Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a critique of the relationship between text and meaning originated by the philosopher Jacques Derrida. Derrida's approach consisted in conducting readings of texts with an ear to what runs counter to the intended meaning or structural unity of a particular text. The purpose of deconstruction is to show that the usage of language in a given text, and language as a whole, are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible. Throughout his readings, Derrida hoped to show deconstruction at work.

Many debates in continental philosophy surrounding ontology, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, hermeneutics, and philosophy of language refer to Derrida's observations. Since the 1980s, these observations inspired a range of theoretical enterprises in the humanities,[1] including the disciplines of law[2]:3–76[3][4] anthropology,[5] historiography,[6] linguistics,[7] sociolinguistics,[8] psychoanalysis, LGBT studies, and the feminist school of thought. Deconstruction also inspired deconstructivism in architecture and remains important within art,[9] music,[10] and literary criticism.[11][12]

While common in continental Europe (and wherever Continental philosophy is in the mainstream), deconstruction is not adopted or accepted by most philosophy departments in universities where analytic philosophy is predominant.

Overview

Jacques Derrida's 1967 book Of Grammatology introduced the majority of ideas influential within deconstruction.[13]:25 Derrida published a number of other works directly relevant to the concept of deconstruction. Books showing deconstruction in action or defining it more completely include Différance, Speech and Phenomena, and Writing and Difference.

According to Derrida and taking inspiration from the work of Ferdinand de Saussure,[14] language as a system of signs and words only has meaning because of the contrast between these signs.[15][13]:7, 12 As Rorty contends, "words have meaning only because of contrast-effects with other words...no word can acquire meaning in the way in which philosophers from Aristotle to Bertrand Russell have hoped it might—by being the unmediated expression of something non-linguistic (e.g., an emotion, a sense-datum, a physical object, an idea, a Platonic Form)".[15] As a consequence, meaning is never present, but rather is deferred to other signs. Derrida refers to the—in this view, mistaken—belief that there is a self-sufficient, non-deferred meaning as metaphysics of presence. A concept, then, must be understood in the context of its opposite, such as being/nothingness, normal/abnormal, speech/writing, etc.[16][17]:26

Further, Derrida contends that "in a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-a-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has the upper hand": signified over signifier; intelligible over sensible; speech over writing; activity over passivity, etc. The first task of deconstruction would be to find and overturn these oppositions inside a text or a corpus of texts; but the final objective of deconstruction is not to surpass all oppositions, because it is assumed they are structurally necessary to produce sense. The oppositions simply cannot be suspended once and for all. The hierarchy of dual oppositions always reestablishes itself. Deconstruction only points to the necessity of an unending analysis that can make explicit the decisions and arbitrary violence intrinsic to all texts.[17]:41

Finally, Derrida argues that it is not enough to expose and deconstruct the way oppositions work and then stop there in a nihilistic or cynical position, "thereby preventing any means of intervening in the field effectively".[17]:42 To be effective, deconstruction needs to create new terms, not to synthesize the concepts in opposition, but to mark their difference and eternal interplay. This explains why Derrida always proposes new terms in his deconstruction, not as a free play but as a pure necessity of analysis, to better mark the intervals. Derrida called undecidables—that is, unities of simulacrum—"false" verbal properties (nominal or semantic) that can no longer be included within philosophical (binary) opposition, but which, however, inhabit philosophical oppositions—resisting and organizing it—without ever constituting a third term, without ever leaving room for a solution in the form of Hegelian dialectics (e.g., différance, archi-writing, pharmakon, supplement, hymen, gram, spacing).[17]:19

Influences

Derrida's theories on deconstruction were themselves influenced by the work of linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure (whose writings on semiotics also became a cornerstone of structuralist theory in the mid-20th century) and literary theorists such as Roland Barthes (whose works were an investigation of the logical ends of structuralist thought). Derrida's views on deconstruction stood in opposition to the theories of structuralists such as psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan, and linguist Claude Lévi-Strauss. However, Derrida resisted attempts to label his work as "post-structuralist".

Influence of Nietzsche

In order to understand Derrida's motivation, one must refer to Nietzsche's philosophy.

Nietzsche's project began with Orpheus, the man underground. This foil to Platonic light was deliberately and self-consciously lauded in Daybreak, when Nietzsche announces, albeit retrospectively, "In this work you will discover a subterranean man at work", and then goes on to map the project of unreason: "All things that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their origin in unreason thereby becomes improbable. Does not almost every precise history of an origination impress our feelings as paradoxical and wantonly offensive? Does the good historian not, at bottom, constantly contradict?".[18]

Nietzsche's point in Daybreak is that standing at the end of modern history, modern thinkers know too much to be deceived by the illusion of reason any more. Reason, logic, philosophy and science are no longer solely sufficient as the royal roads to truth. And so Nietzsche decides to throw it in our faces, and uncover the truth of Plato, that he—unlike Orpheus—just happened to discover his true love in the light instead of in the dark. This being merely one historical event amongst many, Nietzsche proposes that we revisualize the history of the West as the history of a series of political moves, that is, a manifestation of the will to power, that at bottom have no greater or lesser claim to truth in any noumenal (absolute) sense. By calling our attention to the fact that he has assumed the role of Orpheus, the man underground, in dialectical opposition to Plato, Nietzsche hopes to sensitize us to the political and cultural context, and the political influences that impact authorship. For example, the political influences that led one author to choose philosophy over poetry (or at least portray himself as having made such a choice), and another to make a different choice.

The problem with Nietzsche, as Derrida sees it, is that he did not go far enough. That he missed the fact that this will to power is itself but a manifestation of the operation of writing. And so Derrida wishes to help us step beyond Nietzsche's penultimate revaluation of all western values, to the ultimate, which is the final appreciation of "the role of writing in the production of knowledge".[19]

Influence of Saussure

Derrida approaches all texts as constructed around elemental oppositions which all discourse has to articulate if it intends to make any sense whatsoever. This is so because identity is viewed in non-essentialist terms as a construct, and because constructs only produce meaning through the interplay of difference inside a "system of distinct signs". This approach to text is influenced by the semiology of Ferdinand de Saussure.[20][21]

Saussure is considered one of the fathers of structuralism when he explained that terms get their meaning in reciprocal determination with other terms inside language:

In language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it. [...] A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass thought engenders a system of values.[14]

Saussure explicitly suggested that linguistics was only a branch of a more general semiology, a science of signs in general, human codes being only one part. Nevertheless, in the end, as Derrida pointed out, Saussure made linguistics "the regulatory model", and "for essential, and essentially metaphysical, reasons had to privilege speech, and everything that links the sign to phone".[17]:21, 46, 101, 156, 164 Derrida will prefer to follow the more "fruitful paths (formalization)" of a general semiotics without falling into what he considered "a hierarchizing teleology" privileging linguistics, and to speak of "mark" rather than of language, not as something restricted to mankind, but as prelinguistic, as the pure possibility of language, working everywhere there is a relation to something else.

Deconstruction according to Derrida

Etymology

Derrida's original use of the word "deconstruction" was a translation of Destruktion, a concept from the work of Martin Heidegger that Derrida sought to apply to textual reading. Heidegger's term referred to a process of exploring the categories and concepts that tradition has imposed on a word, and the history behind them.[22]

Basic philosophical concerns

Derrida's concerns flow from a consideration of several issues:

  1. A desire to contribute to the re-evaluation of all Western values, a re-evaluation built on the 18th-century Kantian critique of pure reason, and carried forward to the 19th century, in its more radical implications, by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
  2. An assertion that texts outlive their authors, and become part of a set of cultural habits equal to, if not surpassing, the importance of authorial intent.
  3. A re-valuation of certain classic western dialectics: poetry vs. philosophy, reason vs. revelation, structure vs. creativity, episteme vs. techne, etc.

To this end, Derrida follows a long line of modern philosophers, who look backwards to Plato and his influence on the Western metaphysical tradition.[19] Like Nietzsche, Derrida suspects Plato of dissimulation in the service of a political project, namely the education, through critical reflections, of a class of citizens more strategically positioned to influence the polis. However, like Nietzsche, Derrida is not satisfied merely with such a political interpretation of Plato, because of the particular dilemma modern humans find themselves in. His Platonic reflections are inseparably part of his critique of modernity, hence the attempt to be something beyond the modern, because of this Nietzschian sense that the modern has lost its way and become mired in nihilism.

Différance

Différance is the observation that the meanings of words come from their synchrony with other words within the language and their diachrony between contemporary and historical definitions of a word. Understanding language, according to Derrida, requires an understanding of both viewpoints of linguistic analysis. The focus on diachrony has led to accusations against Derrida of engaging in the etymological fallacy.[23]

There is one statement by Derrida—in an essay on Rousseau in Of Grammatology—which has been of great interest to his opponents.[13]:158 It is the assertion that "there is no outside-text" (il n'y a pas de hors-texte),[13]:158–59, 163 which is often mistranslated as "there is nothing outside of the text". The mistranslation is often used to suggest Derrida believes that nothing exists but words. Michel Foucault, for instance, famously misattributed to Derrida the very different phrase "Il n'y a rien en dehors du texte" for this purpose.[24] According to Derrida, his statement simply refers to the unavoidability of context that is at the heart of différance.[25]:133

For example, the word "house" derives its meaning more as a function of how it differs from "shed", "mansion", "hotel", "building", etc. (Form of Content, that Louis Hjelmslev distinguished from Form of Expression) than how the word "house" may be tied to a certain image of a traditional house (i.e., the relationship between signified and signifier), with each term being established in reciprocal determination with the other terms than by an ostensive description or definition: when can we talk about a "house" or a "mansion" or a "shed"? The same can be said about verbs, in all the languages in the world: when should we stop saying "walk" and start saying "run"? The same happens, of course, with adjectives: when must we stop saying "yellow" and start saying "orange", or exchange "past" for "present"? Not only are the topological differences between the words relevant here, but the differentials between what is signified is also covered by différance.

Thus, complete meaning is always "differential" and postponed in language; there is never a moment when meaning is complete and total. A simple example would consist of looking up a given word in a dictionary, then proceeding to look up the words found in that word's definition, etc., also comparing with older dictionaries. Such a process would never end.

Metaphysics of presence

Derrida describes the task of deconstruction as the identification of metaphysics of presence, or logocentrism in western philosophy. Metaphysics of presence is the desire for immediate access to meaning, the privileging of presence over absence. This means that there is an assumed bias in certain binary oppositions where one side is placed in a position over another, such as good over bad, speech over the written word, male over female. Derrida writes, "Without a doubt, Aristotle thinks of time on the basis of ousia as parousia, on the basis of the now, the point, etc. And yet an entire reading could be organized that would repeat in Aristotle's text both this limitation and its opposite".[22]:29–67 To Derrida, the central bias of logocentrism was the now being placed as more important than the future or past. This argument is largely based on the earlier work of Heidegger, who, in Being and Time, claimed that the theoretical attitude of pure presence is parasitical upon a more originary involvement with the world in concepts such as ready-to-hand and being-with.

Deconstruction and dialectics

In the deconstruction procedure, one of the main concerns of Derrida is to not collapse into Hegel's dialectic, where these oppositions would be reduced to contradictions in a dialectic that has the purpose of resolving it into a synthesis.[17]:43 The presence of Hegelian dialectics was enormous in the intellectual life of France during the second half of the 20th century, with the influence of Kojève and Hyppolite, but also with the impact of dialectics based on contradiction developed by Marxists, and including the existentialism of Sartre, etc. This explains Derrida's concern to always distinguish his procedure from Hegel's,[17]:43 since Hegelianism believes binary oppositions would produce a synthesis, while Derrida saw binary oppositions as incapable of collapsing into a synthesis free from the original contradiction.

Difficulty of definition

There have been problems defining deconstruction. Derrida claimed that all of his essays were attempts to define what deconstruction is,[26]:4 and that deconstruction is necessarily complicated and difficult to explain since it actively criticises the very language needed to explain it.

Derrida's "negative" descriptions

Derrida has been more forthcoming with negative (apophatic) than with positive descriptions of deconstruction. When asked by Toshihiko Izutsu some preliminary considerations on how to translate "deconstruction" in Japanese, in order to at least prevent using a Japanese term contrary to deconstruction's actual meaning, Derrida began his response by saying that such a question amounts to "what deconstruction is not, or rather ought not to be".[26]:1

Derrida states that deconstruction is not an analysis, a critique, or a method[26]:3 in the traditional sense that philosophy understands these terms. In these negative descriptions of deconstruction, Derrida is seeking to "multiply the cautionary indicators and put aside all the traditional philosophical concepts".[26]:3 This does not mean that deconstruction has absolutely nothing in common with an analysis, a critique, or a method, because while Derrida distances deconstruction from these terms, he reaffirms "the necessity of returning to them, at least under erasure".[26]:3 Derrida's necessity of returning to a term under erasure means that even though these terms are problematic we must use them until they can be effectively reformulated or replaced. The relevance of the tradition of negative theology to Derrida's preference for negative descriptions of deconstruction is the notion that a positive description of deconstruction would over-determine the idea of deconstruction and would close off the openness that Derrida wishes to preserve for deconstruction. If Derrida were to positively define deconstruction—as, for example, a critique—then this would make the concept of critique immune to itself being deconstructed. Some new philosophy beyond deconstruction would then be required in order to encompass the notion of critique.

Not a method

Derrida states that "Deconstruction is not a method, and cannot be transformed into one".[26]:3 This is because deconstruction is not a mechanical operation. Derrida warns against considering deconstruction as a mechanical operation, when he states that "It is true that in certain circles (university or cultural, especially in the United States) the technical and methodological "metaphor" that seems necessarily attached to the very word 'deconstruction' has been able to seduce or lead astray".[26]:3 Commentator Richard Beardsworth explains that

Derrida is careful to avoid this term [method] because it carries connotations of a procedural form of judgement. A thinker with a method has already decided how to proceed, is unable to give him or herself up to the matter of thought in hand, is a functionary of the criteria which structure his or her conceptual gestures. For Derrida [...] this is irresponsibility itself. Thus, to talk of a method in relation to deconstruction, especially regarding its ethico-political implications, would appear to go directly against the current of Derrida's philosophical adventure.[27]

Beardsworth here explains that it would be irresponsible to undertake a deconstruction with a complete set of rules that need only be applied as a method to the object of deconstruction, because this understanding would reduce deconstruction to a thesis of the reader that the text is then made to fit. This would be an irresponsible act of reading, because it becomes a prejudicial procedure that only finds what it sets out to find.

Not a critique

Derrida states that deconstruction is not a critique in the Kantian sense.[26]:3 This is because Kant defines the term critique as the opposite of dogmatism. For Derrida, it is not possible to escape the dogmatic baggage of the language we use in order to perform a pure critique in the Kantian sense. Language is dogmatic because it is inescapably metaphysical. Derrida argues that language is inescapably metaphysical because it is made up of signifiers that only refer to that which transcends them—the signified. In addition, Derrida asks rhetorically "Is not the idea of knowledge and of the acquisition of knowledge in itself metaphysical?"[2]:5 By this, Derrida means that all claims to know something necessarily involve an assertion of the metaphysical type that something is the case somewhere. For Derrida the concept of neutrality is suspect and dogmatism is therefore involved in everything to a certain degree. Deconstruction can challenge a particular dogmatism and hence desediment dogmatism in general, but it cannot escape all dogmatism all at once.

Not an analysis

Derrida states that deconstruction is not an analysis in the traditional sense.[26]:3 This is because the possibility of analysis is predicated on the possibility of breaking up the text being analysed into elemental component parts. Derrida argues that there are no self-sufficient units of meaning in a text, because individual words or sentences in a text can only be properly understood in terms of how they fit into the larger structure of the text and language itself. For more on Derrida's theory of meaning see the article on différance.

Not post-structuralist

Derrida states that his use of the word deconstruction first took place in a context in which "structuralism was dominant" and deconstruction's meaning is within this context. Derrida states that deconstruction is an "antistructuralist gesture" because "[s]tructures were to be undone, decomposed, desedimented". At the same time, deconstruction is also a "structuralist gesture" because it is concerned with the structure of texts. So, deconstruction involves "a certain attention to structures"[26]:2 and tries to "understand how an 'ensemble' was constituted".[26]:3 As both a structuralist and an antistructuralist gesture, deconstruction is tied up with what Derrida calls the "structural problematic".[26]:2 The structural problematic for Derrida is the tension between genesis, that which is "in the essential mode of creation or movement", and structure: "systems, or complexes, or static configurations".[16]:194 An example of genesis would be the sensory ideas from which knowledge is then derived in the empirical epistemology. An example of structure would be a binary opposition such as good and evil where the meaning of each element is established, at least partly, through its relationship to the other element.

It is for this reason that Derrida distances his use of the term deconstruction from post-structuralism, a term that would suggest that philosophy could simply go beyond structuralism. Derrida states that "the motif of deconstruction has been associated with 'post-structuralism'", but that this term was "a word unknown in France until its 'return' from the United States".[26]:3 In his deconstruction of Husserl, Derrida actually argues for the contamination of pure origins by the structures of language and temporality. Manfred Frank has even referred to Derrida's work as "Neostructuralism".[28]

Alternative definitions

The popularity of the term deconstruction, combined with the technical difficulty of Derrida's primary material on deconstruction and his reluctance to elaborate his understanding of the term, has meant that many secondary sources have attempted to give a more straightforward explanation than Derrida himself ever attempted. Secondary definitions are therefore an interpretation of deconstruction by the person offering them rather than a summary of Derrida's actual position.

  • Paul de Man was a member of the Yale School and a prominent practitioner of deconstruction as he understood it. His definition of deconstruction is that, "[i]t's possible, within text, to frame a question or undo assertions made in the text, by means of elements which are in the text, which frequently would be precisely structures that play off the rhetorical against grammatical elements."[29]
  • Richard Rorty was a prominent interpreter of Derrida's philosophy. His definition of deconstruction is that, "the term 'deconstruction' refers in the first instance to the way in which the 'accidental' features of a text can be seen as betraying, subverting, its purportedly 'essential' message."[30]
  • John D. Caputo attempts to explain deconstruction in a nutshell by stating:

    "Whenever deconstruction finds a nutshell—a secure axiom or a pithy maxim—the very idea is to crack it open and disturb this tranquility. Indeed, that is a good rule of thumb in deconstruction. That is what deconstruction is all about, its very meaning and mission, if it has any. One might even say that cracking nutshells is what deconstruction is. In a nutshell. ...Have we not run up against a paradox and an aporia [something contradictory]...the paralysis and impossibility of an aporia is just what impels deconstruction, what rouses it out of bed in the morning..."[31]

  • Niall Lucy points to the impossibility of defining the term at all, stating:

    "While in a sense it is impossibly difficult to define, the impossibility has less to do with the adoption of a position or the assertion of a choice on deconstruction's part than with the impossibility of every 'is' as such. Deconstruction begins, as it were, from a refusal of the authority or determining power of every 'is', or simply from a refusal of authority in general. While such refusal may indeed count as a position, it is not the case that deconstruction holds this as a sort of 'preference' ".[32]

  • David B. Allison is an early translator of Derrida and states, in the introduction to his translation of Speech and Phenomena:

    [Deconstruction] signifies a project of critical thought whose task is to locate and 'take apart' those concepts which serve as the axioms or rules for a period of thought, those concepts which command the unfolding of an entire epoch of metaphysics. 'Deconstruction' is somewhat less negative than the Heideggerian or Nietzschean terms 'destruction' or 'reversal'; it suggests that certain foundational concepts of metaphysics will never be entirely eliminated...There is no simple 'overcoming' of metaphysics or the language of metaphysics.

  • Paul Ricœur defines deconstruction as a way of uncovering the questions behind the answers of a text or tradition.[33]
  • Richard Ellmann defines 'deconstruction' as the systematic undoing of understanding.

A survey of the secondary literature reveals a wide range of heterogeneous arguments. Particularly problematic are the attempts to give neat introductions to deconstruction by people trained in literary criticism who sometimes have little or no expertise in the relevant areas of philosophy that Derrida is working in. These secondary works (e.g. Deconstruction for Beginners[34] and Deconstructions: A User's Guide)[35] have attempted to explain deconstruction while being academically criticized as too far removed from the original texts and Derrida's actual position.

Application

Derrida's observations have greatly influenced literary criticism and post-structuralism.

Literary criticism

Derrida's method consisted of demonstrating all the forms and varieties of the originary complexity of semiotics, and their multiple consequences in many fields. His way of achieving this was by conducting thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of philosophical and literary texts, with an ear to what in those texts runs counter to their apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). By demonstrating the aporias and ellipses of thought, Derrida hoped to show the infinitely subtle ways that this originary complexity, which by definition cannot ever be completely known, works its structuring and destructuring effects.[36]

Deconstruction denotes the pursuing of the meaning of a text to the point of exposing the supposed contradictions and internal oppositions upon which it is founded—supposedly showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible. It is an approach that may be deployed in philosophy, in literary analysis, and even in the analysis of scientific writings.[37] Deconstruction generally tries to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that an interpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point. Derrida refers to this point as an "aporia" in the text; thus, deconstructive reading is termed "aporetic."[38] He insists that meaning is made possible by the relations of a word to other words within the network of structures that language is.[39]

Derrida initially resisted granting to his approach the overarching name "deconstruction", on the grounds that it was a precise technical term that could not be used to characterize his work generally. Nevertheless, he eventually accepted that the term had come into common use to refer to his textual approach, and Derrida himself increasingly began to use the term in this more general way.

Critique of structuralism

Derrida's lecture at Johns Hopkins University, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences", often appears in collections as a manifesto against structuralism. Derrida's essay was one of the earliest to propose some theoretical limitations to structuralism, and to attempt to theorize on terms that were clearly no longer structuralist. Structuralism viewed language as a number of signs, composed of a signified (the meaning) and a signifier (the word itself). Derrida proposed that signs always referred to other signs, existing only in relation to each other, and there was therefore no ultimate foundation or centre. This is the basis of différance.[40]

Development after Derrida

The Yale School

Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, many thinkers were influenced by deconstruction, including Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller. This group came to be known as the Yale school and was especially influential in literary criticism. Derrida and Hillis Miller were subsequently affiliated with the University of California, Irvine.[41]

Miller has described deconstruction this way: "Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock, but thin air."[42]

Arguing that law and politics cannot be separated, the founders of the "Critical Legal Studies Movement" found it necessary to criticize the absence of the recognition of this inseparability at the level of theory. To demonstrate the indeterminacy of legal doctrine, these scholars often adopt a method, such as structuralism in linguistics, or deconstruction in Continental philosophy, to make explicit the deep structure of categories and tensions at work in legal texts and talk. The aim was to deconstruct the tensions and procedures by which they are constructed, expressed, and deployed.

For example, Duncan Kennedy, in explicit reference to semiotics and deconstruction procedures, maintains that various legal doctrines are constructed around the binary pairs of opposed concepts, each of which has a claim upon intuitive and formal forms of reasoning that must be made explicit in their meaning and relative value, and criticized. Self and other, private and public, subjective and objective, freedom and control are examples of such pairs demonstrating the influence of opposing concepts on the development of legal doctrines throughout history.[3]

Deconstructing History

Deconstructive readings of history and sources have changed the entire discipline of history. In Deconstructing History, Alun Munslow examines history in what he argues is a postmodern age. He provides an introduction to the debates and issues of postmodernist history. He also surveys the latest research into the relationship between the past, history, and historical practice, as well as articulating his own theoretical challenges.[6]

The Inoperative Community

Jean-Luc Nancy argues, in his 1982 book The Inoperative Community, for an understanding of community and society that is undeconstructable because it is prior to conceptualisation. Nancy's work is an important development of deconstruction because it takes the challenge of deconstruction seriously and attempts to develop an understanding of political terms that is undeconstructable and therefore suitable for a philosophy after Derrida.

The Ethics of Deconstruction

Simon Critchley, an English philosopher, argues, in his 1992 book The Ethics of Deconstruction,[43] that Derrida's deconstruction is an intrinsically ethical practice. Critchley argues that deconstruction involves an openness to the Other that makes it ethical in the Levinasian understanding of the term.

Derrida and the Political

Jacques Derrida has had a great influence on contemporary political theory and political philosophy. Derrida's thinking has inspired Slavoj Zizek, Richard Rorty, Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler and many more contemporary theorists who have developed a deconstructive approach to politics. Because deconstruction examines the internal logic of any given text or discourse it has helped many authors to analyse the contradictions inherent in all schools of thought; and, as such, it has proved revolutionary in political analysis, particularly ideology critiques.[44]

Richard Beardsworth, developing from Critchley's Ethics of Deconstruction, argues, in his 1996 Derrida and the Political, that deconstruction is an intrinsically political practice. He further argues that the future of deconstruction faces a perhaps undecidable choice between a theological approach and a technological approach, represented first of all by the work of Bernard Stiegler.

Criticisms

Derrida was involved in a number of high-profile disagreements with prominent philosophers, including Michel Foucault, John Searle, Willard Van Orman Quine, Peter Kreeft, and Jürgen Habermas. Most of the criticism of deconstruction were first articulated by these philosophers and repeated elsewhere.

John Searle

In the early 1970s, Searle had a brief exchange with Jacques Derrida regarding speech-act theory. The exchange was characterized by a degree of mutual hostility between the philosophers, each of whom accused the other of having misunderstood his basic points.[25]:29 Searle was particularly hostile to Derrida's deconstructionist framework and much later refused to let his response to Derrida be printed along with Derrida's papers in the 1988 collection Limited Inc. Searle did not consider Derrida's approach to be legitimate philosophy, or even intelligible writing, and argued that he did not want to legitimize the deconstructionist point of view by paying any attention to it. Consequently, some critics[45] have considered the exchange to be a series of elaborate misunderstandings rather than a debate, while others[46] have seen either Derrida or Searle gaining the upper hand. The level of hostility can be seen from Searle's statement that "It would be a mistake to regard Derrida's discussion of Austin as a confrontation between two prominent philosophical traditions", to which Derrida replied that that sentence was "the only sentence of the 'reply' to which I can subscribe".[47] Commentators have frequently interpreted the exchange as a prominent example of a confrontation between analytic and Continental philosophies.

The debate began in 1972, when, in his paper "Signature Event Context", Derrida analyzed J. L. Austin's theory of the illocutionary act. While sympathetic to Austin's departure from a purely denotational account of language to one that includes "force", Derrida was sceptical of the framework of normativity employed by Austin. Derrida argued that Austin had missed the fact that any speech event is framed by a "structure of absence" (the words that are left unsaid due to contextual constraints) and by "iterability" (the constraints on what can be said, imposed by what has been said in the past). Derrida argued that the focus on intentionality in speech-act theory was misguided because intentionality is restricted to that which is already established as a possible intention. He also took issue with the way Austin had excluded the study of fiction, non-serious, or "parasitic" speech, wondering whether this exclusion was because Austin had considered these speech genres as governed by different structures of meaning, or hadn't considered them due to a lack of interest. In his brief reply to Derrida, "Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida", Searle argued that Derrida's critique was unwarranted because it assumed that Austin's theory attempted to give a full account of language and meaning when its aim was much narrower. Searle considered the omission of parasitic discourse forms to be justified by the narrow scope of Austin's inquiry.[48][49] Searle agreed with Derrida's proposal that intentionality presupposes iterability, but did not apply the same concept of intentionality used by Derrida, being unable or unwilling to engage with the continental conceptual apparatus.[46] This, in turn, caused Derrida to criticize Searle for not being sufficiently familiar with phenomenological perspectives on intentionality.[50] Searle also argued that Derrida's disagreement with Austin turned on Derrida's having misunderstood Austin's type–token distinction and having failed to understand Austin's concept of failure in relation to performativity. Some critics[50] have suggested that Searle, by being so grounded in the analytical tradition that he was unable to engage with Derrida's continental phenomenological tradition, was at fault for the unsuccessful nature of the exchange.

Derrida, in his response to Searle ("a b c ..." in Limited Inc), ridiculed Searle's positions. Claiming that a clear sender of Searle's message could not be established, Derrida suggested that Searle had formed with Austin a société à responsabilité limitée (a "limited liability company") due to the ways in which the ambiguities of authorship within Searle's reply circumvented the very speech act of his reply. Searle did not reply. Later in 1988, Derrida tried to review his position and his critiques of Austin and Searle, reiterating that he found the constant appeal to "normality" in the analytical tradition to be problematic.[25]:133[46][51][52][53][54][55][56]

In the debate, Derrida praised Austin's work, but argued that Austin is wrong to banish what Austin calls "infelicities" from the "normal" operation of language. One "infelicity", for instance, occurs when it cannot be known whether a given speech act is "sincere" or "merely citational" (and therefore possibly ironic). Derrida argues that every iteration is necessarily "citational", due to the graphematic nature of speech and writing, and that language could not work at all without the ever-present and ineradicable possibility of such alternate readings. Derrida takes Searle to task for attempting to get around this issue by grounding final authority in the speaker's inaccessible "intention". Derrida argues that intention cannot possibly govern how an iteration signifies, once it becomes hearable or readable. All speech acts borrow from a language whose significance is determined by historical-linguistic context, and by the alternate possibilities that this context makes possible. This significance, Derrida argues, cannot be altered or governed by the whims of intention.

Derrida argued against the constant appeal to "normality" in the analytical tradition of which Austin and Searle were paradigmatic examples.[25]:133

In the description of the structure called "normal," "normative," "central," "ideal,"this possibility must be integrated as an essential possibility. The possibility cannot be treated as though it were a simple accident-marginal or parasitic. It cannot be, and hence ought not to be, and this passage from can to ought reflects the entire difficulty. In the analysis of so-called normal cases, one neither can nor ought, in all theoretical rigor, to exclude the possibility of transgression. Not even provisionally, or out of allegedly methodological considerations. It would be a poor method, since this possibility of transgression tells us immediately and indispensably about the structure of the act said to be normal as well as about the structure of law in general.

Derrida argued that it was problematic to establish the relation between "nonfiction or standard discourse" and "fiction," defined as its "parasite, "for part of the most originary essence of the latter is to allow fiction, the simulacrum, parasitism, to take place—and in so doing to "de-essentialize" itself as it were".[25]:133 He would finally argue that the indispensable question would then become:[25]:133

what is "nonfiction standard discourse," what must it be and what does this name evoke, once its fictionality or its fictionalization, its transgressive "parasitism," is always possible (and moreover by virtue of the very same words, the same phrases, the same grammar, etc.)?


This question is all the more indispensable since the rules, and even the statements of the rules governing the relations of "nonfiction standard discourse" and its fictional"parasites," are not things found in nature, but laws, symbolic inventions, or conventions, institutions that, in their very normality as well as in their normativity, entail something of the fictional.

In 1995, Searle gave a brief reply to Derrida in The Construction of Social Reality. He called Derrida's conclusion "preposterous" and stated that "Derrida, as far as I can tell, does not have an argument. He simply declares that there is nothing outside of texts..."[57] Searle's reference here is not to anything forwarded in the debate, but to a mistranslation of the phrase "il n'y a pas dehors du texte," ("There is no outside-text") which appears in Derrida's Of Grammatology.[13]:158–159

Jürgen Habermas

In The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Jürgen Habermas criticized what he considered Derrida's opposition to rational discourse.[58]

Further, in an essay on religion and religious language, Habermas criticized Derrida's insistence on etymology and philology[58] (see Etymological fallacy).

Walter A. Davis

The American philosopher Walter A. Davis, in Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx and Freud, argues that both deconstruction and structuralism are prematurely arrested moments of a dialectical movement that issues from Hegelian "unhappy consciousness".[59]

Popular criticism of deconstruction intensified following the Sokal affair, which many people took as an indicator of the quality of deconstruction as a whole, despite the absence of Derrida from Sokal's follow-up book Impostures Intellectuelles.[60]

Chip Morningstar holds a view critical of deconstruction, believing it to be epistemologically challenged. He claims the humanities are subject to isolation and genetic drift due to their unaccountability to the world outside academia. During the Second International Conference on Cyberspace (Santa Cruz, California, 1991), he reportedly heckled deconstructionists off the stage.[61] He subsequently presented his views in the article "How to Deconstruct Almost Anything", where he stated, "Contrary to the report given in the 'Hype List' column of issue #1 of Wired ('Po-Mo Gets Tek-No', page 87), we did not shout down the postmodernists. We made fun of them."[62]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Deconstruction". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  2. 1 2 Allison, David B.; Garver, Newton (1973). Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs (5th ed.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0810103974. Retrieved 8 September 2017. A decision that did not go through the ordeal of the undecidable would not be a free decision, it would only be the programmable application or unfolding of a calculable process...[which] deconstructs from the inside every assurance of presence, and thus every criteriology that would assure us of the justice of the decision.
  3. 1 2 "Critical Legal Studies Movement". The Bridge. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  4. ↑ "German Law Journal - Past Special Issues". 16 May 2013. Archived from the original on 16 May 2013. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  5. ↑ Morris, Rosalind C. (September 2007). "Legacies of Derrida: Anthropology". Annual Review of Anthropology. 36 (1): 355–389. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.36.081406.094357.
  6. 1 2 Munslow, Alan (1997). "Deconstructing History" (PDF). Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  7. ↑ Busch, Brigitta (1 December 2012). "The Linguistic Repertoire Revisited". Applied Linguistics. pp. 503–523. doi:10.1093/applin/ams056. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  8. ↑ Esch, &; Solly, Martin (2012). The Sociolinguistics of Language Education in International Contexts. Bern: Peter Lang. pp. 31–46. ISBN 9783034310093.
  9. ↑ "Deconstruction – Art Term". Tate. Retrieved 16 September 2017. Since Derrida’s assertions in the 1970s, the notion of deconstruction has been a dominating influence on many writers and conceptual artists.
  10. ↑ Cobussen, Marcel (2002). "Deconstruction in Music. The Jacques Derrida – Gerd Zacher Encounter" (PDF). Thinking Sounds. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  11. ↑ Douglas, Christopher (31 March 1997). "Glossary of Literary Theory". University of Toronto English Library. Retrieved 16 September 2017.
  12. ↑ Kandell, Jonathan (10 October 2004). "Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 June 2017.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 Derrida, Jacques; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1997). Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801858305.
  14. 1 2 Saussure, Ferdinand de (1959). "Course in General Linguistics". Southern Methodist University. New York: New York Philosophical Library. pp. 121–122. Retrieved 8 September 2017. In language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system.
  15. 1 2 "Deconstructionist Theory". Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia in the Humanities and Arts. 1995. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  16. 1 2 Derrida, Jacques; Bass, Alan (2001). "7 :Freud and the Scene of Writing". Writing and Difference (New ed.). London: Routledge. p. 276. ISBN 0203991788. Retrieved 8 September 2017. The model of hieroglyphic writing assembles more strikingly—though we find it in every form of writing—the diversity of the modes and functions of signs in dreams. Every sign—verbal or otherwise—may be used at different levels, in configurations and functions which are never prescribed by its "essence," but emerge from a play of differences.
  17. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Derrida, Jacques (1982). Positions. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226143316.
  18. ↑ Nietzsche, Friedrich; Clark, Maudemarie; Leiter, Brian; Hollingdale, R.J. (1997). Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521599636.
  19. 1 2 Zuckert, Catherine H. (1996). "7". Postmodern Platos: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226993310.
  20. ↑ Royle, Nick (2003). Jacques Derrida (Reprint ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 6–623. ISBN 9780415229319. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  21. ↑ Derrida, Jacques; Ferraris, Maurizio (2001). A Taste for the Secret. Wiley. p. 76. ISBN 9780745623344. I take great interest in questions of language and rhetoric, and I think they deserve enormous consideration; but there is a point where the authority of final jurisdiction is neither rhetorical nor linguistic, nor even discursive. The notion of trace or of text is introduced to mark the limits of the linguistic turn. This is one more reason why I prefer to speak of 'mark' rather than of language. In the first place the mark is not anthropological; it is prelinguistic; it is the possibility of language, and it is every where there is a relation to another thing or relation to an other. For such relations, the mark has no need of language.
  22. 1 2 Heidegger, Martin; Macquarrie, John; Robinson, Edward (2006). Being and Time (1st ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 21–23. ISBN 9780631197706. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  23. ↑ Soskice, Janet Martin (1987). Metaphor and Religious Language (Paperback ed.). Oxford: Clarendon. pp. 80–82. ISBN 9780198249825.
  24. ↑ Foucault, Michel; Howard, Richard; Cooper, David (2001). Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (Reprint ed.). London: Routledge. p. 602. ISBN 0415253853.
  25. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Derrida, Jacques (1995). Limited Inc (4th ed.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0810107880.
  26. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Wood, David; Bernasconi, Robert (1988). Derrida and Sifférance (Reprinted ed.). Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 9780810107861.
  27. ↑ Beardsworth, Richard (1996). Derrida & The Political. London: Routledge. p. 4. ISBN 1134837380.
  28. ↑ Frank, Manfred (1989). What is Neostructuralism?. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816616027.
  29. ↑ Moynihan, Robert (1986). A Recent imagining: interviews with Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Miller, Paul De Man (1st ed.). Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books. p. 156. ISBN 9780208021205.
  30. ↑ Brooks, Peter (1995). The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: From Formalism to Poststructuralism (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521300131.
  31. ↑ Caputo, John D. (1997). Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (3rd ed.). New York: Fordham University Press. p. 32. ISBN 9780823217557.
  32. ↑ Lucy, Niall (2004). A Derrida DIctionary. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1405137517.
  33. ↑ Klein, Anne Carolyn (1994). Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 9780807073063.
  34. ↑ Powell, Jim (2005). Deconstruction for Beginners. Danbury, Connecticut: Writers and Readers Publishing. ISBN 0863169988.
  35. ↑ Royle, Nicholas (2000). Deconstructions: A User's Guide. New York: Palgrave. ISBN 0333717619.
  36. ↑ Sallis, John (1988). Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida (Paperback ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 3–4. ISBN 0226734390. One of the more persistent misunderstandings that has thus far forestalled a productive debate with Derrida's philosophical thought is the assumption, shared by many philosophers as well as literary critics, that within that thought just anything is possible. Derrida's philosophy is more often than not construed as a license for arbitrary free play in flagrant disregard of all established rules of argumentation, traditional requirements of thought, and ethical standards binding upon the interpretative community. Undoubtedly, some of the works of Derrida may not have been entirely innocent in this respect, and may have contributed, however obliquely, to fostering to some extent that very misconception. But deconstruction which for many has come to designate the content and style of Derrida's thinking, reveals to even a superficial examination, a well-ordered procedure, a step-by-step type of argumentation based on an acute awareness of level-distinctions, a marked thoroughness and regularity. [...] Deconstruction must be understood, we contend, as the attempt to "account," in a certain manner, for a heterogeneous variety or manifold of nonlogical contradictions and discursive equalities of all sorts that continues to haunt and fissure even the successful development of philosophical arguments and their systematic exposition
  37. ↑ Hobson, Marian (2012). Jacques Derrida: Opening Lines. Routledge. p. 51. ISBN 9781134774449. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  38. ↑ Currie, M. (2013). The Invention of Deconstruction. Springer. p. 80. ISBN 9781137307033. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  39. ↑ Mantzavinos, C. (2016). "Hermeneutics". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  40. ↑ Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play" (1966), as printed/translated by Macksey & Donato (1970)
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  44. ↑ McQuillan, Martin (2007). The Politics of Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida and the Other of Philosophy (1st ed.). London: Pluto Press. ISBN 0745326749.
  45. ↑ Maclachlan, Ian (2004). Jacques Derrida: Critical Thought. Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 0754608069.
  46. 1 2 3 Alfino, Mark (1991). "Another Look at the Derrida-Searle Debate". Philosophy & Rhetoric. 24 (2): 143–152. doi:10.2307/40237667. JSTOR 10.2307/40237667.
  47. ↑ Simon Glendinning. 2001. Arguing with Derrida. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 18
  48. ↑ Gregor Campbell. 1993. "John R. Searle" in Irene Rima Makaryk (ed). Encyclopedia of contemporary literary theory: approaches, scholars, terms. University of Toronto Press, 1993
  49. ↑ John Searle, "Reiterating the Différences: A Reply to Derrida", Glyph 2 (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).
  50. 1 2 Marian Hobson. 1998. Jacques Derrida: opening lines. Psychology Press. pp. 95-97
  51. ↑ Farrell, Frank B. (1 January 1988). "Iterability and Meaning: The Searle-Derrida Debate". Metaphilosophy. 19 (1): 53–64. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9973.1988.tb00701.x. ISSN 1467-9973. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  52. ↑ Fish, Stanley E. (1982). "With the Compliments of the Author: Reflections on Austin and Derrida". Critical Inquiry. 8 (4): 693–721. doi:10.2307/1343193. JSTOR 10.2307/1343193.
  53. ↑ Wright, Edmond (1982). "Derrida, Searle, Contexts, Games, Riddles". New Literary History. 13 (3): 463–477. doi:10.2307/468793. JSTOR 10.2307/468793.
  54. ↑ Culler, Jonathan (1981). "Convention and Meaning: Derrida and Austin". New Literary History. 13 (1): 15–30. doi:10.2307/468640. JSTOR 10.2307/468640.
  55. ↑ Kenaan, Hagi (2002). "Language, philosophy and the risk of failure: rereading the debate between Searle and Derrida". Continental Philosophy Review. 35 (2): 117–133. doi:10.1023/A:1016583115826. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  56. ↑ Raffel, Stanley (28 July 2011). "Understanding Each Other: The Case of the Derrida-Searle Debate" (PDF). Human Studies. 34 (3): 277–292. doi:10.1007/s10746-011-9189-6. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  57. ↑ Searle, John R. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality (3rd ed.). New York: Free Press. pp. 157–160. ISBN 0029280451.
  58. 1 2 Habermas, Jürgen; Lawrence, Frederick (2005). The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Reprinted ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. pp. 185–210. ISBN 0745608302.
  59. ↑ Davis, Walter A. (1989). Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity In/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and Freud (1st ed.). Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299120147.
  60. ↑ Sokal, Alan D. (May 1996). "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies". www.physics.nyu.edu. Retrieved 3 April 2007.
  61. ↑ Steinberg, Steve (1 January 1993). "Hype List". WIRED. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
  62. ↑ Morningstar, Chip (1993-07-05). "How To Deconstruct Almost Anything: My Postmodern Adventure". Retrieved 2017-05-19.

Further reading

  • Derrida, Jacques. Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. ISBN 978-0-226-14331-6
  • Derrida [1980], The time of a thesis: punctuations, first published in:
  • Derrida [1990], Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2, pp. 113–128
  • Montefiore, Alan (ed., 1983), Philosophy in France Today Cambridge: Cambridge UP, pp. 34–50
  • Breckman, Warren, "Times of Theory: On Writing the History of French Theory," Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 71, no. 3 (July 2010), 339–361 (online).
  • Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, Cornell University Press, 1982. ISBN 978-0-8014-1322-3.
  • Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction, University of Minnesota Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-8166-1251-2
  • Ellis, John M.. Against Deconstruction, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. ISBN 978-0-691-06754-4.
  • Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. ISBN 978-0-801-82458-6
  • Reynolds, Simon, Rip It Up and Start Again, New York: Penguin, 2006, pp. 316. ISBN 978-0-143-03672-2. (Source for the information about Green Gartside, Scritti Politti, and deconstructionism.)
  • Stocker, Barry, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Derrida on Deconstruction, Routledge, 2006. ISBN 978-1-134-34381-2
  • Wortham, Simon Morgan, The Derrida Dictionary, Continuum, 2010. ISBN 978-1-847-06526-1
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