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Chapter 11. Gadamer’s fusion of horizons – OOO and “blanc silence”

Fusion of horizons – Hermeneutics’ main goal. But what if one leaves the heliocentric metaphor turning his/her back? What if there is no horizon, which is defined by the flexion of the earth and a sun contrasting the line of sight?

In Hermeneutics the fusion of horizon is, especially for Gadamer, the reward of the dialogical practice.1 Both, text and interpretation, (or author and reader) get close and intimate, while reaching a point of mutual understanding regarding the topic they discussed. Hence, they merge. Derrida criticized his friend Gadamer for the conception of a “will of understanding” a “will to agree”. From an OOO-perspective this is not surprising because how OOO conceptualizes an object, even the object itself never reaches a point of agreement, a point of fusion in itself, of “appearance” and “essence”. This is especially because an object cannot be paraphrased.2 Regarding this definition every dialog which has a will to agree must fail, because it cannot speak about objects directly and completely. The object is always between text and interpretation. 

Another point to make here is to speak about the horizon, which disappears within a Dark Hermeneutics. Dark Hermeneutics does not condemn the heliocentric metaphor, it just does not “see” it. Therefore, it does not need to use the flexion or re-flexion which is needed for the horizon to become visible. Instead, Dark Hermeneutics is diffracted. So far, nothing new.

But I must insist, that Dark Hermeneutics does not assimilate the “Other/other”. What does it do instead?

Derrida opted for a “disseminal practice of reading”, searching and articulating what is left out, forgotten, marginalized and so on. OOO seems to be an approach of closing/closure as it argues for a practice regarding poetry or art itself, which is doomed to never “translate an object perfectly into any language.”3 Translating, reading, discussing, everything seems to be not enough for any object to being understood. Does understanding become an “object-oriented-politics”, where no one ever is entirely sure what politics is about?4

The discussion of Derrida and Gadamer is still a contribution to Kant’s philosophy. This is not a bad thing to be, but it is getting old. I refer especially to the difference between what we (humans) can know and what we can think about. Harman writes: “For Kant, of course, a big part of his philosophy is that there are the things-in-themselves that lie beyond the human mind. We can think about them, but we can never know them.”5 For me, Derrida and Gadamer seem to neglect the difference between thinking about something and knowing it. The difference is in the dark. Because if they talk about knowing – following Kant – they would make a category mistake. And if they just discus what they think about something, does it even matter if they speak about the thing?

To formulate the critique even harder: Derrida and Gadamer only articulate the features of the object they are talking about, “that are relevant to [their] own existence.”6 For example, if they talk about a poem by Paul Celan, they talk about the poem regarding their own (theoretical) existence. But the poem itself will be articulate Gadamer and Derrida, distorting and translating them as objects, as they did with the poem. “Ontologically speaking, at the most basic level, every object distorts or translates every other object it encounters.”7 This means one must look for those distorting events and actions. Does this sound like Derrida? But forcing the dialog or denying it is like inhaling and exhaling part of one motion. OOO seems to recognize a third part, the gap. 

Derrida comes close to what I call the gap between inhale and exhale, and OOO understands as the gap between essence and appearance, the moment of withdrawal. For Derrida the gap itself is part of a text.8 Discussing Paul Celan’s poem GROSSE GLÜHENDE WÖLBUNG Derrida reads the “blanc silence”, the blank spaces as part of the text, as text itself. They materialize the withdrawal of meaning, of language. The gap is already there. It is the textualizing of the withdrawal, the written withdrawal, which is constitutive for every object. It is a response-ability which interacts with the refusal of any answer from the text side. From Gadamer‘s Hermeneutics as “unfolding references” through the  “reference’s rift” to the “reference as a rift” – Derrida tries to aim at the withdrawal, the gap between essence and appearance.

But Derrida, as Heidegger, remains in this point, a philosopher of the background:9 Because he designs his “Hermeneutics” from the blank, white space between all words and even letters.8 It is not (only) the in-between which interests Derrida, but the background itself. Harman discusses the background theorists, especially Heidegger and Marshall McLuhan.9 For him the problem with Heidegger’s background is, that Heidegger understands it as “one unified being, on unified lump.”7 Therefore, one could say, that Derrida’s background, the “blanc silence” is also “one unified being”. And as Harman argues for Heidegger, who in not carrying for the appearance of things gets to “real objects”10 one could say, that Derrida gets the “real text”. Harman defines real objects as follows: “Real objects are the ones that withdraw, that never become visible even when they break.”7 Remembering how important for Heidegger broken things are, one can see, that Derrida’s “blanc silence” gets close to what OOO understands as a “real object”. It is somehow uncanny, and this is how Derrida likes his real objects. Every text, fusing Derrida and Harman, “is deeper than any human interaction with it whatsoever, and ultimately deeper than the interaction between any two objects, whether they are human or not.”7 

How did Derrida betray his roots in phenomenology? Did he got contaminated by Gadamer’s Hermeneutics? For Harman Husserl’s main achievement is to understand that “the object comes first. […] Objects are in tension with qualities because you can change your clothing, you can change your appearance, and I would still recognize you, within certain ill-defined limits, as the same person.”11

Harman’s famous concept unfolds: For him “there are four basic distinctions”12, real objects and real qualities, sensual objects and sensual qualities. 

The rift as reference, which Derrida reaches through the “blanc silence” in Celan’s poem, is a real object: Derrida cannot paraphrase what the “blanc silence” is, it is ultimately withdrawn. Regarding art, I guess, Derrida inverts Heidegger at this point, because art is about real objects and their visible qualities, the “blanc silence” and the written text, so to speak. Heidegger uses the terms “earth” for what is withdrawn” and “world” for what is visible (to whom, us humans?) and artworks are in-between.13

Derrida, now, turns to the “invisible”: he articulates the “invisible” as the main state of art: the real object and the visible qualities change positions. Therefore, the qualities became the background and what was the background becomes what can be no differentiated. But how? 

For Derrida the world (not the earth) is now withdrawn. What can this mean?

On the one hand it can mean, that language is withdrawn and all what is left is the writing, the letter without any reference to a speaking subject, a logos. On the other hand, the writing is withdrawn, and all what is left is a speaking subject, without any reference in the writing, the written object. 

And Gadamer now appears as a philosopher of breath, when Derrida writes:

“Die Unentschiedenheit hält die Aufmerksamkeit immerzu in Atem, d.h. am Leben, wach und wachsam, bereit zu neuem Engagement auf ganz anderen Wegen, bereit, jenes andere Wort mit gespitztem Ohr und genauem Hinhören kommen zu lassen, im Atem des anderen Wortes und des Wortes des anderen gehalten – selbst dort, wo es noch unverständlich, unhörbar und unübersetzbar scheinen mag.“14

The breath becomes the medium for the indecision held, withstood by Gadamer’s interpretation. 

“Die Unterbrechung ist unentschieden, sie unentscheidet [indécide]. Sie haucht der Frage ihren Atem ein, der nicht etwa lähmend wirkt, sondern sie in Bewegung bringt.“7

One can ask now if breath is like the real object, a background, a medium as understood by Heidegger and McLuhan? Therefore, for the medium “poem” or “language” breath becomes the background. In reversing the direction, Derrida translates the background into the medium itself: the breath becomes, what is actually mediated between the words of the poem and the interpretation. The poem as well as the interpretation become real objects, backgrounds to the breath. 

And this is important for both, Derrida and Gadamer, because now, they can speak about the medium and they do not need to speak about the content of the poem, which is already lost, or withdrawn. This is the point where Hermeneutics itself transforms: While Hermeneutics was concerned with the content of poetry it can now concentrate on the poem being a medium not a message. 

The problem with making the background the foreground is, that such a move misses the point. Because each “syllabaire” has its own background: the void the poem is placed is not unified. Concluding this short chapter now, I would say, what Dark Hermeneutics is about. It is about literature without humans. This does not mean literature, which cannot be read by humans or humans have no knowledge about. It means, that literature is not only the effects it has on humans. Literature is not, what humans think, they read. And Gadamer as well as Derrida stopped thinking that they read and started reading what they think.  

  1. Gessmann 2004, 101 []
  2. Harman 2020, 16 []
  3. Ibid, 17 []
  4. Ibid., 22 []
  5. Ibid, 26 []
  6. Ibid., 27 []
  7. Ibid. [] [] [] [] []
  8. Gessmann 2004, S. 108 [] []
  9. Harman 2020, 32 [] []
  10. Ibid., 33 []
  11. Ibid., 34 []
  12. ibid. []
  13. Ibid. 35 []
  14. Derrida 2004, 23 []

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Martin Bartelmus (August 16, 2021). Chapter 11. Gadamer’s fusion of horizons – OOO and “blanc silence” Dark Hermeneutics. Retrieved July 18, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/ngwx


By Martin Bartelmus

Martin Bartelmus is a Postdoctoral Scholar of German Literary, Media, and Cultural Theory at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. He studied German Literature, Philosophy, Political and Social Studies at Julius Maximilians University Würzburg and received his PhD in Media and Cultural Studies as part of the DFG graduate program “Materiality and Production” from Heinrich Heine University. His PhD-Thesis is entitled Cultural Born Killer: Poetics of Killing around 1900. Before joining the department of German Literature at Heinrich Heine University for his current postdoctoral position, he worked as a curator for the Museum of Natural History of the Benrath Palace and Park Foundation and as a freelancer for the Julia Stoschek Collection. He is interested in Animal and Plant Studies, killing in literature and film, French theory, Object-Oriented Ontology, and literature without humans.

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