Speech and Phenomena
Derrida's first book length deconstruction is his critical engagement with Husserl's phenomenology in Speech and Phenomena published in 1967. Derrida states that Speech and Phenomena is the "essay I value the most" and it is therefore a very important example of deconstruction. Husserl's philosophy is grounded in conscious experience as the ultimate origin of validity for all philosophy and science. Derrida's deconstruction operates by illustrating how the originary status of consciousness is compromised by the operation of structures within conscious experience that prevent it from being "the original self-giving evidence, the present or presence of sense to a full and primordial intuition." Derrida argues that Husserl's "phenomenology seems to us tormented, if not contested from within, by its own descriptions of the movement of temporalization and language". Derrida argues that the involvement of language and temporalisation within the "living present" of conscious experience means that instead of consciousness being the pure unitary origin of validity that Husserl wishes it be, it is compromised by the operation of différance in the structures of language and temporalisation. Derrida argues that language is a structured system of signs and that the meaning of individual signs is produced by the différance between that sign and other signs. This means that words are not self sufficiently meaningful but only meaningful as part of a larger a structure that makes meaning possible. Derrida therefore argues that the meaning of language is dependent on the larger structures of language and cannot originate in the unity of conscious experience. Derrida therefore argues that linguistic meaning does not originate in the intentional meaning of the speaking subject. This conclusion is very important for deconstruction and explains the importance of Speech and Phenomena for Derrida. Informed by this conclusion the deconstruction of a text will typically demonstrate the inability of the author to achieve their stated intentions within a text by demonstrating how the meaning of the language they use is, at least partially, beyond the ability of their intentions to control. Similarly, Derrida argues that Husserl's description of temporal of consciousness - where he describes the retension of past conscious experience and protension of future conscious experience - introduces the structural différance of temporal deferral, temporal non-presence, into consciousness. This means that the past and future are not in the living present of conscious experience but they taint the presence of the living present with their conscious absence through retension and protension. Husserl's description of temporal consciousness therefore compromises the total self presence of conscious experience required by Husserl's philosophy once again.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Différance
Différance
Considered more technically, deconstruction refers for Derrida to the problematisation of the metaphysical appeal to presence through différance. Derrida states that:
To "deconstruct" philosophy [...] would be to think - in the most faithful, interior way - the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time to determine - from a certain exterior [...] - what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid [...] By means of this simultaneously faithful and violent circulation between the inside and the outside of philosophy [...a] putting into question the meaning of Being as presence
To deconstruct philosophy is therefore to think carefully within philosophy about philosophical concepts in terms of their structure and genesis. Deconstruction tries to understand the implications of this history of philosophy as if we could reflect upon it from the outside. Especially the implications of the history of philosophy that have been least obvious because they have controlled the operation of all philosophical thought. Deconstruction operates both faithfully within philosophy and violently tries to escape it to some degree in order to understand it better. Deconstruction does this in order to challenge the basic controlling operation of all philosophical thought: the meaning of being as presence. For Derrida all philosophy is metaphysics - a philosophy of being. Derrida argues that all theories of knowledge are metaphysical appeals to the full presence of truth in a given situation. This is regardless of how the criteria advocated by different epistemologies is constructed. Deconstruction questions this appeal to presence by arguing that there is always an irreducible aspect of non-presence in operation. Derrida terms this aspect of non-presence différance. Différance is therefore the key theoretical basis of deconstruction. Deconstruction questions the the basic operation of all philosophy through the appeal to presence and différance therefore pervades all philosophy. Derrida argues that différance pervades all philosophy because "What defers presence [...] is the very basis on which presence is announced or desired in what represents it, its sign, its trace". Différance therefore pervades all philosophy because all philosophy is constructed as a system through language. Différance is essential to language because it produces "what metaphysics calls the sign (signified/signifier)". In one sense, a sign must point to something beyond itself that is its meaning so the sign is never fully present in itself but a deferral to something else, to something different. In another sense the structural relationship between the signified and signifier, as two related but separate aspects of the sign, is produced through differentiation. Derrida states that différance "is the economical concept", meaning that it is the concept of all systems and structures, because "there is no economy without différance [...] the movement of différance, as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language [...] différance is also the production [...] of these differences." Différance is therefore the condition of possibility for all complex systems and hence all philosophy. Operating through différance, deconstruction is the description of how non-presence problematises the operation of the appeal to presence within a particular philosophical system. Différance is an a-priori condition of possibility that is always already in effect but a deconstruction must be a careful description of how this différance is actually in effect in a given text. A deconstruction is achieved through recreating the full force of Derrida's deconstruction of Husserl in Speech and Phenomena and cannot simply derive its legitimacy from an appeal to Derrida's work and then be applied as a methodology. The effectiveness of Derrida's general strategy must be creatively reworked in response to the object text under consideration. All deconstructions are different and cannot be assumed before the deconstruction has actually been demonstrated - but, somewhat paradoxically, all deconstructions must describe problems that once made clear can be said to have always have been in effect in an unrecognised manner. Deconstruction therefore describes problems in the text rather than creating them (which would be trivial). Derrida considers the illustration of aporia in this way to be productive because it shows the failure of earlier philosophical systems and the necessity of continuing to philosophise through them with deconstruction.
Considered more technically, deconstruction refers for Derrida to the problematisation of the metaphysical appeal to presence through différance. Derrida states that:
To "deconstruct" philosophy [...] would be to think - in the most faithful, interior way - the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time to determine - from a certain exterior [...] - what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid [...] By means of this simultaneously faithful and violent circulation between the inside and the outside of philosophy [...a] putting into question the meaning of Being as presence
To deconstruct philosophy is therefore to think carefully within philosophy about philosophical concepts in terms of their structure and genesis. Deconstruction tries to understand the implications of this history of philosophy as if we could reflect upon it from the outside. Especially the implications of the history of philosophy that have been least obvious because they have controlled the operation of all philosophical thought. Deconstruction operates both faithfully within philosophy and violently tries to escape it to some degree in order to understand it better. Deconstruction does this in order to challenge the basic controlling operation of all philosophical thought: the meaning of being as presence. For Derrida all philosophy is metaphysics - a philosophy of being. Derrida argues that all theories of knowledge are metaphysical appeals to the full presence of truth in a given situation. This is regardless of how the criteria advocated by different epistemologies is constructed. Deconstruction questions this appeal to presence by arguing that there is always an irreducible aspect of non-presence in operation. Derrida terms this aspect of non-presence différance. Différance is therefore the key theoretical basis of deconstruction. Deconstruction questions the the basic operation of all philosophy through the appeal to presence and différance therefore pervades all philosophy. Derrida argues that différance pervades all philosophy because "What defers presence [...] is the very basis on which presence is announced or desired in what represents it, its sign, its trace". Différance therefore pervades all philosophy because all philosophy is constructed as a system through language. Différance is essential to language because it produces "what metaphysics calls the sign (signified/signifier)". In one sense, a sign must point to something beyond itself that is its meaning so the sign is never fully present in itself but a deferral to something else, to something different. In another sense the structural relationship between the signified and signifier, as two related but separate aspects of the sign, is produced through differentiation. Derrida states that différance "is the economical concept", meaning that it is the concept of all systems and structures, because "there is no economy without différance [...] the movement of différance, as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language [...] différance is also the production [...] of these differences." Différance is therefore the condition of possibility for all complex systems and hence all philosophy. Operating through différance, deconstruction is the description of how non-presence problematises the operation of the appeal to presence within a particular philosophical system. Différance is an a-priori condition of possibility that is always already in effect but a deconstruction must be a careful description of how this différance is actually in effect in a given text. A deconstruction is achieved through recreating the full force of Derrida's deconstruction of Husserl in Speech and Phenomena and cannot simply derive its legitimacy from an appeal to Derrida's work and then be applied as a methodology. The effectiveness of Derrida's general strategy must be creatively reworked in response to the object text under consideration. All deconstructions are different and cannot be assumed before the deconstruction has actually been demonstrated - but, somewhat paradoxically, all deconstructions must describe problems that once made clear can be said to have always have been in effect in an unrecognised manner. Deconstruction therefore describes problems in the text rather than creating them (which would be trivial). Derrida considers the illustration of aporia in this way to be productive because it shows the failure of earlier philosophical systems and the necessity of continuing to philosophise through them with deconstruction.
DECONSTRUCTION IS
Deconstruction is not destruction but it may be thought of in terms of a literary construction. The originator of this textual practise, Derrida (in the late 1960s and early 1970s), explains it in these terms:
Deconstruction is inventive or it is nothing at all; it does not settle for methodological procedures, it opens up a passageway, it marches ahead and marks a trail; its writing is not only performative, it produces rules -- other conventions -- for new performativities and never installs itself in the theoretical assurance of a simple opposition between performative and constative. Its process involves an affirmation, this latter being linked to the coming [venir] in event, advent, invention. ("Psyche: Invention of the Other," 1984.)
The key to deconstruction, according to Derrida, is that through a re-reading (of philosophy) one may more profoundly understand society as a complex and historical processes; sites of différance, much like philosophy and texts themselves. Derrida sees signifying force in the gaps, margins, figures, echoes, digressions, discontinuities, contradictions, and ambiguities of a text.
Derrida's writings on deconstruction refine poststructuralist and postmodern arguments which seek to re-evaluate ways of thinking of reality. For Derrida, as with other theorists, access to reality is no longer recognised as unmediated. Experienced through language, reality is never something we can know, just something we can experience as Pierce says. In an attempt to get at something other than language, Derrida asks us to deconstruct.
Deconstruction involves the dissolving or orders and hierarchies which allows for new structures to be composed and then recomposed. This "play" allows elements which originally may never have been thought of as similar to sit side by side and create new connections. For example a deconstructive reading focuses on binary oppositions (woman/man, black/white, high/low, rich/poor, signifier/signified, presence/absence) within a text first, to illustrate the hierarchy of their structure; second, to overturn that hierarchy (albeit temporarily), in order to see what the text was not saying; in order to see what was under erasure. Thirdly, a deconstructive reading of binaries would seek to displace and reassert both terms of the opposition within a non-hierarchical relationship of "difference."
Working within the idea of unfulfillness; even deconstruction does not aim to guarantee any "wholes", it only seeks to fragment them and in the fragmentation question the meaning of ideas such as "center," "man," "truth," and "reality." But to recognise the instability of these terms is to put them under "erasure." Although speaking in theoretical terms, Derrida signifies this graphically by writing: truth
Although Derrida applies his deconstruction mainly through philosophy showing metaphysical contradictions and the specific historicity of writing, any text can sustain a deconstructive reading. Looking at multiple meanings of works, intertextuality, repetition, or exclusions is one of the ways in which Derrida enacts his deconstruction. In Jakobson's phrasing, most texts attend to the poetic function of the text. In a Derridean sense this means that the naïve, thetic, transcendental (i.e. unmediated) reading of a text is complicated by a counter-reading which deconstructs the thetic impetus and claims. The more universal a text claims to be the more thoroughly it can be deconstructed.
Derrida's main premise centres around his belief that when one writes, one writes more than, or differently from, one what thinks. Therefore the task of the reader (and critic) is to read what is written on the page, not intuit meanings. As Barbara Johnson reminds us:
The possibility of reading materiality, silence, space, and conflict within texts has opened up extremely productive ways of studying the politics of language. If each text is seen as presenting a major claim that attempts to dominate, erase, or distort various "other" claims (whose traces nevertheless remain detectable to a reader who goes against the grain of the dominant claim), then "reading" is its extended sense is deeply involved in questions of authority and power. One field of conflict and domination in discourse that has been fruitfully studied in this sense is the field of sexual politics. Alice Jardine, in Gynesis (1985), points out that since logocentric logic has been coded as 'male' the "other" logics of spacing, ambiguity, figuration, and indirection are often coded as "female," and that a critique of logocentrism can enable a critique pf "phallocentrism" as well....("On Writing," Critical Terms for Literary Study, eds Lentricchia and McLaughlin.)
By reading against the grain of the writer's intentions, Derrida examines how European leaders who substantiated their "rule" on ideas of reason and logic managed to inscribe an ideology of oppression and exploitation within their very discourse of Enlightenment. And, by reading against the grain in contemporary society, we, as critical readers, can deconstruct not only previous readings, but question reading itself.
Deconstruction is inventive or it is nothing at all; it does not settle for methodological procedures, it opens up a passageway, it marches ahead and marks a trail; its writing is not only performative, it produces rules -- other conventions -- for new performativities and never installs itself in the theoretical assurance of a simple opposition between performative and constative. Its process involves an affirmation, this latter being linked to the coming [venir] in event, advent, invention. ("Psyche: Invention of the Other," 1984.)
The key to deconstruction, according to Derrida, is that through a re-reading (of philosophy) one may more profoundly understand society as a complex and historical processes; sites of différance, much like philosophy and texts themselves. Derrida sees signifying force in the gaps, margins, figures, echoes, digressions, discontinuities, contradictions, and ambiguities of a text.
Derrida's writings on deconstruction refine poststructuralist and postmodern arguments which seek to re-evaluate ways of thinking of reality. For Derrida, as with other theorists, access to reality is no longer recognised as unmediated. Experienced through language, reality is never something we can know, just something we can experience as Pierce says. In an attempt to get at something other than language, Derrida asks us to deconstruct.
Deconstruction involves the dissolving or orders and hierarchies which allows for new structures to be composed and then recomposed. This "play" allows elements which originally may never have been thought of as similar to sit side by side and create new connections. For example a deconstructive reading focuses on binary oppositions (woman/man, black/white, high/low, rich/poor, signifier/signified, presence/absence) within a text first, to illustrate the hierarchy of their structure; second, to overturn that hierarchy (albeit temporarily), in order to see what the text was not saying; in order to see what was under erasure. Thirdly, a deconstructive reading of binaries would seek to displace and reassert both terms of the opposition within a non-hierarchical relationship of "difference."
Working within the idea of unfulfillness; even deconstruction does not aim to guarantee any "wholes", it only seeks to fragment them and in the fragmentation question the meaning of ideas such as "center," "man," "truth," and "reality." But to recognise the instability of these terms is to put them under "erasure." Although speaking in theoretical terms, Derrida signifies this graphically by writing: truth
Although Derrida applies his deconstruction mainly through philosophy showing metaphysical contradictions and the specific historicity of writing, any text can sustain a deconstructive reading. Looking at multiple meanings of works, intertextuality, repetition, or exclusions is one of the ways in which Derrida enacts his deconstruction. In Jakobson's phrasing, most texts attend to the poetic function of the text. In a Derridean sense this means that the naïve, thetic, transcendental (i.e. unmediated) reading of a text is complicated by a counter-reading which deconstructs the thetic impetus and claims. The more universal a text claims to be the more thoroughly it can be deconstructed.
Derrida's main premise centres around his belief that when one writes, one writes more than, or differently from, one what thinks. Therefore the task of the reader (and critic) is to read what is written on the page, not intuit meanings. As Barbara Johnson reminds us:
The possibility of reading materiality, silence, space, and conflict within texts has opened up extremely productive ways of studying the politics of language. If each text is seen as presenting a major claim that attempts to dominate, erase, or distort various "other" claims (whose traces nevertheless remain detectable to a reader who goes against the grain of the dominant claim), then "reading" is its extended sense is deeply involved in questions of authority and power. One field of conflict and domination in discourse that has been fruitfully studied in this sense is the field of sexual politics. Alice Jardine, in Gynesis (1985), points out that since logocentric logic has been coded as 'male' the "other" logics of spacing, ambiguity, figuration, and indirection are often coded as "female," and that a critique of logocentrism can enable a critique pf "phallocentrism" as well....("On Writing," Critical Terms for Literary Study, eds Lentricchia and McLaughlin.)
By reading against the grain of the writer's intentions, Derrida examines how European leaders who substantiated their "rule" on ideas of reason and logic managed to inscribe an ideology of oppression and exploitation within their very discourse of Enlightenment. And, by reading against the grain in contemporary society, we, as critical readers, can deconstruct not only previous readings, but question reading itself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)