Vienna as Centered Structure (?) in Measure for Measure

In "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Jacques Derrida begins with a discussion of "classical" conceptions of "structure," a term borrowed from structuralists such as Claude Levi-Strauss who applied Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic theories to many cultural phenomena. For Derrida, the two essential components of structure—in what he hopes to show to be an outdated model—are "center" and "play." Of these two amorphous terms, "center" seems to signify whatever element of the structure the analyst privileges, and which "is the point at which the substitution of contents, elements, or terms is no longer possible," thus both opening up and closing down the possibility of "play" or transformation of the other elements. A structure with unlimited play would then be one without a center, but this, Derrida tells us, "represents the unthinkable itself" (279). Perhaps Wittgenstein (I am thinking of his analysis of spiel, a term and concept seemingly none the less useful for its lack of any coherent definition, in the Philosophical Investigations (e.g. 69, 71)) might disagree on this point.

     Unfortunately since the alternative is impossible to conceive, this notion of centered structure is only "contradictorily coherent" because the center "escapes structurality." To the extent to which it is conceived of as part of the structure, it must be subject to the same "permutation[s] or [...] transformation[s]" as the rest of the structure's elements: apparently, structuralist notions of the "structurality of structure" required this. But this the center, as center, cannot be. So why continue to think of structures as having centers? In addition to the aforementioned unthinkability of the only possible alternative, Derrida deduces a further psychological reason: "as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of a desire. The concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of a play based on a fundamental ground, a play constituted on the basis of a fundamental immobility and a reassuring certitude, which itself is beyond the reach of play. And on the basis of this certitude anxiety can be mastered, for anxiety is invariably the result of a certain mode of being implicated in the game, of being caught by the game, of being as it were at stake in the game from the outset" (279).

    Ivo Kamps and Karen Raber, commenting on the political context of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, describe the roles of the ruler and the power structure she or he represents in an early modern commonwealth using strikingly similar language. Like Derrida's "center," which both opens up the possibility of anxiety-inducing "play" and manages that anxiety by closing it down, the early modern prince utilizes "the arousal and management of anxiety in his subjects" as one of his primary methods of ensuring "the subjects' obedience" (135). They provide as an example James I's practice of allowing subjects to be brought to the gallows and actually ascend the scaffold before pardoning them, which recalls the Duke's decision to allow Isabel and Claudio to remain in ignorance of their imminent deliverance even when this deception seems immaterial to the success of his plot (138). To what extent is the similarity between Kamps' and Raber's understanding of the early modern state as it appears in Measure for Measure, centered on the Duke; and Derrida's much more abstract notion of "centered structure;" substantive, as opposed to merely verbal?

     One problem with seeing Shakespeare's Vienna as a "centered structure" in Derrida's terms is that the play revolves around precisely what Derrida seems to see as impossible in such a structure: the violation of its center's "fundamental immobility" as the Duke hands over his authority to Angelo, moving out of his privileged social position as sovereign ruler as he takes on a friar's habit. On the other hand, Derrida does speak of a "series of substitutions of center for center" which constitutes the history of the concept, implying that the kind of substitution we see in the play might not demolish the State of Vienna's legitimacy any more than any of the links in the "chain of determinations of the center" (279) which constitutes the history of Western thought has succeeded in overthrowing the general notion of centered structure. But this just brings us back to the question: for what reason and in what sense is this substitution "interdicted," and what happens to a structure when (what was thought of as) its center does undergo alteration and ceases to be itself?

Works Cited

Kamps, Ivo and Karen Raber. "Governance." Measure for Measure: Texts and Contexts. By William Shakespeare. Eds. Ivo Kamps and Karen Raber. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. 117-48. Print.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophische Untersuchungen / Philosophical Investigations. Eds. P. M. S. Hacker and and Joachim Schulte. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Rev. 4th ed. Malden: Blackwell, 2009. Print.