Booranga Writers Centre
Writing - Prose
Driving Wheel by Daniel King
In The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics, Jean Doresse considers the sect of the Kukeans. He observes:
St Ephraim had heard of them; so they were already in existence in the middle of the fourth century. (Doresse 1960, 58)
Given the number of esoteric belief-systems that Doresse describes, it is remarkable that he singles out as 'strange' that of the Kukeans. In this essay I shall argue that it is the extraordinary half-conceptual quality of the Kukeans' 'dead image' that prompted Duresse's attribution. Further, I shall maintain that the 'dead image' is actually (owing to its shifting, composite nature and to its initial transformation by the God of the Awakened Sea) a motif of change. This change is, however, one of form as well as content, and is thus able to manifest itself in all domains, in all places, and throughout all time.1
Doresse's book is ostensibly about the recovery, translation, and interpretation of some ancient Coptic papyri, discovered in the forties at Chenoboskion, Egypt. Many of the texts are fragmentary, although the most important text, The Gospel According to St Thomas, is largely intact. There are no Kukean texts amongst the papyri; Doresse discusses their beliefs largely for contextual reasons. Formally, then, the Kukeans' beliefs are hors d'oeuvre (in Derrida's sense).
I have mentioned that the central conception of the Kukeans concerns the 'dead image'. As already implied, because no specific sensory information is given about the image, it is not purely an image at all, but is partly cognitive (one might call it a thought-form). In this regard it is probably best to quote Doresse's summary in detail. It is a citation of Bar-Konaï:
They say that God was born from the sea situated in the World of Light, which they call the Awakened Sea; and this Sea of Light and the world are more ancient than God. [They also say] that when God was born of the Awakened Sea, he seated himself above the waters, looked into them, and saw his own image. He held out his hand, took [this image] to be his companion, had relations with it and then engendered a multitude of gods and goddesses. They called this the Mother of Life,
1The reader may suspect a poststructualist (or even postcolonialist) move, here: if the 'dead image' really can bring about such profound changes, even this essay will not be immune, and could change into something else (for example, a story or play). Cf. the provisionality that arises in Derrida's own texts by virtue of his writing sous rature. and said that she had made seventy worlds and twelve aeons. They added that, at a certain distance from the god who was born of the Awakened Sea, there was a sort of dead image like a statue without movement, without life, without thought or intelligence. The god, who found this hateful, evil and ugly. . . , thought to take it up and cast it far from his presence. But then he said, 'since it has neither the life, the intelligence, nor the thought to make war against me, and seeing that I have no fault to find with it, it would be unjust of me to cast it out: I will therefore give it some of my own strength, of my own mobility and intelligence, and then it will declare war upon me'. (Doresse 1958, 58)
Although the dead image is thus seen only 'out of the corner of the eye', so to speak (and consequently would have appeared more awe-inspiring to the narrative's original recipients), there is an overwhelming impression that it is like a machine2. In today's terms, perhaps not too much of the original narrative's spirit is lost by envisaging a kind of large, circular, single-storey structure resembling a roundabout.3 By implication this would have to be situated on the margins of a desert.4 Superficially there could be no motivation to venture near such a machine - yet if the theme of a self-destroying oppositional metaphysics is taken to the limit, eluding the machine would be extremely complex. Perhaps, ultimately, anybody approaching too near the machine would be drawn into the huge meshing cogs and shredded.
It is possible to be more specific, although for strategic reasons I shall postpone such a move, perhaps indefinitely. It is worth focusing on the machine itself. A huge, driving wheel entirely of machinery so complex that little daylight is visible through the rusting pawls and worms. Slowly turning worms, making no sound as they mesh against their wheels. The desert sun, high in the sky and searing down on fault lines and low bluffs - bluffs appearing as though knots of umber paint on a canvas. And the ocean beyond those bluffs: perhaps the machine had its origin there, a dozen centuries ago, rising (even then a dark, rusting mass) from spiralling, boiling kelp. Or perhaps the ocean subsided and withdrew from it. Such are the possibilities of an oppositional metaphysics which, by virtue of the notion of play that it incorporates, cannot last for all time.
And, of course, I have myself established a relationship with this machine. I am before it, in the dual sense of (an author's) temporal priority and one who is in the same frame of reference (and these two senses are not absolutely separable). And so
2 Derrida, of course, often typifies an oppositional metaphysics - which the Kukean account exemplifies - in terms of mechanism. See, for example, his 'Tympan', in Margins of Philosophy. 3 I say 'circular' because such creation myths typically incorporate the idea of cyclic return. The roundabout is emblematic of play, which can subvert any mechanistic metaphysics - even that which it itself stands for. 4 Given that the dead image has its 'emptiness' taken from it, there would seem to be a sense of balance in conceiving at least some of that emptiness as being transferred to the image's environment. Hence, the desert.
there is an inching, not purely textual, past the machine. I long to be able to move farther from it, but it is as though there is a high barrier on my right, impeding my way. But I feel reasonably sure that I can make it.
Feigning a relaxed attitude (in case the machine can perceive my apprehension and, despising it, take action) I kneel and draw my finger through the dust. It is the colour of old bones. Given that the dust comprises limestone - the trash of ancient seacreatures - this is not surprising. I wonder whether to cast a handful at the machine.
Just looking at it, however, would be a trial. Occasionally, between the meshing cogs there is a tiny bright star, revealing that the desert landscape on the other side of the machine is much like the one on this side, and that the sun has not been wholly occulted. And there are shapes - usually five-pointed shapes, like human figures. As I smooth the dust and edge past the rusting metal, I think of the Kukeans themselves, wondering whether they were indigenous to this area and picturing them, statuesque against the sunset, contemplating their harvest.
Soon I am a significant distance from the machine. I feel very apprehensive, and I'm conscious of taking one step, then another. This becomes increasingly hard: it is as though there is some force that increasingly presses against me the farther I move from the machine. But there is a dark point on the skyline, and I am resolved to let that occupy my thoughts, let that drive me towards it.
Several minutes later I feel more composed. I tell myself I was childish. The machine is behind me, now, and I almost feel able to think light-heartedly about it. Vague recollections of Kafka's "In the Penal Colony", however, replace the lighthearted thoughts. But the force that I initially experienced seems to have reached a plateau, and I am relieved. The machine surely will not follow me.
For the first time I wonder exactly where I am. Inexplicably, it is now sunset, and the dusk stars form bright, unfamiliar constellations. Not sure if I can remain awake, I notice that I am seated on a sand-dune, perhaps four metres high, with the sea before me. It is an ancient, ink-coloured sea - perhaps the primeval sea of Tethys (although, of course, the machine is older). The sand-grains are coarse and large - clearly because there has been insufficient time for them to have become ground to the powder of shifting sands. I muse idly whether there are any lamp-shells or other extinct species on the shore. Or maybe I was wrong about the limestone, and the world is dead only in the sense that it does not yet have life.
How unfathomable that this whole landscape, and everything it stands for, must vanish!5 The dunes and the desert, washed away. Whole epochs will have to pass, of course, but the machine testifies that it will happen. Not even Plato's Forms are eternal. And artworks are governed by the Forms: the play, the Stabat Mater, the story. Eventually they all become something else, even if only by virtue of the trajectory of allusion and metaphoricity, which is always away from the heart, the centre. I think it fair to say that this is the 'central' theme of Derrida's entire work. "White Mythology" emphasizes the case of metaphoricity and the machine. He says:
5 The reader will perhaps have guessed that the 'dark point' on the skyline, mentioned three paragraphs back, is also the machine, and that it is therefore before me as well as behind me. Formally, my not drawing attention to this fact underlines the idea that even the circle of return must eventually decay. As has been remarked by a number of writers, the hermeneutic circle is actually a spiral.
. . . there would be metaphors that are biological, organic, mechanical, technical, economic, historical, mathematical. . . . This classification, which supposes an indigenous population and a migration, is usually adopted by those, not numerous, who have studied the metaphorics of a single philosopher or particular body of work. (Derrida 1986, 220; my emphasis)
Slowly, I descend the dune and walk in the direction of the infinite, primeval sea.
References
Derrida, Jacques (1986). Margins of Philosophy (Sussex: The Harvester Press). Doresse, Jean (1960). The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic Manuscripts Discovered at Chenoboskion (London: Hollis and Carter).
