9 the Deconstruction of Deconstruction: Prelude to a Metaphysics

9 The Deconstruction of Deconstruction: Prelude to a Metaphysics It may seem that deconstruction emerging from Derrida’s texts as a schematic approach to evaluating philosophical theory has collapsed from unrecognized reliance on its own residual metaphysics. Derrida’s concerted regard for and attention to the history of philosophy and its effect on contemporary thought would not then have resulted in a position with sufficient stability to reveal untapped possibilities resident in that very history. But this summary and ultimately dismissive judgment is in a way premature. Even if the criticisms aimed at Derrida are accepted, the elements collectively standing as “deconstruction” hold out possibilities for additional inquiry and potential insight into the experience and articulation of traditional metaphysics. Chapter 9 addresses these attendant possibilities. The pivotal component is the notion named “trace.” In Chapter 6, we outlined and discussed Derrida’s complex and convoluted treatment of trace functioning as a key component in signification. But now we shall see that Derrida’s notion of trace can become an access to ways of looking at and thinking about “reality,” a code word for the subject of metaphysics. This access engages what should be countenanced from western metaphysics but then routes that engagement through a style of discourse which, at least by intent, reduces residual effects of having emerged from the terminology of metaphysics. The resulting language embraces what looks to be fresh and revelatory means of expression, or at least optimizes chances of eventually accessing such material. Although on the surface it may appear difficult, perhaps even impossible, to transcend the outermost limits of being as presence, we approach Derrida’s disposition of trace with a high degree of optimism regarding its potential for producing insight at this level. It may in the end remain viable to “do” metaphysics in something like the ways it has been done for the last three millennia. The notion of possibility identified in the terminology of classical metaphysics stands as both an underlying context and ongoing theme throughout this chapter. In general, a possibility may–or may not–be actualized. The reader should keep this broad tentativeness in view as the chapter derives an argument based on texts from deconstruction which leads gradually to positive results in metaphysical matters. In one respect, being as presence is and has been a continually closed and closing door; but in another respect, finalizing one set of possible outcomes found in and defined by the history of metaphysics may engender another set of entrances to new destinations. 270 The Deconstruction of Deconstruction: Prelude to a Metaphysics 9.1 Derrida’s Truth The scene is the arena of contemporary philosophy. That fundamental differences obtain between analytical and continental philosophy is a view commonly held by many practitioners of each mode of expression as they respectively pursue the love of wisdom. One of the most dramatic and intense examples of this difference emerged from exchanges between Jacques Derrida and John Searle on the topic of speech acts, especially as this concept was formulated and developed by John Austin. Derrida critically evaluated Austin on speech acts, Searle critiqued Derrida’s assessment with considerable energy and also an apparent lack of good will. For Derrida, Searle’s reply was not just laced with ill humor, it was also fundamentally wrong. Derrida said so, bluntly and unambiguously: Passage 9A The answer is simple enough: this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that’s right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that’s right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread. Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never con- tested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts (LI, 146–italics in text). Philosophers often disagree with evaluations of their positions, whether negative reactions appear in print or are “live” at meetings, so in one respect Derrida’s blunt (if not apparently overwrought) rejoinder is not of special interest. If it were just a matter of intellectual biography (in what may be one of its more indecorous moments), then this episode is interesting to the extent that public idiosyncrasies of authors are interesting; however, if only this were at stake, little if anything illuminating for those philosophically inclined would remain from this fractious interchange. What is striking from a more dispassionate perspective is that Derrida’s response to Searle appears to be flatly inconsistent with Derrida’s canonic positions as they emerge from a plateau for interpreting texts based on deconstructionist principles. For Derrida, Searle’s reading of Derrida’s text is simply “false.” But if an articulated reading of a text is false, then it is reasonable to expect that another reading of the same text will be “true.” Yet on deconstructionist principles, how is a true reading possible? Derrida’s insistence on rightness in this case may have been only a momentary aberration (motivated by pique and aggrieved ego), a temporary deferral of dispassionate deconstructionist approaches to reading.115 115 In the Afterword to LI, written ten years after Derrida’s original reply to Searle, Derrida admits that this response “was not devoid of aggressivity” (LI, 113). However, he also insists that this mode of expression was consonant with the “violence” characterizing the context surrounding his work and Searle’s critique of it. Derrida says in the Afterword that he will return to “straightforward” discus- sion so that his observations “will thereby gain in clarity” (LI, 114). Whether Derrida’s “aggressivity” is read as a manifest instance of polemic depends on one’s taste in academic writing. But the more “As we speak....” 271 But if this appeal to rightness is indeed seriously intended, we ask: first, what conditions must obtain to enable the possibility of such a reading; second, are these conditions, if enunciated with sufficient clarity and comprehensiveness, compatible with deconstruction as an aggregation of interpretive principles aimed at evoking determinate ends? 9.2 “As we speak....” By way of preamble to an exploration of these joint concerns, let us review what is true of many linguistic contexts, intractably and stubbornly so, in ways which philosophers must acknowledge and incorporate into their reflection on the issues at hand. Consider as paradigmatic Dewey’s example, asking someone for something. This event happens now, not a few minutes ago, not later on. The event happens here, not there or anywhere else.The reader of this essay is doing so here and now, surrounded by a determinable number of entities or people, perhaps both. Generally speaking, an utterance such as, e.g., a request for a drink of water relates a speaker existing in this here and now to an auditor also existing in this here and now. The resultant meaning of linguistic sequence voiced within an environment circumscribed by such temporal and contextual constraints is straightforward, stable and unambiguous for all concerned participants. But following Derrida and deconstruction with its undifferentiated and comprehensively unified ensemble of interpretive strategies fully in place–a unity tacitly spanning all contexts and all dimensions of temporality–the theoretical possibility of securing such a meaning is necessarily out of bounds. However, the primary reason for this loss of stability has nothing to do with considerations relative to language proper. As argued in Chapter 8, the deconstructively motivated conclusion derives its theoretical force from reliance on metaphysics plain and simple–in fact, a continually ongoing rush of contexts and temporality, with this reality spreading in all possible directions from the confines of a single moment or definite duration and the equally determinate limits of a context with a necessary measure of givenness and limit. But this rampant Heracliteanism apparently does not extend to at least some of Derrida’s texts as well as to the readings which he himself produced and imposed on those texts. This fact must give us pause. important philosophical point is how any sense of “clarity” is possible in Derrida’s own writing given the deconstructive approach to linguistic structure exemplified in Derrida’s theoretical work and the interpretive assumption that the statement of deconstructionist theory in Derrida’s texts is itself fully self-referential. 272 The Deconstruction of Deconstruction: Prelude to a Metaphysics 9.3 Deconstruction and the Margins of Self-reference We assume that Derrida’s reaction to Searle is intended seriously and also that this seriousness can be justified philosophically. But how? The cogency of Derrida’s written reactions to what others say in texts about his texts presupposes the existence and reliability of a series of realities and principles based on those realities. First, the text in question must be identical for both the critic of that text and its defender. Furthermore, this text must remain identical during both (a) the process of criticism advanced by a reader of a text as well as (b) the defense raised against that criticism on behalf of the text’s apparent integrity. If the text is moving and unstable in its import, then it follows that the critic and defender may not be referring to the same ordered series of words as these words produce unity of signification. In addition, the defender must understand the text in a certain way, an understanding existing apart from the myriad possible ways in which the text could be taken by other readers. This separation of textual givenness and an understanding of that givenness is necessary in order to establish a condition for the possibility of rightness from the interpretive perspective of the defender; without this distance between text and understanding, the defender’s claim of rightness against alternate readings rests solely on what the defender believes to be the case.

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