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.
1. Life and Works
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. He has also had lecturing
positions at various universities, the world over. Derrida died in
2004.
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.
2. 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.
Deconstruction, and particularly early deconstruction, functions by
engaging in sustained analyses of particular texts. It is committed to
the rigorous analysis of the literal meaning of a text, and yet also
to finding within that meaning, perhaps in the neglected corners of
the text (including the footnotes), internal problems that actually
point towards alternative meanings. Deconstruction must hence
establish a methodology that pays close attention to these apparently
contradictory imperatives (sameness and difference) and a reading of
any Derridean text can only reaffirm this dual aspect. Derrida speaks
of the first aspect of this deconstructive strategy as being akin to a
fidelity and a "desire to be faithful to the themes and audacities of
a thinking" (WD 84). At the same time, however, deconstruction also
famously borrows from Martin Heidegger's conception of a 'destructive
retrieve' and seeks to open texts up to alternative and usually
repressed meanings that reside at least partly outside of the
metaphysical tradition (although always also partly betrothed to it).
This more violent and transgressive aspect of deconstruction is
illustrated by Derrida's consistent exhortation to "invent in your own
language if you can or want to hear mine; invent if you can or want to
give my language to be understood" (MO 57). In suggesting that a
faithful interpretation of him is one that goes beyond him, Derrida
installs invention as a vitally important aspect of any deconstructive
reading. He is prone to making enigmatic suggestions like "go there
where you cannot go, to the impossible, it is indeed the only way of
coming or going" (ON 75), and ultimately, the merit of a
deconstructive reading consists in this creative contact with another
text that cannot be characterised as either mere fidelity or as an
absolute transgression, but rather which oscillates between these dual
demands. The intriguing thing about deconstruction, however, is that
despite the fact that Derrida's own interpretations of specific texts
are quite radical, it is often difficult to pinpoint where the
explanatory exegesis of a text ends and where the more violent aspect
of deconstruction begins. Derrida is always reluctant to impose 'my
text', 'your text' designations too conspicuously in his texts. This
is partly because it is even problematic to speak of a 'work' of
deconstruction, since deconstruction only highlights what was already
revealed in the text itself. All of the elements of a deconstructive
intervention reside in the "neglected cornerstones" of an already
existing system (MDM 72), and this equation is not altered in any
significant way whether that 'system' be conceived of as metaphysics
generally, which must contain its non-metaphysical track, or the
writings of a specific thinker, which must also always testify to that
which they are attempting to exclude (MDM 73).
These are, of course, themes reflected upon at length by Derrida, and
they have an immediate consequence on the meta-theoretical level. To
the minimal extent that we can refer to Derrida's own arguments, it
must be recognised that they are always intertwined with the arguments
of whomever, or whatever, he seeks to deconstruct. For example,
Derrida argues that his critique of the Husserlian 'now' moment is
actually based upon resources within Husserl's own text which elide
the self-presence that he was attempting to secure (SP 64-66). If
Derrida's point is simply that Husserl's phenomenology holds within
itself conclusions that Husserl failed to recognise, Derrida seems to
be able to disavow any transcendental or ontological position. This is
why he argues that his work occupies a place in the margins of
philosophy, rather than simply being philosophy per se.
Deconstruction contends that in any text, there are inevitably points
of equivocation and 'undecidability' that betray any stable meaning
that an author might seek to impose upon his or her text. The process
of writing always reveals that which has been suppressed, covers over
that which has been disclosed, and more generally breaches the very
oppositions that are thought to sustain it. This is why Derrida's
'philosophy' is so textually based and it is also why his key terms
are always changing, because depending upon who or what he is seeking
to deconstruct, that point of equivocation will always be located in a
different place.
This also ensures that any attempt to describe what deconstruction is,
must be careful. Nothing would be more antithetical to
deconstruction's stated intent than this attempt at defining it
through the decidedly metaphysical question "what is deconstruction?"
There is a paradoxicality involved in trying to restrict
deconstruction to one particular and overarching purpose (OG 19) when
it is predicated upon the desire to expose us to that which is wholly
other (tout autre) and to open us up to alternative possibilities. At
times, this exegesis will run the risk of ignoring the many meanings
of Derridean deconstruction, and the widely acknowledged difference
between Derrida's early and late work is merely the most obvious
example of the difficulties involved in suggesting "deconstruction
says this", or "deconstruction prohibits that".
That said, certain defining features of deconstruction can be noticed.
For example, Derrida's entire enterprise is predicated upon the
conviction that dualisms are irrevocably present in the various
philosophers and artisans that he considers. While some philosophers
argue that he is a little reductive when he talks about the Western
philosophical tradition, it is his understanding of this tradition
that informs and provides the tools for a deconstructive response.
Because of this, it is worth briefly considering the target of
Derridean deconstruction – the metaphysics of presence, or somewhat
synonymously, logocentrism.
a. 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?
In the 'Afterword' to Limited Inc., Derrida suggests that metaphysics
can be defined as:
"The enterprise of returning 'strategically', 'ideally', to an origin
or to a priority thought to be simple, intact, normal, pure, standard,
self-identical, in order then to think in terms of derivation,
complication, deterioration, accident, etc. All metaphysicians, from
Plato to Rousseau, Descartes to Husserl, have proceeded in this way,
conceiving good to be before evil, the positive before the negative,
the pure before the impure, the simple before the complex, the
essential before the accidental, the imitated before the imitation,
etc. And this is not just one metaphysical gesture among others, it is
the metaphysical exigency, that which has been the most constant, most
profound and most potent" (LI 236).
According to Derrida then, metaphysics involves installing hierarchies
and orders of subordination in the various dualisms that it encounters
(M 195). Moreover, metaphysical thought prioritises presence and
purity at the expense of the contingent and the complicated, which are
considered to be merely aberrations that are not important for
philosophical analysis. Basically then, metaphysical thought always
privileges one side of an opposition, and ignores or marginalises the
alternative term of that opposition.
In another attempt to explain deconstruction's treatment of, and
interest in oppositions, Derrida has suggested that: "An opposition of
metaphysical concepts (speech/writing, presence/absence, etc.) is
never the face-to-face of two terms, but a hierarchy and an order of
subordination. Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed
immediately to neutralisation: it must, by means of a double gesture,
a double science, a double writing, practise an overturning of the
classical opposition, and a general displacement of the system. It is
on that condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of
intervening in the field of oppositions it criticises" (M 195). In
order to better understand this dual 'methodology' – that is also the
deconstruction of the notion of a methodology because it no longer
believes in the possibility of an observer being absolutely exterior
to the object/text being examined – it is helpful to consider an
example of this deconstruction at work (See Speech/Writing below).
3. 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.
a. 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.
For example, in an entire chapter of his Course in General
Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure tries to restrict the science of
linguistics to the phonetic and audible word only (24). In the course
of his inquiry, Saussure goes as far as to argue that "language and
writing are two distinct systems of signs: the second exists for the
sole purpose of representing the first". Language, Saussure insists,
has an oral tradition that is independent of writing, and it is this
independence that makes a pure science of speech possible. Derrida
vehemently disagrees with this hierarchy and instead argues that all
that can be claimed of writing – eg. that it is derivative and merely
refers to other signs – is equally true of speech. But as well as
criticising such a position for certain unjustifiable presuppositions,
including the idea that we are self-identical with ourselves in
'hearing' ourselves think, Derrida also makes explicit the manner in
which such a hierarchy is rendered untenable from within Saussure's
own text. Most famously, Saussure is the proponent of the thesis that
is commonly referred to as "the arbitrariness of the sign", and this
asserts, to simplify matters considerably, that the signifier bears no
necessary relationship to that which is signified. Saussure derives
numerous consequences from this position, but as Derrida points out,
this notion of arbitrariness and of "unmotivated institutions" of
signs, would seem to deny the possibility of any natural attachment
(OG 44). After all, if the sign is arbitrary and eschews any
foundational reference to reality, it would seem that a certain type
of sign (ie. the spoken) could not be more natural than another (ie.
the written). However, it is precisely this idea of a natural
attachment that Saussure relies upon to argue for our "natural bond"
with sound (25), and his suggestion that sounds are more intimately
related to our thoughts than the written word hence runs counter to
his fundamental principle regarding the arbitrariness of the sign.
b. 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.
This originary breach that arche-writing refers to can be separated
out to reveal two claims regarding spatial differing and temporal
deferring. To explicate the first of these claims, Derrida's emphasis
upon how writing differs from itself is simply to suggest that
writing, and by extension all repetition, is split (differed) by the
absence that makes it necessary. One example of this might be that we
write something down because we may soon forget it, or to communicate
something to someone who is not with us. According to Derrida, all
writing, in order to be what it is, must be able to function in the
absence of every empirically determined addressee (M 375). Derrida
also considers deferral to be typical of the written and this is to
reinforce that the meaning of a certain text is never present, never
entirely captured by a critic's attempt to pin it down. The meaning of
a text is constantly subject to the whims of the future, but when that
so-called future is itself 'present' (if we try and circumscribe the
future by reference to a specific date or event) its meaning is
equally not realised, but subject to yet another future that can also
never be present. The key to a text is never even present to the
author themselves, for the written always defers its meaning. As a
consequence we cannot simply ask Derrida to explain exactly what he
meant by propounding that enigmatic sentiment that has been translated
as "there is nothing outside of the text" (OG 158). Any explanatory
words that Derrida may offer would themselves require further
explanation. [That said, it needs to be emphasised that Derrida's
point is not so much that everything is simply semiotic or linguistic
- as this is something that he explicitly denies - but that the
processes of differing and deferring found within linguistic
representation are symptomatic of a more general situation that
afflicts everything, including the body and the perceptual]. So,
Derrida's more generalised notion of writing, arche-writing, refers to
the way in which the written is possible only on account of this
'originary' deferral of meaning that ensures that meaning can never be
definitively present. In conjunction with the differing aspect that we
have already seen him associate with, and then extend beyond the
traditional confines of writing, he will come to describe these two
overlapping processes via that most famous of neologisms: différance.
c. 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.
Of course, différance cannot be exhaustively defined, and this is
largely because of Derrida's insistence that it is "neither a word,
nor a concept", as well as the fact that the meaning of the term
changes depending upon the particular context in which it is being
employed. For the moment, however, it suffices to suggest that
according to Derrida, différance is typical of what is involved in
arche-writing and this generalised notion of writing that breaks down
the entire logic of the sign (OG 7). The widespread conviction that
the sign literally represents something, which even if not actually
present, could be potentially present, is rendered impossible by
arche-writing, which insists that signs always refer to yet more signs
ad infinitum, and that there is no ultimate referent or foundation.
This reversal of the subordinated term of an opposition accomplishes
the first of deconstruction's dual strategic intents. Rather than
being criticised for being derivative or secondary, for Derrida,
writing, or at least the processes that characterise writing (ie.
différance and arche-writing), are ubiquitous. Just as a piece of
writing has no self-present subject to explain what every particular
word means (and this ensures that what is written must partly elude
any individual's attempt to control it), this is equally typical of
the spoken. Utilising the same structure of repetition, nothing
guarantees that another person will endow the words I use with the
particular meaning that I attribute to them. Even the conception of an
internal monologue and the idea that we can intimately 'hear' our own
thoughts in a non-contingent way is misguided, as it ignores the way
that arche-writing privileges difference and a non-coincidence with
oneself (SP 60-70).
d. 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.
Derrida must highlight that the categories that sustain and safeguard
any dualism are always already disrupted and displaced. To effect this
second aspect of deconstruction's strategic intents, Derrida usually
coins a new term, or reworks an old one, to permanently disrupt the
structure into which he has intervened – examples of this include his
discussion of the pharmakon in Plato (drug or tincture, salutary or
maleficent), and the supplement in Rousseau, which will be considered
towards the end of this section. To phrase the problem in slightly
different terms, Derrida's argument is that in examining a binary
opposition, deconstruction manages to expose a trace. This is not a
trace of the oppositions that have since been deconstructed – on the
contrary, the trace is a rupture within metaphysics, a pattern of
incongruities where the metaphysical rubs up against the
non-metaphysical, that it is deconstruction's job to juxtapose as best
as it can. The trace does not appear as such (OG 65), but the logic of
its path in a text can be mimed by a deconstructive intervention and
hence brought to the fore.
e. 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.
This is not just some rhetorical suggestion that has no concrete
significance in deconstruction. Indeed, while Rousseau consistently
laments the frequency of his masturbation in his book, The
Confessions, Derrida argues that "it has never been possible to desire
the presence 'in person', before this play of substitution and the
symbolic experience of auto-affection" (OG 154). By this, Derrida
means that this supplementary masturbation that 'plays' between
presence and absence (eg. the image of the absent Therese that is
evoked by Rousseau) is that which allows us to conceive of being
present and fulfilled in sexual relations with another at all. In a
sense, masturbation is 'originary', and according to Derrida, this
situation applies to all sexual relations. All erotic relations have
their own supplementary aspect in which we are never present to some
ephemeral 'meaning' of sexual relations, but always involved in some
form of representation. Even if this does not literally take the form
of imagining another in the place of, or supplementing the 'presence'
that is currently with us, and even if we are not always acting out a
certain role, or faking certain pleasures, for Derrida, such
representations and images are the very conditions of desire and of
enjoyment (OG 156).
4. 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.
According to Derrida, phenomenology is a metaphysics of presence
because it unwittingly relies upon the notion of an indivisible
self-presence, or in the case of Husserl, the possibility of an exact
internal adequation with oneself (SP 66-8). In various texts, Derrida
contests this valorisation of an undivided subjectivity, as well as
the primacy that such a position accords to the 'now', or to some
other kind of temporal immediacy. For instance, in Speech and
Phenomena, Derrida argues that if a 'now' moment is conceived of as
exhausting itself in that experience, it could not actually be
experienced, for there would be nothing to juxtapose itself against in
order to illuminate that very 'now'. Instead, Derrida wants to reveal
that every so-called 'present', or 'now' point, is always already
compromised by a trace, or a residue of a previous experience, that
precludes us ever being in a self-contained 'now' moment (SP 68).
Phenomenology is hence envisaged as nostalgically seeking the
impossible: that is, coinciding with oneself in an immediate and
pre-reflective spontaneity. Following this refutation of Husserlian
temporality, Derrida remarks that "in the last analysis, what is at
stake is… the privilege of the actual present, the now" (SP 62-3).
Instead of emphasising the presence of a subject to themselves (ie.
the so-called living-present), Derrida strategically utilises a
conception of time that emphasises deferral. John Caputo expresses
Derrida's point succinctly when he claims that Derrida's criticisms of
Husserlian temporality in Speech and Phenomena involve an attempt to
convey that: "What is really going on in things, what is really
happening, is always "to come". Every time you try to stabilise the
meaning of a thing, try to fix it in its missionary position, the
thing itself, if there is anything at all to it, slips away" (cf. SP
104, Caputo DN 31). To put Derrida's point simplistically, it might be
suggested that the meaning of a particular object, or a particular
word, is never stable, but always in the process of change (eg. the
dissemination of meaning for which deconstruction has become
notorious). Moreover, the significance of that past change can only be
appreciated from the future and, of course, that 'future' is itself
implicated in a similar process of transformation were it ever to be
capable of becoming 'present'. The future that Derrida is referring to
is hence not just a future that will become present, but the future
that makes all 'presence' possible and also impossible. For Derrida,
there can be no presence-to-self, or self-contained identity, because
the 'nature' of our temporal existence is for this type of experience
to elude us. Our predominant mode of being is what he will eventually
term the messianic (see Section 6), in that experience is about the
wait, or more aptly, experience is only when it is deferred. Derrida's
work offers many important temporal contributions of this
quasi-transcendental variety.
5. 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).
However, Derrida has a recurring tendency to resuscitate terms in
different contexts, and the term undecidability also returns in later
deconstruction. Indeed, to complicate matters, undecidability returns
in two discernible forms. In his recent work, Derrida often insists
that the condition of the possibility of mourning, giving, forgiving,
and hospitality, to cite some of his most famous examples, is at once
also the condition of their impossibility (see section 7). In his
explorations of these "possible-impossible" aporias, it becomes
undecidable whether genuine giving, for example, is either a possible
or an impossible ideal.
a. 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.
In Adieu to Emmanuel Lévinas, Derrida argues that a decision must
always come back to the other, even if it is the other 'inside' the
subject, and he disputes that an initiative which remained purely and
simply "mine" would still be a decision (AEL 23-4). A theory of the
subject is incapable of accounting for the slightest decision (PF
68-9), because, as he rhetorically asks, "would we not be justified in
seeing here the unfolding of an egological immanence, the autonomic
and automatic deployment of predicates or possibilities proper to a
subject, without the tearing rupture that should occur in every
decision we call free?" (AEL 24). In other words, if a decision is
envisaged as simply following from certain character attributes, then
it would not genuinely be a decision. Derrida is hence once more
insisting upon the necessity of a leap beyond calculative reasoning,
and beyond the resources of some self-contained subject reflecting
upon the matter at hand. A decision must invoke that which is outside
of the subject's control. If a decision is an example of a concept
that is simultaneously impossible within its own internal logic and
yet nevertheless necessary, then not only is our reticence to decide
rendered philosophically cogent, but it is perhaps even privileged.
Indeed, Derrida's work has been described as a "philosophy of
hesitation", and his most famous neologism, différance, explicitly
emphasises deferring, with all of the procrastination that this term
implies. Moreover, in his early essay "Violence and Metaphysics",
Derrida also suggests that a successful deconstructive reading is
conditional upon the suspension of choice: on hesitating between the
ethical opening and the logocentric totality (WD 84). Even though
Derrida has suggested that he is reluctant to use the term 'ethics'
because of logocentric associations, one is led to conclude that
'ethical' behaviour (for want of a better word) is a product of
deferring, and of being forever open to possibilities rather than
taking a definitive position. The problem of undecidability is also
evident in more recent texts including The Gift of Death. In this
text, Derrida seems to support the sacrificing of a certain notion of
ethics and universality for a conception of radical singularity not
unlike that evinced by the "hyper-ethical" sacrifice that Abraham
makes of his son upon Mt Moriah, according to both the Judaic and
Christian religions alike (GD 71). To represent Derrida's position
more precisely, true responsibility consists in oscillating between
the demands of that which is wholly other (in Abraham's case, God, but
also any particular other) and the more general demands of a community
(see Section 6). Responsibility is enduring this trial of the
undecidable decision, where attending to the call of a particular
other will inevitably demand an estrangement from the "other others"
and their communal needs. Whatever decision one may take, according to
Derrida, it can never be wholly justified (GD 70). Of course,
Derrida's emphasis upon the undecidability inherent in all
decision-making does not want to convey inactivity or a quietism of
despair, and he has insisted that the madness of the decision also
demands urgency and precipitation (DPJ 25-8). Nevertheless, what is
undergone is described as the "trial of undecidability" (LI 210) and
what is involved in enduring this trial would seem to be a relatively
anguished being. In an interview with Richard Beardsworth, Derrida
characterises the problem of undecidability as follows: "However
careful one is in the theoretical preparation of a decision, the
instant of the decision, if there is to be a decision, must be
heterogeneous to the accumulation of knowledge. Otherwise, there is no
responsibility. In this sense not only must the person taking the
decision not know everything… the decision, if there is to be one,
must advance towards a future which is not known, which cannot be
anticipated" (NM 37). This suggestion that the decision cannot
anticipate the future is undoubtedly somewhat counter-intuitive, but
Derrida's rejection of anticipation is not only a rejection of the
traditional idea of deciding on the basis of weighing-up and
internally representing certain options. By suggesting that
anticipation is not possible, he means to make the more general point
that no matter how we may anticipate any decision must always rupture
those anticipatory frameworks. A decision must be fundamentally
different from any prior preparations for it. As Derrida suggests in
Politics of Friendship, the decision must "surprise the very
subjectivity of the subject" (PF 68), and it is in making this leap
away from calculative reasoning that Derrida argues that
responsibility consists (PF 69).
6. The Other
a. 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).
Derrida's exploration of Abraham's strange and paradoxical
responsibility before the demands of God, which consists in
sacrificing his only son Isaac, but also in betraying the ethical
order through his silence about this act (GD 57-60), is designed to
problematise this type of ethical concern that exclusively locates
responsibility in the realm of generality. In places, Derrida even
verges on suggesting that this more common notion of responsibility,
which insists that one should behave according to a general principle
that is capable of being rationally validated and justified in the
public realm (GD 60), should be replaced with something closer to an
Abrahamian individuality where the demands of a singular other (eg.
God) are importantly distinct from the ethical demands of our society
(GD 61, 66). Derrida equivocates regarding just how far he wants to
endorse such a conception of responsibility, and also on the entire
issue of whether Abraham's willingness to murder is an act of faith,
or simply an unforgivable transgression. As he says, "Abraham is at
the same time, the most moral and the most immoral, the most
responsible and the most irresponsible" (GD 72). This equivocation is,
of course, a defining trait of deconstruction, which has been
variously pilloried and praised for this refusal to propound anything
that the tradition could deem to be a thesis. Nevertheless, it is
relatively clear that in The Gift of Death, Derrida intends to free us
from the common assumption that responsibility is to be associated
with behaviour that accords with general principles capable of
justification in the public realm (ie. liberalism). In opposition to
such an account, he emphasises the "radical singularity" of the
demands placed upon Abraham by God (GD 60, 68, 79) and those that
might be placed on us by our own loved ones. Ethics, with its
dependence upon generality, must be continually sacrificed as an
inevitable aspect of the human condition and its aporetic demand to
decide (GD 70). As Derrida points out, in writing about one particular
cause rather than another, in pursuing one profession over another, in
spending time with one's family rather than at work, one inevitably
ignores the "other others" (GD 69), and this is a condition of any and
every existence. He argues that: "I cannot respond to the call, the
request, the obligation, or even the love of another, without
sacrificing the other other, the other others" (GD 68). For Derrida,
it seems that the Buddhist desire to have attachment to nobody and
equal compassion for everybody is an unattainable ideal. He does, in
fact, suggest that a universal community that excludes no one is a
contradiction in terms. According to him, this is because: "I am
responsible to anyone (that is to say, to any other) only by failing
in my responsibility to all the others, to the ethical or political
generality. And I can never justify this sacrifice; I must always hold
my peace about it… What binds me to this one or that one, remains
finally unjustifiable" (GD 70). Derrida hence implies that
responsibility to any particular individual is only possible by being
irresponsible to the "other others", that is, to the other people and
possibilities that haunt any and every existence.
b. 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.
According to Derrida, the term messianism refers predominantly to the
religions of the Messiahs – ie. the Muslim, Judaic and Christian
religions. These religions proffer a Messiah of known characteristics,
and often one who is expected to arrive at a particular time or place.
The Messiah is inscribed in their respective religious texts and in an
oral tradition that dictates that only if the other conforms to such
and such a description is that person actually the Messiah. The most
obvious of numerous necessary characteristics for the Messiah, it
seems, is that they must invariably be male. Sexuality might seem to
be a strange prerequisite to tether to that which is beyond this
world, wholly other, but it is only one of many. Now, Derrida is not
simplistically disparaging religion and the messianisms they propound.
In an important respect, the messianic depends upon the various
messianisms and Derrida admits that he cannot say which is the more
originary. The messianism of Abraham in his singular responsibility
before God, for Derrida, reveals the messianic structure of existence
more generally, in that we all share a similar relationship to
alterity even if we have not named and circumscribed that experience
according to the template provided by a particular religion. However,
Derrida's call to the wholly other, his invocation for the wholly
other "to come", is not a call for a fixed or identifiable other of
known characteristics, as is arguably the case in the average
religious experience. His wholly other is indeterminable and can never
actually arrive. Derrida more than once recounts a story of Maurice
Blanchot's where the Messiah was actually at the gates to a city,
disguised in rags. After some time, the Messiah was finally recognised
by a beggar, but the beggar could think of nothing more relevant to
ask than: "when will you come?"(DN 24). Even when the Messiah is
'there', he or she must still be yet to come, and this brings us back
to the distinction between the messianic and the various historical
messianisms. The messianic structure of existence is open to the
coming of an entirely ungraspable and unknown other, but the concrete,
historical messianisms are open to the coming of a specific other of
known characteristics. The messianic refers predominantly to a
structure of our existence that involves waiting – waiting even in
activity – and a ceaseless openness towards a future that can never be
circumscribed by the horizons of significance that we inevitably bring
to bear upon that possible future. In other words, Derrida is not
referring to a future that will one day become present (or a
particular conception of the saviour who will arrive), but to an
openness towards an unknown futurity that is necessarily involved in
what we take to be 'presence' and hence also renders it 'impossible'.
A deconstruction that entertained any type of grand prophetic
narrative, like a Marxist story about the movement of history toward a
pre-determined future which, once attained, would make notions like
history and progress obsolete, would be yet another vestige of
logocentrism and susceptible to deconstruction (SM). Precisely in
order to avoid the problems that such messianisms engender – eg.
killing in the name of progress, mutilating on account of knowing the
will of God better than others, etc. – Derrida suggests that: "I am
careful to say 'let it come' because if the other is precisely what is
not invented, the initiative or deconstructive inventiveness can
consist only in opening, in uncloseting, in destabilising
foreclusionary structures, so as to allow for the passage toward the
other" (RDR 60).
7. 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.
a. 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.
The important point is that, for Derrida, a genuine gift requires an
anonymity of the giver, such that there is no accrued benefit in
giving. The giver cannot even recognise that they are giving, for that
would be to reabsorb their gift to the other person as some kind of
testimony to the worth of the self – ie. the kind of
self-congratulatory logic that rhetorically poses the question "how
wonderful I am to give this person that which they have always
desired, and without even letting them know that I am responsible?".
This is an extreme example, but Derrida claims that such a predicament
afflicts all giving in more or less obvious ways. For him, the logic
of a genuine gift actually requires that self and other be radically
disparate, and have no obligations or claims upon each other of any
kind. He argues that a genuine gift must involve neither an
apprehension of a good deed done, nor the recognition by the other
party that they have received, and this seems to render the actuality
of any gift an impossibility. Significantly, however, according to
Derrida, the existential force of this demand for an absolute altruism
can never be assuaged, and yet equally clearly it can also never be
fulfilled, and this ensures that the condition of the possibility of
the gift is inextricably associated with its impossibility. For
Derrida, there is no solution to this type of problem, and no hint of
a dialectic that might unify the apparent incommensurability in which
possibility implies impossibility and vice versa. At the same time,
however, he does not intend simply to vacillate in hyperbolic and
self-referential paradoxes. There is a sense in which deconstruction
actually seeks genuine giving, hospitality, forgiving and mourning,
even where it acknowledges that these concepts are forever elusive and
can never actually be fulfilled.
b. 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.
As Derrida makes explicit, there is a more existential example of this
tension, in that the notion of hospitality requires one to be the
'master' of the house, country or nation (and hence controlling). His
point is relatively simple here; to be hospitable, it is first
necessary that one must have the power to host. Hospitality hence
makes claims to property ownership and it also partakes in the desire
to establish a form of self-identity. Secondly, there is the further
point that in order to be hospitable, the host must also have some
kind of control over the people who are being hosted. This is because
if the guests take over a house through force, then the host is no
longer being hospitable towards them precisely because they are no
longer in control of the situation. This means, for Derrida, that any
attempt to behave hospitably is also always partly betrothed to the
keeping of guests under control, to the closing of boundaries, to
nationalism, and even to the exclusion of particular groups or
ethnicities (OH 151-5). This is Derrida's 'possible' conception of
hospitality, in which our most well-intentioned conceptions of
hospitality render the "other others" as strangers and refugees (cf.
OH 135, GD 68). Whether one invokes the current international
preoccupation with border control, or simply the ubiquitous suburban
fence and alarm system, it seems that hospitality always posits some
kind of limit upon where the other can trespass, and hence has a
tendency to be rather inhospitable. On the other hand, as well as
demanding some kind of mastery of house, country or nation, there is a
sense in which the notion of hospitality demands a welcoming of
whomever, or whatever, may be in need of that hospitality. It follows
from this that unconditional hospitality, or we might say 'impossible'
hospitality, hence involves a relinquishing of judgement and control
in regard to who will receive that hospitality. In other words,
hospitality also requires non-mastery, and the abandoning of all
claims to property, or ownership. If that is the case, however, the
ongoing possibility of hospitality thereby becomes circumvented, as
there is no longer the possibility of hosting anyone, as again, there
is no ownership or control.
c. 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.
This forgiveness paradox depends, in one of its dual aspects, upon a
radical disjunction between self and other. Derrida explicitly states
that "genuine forgiveness must engage two singularities: the guilty
and the victim. As soon as a third party intervenes, one can again
speak of amnesty, reconciliation, reparation, etc., but certainly not
of forgiveness in the strict sense" (OCF 42). Given that he also
acknowledges that it is difficult to conceive of any such face-to-face
encounter without a third party – as language itself must serve such a
mediating function (OCF 48) – forgiveness is caught in an aporia that
ensures that its empirical actuality looks to be decidedly unlikely.
To recapitulate, the reason that Derrida's notion of forgiveness is
caught in such an inextricable paradox is because absolute forgiveness
requires a radically singular confrontation between self and other,
while conditional forgiveness requires the breaching of categories
such as self and other, either by a mediating party, or simply by the
recognition of the ways in which we are always already intertwined
with the other. Indeed, Derrida explicitly argues that when we know
anything of the other, or even understand their motivation in however
minimal a way, this absolute forgiveness can no longer take place (OCF
49). Derrida can offer no resolution in regard to the impasse that
obtains between these two notions (between possible and impossible
forgiving, between an amnesty where apologies are asked for and a more
absolute forgiveness). He will only insist that an oscillation between
both sides of the aporia is necessary for responsibility (OCF 51).
d. 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).
In his essay "Fors: The Anglish Words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria
Torok", Derrida again considers two models of the type of encroachment
between self and other that is regularly associated with mourning.
Borrowing from post-Freudian theories of mourning, he posits (although
later undermines) a difference between introjection, which is love for
the other in me, and incorporation, which involves retaining the other
as a pocket, or a foreign body within one's own body. For Freud, as
well as for the psychologists Abraham and Torok whose work Derrida
considers, successful mourning is primarily about the introjection of
the other. The preservation of a discrete and separate other person
inside the self (psychologically speaking), as is the case in
incorporation, is considered to be where mourning ceases to be a
'normal' response and instead becomes pathological. Typically, Derrida
reverses this hierarchy by highlighting that there is a sense in which
the supposedly pathological condition of incorporation is actually
more respectful of the other person's alterity. After all,
incorporation means that one has not totally assimilated the other, as
there is still a difference and a heterogeneity (EO 57). On the other
hand, Abraham and Torok's so-called 'normal' mourning can be accused
of interiorising the other person to such a degree that they have
become assimilated and even metaphorically cannibalised. Derrida
considers this introjection to be an infidelity to the other. However,
Derrida's account is not so simple as to unreservedly valorise the
incorporation of the other person, even if he emphasises this paradigm
in an effort to refute the canonical interpretation of successful
mourning. He also acknowledges that the more the self "keeps the
foreign element inside itself, the more it excludes it" (Fors xvii).
If we refuse to engage with the dead other, we also exclude their
foreignness from ourselves and hence prevent any transformative
interaction with them. When fetishised in their externality in such a
manner, the dead other really is lifeless and it is significant that
Derrida describes the death of de Man in terms of the loss of exchange
and of the transformational opportunities that he presented (MDM xvi,
cf WM). Derrida's point hence seems to be that in mourning, the
'otherness of the other' person resists both the process of
incorporation as well as the process of introjection. The other can
neither be preserved as a foreign entity, nor introjected fully
within. Towards the end of Memoires: for Paul de Man, Derrida suggests
that responsibility towards the other is about respecting and even
emphasising this resistance (MDM 160, 238).
8. References and Further Reading
a. Selected Commentaries
* Acts of Literature, ed. Attridge, New York: Routledge, 1992 (AL).
* Adieu to Emmanuel Lévinas, trans. Brault & Naas, Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 1999 (AEL).
* Circumfessions: Fifty Nine Periphrases, in Bennington, G.,
Jacques Derrida, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 (Circ).
* On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, London: Routledge, 2001 (OCF).
* Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, (inc. "Force of
the Law"), eds. Cornell, Carlson, & Benjamin, New York: Routledge,
1992 (DPJ).
* Dissemination, trans. Johnson, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1981 (D).
* "'Eating Well' or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview
with Jacques Derrida" in Who Comes After the Subject? eds. Cadava,
Connor, & Nancy, New York: Routledge, 1991, p 96-119.
* The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation,
trans. Kamuf, ed. McDonald, New York: Schocken Books, 1985 (EO).
* Edmund Husserl's 'Origin of Geometry': An Introduction, trans.
Leavey, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1978 (1962) (HOG).
* "Fors: The Anglish Words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok",
trans. Johnson, in The Wolfman's Magic Word: A Cryptonomy, Abraham,
N., & Torok, M., trans. Rand, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1986 (Fors).
* The Gift of Death, trans. Wills, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995 (1991) (GD).
* Given Time: i. Counterfeit Money, trans. Kamuf, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992 (GT).
* "Hostipitality" in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical
Humanities, Vol. 5, Number 3, Dec 2000.
* Le Toucher: Jean-Luc Nancy, Paris: Galilée, 2000 (T).
* "Le Toucher: Touch/to touch him", in Paragraph, trans. Kamuf,
16:2, 1993, p 122-57.
* Limited Inc. (inc. "Afterword"), ed. Graff, trans. Weber,
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998 edition (LI).
* Margins of Philosophy, trans. Bass, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982 (M).
* Memoires: for Paul de Man, trans. Lindsay, Culler, Cadava, &
Kamuf, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989 (MDM).
* Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, trans.
Brault & Naas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 (1991) (MB).
* Monolingualism of the Other or the Prosthesis of Origin, trans.
Mensh, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996 (MO).
* "Nietzsche and the Machine: Interview with Jacques Derrida"
(interviewer Beardsworth) in Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 7,
Spring 1994 (NM). Of Grammatology, trans. Spivak, Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press, 1976 (OG).
* Derrida, J., & Dufourmantelle, A., Of Hospitality, trans.
Bowlby, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000 (OH).
* On the Name (inc. "Passions"), ed. Dutoit, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1995 (ON).
* "Ousia and Gramme: A Note to a Footnote in Being and Time"
trans. Casey in Phenomenology in Perspective, ed. Smith, The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1970.
* Parages, Paris: Galilée, 1986. Points… Interviews, 1974-1995,
ed. Weber, trans. Kamuf et al, Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1995 (P).
* Politics of Friendship, trans. Collins, New York: Verso, 1997 (PF).
* Positions, trans. Bass, London: Athlone Press, 1981 (1972) (PO).
* "Psyche: Inventions of the Other" in Reading De Man Reading,
eds. Waters & Godzich, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1989 (RDR).
* Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning
and the New International, trans. Kamuf, New York: Routledge, 1994
(SM).
* 'Speech and Phenomena' and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of
Signs, trans. Allison, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973
(1967) (SP).
* The Work of Mourning, eds. Brault & Naas, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2001 (WM).
* Writing and Difference, trans. Bass, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1978 (1967) (WD).
b. Selected Commentaries
* Bennington, G., Interrupting Derrida, Warwick Studies in
European Philosophy, London: Routledge, 2000.
* Bennington, G., Jacques Derrida, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1993.
* Caputo, J., Deconstruction in a Nutshell, New York: Fordham
University Press, 1997.
* Caputo, J., The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
* Critchley, S., The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and
Lévinas, Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1992.
* Culler, J., On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after
Structuralism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983.
* Gasché, R., Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994. Gasché, R., The Tain of
the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1986.
* Hart, K., The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology and
Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
* Harvey, I., Derrida and the Economy of Différance, Studies in
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1986.
* Howells, C., Derrida: Deconstruction from Phenomenology to
Ethics, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999.
* Krell, D., The Purest of Bastards: Works of Art, Affirmation and
Mourning in the Thought of Jacques Derrida, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania
University Press, 2000.
* Norris, C., Derrida, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987.
* Patrick, M., Derrida, Responsibility and Politics, Avebury
Series in Philosophy, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1997.
* Silverman, H., ed. Derrida and Deconstruction, New York: Routledge, 1989.
* Wood, D., The Deconstruction of Time, Contemporary Studies in
Philosophy and the Human Sciences, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey:
Humanities Press, 1989.
* Wood, D., ed. Derrida: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
* Wood, D., & Bernasconi, R., eds. Derrida and Différance,
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988.
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