ABSTRACT
For both Homi K. Bhabha and Jean Paulhan are concerned not just with the nation but, more significantly, with the nation as a function of a certain linguistic perplexity and playfulness — although here it is Bhabha who opts for the weightier tones of the 'foreignness' of languages, which he draws primarily from Walter Benjamin. The difficulty lies in theorizing a space outside or beyond the hegemonic rules of determination, which can nonetheless be identified as the locus of cultural resistance. Immersion is the state Paulhan alludes to most insistently in La Peinture cubiste, particularly in the chapter 'Petite aventure en pleine nuit', which he recounts in various texts and which apparently represented some sort of bedrock experience that all his post-war theoretical elaborations attempted to understand. The world may be reduced to scraps by modern painting, but in Paulhan's account these scraps have personality and depth and usefulness.
