glance ahead into this realm of “Being” can only write it as ̶B̶e̶i̶n̶g̶. The drawing of these crossed lines at first only wards off especially the habit of conceiving “Being” as something standing by itself”
(I’ve had to use strikethrough here since my publishing platforms, unfortunately, do not provide an option for writing under erasure. But I have included a picture below to show what it looks like on the printed page).
But getting lost in Hieddegar is for another article.
Jacques Derrida’s Sous Rature
As mentioned above, Derrida’s use of sous rature is different from Hieddegar’s. Derrida’s grammatology centers around the exercise of viewing any symbol, be it a printed word or spoken word as an instance of difference (a comparison of one thing to another). Symbols and concepts signify something, but at the same time, they signify what they are not. The nature of a symbol is determined by its relationship of difference to something else.
As Gayatri explains it,
“Such is the strange “being” of the sign: half of it always “not there” and the other half always “not that.” The structure of the sign is determined by the trace or track of that other which is forever absent.”
Here is an activating example that demonstrates Derrida’s writing under erasure and also sets up my later discussion on the psychotherapeutic implications of thinking under erasure.
Derrida writes in Of Grammatology (citing directly from Freud, but adding erasures):
“The ego treats ̶r̶e̶c̶o̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ itself as a new ̶d̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶”
When you read ̶r̶e̶c̶o̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ or ̶d̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶, you are prompted to consider what the word does not mean or what it does not symbolize. You may begin to think about antonyms, origins, associations, or what was there before the symbol was used. It also has a way of lifting the word off the page, reminding you that the words, strings of words, and gaps between words are just symbols of your deeper richer inner world. This is the psychological exercise of deconstruction and can lead to insights into the meta-connotations of the word as it functions in your social or inner world.
Derridian Trace & Psychoanalysis
Tied up with the use of sous rature is Derrida’s concept of trace. Trace refers to the mark, track, or impression left in the mind by a word’s absence (as occurs when deconstructing a word that has been printed under erasure). Derrida’s concept of trace highlights the temporal aspect of a word. While the word appears in the present, the trace in consciousness includes not only the meaning in the present but also its disconnection from future and past meanings. Although not explicit in the word itself, these displaced meanings are exposed when the word is explored under erasure. There is a temporal dislocation between what the word embodies in the present and what it contains in the future under the magnifying glass of deconstruction.
Derrida was heavily influenced by Freud and often refers to the leading form of psychotherapy in his day, psychoanalysis. In the article Freud and Derrida: Writing and Speculation (or When the Future Irrupts in the Present) Rosaura Martínez Ruiz discusses how the temporal differentiation of trace aligns with Freudian thought about the temporality of the psychoanalytical approach to human consciousness.
Freud acknowledged that the psychic representation used in psychoanalysis also neglects to consider any future psychological situation. Psychoanalysis certainly indicates the traumatic past (as is evidenced in Freud’s insistence on formative childhood experiences), but a psychoanalytic snapshot in time does not provide future iterations of traumatic disruption.
Acknowledging that psychic concepts and linguistic signifiers are bound to repeat in the future led Derrida to what he called hauntology. Hauntology (which, of course, plays on the common philosophical approach to meaning — ontology), states that ontology contains a future ghost in the form of future repetitions and meanings undiscernible in the present.
Ruiz puts it this way:
“The ghost haunts by inhabiting a place without occupying it. This is how a specter inhabits what is, it does not overfill, but it is nonetheless there, it makes itself noticed without presenting itself, without showing itself, but it makes things and produces effects. Just like the ghost that does not present itself in the room, but moves objects, and in so doing, makes noises. The ghost can also come from the past or from the future, but the threat of his haunting is always that it will present itself. In other words, it is a promise that will be fulfilled in the future”
Derridian Hauntology & Clinical Traumatology
This hauntological ghost aligns with modern clinical and traumatological thought (from the likes of Mark Wolynn ) that describes trauma (even intergenerational trauma) as a ghost that can live in the gaps of our discourse, in what is not spoken. Like the undisclosed meaning exposed in sous rature text, the clinician must listen carefully to ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶l̶i̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶s̶a̶y̶s̶ to expose the hauntology of their present psychic state. They must smoke out the ghost of traumatology, the unspoken subconscious material that returns to disrupt the balance of the traumatized.
Reading and writing under erasure train the mind to look for this ghost.
(Originally published at https://thomaswmoore.substack.com.)
References:
Derrida, J. (2016). Of grammatology. Jhu Press.
Heidegger in Spivak, GC, 1997, “Translator’s Preface” in Derrida, J. 1967, Of Grammatology, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, p. xiv
Martínez Ruiz, R. (2015). Freud and Derrida: Writing and Speculation (or When the Future Irrupts in the Present). Filozofski vestnik, 36(3).
Wolynn, M. (2017). It didn’t start with you: How inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle. Penguin.
