This is my provocation and it concerns the status of Jacques Derrida's philosophy.
This is quite wordy, but hopefully it is also interesting and clear. I will of course be available to clarify any issues as well as contribute to the discussion with a defence of my own position (i will definately reply the same day at least!).
and so...
Jacques Derrida was one of the most important and prolific writers of the twentieth century. Alongside a rigour and analysis of argument that equals the strictest of analytic philosophers he has utilized what were traditionally literary and critical theory techniques to perform an intense close reading of many of Western history?s great thinkers (primarily Nietzsche, Husserl, Plato, Heidegger, Rousseau and more, and including influences of Levinas, Freud and Marx) . The blurring of academic genres that this has engendered has produced a unique critical view of our philosophical tradition. The general term for this philosophic methodology (perhaps to some even ideology) is deconstruction. It is Jacques Derrida who, despite his own protests, has been associated with the founding of this cross-disciplinary movement. Its sceptical view of reason, convention and truth has often led it to be affiliated with postmodernist thought, but this is a misrepresentation. Admittedly there are those associated with deconstruction who traverse the boundaries of postmodern literature, critical theory, and philosophy. Derrida himself, whilst creating a highly unique and difficult style, is firmly positioned as a philosopher. It is Derrida?s particular mode of deconstructive philosophy that I will focus on here.
I will begin with a brief summary of the key concepts of Derridian deconstruction before placing them in their context. It is somewhat necessary to approach Derrida through his predecessors because of the way he builds his own original ideas through the ideas of others. However, it will become clear that because of his tendency for subversion, it is no mere question of influence in the sense of simply transposing concepts into new contexts. And so immediately we find a practical difficulty because, for Derrida, context is irretrievable and therefore originary meaning, even if it initially seems explicit, always already remains an enigma. Given that this directly contradicts traditional readings of the canon that are usually based on authorial intention, we must, as far as is possible, discard our preconceptions and presuppositions. But of course this also applies to deconstructive texts themselves. In giving an account of the concepts of deconstruction as opposed to the concepts of particular texts I am immediately assuming that Derrida is consistent and definable. In this sense consistency would involve imposing a preconceived structure of criticism onto a text and thus fail to offer the text the respect it deserves. Furthermore it would seem that I am merely using the ready-made concepts of Derridian deconstruction without having earned the right to do so by myself acting out a close reading of the Western philosophical canon. As Derrida sees in one of his most famous texts Of Grammatology, it is only by permanently deconstructing that it is in any way possible to break from convention. Otherwise I am using the conventions of deconstruction in order to break from the conventions of the Western philosophical tradition. But the conventions of deconstruction (as primarily a critical discipline) are created through the conventions of those texts it reads ? the conventions of deconstruction are the conventions of the Western philosophical tradition; I am always already deluded. However, in the present context my delusion must be accepted, and for the moment excepted.
And so to a brief outline of Derridian deconstruction that will present an overview of the concepts, their contexts, and their origins. The subtitles are merely guides to the primary fields of discussion, the concepts are interlinked and they do not properly function independently.
Derrida is a master neologist, using words in new ways, subverting and contorting the intended or traditional usage of words, and creating new words to signify new concepts (although Derrida would claim that he has merely uncovered or discovered the occurrence of these concepts). Perhaps the most important of these is differance. Differance relates to three French words with different qualities: the noun la difference meaning the difference; the verb differer meaning both to differ and defer; and the adjectival verb differant meaning the condition of differing or deferring. Its purpose is to contain all the varied meanings of these three different words. Differance also plays the role of the conspicuously occluded noun-verb without having any definitive restraints because it is technically not a word. As a concept it actively disrupts the binary oppositions that are the basis of many philosophical arguments. There is a hierarchical structure to these distinctions that is necessary for the arguments of which they are the foundation to be valid. The first term is privileged to the detriment of the second term. The supreme importance of binary oppositions in philosophy can be seen in naming just a few examples ? being/non-being, presence/absence, pure/impure, true/false, positive/negative, alive/dead, phenomenal/noumenal, inside/outside, good/bad. But Derrida views language as a structuralist; that is he sees the delimiter of meaning to be simply difference. Taken to the extreme this denies that there is an immediate correspondence between word and concept and so it is impossible to privilege one word over another. The prevalence of the binary mode of thought is a result of the dominance of bivalent logic which operates on the principle of either/or. Differance shall be seen to play across the traditional rules of logic; it is undecidable and as such it will destabilize the fields in which it is situated. Differance performs perhaps its most important role in terms of questioning Western philosophy when it disrupts the distinction between presence and absence. But we will linger for a moment on its other fields of play.
To Derrida the primacy and priority of speech over writing (Phonocentrism) is a universal fallacy in the Western philosophic tradition. From Plato in his dialogue The Phaedrus, to Rousseau in his Essay on the Origin of Languages, to Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics, writing is seen as derivative. The hierarchical bifurcation of language comes about because there is traditionally assumed to be a direct connection between signifier and signified, which in turn is assumed to parallel the direct connection of speech with thought. These direct connections would entail full presence. Writing, because it can exist without the thought, both spatially and temporally, attains no such presence. Therefore it is the privileged position given to presence that results in the pejorative position given to writing. It is important to note that phonocentrism shows that the concept of presence functions in both space and time. Because things can differ in space, and people can defer (put-off) things in time, they can be drawn a similarity between presence and differance. However, there is also a fundamental and crucial difference: presence is stable whilst differance is dynamic and destabilizing; differance is freer, less binding, than presence. When Derrida inverts Phonocentrism, and places writing above speech, we see another nuance of the term differance. Its subtle movement across the varied meanings of its constituent parts is undetectable in speech because the alien a makes no difference to pronunciation, and therefore it is only detectable in inscription. The initial inversion of the speech/writing distinction is facilitated by introducing the three-valued logic of supplementarity. Through subverting Rousseau?s use of the noun supplement to designate writing, Derrida exploits the possible semantic ambiguity that it entails. Derrida is allowed to do this because he holds that origin meaning is irretrievable. As Derrida notes, supplement means both arbitrary addition and essential addition and, as a verb, replacement. Of course traditionally, in bivalent logic, it could not mean all at the same time, and so this ambiguity is resolved by context. But by reading Rousseau?s text closely Derrida sees that it can indeed function as an undecidable. Here we see the disconcerting effects of differance. It remains undecidable whether the addition is held to be arbitrary or essential. Derrida shows that if the supplement is simply reconciled to be an arbitrary addition then Rousseau?s argument is incoherent and self-contradicting. Conversely, as a necessary addition we see that writing would in fact replace speech with a dialectical logic akin to the exchange of power between master and slave in Hegel?s famous example. Writing plays the role of both arbitrary addition and necessary addition, and as a continuous necessary addition it also becomes a replacement. Derrida has not only inverted the binary opposition, but also displaced it and undone the concept of opposition. For Derrida writing becomes an all-inclusive term that entails far more than mere graphic inscription. This view is of writing as grammatology. In supplementing speech writing has in fact encompassed language, indeed it is there in the very possibility of language. Again this is a subversion of Rousseau?s view, asserting that grammatology precedes and prefigures society. (Derrida uses other forms of deviant logic that all highlight the play of differance to question other philosophical arguments that are based on a binary opposition: The logic of iterability deconstructs Austin?s speech-act philosophy which is also seen to hanker after presence (unstable) and safe context (impossible); The logic of parergonality deconstructs Kant?s aesthetic philosophy which is based on the inside/outside distinction. This deconstruction is hugely important because the reconciliation between Kant?s metaphysical epistemology and his ethics is achieved through his aesthetic theory. Hence if his aesthetic theory falls apart so does the whole Kantian system). Furthermore, the traditional suppression of writing as begun by Plato is justified by resorting to myth and metaphor, the recognition of which must in turn be suppressed by reason and the unjustified resolution of undecidables. Hence the key binary oppositions of Western philosophy have been introduced as speech/writing, reason/rhetoric, and ultimately presence/absence.
The trace refers to the presence in a word of all the other words that it itself is not; it is the other. Paradoxically, the presence of the other is made conspicuous by its absence. The concept of the trace is based on the concept of language as a differential network of meaning as taken from the structuralist Saussure. Derrida is writing in a post-structuralism context, although he remains separate from this school of philosophy. We return to the fact that for all forms of structuralism there is no direct connection between signifier and signified that would provide semantic meaning. This applies equally to the phonic enunciation and the graphic inscription. Instead distinctive differences of sound and shape are the delimiters of meaning. This notion of the arbitrary nature of the sign leads to the residual trace of all words in each word; to make the signifier that something which is not other, the thing or things which are other must present themselves. But this trace is an undecidable as it is neither fully present nor fully absent. This creates undecidablity at the very origin of language, where it is given semantic meaning; it is brought about by the play of the trace between presence and absence. This gives rise to a circular, self-affirming and self-revising picture of language. If language forms an unstable, interwoven fabric, then it cannot be used as a vehicle to a concept of truth that must necessarily and impossibly transcend mere human language. It would therefore be necessary to stand outside language in search of truth or else to clear language of these confusions. The impossibility of gaining a position completely independent of language has generally been recognized in the linguistic turn of twentieth century philosophy; the other option ?that of pure clarification ? has failed with the fall of logical positivism. In early Wittgenstein the first is a recognized absurdity, in late Wittgenstein the second has an acknowledged irreducibility. Furthermore, the irreducible rhetoricity of language is taken up by Derrida from Nietzsche. Important philosophic concepts such as understanding and structure have obvious metaphoric references, but the virtual palimpsest of systematically forgotten metaphors is seen to efface the originary claims of so many of the concepts of Western philosophy that the problem is abyssal. The path to truth via philosophical concepts is becoming more and more problematic. For Derrida and Nietzsche alike, the dominance of Socratic reason, as equated with logic, as equated with truth, is seen as no more than the effacement of metaphors and the effacement of the trace. The primary concern of Western philosophy has been to efface its own metaphors. In the extreme, the result of all this is that language is inescapable but useless in searching for a truth that is not merely a trope or one truth among many. Thus the binary opposition of reason/rhetoric has also been displaced.
We have seen that Derrida adopts Heidegger?s formulation and refers all binary oppositions to that of presence/absence. Western philosophy?s obsession with the origin that would be the transcendental signified is a futile aim at the reappropriation of presence. The aim would be futile because, as we have seen, there is an undecidability at the supposed origin of language, indeed undecidability prefigures the very possibility of language. Although Derrida has close relationships with Heidegger and Nietzsche particularly, but also Freud, Husserl, Saussure, Marx and others, he still views these philosophers as committed to the metaphysics of presence. Derrida creates his own linearly fluctuating dialectic in an attempt to escape the metaphysics of presence. This idea is taken from the Hegelian dialectic which we now name in terms of thesis ? antithesis ? synthesis. For Hegel, the third stage of this dialectic was necessarily a progression. His term aufhebung means literally heaving up, the operative term being up, implying progression and betterment. It can be seen how this gradual movement is traditionally taken as a path to a higher truth that carries presence, but Derrida has deconstructed truth and presence and is therefore content with a dialectic that has only one dimension. Logocentrism is the name given by Derrida to the authoritarian rule of reason in the fundamentally flawed journey for truth and presence. Logocentrism has been at work in the readings of texts as much as in their composition. As we have seen, Derrida is in agreement with Nietzsche when he sees the logocentric dominance of reason as unjustified and unjustifiable; it is delusive. However, they also both view this dominance as illusory. The dizzying effects of differance ensure the permanent displacement of privileged oppositions. In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche eventually notes the subtle, allusive triumph of the Dionysian (affiliated with rhetoric) over the Appolline (affiliated with reason). Rhetoric joins the ranks of subverted supplements alongside writing. We have returned to Derrida?s assertion that we much continuously act against logocentrism, it is not something that can be discarded once it has been destabilized.
It is here that we see the connotations of the word deconstruction. Hitherto we may well have termed Derrida?s critical method simply destruction (perhaps like Heidegger?s) but this is too negative. Derrida, with Nietzsche, is positive, even jubilant, in gesturing toward a strictly self-aware plurality of style that is always already questioning itself as well as the texts it must read through. This style is also heavily influenced by Heidegger, particularly his method of placing problematic but unavoidable concepts 'under erasure' (sous rature ). A concept (or phrase or word) that is placed under erasure is simply deemed inadequate and misleading but essential. In this sense deconstruction can be read in a similar way to delimiting; it defines the boundaries that may only be contorted and stretched, not broken, in any construction. For Derrida, the outside is always already confined and defined within the inside. It is awareness of the displacing effects of differance and its many linked concepts, alongside awareness of the binds imposed by conventions that is what constitutes deconstruction. Deconstruction is jubilant in the play of language and philosophy; it endorses an active interpretation of texts that will recognize the life within them. Paradox, contradictions, antinomies and ultimately aporia are commonplace in such a theory. To involve the concepts of deconstruction and to be aware, as much as is possible, of the results of these concepts necessitates an original, often artistic style. This style is difficult and illusive and plural.