Jacques Derrida, 1930-2004
‘But a reading here should no longer be carried out as a simple table of concepts or words, as a static or statistical sort of punctuation. One must reconstitute a chain in motion, the effects of a network and the play of a syntax.’
[Jacques Derrida on reading Mallarme, ‘The First Session’ in Acts of Literature, p. 144]
‘His being is a being-at-the-telephone. He is hooked up to a multiplicity of voices and answering machines. His being-there is a being-at-the-telephone, a being for the telephone, in the way that Heidegger speaks of the being for death of Dasein.’
[Jacques Derrida on Leopold Bloom, ‘Ulysses Gramophone’ in Acts of Literature, p. 273]
‘In any encounter, whether I destroy or be destroyed, there takes place a combination of relations that is, as such, good.’
[Gilles Deleuze, ‘Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza’, p. 249]
[1] I would like to offer my impressions of Derrida’s work. My engagement has been limited and I apologise if my use of concepts and terms is in fact inappropriate at any point. In order to distinguish this short piece from the obituaries offered by the English newspapers, and their ‘descriptions’ of Derrida, I shall begin with a particular concept. Then I will work from it in an attempt to show the power and radicalism of his thought to the best of my abilities. This concept is text or ‘textuality.’ Derrida was concerned with writing and its creative displacement of categories dominant in philosophy. We therefore will begin from a basic notion that is opposed to presence and is a terrain for thought (it is difficult to say general things about it since it displaces categories we might use to describe it and it is in its immanent ‘play’ that it is best seen). This of course meant that Derrida was accused, especially by Anglo-Saxon intellectuals, of destroying the distinction between fiction and reality. He is said to neglect common sense and to be obscure for no good reason. Of course Derrida must live for us by being precisely what the analytic tradition is not. He works with literature because it does not look at things from outside in order to critique them. Instead it takes hold of them and plays with them. The text-world distinction is thus displaced, as is that of outside-inside. The difficulty is to conceive of thinking without a solid and clear starting point, which would suggest that the text wasn’t already in operation. Literature cannot be limited and philosophy cannot tell it what it is. Anything can therefore become literature because there is no such thing as literature. To define it would be to practice metaphysics, to subordinate it to ontology.
[2] A further key concept is repeatability (Signature, Event, Context, 1991, p. 90). This is the structural possibility of a written mark being severed from its alleged origin or production. A chain of differential marks thus replaces pure presence. Rather than these leading to any origin they are differential in the sense of expressing an irreducible absence of any intention, context, ordinary language, presence and so on. This is something akin to Deleuze’s notion of the creative destruction, which is non-dialectical because it does not preserve the essence of anything but destroys everything. In this way a ground for complete creativity is cleared and difference is affirmed. This casting adrift of the written mark does not lead to a relativism in which different opinions are equally valid (leading to the utterly horrific notion of a ‘supermarket trolley’ approach to knowledge). The play of the text displaces categories such as the subject which relativism has at its centre. This is instead the immanent re-thinking of everything and the openness onto possibilities without limit. The potential endlessness of repeatability allows for the text to be compared to a textile or veil where there is no centre or transcendence (Dissemination, 1981, p. 240). This element spreads out and in its immanent play or activity there is only text. Text is a dynamic, not a substance because this would be to limit what it can be, to define it in relation to an outside or other. Communication becomes a movement rather than a phenomenon of meaning or signification. Only in this way is it productive through itself. It is movement concerned only with its own play and not with realising or attaining anything outside this proliferation of difference. ‘Displacement’ is textual movement that denies all fixed essences through the self-sufficiency and radical effects of this dynamic. Rather than the literature being open to the different interpretations of human beings it is instead the case that we are open to interpretation by the processes of the text.
[3] For Derrida, the autonomy of the text implies circularity and this affirms the notion of fabric or veil. No restrictions are imposed upon the text because of its self-sufficiency (it has no outside but this does not mean it has a sufficient reason, which for Derrida would be to limit it). Therefore, without dependence on any outside, circularity can be expressive of difference without limitation. Alternative possibilities flow from the freedom of the text, from the creativity of art liberated from mimesis. For example, mime in Mallarme doesn’t do anything, there is no act, no acting agent and nothing ‘is.’ In fact, Derrida writes, the word ‘is’ does not appear because ‘play’ eclipses ‘being’ (‘The First Session’ in Acts of Literature, p. 169).
[4] In a way, Derrida can be seen as taking further Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘universal flesh’ by retaining this notion of a continuous fabric but as a more decentred and decentring practice. The text avoids being related to the human being in the way that flesh is and this may undermine Merleau-Ponty’s concern with the body. The text bypasses intentionality since it does not attempt to realise phenomenology in a more radical way. The operations of the text can be said to concern the workings of experience and not simply language. This has to be the substance of Derrida’s greatness. He wasn’t simply using the text as a helpful tool. Instead the human being is decentred, if anything we are the tools of the text (although this implies an intentionality, and thus a duality, that has no place in the play of the text). Therefore, to decide where to begin is always to commit an act of violence. With no natural beginning, the text is not a ground but much more like a situation of ongoing movement. The movement is one of difference and thus of displacement. Circularity cuts off any grounding of textuality and any beginning. Without the categories and essences structuring experience there is the task of thinking equally to difference. This means not conceiving of sufficient reason because to do so would be to ground textuality and violate its circularity.
[5] Perhaps Derrida’s greatest achievement is to have been a ‘philosopher of language’ and actually to have thought equally to language. Like Lyotard and Wittgenstein, he is magnificently able to see, within the limits of language, the liberation of philosophy rather than its severe limitation. Instead of the death of metaphysics being a cause for reaction and retreat, as it was for Moore, Russell, Ayer and others, it was the key to thinking in radically new ways. He really asked what kind of thinking can happen in a language, how has it been limited and neglected in philosophy. This was a positive and utterly non-reactive response to a serious problem for thinkers of his generation. Indeed, for Derrida it is really any kind of thinking that happens in a language. If perhaps language philosophy is for some a negative retreat in the idea that we can only know what is human and scientific - the philosopher as narcissus or ‘bourgeois’ as Adorno would assert - it is for Derrida the overcoming of this state. The pure affirmation of language is his greatest legacy.
[Jacques Derrida on reading Mallarme, ‘The First Session’ in Acts of Literature, p. 144]
‘His being is a being-at-the-telephone. He is hooked up to a multiplicity of voices and answering machines. His being-there is a being-at-the-telephone, a being for the telephone, in the way that Heidegger speaks of the being for death of Dasein.’
[Jacques Derrida on Leopold Bloom, ‘Ulysses Gramophone’ in Acts of Literature, p. 273]
‘In any encounter, whether I destroy or be destroyed, there takes place a combination of relations that is, as such, good.’
[Gilles Deleuze, ‘Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza’, p. 249]
[1] I would like to offer my impressions of Derrida’s work. My engagement has been limited and I apologise if my use of concepts and terms is in fact inappropriate at any point. In order to distinguish this short piece from the obituaries offered by the English newspapers, and their ‘descriptions’ of Derrida, I shall begin with a particular concept. Then I will work from it in an attempt to show the power and radicalism of his thought to the best of my abilities. This concept is text or ‘textuality.’ Derrida was concerned with writing and its creative displacement of categories dominant in philosophy. We therefore will begin from a basic notion that is opposed to presence and is a terrain for thought (it is difficult to say general things about it since it displaces categories we might use to describe it and it is in its immanent ‘play’ that it is best seen). This of course meant that Derrida was accused, especially by Anglo-Saxon intellectuals, of destroying the distinction between fiction and reality. He is said to neglect common sense and to be obscure for no good reason. Of course Derrida must live for us by being precisely what the analytic tradition is not. He works with literature because it does not look at things from outside in order to critique them. Instead it takes hold of them and plays with them. The text-world distinction is thus displaced, as is that of outside-inside. The difficulty is to conceive of thinking without a solid and clear starting point, which would suggest that the text wasn’t already in operation. Literature cannot be limited and philosophy cannot tell it what it is. Anything can therefore become literature because there is no such thing as literature. To define it would be to practice metaphysics, to subordinate it to ontology.
[2] A further key concept is repeatability (Signature, Event, Context, 1991, p. 90). This is the structural possibility of a written mark being severed from its alleged origin or production. A chain of differential marks thus replaces pure presence. Rather than these leading to any origin they are differential in the sense of expressing an irreducible absence of any intention, context, ordinary language, presence and so on. This is something akin to Deleuze’s notion of the creative destruction, which is non-dialectical because it does not preserve the essence of anything but destroys everything. In this way a ground for complete creativity is cleared and difference is affirmed. This casting adrift of the written mark does not lead to a relativism in which different opinions are equally valid (leading to the utterly horrific notion of a ‘supermarket trolley’ approach to knowledge). The play of the text displaces categories such as the subject which relativism has at its centre. This is instead the immanent re-thinking of everything and the openness onto possibilities without limit. The potential endlessness of repeatability allows for the text to be compared to a textile or veil where there is no centre or transcendence (Dissemination, 1981, p. 240). This element spreads out and in its immanent play or activity there is only text. Text is a dynamic, not a substance because this would be to limit what it can be, to define it in relation to an outside or other. Communication becomes a movement rather than a phenomenon of meaning or signification. Only in this way is it productive through itself. It is movement concerned only with its own play and not with realising or attaining anything outside this proliferation of difference. ‘Displacement’ is textual movement that denies all fixed essences through the self-sufficiency and radical effects of this dynamic. Rather than the literature being open to the different interpretations of human beings it is instead the case that we are open to interpretation by the processes of the text.
[3] For Derrida, the autonomy of the text implies circularity and this affirms the notion of fabric or veil. No restrictions are imposed upon the text because of its self-sufficiency (it has no outside but this does not mean it has a sufficient reason, which for Derrida would be to limit it). Therefore, without dependence on any outside, circularity can be expressive of difference without limitation. Alternative possibilities flow from the freedom of the text, from the creativity of art liberated from mimesis. For example, mime in Mallarme doesn’t do anything, there is no act, no acting agent and nothing ‘is.’ In fact, Derrida writes, the word ‘is’ does not appear because ‘play’ eclipses ‘being’ (‘The First Session’ in Acts of Literature, p. 169).
[4] In a way, Derrida can be seen as taking further Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘universal flesh’ by retaining this notion of a continuous fabric but as a more decentred and decentring practice. The text avoids being related to the human being in the way that flesh is and this may undermine Merleau-Ponty’s concern with the body. The text bypasses intentionality since it does not attempt to realise phenomenology in a more radical way. The operations of the text can be said to concern the workings of experience and not simply language. This has to be the substance of Derrida’s greatness. He wasn’t simply using the text as a helpful tool. Instead the human being is decentred, if anything we are the tools of the text (although this implies an intentionality, and thus a duality, that has no place in the play of the text). Therefore, to decide where to begin is always to commit an act of violence. With no natural beginning, the text is not a ground but much more like a situation of ongoing movement. The movement is one of difference and thus of displacement. Circularity cuts off any grounding of textuality and any beginning. Without the categories and essences structuring experience there is the task of thinking equally to difference. This means not conceiving of sufficient reason because to do so would be to ground textuality and violate its circularity.
[5] Perhaps Derrida’s greatest achievement is to have been a ‘philosopher of language’ and actually to have thought equally to language. Like Lyotard and Wittgenstein, he is magnificently able to see, within the limits of language, the liberation of philosophy rather than its severe limitation. Instead of the death of metaphysics being a cause for reaction and retreat, as it was for Moore, Russell, Ayer and others, it was the key to thinking in radically new ways. He really asked what kind of thinking can happen in a language, how has it been limited and neglected in philosophy. This was a positive and utterly non-reactive response to a serious problem for thinkers of his generation. Indeed, for Derrida it is really any kind of thinking that happens in a language. If perhaps language philosophy is for some a negative retreat in the idea that we can only know what is human and scientific - the philosopher as narcissus or ‘bourgeois’ as Adorno would assert - it is for Derrida the overcoming of this state. The pure affirmation of language is his greatest legacy.
posted by edward willatt at 8:07 pm
5 Comments:
Thank you Edward!
1) At last an intelligent, penetrating, and stylish obituary to the work of Jacques Derrida. The cross-referencing of his term "iterability" - or here referred to as "repeatability" [2] (I assume these terms refer to the same principle in JD) - with the Deleuzian notion of creative destruction is a very interesting and potentially fertile point of further investigation. As a matter of course, I only wish here, at the risk of stating the obvious, to also highlight what occurs to me as the more straightforward references for the direction of Derrida's thought: on the one hand Saussure's analysis of the signifier-signified, and on the other, in his concern with language understood in terms of "differance" (the differing deferral of the sign) which thus "replaces presence," the overwhelming presence, and dissemination (if you pardon the pun) through his work of Heidegger. In Derrida, Heidegger finds a worthy disciple - but this is to say too little on either's behalf.
2) With respect of an emphasis on this relation I however might wish to question slightly the conclusion of the piece - though I am very much taken with your beautiful summation that "The pure affirmation of language is his greatest legacy" [5] Nevertheless, I would like to draw attention to where you remark
"He really asked what kind of thinking can happen in a language, how has it been limited and neglected in philosophy" [5] - isn't it rather for Derrida that it is only with respect of language that thinking can proceed, and that what he draws attention to is that the limits of philosophy are evidenced in its precedencing of the spoken word, of the dialogue?
3) The relation between Derrida and Heidegger has of course been ploughed many times, whereas the relation between Deleuze and Derrida, is perhaps a more open field (though there is of course, at the very least, the collection of essays in the Paul Patton book "Between Deleuze & Derrida")...but whatever the case, there is undoubtedly much more work in be done...
4) One aspect that has perhaps not been given enough of a significant treatment is Derrida's work in the latter part of his life - it is here that it seems he experienced something of a turn, indeed what one might refer to as an ethical turn. His work of the latter period of his life (Of Spirit, Politics of Friendship, etc.) has perhaps been difficult to assess in the light of his brilliant earlier work (Writing & Difference, Of Grammatology - both works of the late '60s) - but its virtues (and failings) might now become clearer.
With Derrida's death one senses the sky has once more opened, but he has left something behind - a promise. It is a gift which we must now take up.
PS I hope you don't mind the attachment of a photo of JD to your article. best wishes, s.
The picture of Derrida is a very fitting and effective addition to the piece. Thanks Scott for that and for your very kind comment. I accept fully the point you make about a line in paragraph 5 of the piece. Indeed, it contradicts the paragraph and the piece as a whole. As I was arguing that Derrida practiced a pure affirmation of language I needed to avoid suggesting that anything can be outside language. Otherwise language isn't affirmed in such a full way. I think this was certainly a slip and that I should have phrased it in a way that suggested that philosophy had misread language's role and in this sense neglected its true dynamic or 'play.' Instead I carelessly introduced an inside-outside distinction that I should have been avoiding. As Scott says, it is the emphasis on spoken language that was limiting philosophy but language itself was never limited.
The points Scott makes about Heidegger and Saussure are effective at putting Derrida in context. It raises the question for us of how we want to see Heidegger taken forward, through Derrida or through thinkers like Badiou and Deleuze. I agree with Scott that Derrida has take on a new life, itterability makes immortal.
You write, "This of course meant that Derrida was accused, especially by Anglo-Saxon intellectuals, of destroying the distinction between fiction and reality".
Could you please inform me why he was accused of breaking down this distinction? I do not find it clear why in your post. Or maybe you could tell me where to read about it.
I enjoyed your text.
Destroying the distinction between fiction and reality is certainly a general and inadequate description of Derrida's work. It is of course a good newspaper catch phrase, something that suggests a spectacle and thus lacking any real depth. It refers to Derrida's conception of the text and its processes being active elements of reality itself. It points to his critique of 'presence' which relies upon a conception of reality that doesn't involve such textual movement and productivity. We have a gesturing towards these notions but assumes vague and general ideas of 'fiction' (a marketable commodity for use only in leisure time) and 'reality' (the public space of work). It then suggests that Derrida against common sense but without trying to understand textuality in any depth, complexity or sophistication. Nothing is challenging in this description, it is neutralised and rendered harmless. I mentioned it in order to get beyond it. It features both as a newspaper phrase and also as the throw away of Anglo Saxon philosophers. They have a fully fledged understanding of reality and common sense. For them Derrida is outside of the domain of valid thinking from the start.
Interestingly, Jacques Ranciere mentions the reality-fiction distinction in his 'The Politics of Aesthetics.' Here he says that positivists and deconstrictionists are stuck at the level of this distinction. This is of course debatable but it shows how he attempts to overcome this level. In his conception of distributions of the sensible, the blurring of the divide between art and politics is the source of a redistribution.
As for reading upon this issue, any of Derrida's work would I think illustrate the undermining of categories 'reality'. They presence and other limitations to the textuality that requires recognition. Instead of facts or phenomena there is text and whether text can be put down by being called 'fiction' is the key issue.
Post a Comment
<< Home