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Jacques Derrida is arguably the most well known philosopher of contemporary times. He is also one of the most prolific. Distancing himself from the various philosophical movements and traditions that preceded him on the French intellectual scene (phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism), in the mid 1960s he developed a strategy called deconstruction. Deconstruction is not purely negative, but it is primarily concerned with something tantamount to a ‘critique’ of the Western philosophical tradition, although this is generally staged via an analysis of specific texts. To simplify matters, deconstruction seeks to expose, and then to subvert, the various binary oppositions that undergird our dominant ways of thinking.
Deconstruction has had an enormous influence in many disparate fields, including psychology, literary theory, cultural studies, linguistics, feminism, sociology and anthropology. Poised in the interstices between philosophy and non-philosophy (or philosophy and literature), it is not difficult to see why this is the case. What follows in this article, however, is an attempt to bring out the philosophical significance of Derrida’s thought.Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to that part of this article)
In 1930, Derrida was born into a Jewish family in Algiers. He was also born into an environment of some discrimination. In fact, he either withdrew from, or was forced out of at least two schools during his childhood simply on account of being Jewish. He was expelled from one school because there was a 7% limit on the Jewish population, and he later withdrew from another school on account of the anti-semitism. While Derrida would resist any reductive understanding of his work based upon his biographical life, it could be argued that these kind of experiences played a large role in his insistence upon the importance of the marginal, and the other, in his later thought.
Derrida was twice refused a position in the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure (where Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and the majority of French intellectuals and academics began their careers), but he was eventually accepted to the institution at the age of 19. He hence moved from Algiers to France, and soon after he also began to play a major role in the leftist journal Tel Quel. Derrida’s initial work in philosophy was largely phenomenological, and his early training as a philosopher was done largely through the lens of Husserl. Other important inspirations on his early thought include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Saussure, Levinas and Freud. Derrida acknowledges his indebtedness to all of these thinkers in the development of his approach to texts, which has come to be known as ‘deconstruction’. It was in 1967 that Derrida really arrived as a philosopher of world importance. He published three momentous texts (Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena). All of these works have been influential for different reasons, but it is Of Grammatology that remains his most famous work (it is analysed in some detail in this article). In Of Grammatology, Derrida reveals and then undermines the speech-writing opposition that he argues has been such an influential factor in Western thought. His preoccupation with language in this text is typical of much of his early work, and since the publication of these and other major texts (including Dissemination, Glas, The Postcard, Spectres of Marx, The Gift of Death, and Politics of Friendship), deconstruction has gradually moved from occupying a major role in continental Europe, to also becoming a significant player in the Anglo-American philosophical context. This is particularly so in the areas of literary criticism, and cultural studies, where deconstruction’s method of textual analysis has inspired theorists like Paul de Man. Derrida has also had lecturing positions at various universities, the world over. Deconstruction has frequently been the subject of some controversy. When Derrida was awarded an honorary doctorate at Cambridge in 1992, there were howls of protest from many ‘analytic’ philosophers. Since then, Derrida has also had many dialogues with philosophers like John Searle (see Limited Inc.), in which deconstruction has been roundly criticised, although perhaps unfairly at times. However, what is clear from the antipathy of such thinkers is that deconstruction challenges traditional philosophy in several important ways, and the remainder of this article will highlight why this is so.Deconstructive
Strategy
Derrida, like many other contemporary European theorists, is preoccupied with
undermining the oppositional tendencies that have befallen much of the Western
philosophical tradition. In fact, dualisms are the staple diet of
deconstruction, for without these hierarchies and orders of subordination it
would be left with nowhere to intervene. Deconstruction is parasitic in that
rather than espousing yet another grand narrative, or theory about the nature of
the world in which we partake, it restricts itself to distorting already
existing narratives, and to revealing the dualistic hierarchies they conceal.
While Derrida’s claims to being someone who speaks solely in the margins of
philosophy can be contested, it is important to take these claims into account.
Deconstruction is, somewhat infamously, the philosophy that says nothing. To the
extent that it can be suggested that Derrida’s concerns are often philosophical,
they are clearly not phenomenological (he assures us that his work is to be read
specifically against Husserl, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty) and nor are they
ontological. Metaphysics
of Presence/Logocentrism
There are many different terms that Derrida employs to describe what he
considers to be the fundamental way(s) of thinking of the Western philosophical
tradition. These include: logocentrism, phallogocentrism, and perhaps most
famously, the metaphysics of presence, but also often simply ‘metaphysics’.
These terms all have slightly different meanings. Logocentrism emphasises the
privileged role that logos, or speech, has been accorded in the Western
tradition (see Section 3). Phallogocentrism points towards the patriarchal
significance of this privileging. Derrida’s enduring references to the
metaphysics of presence borrows heavily from the work of Heidegger. Heidegger
insists that Western philosophy has consistently privileged that which
is, or that which appears, and has forgotten to pay any attention to the
condition for that appearance. In other words, presence itself is privileged,
rather than that which allows presence to be possible at all – and also
impossible, for Derrida (see Section 4, for more on the metaphysics of
presence). All of these terms of denigration, however, are united under the
broad rubric of the term ‘metaphysics’. What, then, does Derrida mean by
metaphysics? Key terms from
the early work
Derrida’s terms change in every text that he writes. This is part of his
deconstructive strategy. He focuses on particular themes or words in a text,
which on account of their ambiguity undermine the more explicit intention of
that text. It is not possible for all of these to be addressed (Derrida has
published in the vicinity of 60 texts in English), so I have focused on some of
the most pivotal terms and neologisms from his early thought. I address aspects
of his later, more theme-based thought, in Sections 6 & 7. Speech/Writing
The most prominent opposition with which Derrida’s earlier work is concerned
is that between speech and writing. According to Derrida, thinkers as different
as Plato, Rousseau, Saussure, and Levi-Strauss, have all denigrated the written
word and valorised speech, by contrast, as some type of pure conduit of meaning.
Their argument is that while spoken words are the symbols of mental experience,
written words are the symbols of that already existing symbol. As
representations of speech, they are doubly derivative and doubly far from a
unity with one’s own thought. Without going into detail regarding the ways in
which these thinkers have set about justifying this type of hierarchical
opposition, it is important to remember that the first strategy of
deconstruction is to reverse existing oppositions. In Of Grammatology
(perhaps his most famous work), Derrida hence attempts to illustrate that the
structure of writing and grammatology are more important and even ‘older’ than
the supposedly pure structure of presence-to-self that is characterised as
typical of speech. Arche-writing
In Of Grammatology and elsewhere, Derrida argues that signification,
broadly conceived, always refers to other signs, and that one can never reach a
sign that refers only to itself. He suggests that “writing is not a sign of a
sign, except if one says it of all signs, which would be more profoundly true”
(OG 43), and this process of infinite referral, of never arriving at meaning
itself, is the notion of ‘writing’ that he wants to emphasise. This is not
writing narrowly conceived, as in a literal inscription upon a page, but what he
terms ‘arche-writing’. Arche-writing refers to a more generalised notion of
writing that insists that the breach that the written introduces between what is
intended to be conveyed and what is actually conveyed, is typical of an
originary breach that afflicts everything one might wish to keep sacrosanct,
including the notion of self-presence. Différance
Différance is an attempt to conjoin the differing and deferring
aspects involved in arche-writing in a term that itself plays upon the
distinction between the audible and the written. After all, what differentiates
différance and différence is inaudible, and this means that
distinguishing between them actually requires the written. This problematises
efforts like Saussure’s, which as well as attempting to keep speech and writing
apart, also suggest that writing is an almost unnecessary addition to speech. In
response to such a claim, Derrida can simply point out that there is often, and
perhaps even always, this type of ambiguity in the spoken word –
différence as compared to différance – that demands reference to
the written. If the spoken word requires the written to function properly, then
the spoken is itself always at a distance from any supposed clarity of
consciousness. It is this originary breach that Derrida associates with the
terms arche-writing and différance. Trace
In this respect, it needs to be pointed out that all of deconstruction’s
reversals (arche-writing included) are partly captured by the edifice that they
seek to overthrow. For Derrida, “one always inhabits, and all the more when one
does not suspect it” (OG 24), and it is important to recognise that the mere
reversal of an existing metaphysical opposition might not also challenge the
governing framework and presuppositions that are attempting to be reversed (WD
280). Deconstruction hence cannot rest content with merely prioritising writing
over speech, but must also accomplish the second major aspect of
deconstruction’s dual strategies, that being to corrupt and contaminate the
opposition itself. Supplement
The logic of the supplement is also an important aspect of Of
Grammatology. A supplement is something that, allegedly secondarily, comes
to serve as an aid to something ‘original’ or ‘natural’. Writing is itself an
example of this structure, for as Derrida points out, “if supplementarity is a
necessarily indefinite process, writing is the supplement par excellence
since it proposes itself as the supplement of the supplement, sign of a sign,
taking the place of a speech already significant” (OG 281). Another example of
the supplement might be masturbation, as Derrida suggests (OG 153), or even the
use of birth control precautions. What is notable about both of these examples
is an ambiguity that ensures that what is supplementary can always be
interpreted in two ways. For example, our society’s use of birth control
precautions might be interpreted as suggesting that our natural way is lacking
and that the contraceptive pill, or condom, etc., hence replaces a fault in
nature. On the other hand, it might also be argued that such precautions merely
add on to, and enrich our natural way. It is always ambiguous, or more
accurately ‘undecidable’, whether the supplement adds itself and “is a plenitude
enriching another plenitude, the fullest measure of presence”, or whether “the
supplement supplements… adds only to replace… represents and makes an image… its
place is assigned in the structure by the mark of an emptiness” (OG 144).
Ultimately, Derrida suggests that the supplement is both of these things,
accretion and substitution (OG 200), which means that the supplement is “not a
signified more than a signifier, a representer than a presence, a writing than a
speech” (OG 315). It comes before all such modalities. Time and
Phenomenology
Derrida has had a long and complicated association with phenomenology for his
entire career, including ambiguous relationships with Husserl and Heidegger, and
something closer to a sustained allegiance with Lévinas. Despite this
complexity, two main aspects of Derrida’s thinking regarding phenomenology
remain clear. Firstly, he thinks that the phenomenological emphasis upon the
immediacy of experience is the new transcendental illusion, and secondly, he
argues that despite its best intents, phenomenology cannot be anything other
than a metaphysics (SP 75, 104). In this context, Derrida defines metaphysics as
the science of presence, as for him (as for Heidegger), all metaphysics
privileges presence, or that which is. While they are presented
schematically here, these inter-related claims constitute Derrida’s major
arguments against phenomenology. Undecidability
In its first and most famous instantiation, undecidability is one of
Derrida’s most important attempts to trouble dualisms, or more accurately, to
reveal how they are always already troubled. An undecidable, and there are many
of them in deconstruction (eg. ghost, pharmakon, hymen, etc.), is something that
cannot conform to either polarity of a dichotomy (eg. present/absent,
cure/poison, and inside/outside in the above examples). For example, the figure
of a ghost seems to neither present or absent, or alternatively it is both
present and absent at the same time (SM). Decision
Derrida’s later philosophy is also united by his analysis of a similar type
of undecidability that is involved in the concept of the decision itself. In
this respect, Derrida regularly suggests that a decision cannot be wise, or
posed even more provocatively, that the instant of the decision must actually be
mad (DPJ 26, GD 65). Drawing on Kierkegaard, Derrida tells us that a decision
requires an undecidable leap beyond all prior preparations for that decision (GD
77), and according to him, this applies to all decisions and not just those
regarding the conversion to religious faith that preoccupies Kierkegaard. To
pose the problem in inverse fashion, it might be suggested that for Derrida, all
decisions are a faith and a tenuous faith at that, since were faith and the
decision not tenuous, they would cease to be a faith or a decision at all (cf.
GD 80). This description of the decision as a moment of madness that must move
beyond rationality and calculative reasoning may seem paradoxical, but it might
nevertheless be agreed that a decision requires a ‘leap of faith’ beyond the sum
total of the facts. Many of us are undoubtedly stifled by the difficulty of
decision-making, and this psychological fact aids and, for his detractors, also
abets Derrida’s discussion of the decision as it appears in texts like The
Gift of Death, Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice,
Adieu to Emmanuel Lévinas, and Politics of Friendship. The Other
Responsibility to the
Other
Perhaps the most obvious aspect of Derrida’s later philosophy is his
advocation of the tout autre, the wholly other, and The Gift of
Death will be our main focus in explaining what this exaltation of the
wholly other might mean. Any attempt to sum up this short but difficult text
would have to involve the recognition of a certain incommensurability between
the particular and the universal, and the dual demands placed upon anybody
intending to behave responsibly. For Derrida, the paradox of responsible
behaviour means that there is always a question of being responsible before a
singular other (eg. a loved one, God, etc.), and yet we are also always referred
to our responsibility towards others generally and to what we share with them.
Derrida insists that this type of aporia, or problem, is too often ignored by
the “knights of responsibility” who presume that accountability and
responsibility in all aspects of life – whether that be guilt before the human
law, or even before the divine will of God – is quite easily established (GD
85). These are the same people who insist that concrete ethical guidelines
should be provided by any philosopher worth his or her ‘salt’ (GD 67) and who
ignore the difficulties involved in a notion like responsibility, which demands
something importantly different from merely behaving dutifully (GD 63).
Wholly
Other/Messianic
This brings us to a term that Derrida has resuscitated from its association
with Walter Benjamin and the Judaic tradition more generally. That term is the
messianic and it relies upon a distinction with messianism. Possible and
Impossible Aporias
Derrida has recently become more and more preoccupied with what has come to
be termed “possible-impossible aporias” - aporia was originally a Greek term
meaning puzzle, but it has come to mean something more like an impasse or
paradox. In particular, Derrida has described the paradoxes that afflict notions
like giving, hospitality, forgiving and mourning. He argues that the condition
of their possibility is also, and at once, the condition of their impossibility.
In this section, I will attempt to reveal the shared logic upon which these
aporias rely. The Gift
The aporia that surrounds the gift revolves around the paradoxical thought
that a genuine gift cannot actually be understood to be a gift. In his text,
Given Time, Derrida suggests that the notion of the gift contains an
implicit demand that the genuine gift must reside outside of the oppositional
demands of giving and taking, and beyond any mere self-interest or calculative
reasoning (GT 30). According to him, however, a gift is also something that
cannot appear as such (GD 29), as it is destroyed by anything that proposes
equivalence or recompense, as well as by anything that even proposes to know of,
or acknowledge it. This may sound counter-intuitive, but even a simple
‘thank-you’ for instance, which both acknowledges the presence of a gift and
also proposes some form of equivalence with that gift, can be seen to annul the
gift (cf. MDM 149). By politely responding with a ‘thank-you’, there is often,
and perhaps even always, a presumption that because of this acknowledgement one
is no longer indebted to the other who has given, and that nothing more can be
expected of an individual who has so responded. Significantly, the gift is hence
drawn into the cycle of giving and taking, where a good deed must be accompanied
by a suitably just response. As the gift is associated with a command to
respond, it becomes an imposition for the receiver, and it even becomes an
opportunity to take for the ‘giver’, who might give just to receive the
acknowledgement from the other that they have in fact given. There are
undoubtedly many other examples of how the ‘gift’ can be deployed, and not
necessarily deliberately, to gain advantage. Of course, it might be objected
that even if it is psychologically difficult to give without also receiving (and
in a manner that is tantamount to taking) this does not in-itself constitute a
refutation of the logic of genuine giving. According to Derrida, however, his
discussion does not amount merely to an empirical or psychological claim about
the difficulty of transcending an immature and egocentric conception of giving.
On the contrary, he wants to problematise the very possibility of a giving that
can be unequivocally disassociated from receiving and taking. Hospitality
It is also worth considering the aporia that Derrida associates with
hospitality. According to Derrida, genuine hospitality before any number of
unknown others is not, strictly speaking, a possible scenario (OH 135, GD 70,
AEL 50, OCF 16). If we contemplate giving up everything that we seek to possess
and call our own, then most of us can empathise with just how difficult enacting
any absolute hospitality would be. Despite this, however, Derrida insists that
the whole idea of hospitality depends upon such an altruistic concept and is
inconceivable without it (OCF 22). In fact, he argues that it is this internal
tension that keeps the concept alive. Forgiveness
Derrida discerns another aporia in regard to whether or not to forgive
somebody who has caused us significant suffering or pain. This particular
paradox revolves around the premise that if one forgives something that is
actually forgivable, then one simply engages in calculative reasoning and hence
does not really forgive. Most commonly in interviews, but also in his recent
text On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, Derrida argues that according to
its own internal logic, genuine forgiving must involve the impossible: that is,
the forgiving of an ‘unforgivable’ transgression – eg. a ‘mortal sin’ (OCF 32,
cf. OH 39). There is hence a sense in which forgiving must be ‘mad’ and
‘unconscious’ (OCF 39, 49), and it must also remain outside of, or heterogenous
to, political and juridical rationality. This unconditional ‘forgiveness’
explicitly precludes the necessity of an apology or repentance by the guilty
party, although Derrida acknowledges that this pure notion of forgiveness must
always exist in tension with a more conditional forgiveness where apologies are
actually demanded. However, he argues that this conditional forgiveness amounts
more to amnesty and reconciliation than to genuine forgiveness (OCF 51). The
pattern of this discussion is undoubtedly beginning to become familiar.
Derrida’s discussions of forgiving are orientated around revealing a fundamental
paradox that ensures that forgiving can never be finished or concluded – it must
always be open, like a permanent rupture, or a wound that refuses to heal.
Mourning
In Memoires: for Paul de Man, which was written almost immediately
following de Man’s death in 1983, Derrida reflects upon the political
significance of his colleague’s apparent Nazi affiliation in his youth, and he
also discusses the pain of losing his friend. Derrida’s argument about mourning
adheres to a similarly paradoxical logic to that which has been associated with
him throughout this article. He suggests that the so-called ‘successful’
mourning of the deceased other actually fails – or at least is an unfaithful
fidelity – because the other person becomes a part of us, and in this
interiorisation their genuine alterity is no longer respected. On the other
hand, failure to mourn the other’s death paradoxically appears to succeed,
because the presence of the other person in their exteriority is prolonged (MDM
6). As Derrida suggests, there is a sense in which “an aborted interiorisation
is at the same time a respect for the other as other” (MDM 35). Hence the
possibility of an impossible bereavement, where the only possible way to mourn,
is to be unable to do so. However, even though this is how he initially presents
the problem, Derrida also problematises this “success fails, failure succeeds”
formulation (MDM 35). Bibliography
Derrida's Texts (and their abbreviations)
Acts of Literature, ed. Attridge, New York: Routledge, 1992 (AL).
Selected
Commentaries
Bennington, G., Interrupting Derrida, Warwick Studies in European
Philosophy, London: Routledge, 2000. Dr Jack Reynolds
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