1. Plato, Republic, VII, 514a-517c.

2. Plato, Cratylus, 400b-c.

3. O. Ducrot, T. Todorov, Dictionnaire encyclopêdique des sciences du langage, Paris 1972, p.132.

4. M. Heidegger, "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes", in Holzwege, Frankfurt a. M. 1980, p.3-4.

5. Thus, Heidegger says quite vaguely: "über das Seiende hinaus, aber nicht von ihm weg, sondern vor ihm her, geschieht noch ein Anderes. Inmitten des Seienden im Ganzen west eine offene Stelle. Eine Lichtung ist. Sie ist, vom Seienden her gedacht, seiender als das Seiende. Diese offene Mitte ist daher nicht vom Seienden umschlossen, sondern die lichtende Mitte selbst umkreist wie das Nichts, das wir kaum kennen, alles Seiende" (ibid., p.38-39). Hence, the Other invades being from the outside, and the lighting (Lichtung) induced by it fulfils the function of negation and exclusion of difference and the other itself, the very otherness of the other. Lighting reduces beings to their One (Eine), that is, to a being (Seiende) as one and unique, to its thingly element (Dinghafte), its equipmental being (das Zeugsein), etc. - in a word, to the Being (das Sein) of a being (Seiende). Thanks to the intended and necessary vagueness of Heidegger's expression, the Other and the Lighting have great reductive, that is, symbolic power, by which, finally, "ist das sichverbergende Sein gelichtet. Das so geartete Licht fügt sein Scheinen ins Werk. Das ins Werk gefügtete Scheinen ist das Schöne. Schönheit ist eine Weise, wie Wahrheit als Unverborgenheit west" (ibid., p.42).

6. "Das Zeugsein des Zeuges, die Verlässlichkeit, hält alle Dinge je nach ihrer Weise und Weite in sich gesammelt" (ibid., p.19).

7. "Die Kunstwerke zeigen durchgängig, auch in ganz verschiedener Weise, das Dinghafte... Über das Dinghafte am Werk kann nie befunden werden, solange sich das reine Insichstehen des Werkes nicht deutlich gezeigt hat. Doch ist das Werk jemals an sich zugänglich? Damit dies glücken könnte, wäre nötig, das Werk aus allen Bezügen zu solchem, was ein anderes ist als es selbst, herauszurücken, um es allein für sich auf sich beruhen zu lassen... Das Werk soll durch ihn zu seinem reinen Insichselbststehen entlassen sein" (ibid., p.25).

8. Ibid., p.26.

9. "Der entwerfende Sagen ist Dichtung... Das entwerfende Sagen ist jenes, das in der Bereitung des Sagbaren zugleich das Unsagbare als ein solches zur Welt bringt" (ibid., p.60).

10. Ibid., p.58.

11. Ibid., p.60.

12. L. Wiesenthal, Zur Wissenschaftstheorie Walter Benjamins, Frankfurt a. M. 1973, p.120.

13. W. Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, Frankfurt a. M. 1990, p.160.

14. AT VII, p.69.

15. Ibid.

16. In fact, the nature of God as the ultimate signifier, becomes completely confirmed only with one empty atque (still, yet), which stands instead of a real, speculative proof, of a proof in Descartes' sense, of the existence of res extensa (cf ibid., p.79).

17. This is the case even with nature, by which I (Descartes, i.e. the only genuine and original Cogito) "nihil nunc aliud quêm vel Deum, ipsum, vel rerum creatarum coordinationem a Deo institutiam intelligo" (ibid., p.80). God is in the world, the world is in God, God is the world.

18. Ibid., p.81.

19. Because "human nature, being composed as it is of spirit and body, cannot but be deceitful sometimes" (ibid., p.88).

20. For this see S. Kofman, "Descartes Entrapped", in: Cadava, Connor, Nancy, eds., Who comes after the Subject?, New York and London 1991.

21. Ibid., p.186.

22. Ibid., p.189.

23. Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. W. Kaufman, New York 1954, p.483.

24. Ibid., p.194.

25. Dreaming and dying are equated in Metamorphosis at least nine times, and Gregor Samsa dies at least nine times.

For the first time at the very beginning of the story, when he realizes that "it was no dream" and when he still wishes to come back to life, "to sleep a little more and forget all that foolishness".

The second time, however, he wants something else, he wants death, or rather reconciles with it. But, that is still the symbolic death as we know it, and the desire for it is the desire to fit it within the symbolic chain and thus prolong it. Namely, Gregor is trying to get up on time for work, and doesn't want to hurt his head and lose consciousness.

For the third time, Gregor dies for the symbolic. It happens during his first appearance, his first exposure to symbolic eyes of his family. The shock that his appearance creates among those present (his mother actually faints), converges with his becoming an emblem, with his inauguration into allegory.

The fourth time, however, symbolic death of Gregor Samsa comes immediately after the third, when - after being hunted back to his room - Gregor loses hearing, so that he doesn't hear "the voice of the only father" behind him any more. Gregor is now being excluded from the patriarchal ("phallogocentric") as such. Rejection is mutual, since father's (or, which amounts to the same, god's) major means of domination, his legitimation, is no longer worth anything for the emblem. He not only doesn't listen to his father any more (which otherwise fits into patriarchal order very easily), but he doesn't hear him any more, he cannot hear him.

The fifth death is almost identical with the first: awakening from, again, "uneasy dream"; and the sixth corresponds to the fourth inasmuch as now, in return, the symbolic cannot understand the allegorical, and therefore ignores it and starts seeing it in its thing-likeness, as (movable, but essentially dead) being, or as a house pet, on whom (not with whom) the symbolic operation is done.

The seventh dying happens as blindin0g, as Gregor's loss of eyesight at the beginning of the third section of the story; whereas, a little later, the eight one is hinted at with his insomnia - the dead don't sleep, much less dream, for there is really nothing left to be dreamed, everything is dreamed-out in life.

Finally, the ninth time Gregor totally and completely dies. What started with melancholy, ends with it, too. The only thing left for him to do is let out the last faint breath of life through his nostrils.

26. That's why there is no essential difference between Gregor's nine deaths and, say, cat's nine lives.

27. Gregor is not Gregor any more, he has no name. More precisely, they don't want him to be named (Gregor's sister, at the end, only says what they have all been thinking for some time). They turn him into an animal, they destroy him as a subject, therein revealing the touchstone of the symbolic constitution of subjectivity: the name.

28. The decisive moment of Gregor's de-subjectivization happens after dinner, in the scene of his getting out of his room and exposing himself to the outsiders, the tenants. The shock, disgrace and scandal that his appearance induces at that moment, incite and designate the decision of the symbolic to push him out of itself for good. The strategy of the symbolic here becomes transparent. First, it allures and seduces by means of something that turns out to be simple faking of allegory (i.e. by means of music, whose sole purpose is, in fact, an increase of the rent and a possible marriage of Gregor's sister to some of the tenants); in order to, then, reject and exclude the attracted all the more definitely and completely.  

29. One would do well to remember that - while he still (at least partly) belonged to the symbolic order, and hence still felt responsible for his metamorphosis - Gregor used to blush with shame and sadness whenever the family talked about making money.