Planōménē aitía. Indagine sulla topologia della potenza di significare

In this paper I will argue that literature, its operative space, can be located in the difference between the signifier and the conceptual image of the referent. The investigation will take place in two moments: in the first moment I will engage in an analysis of Plato’s Timaeus. More specifically, I will show how the erratic cause represents a third causality in contrast to the mechanical and the divine. In his commentary on Plato’s Cratylus, Proclus refers to the Demiurge as the first coiner of names. This is the reason why, in the second moment of my analysis, I will show how the human signifier, understood as the phonic matter of which the name is made, though it can be correct, cannot constitutively reach the degree of perfection of divine naming. This imperfection is precisely the ground from which literary power is possible: literature forces the difference between signifier and conceptual image of the referent to make the matter of the name ungovern- able, that is, not reducible to the ordered materiality of human significations.