Contradiction and Confirmation: Validity as Persuasiveness TANYA DITOMMASO, University a/Ottawa Derrida's deconstruction of metaphysical identity, authority, and certainty has left contemporary philosophers scrambling to fmd ways in which they can describe and evaluate the interpreter's task without appealing to metaphysical dogma. l At the present moment, given Derrida's deconstruction, it is impossible to say that an interpretation is either "valid" or "invalid." The task of comparing and deciding between interpretations must be performed without absolute standards. Yet the postmodern interpreter is no less confronted with the task of reading competing interpretations and deciding which to accept. How, then, does the postmodern reader perform this task? What postfoundational tools or guides are available? While Derrida has taken great pains to deconstruct metaphysical grounds, we should not conclude that there are no postfoundational principles informing interpretive judgement. Undecidability Versus Indeterminacy Throughout Derrida's deconstruction of metaphysical grounds is the claim that the meaning of any text is undecidable. It is important to note, however, that the notion of undecidability does not entail the complete absence of principles in reading. Indeed, Derrida fIrmly rejects the notion of indeterminacy of meaning. In an effort to clarify his position, he claims that undecidability rather than indeterminacy is the implication of deconstruction. [AJt stake is always a set of determinate and fInite possibilities ... otherwise, one could indeed say just anything at all and I have never accepted saying, or encouraging others to say, just anything at all, nor have I argued for indeterminacy as such .... I do not believe I have ever spoken of "indeterminacy," whether in regard to "meaning" or anything else. Undecidability is something else again .... I want to recall that undecidability is always a determinate oscillation between possibilities .... These possibilities are themselves highly determined in strictly defined situations.2 Undecidability refers not to the impossibility of making any decision at all, but to the inherent complexity of decision making itself. Derrida stresses the fluidity of borders and the need for "an incessant movement ofrecontextualization" while admitting that the reader's activity limits and affects what a text means. Readers interpret within a context; "there is nothing outside context ... nothing exists outside context," and what is more, "one cannot r 24 Contradiction and Confinnation Contradiction and Confinnation 25 do anything, least of all speak, without detennining a context.,,3 The context of we can only read by deciding to highlight particular connections in a text. interpretation cannot be absolutely indetenninate or perfectly fluid; in being forced Essentially, reading or interpreting consists of organizing words into webs of to make decisions about a text's contextual margin, readers create readings that are relations, where such relations spread their effects in chains or webs over the rest detennined in part by these decisions. To say that contexts remain fluid is to of the text. Presumably, this is what Derrida is driving at when he writes: acknowledge that the meaning of an interpretation can change. It does not mean, "following the appearances of the word 'supplement' and of the corresponding however, that there is absolutely no determination to that interpretation's meaning. concept or concepts, we traverse a certain path within ... [the] text.'06 Maintaining that meaning is neither detenninate nor indetenninate, Derrida claims An appeal to structural dependency is implicit to Derrida's observation that he has never proposed an "'all or nothing' choice between pure realization of that the question "what is writing?" is guided by the interpreter's belief in the self-presence and complete freeplay or undecidability," and declares: "what has certitude of essence. Derrida, of course, rejects such essences, yet while recogniz­ always interested me the most ... is not indetenninacy in itself, but the strictest ing that a belie/in essences is necessary in prompting and guiding both the question 7 possible detennination of the figures of play, of oscillation, of undecidability.'''' "what is?" and the metaphysical answer that follows. Thus, as Derrida notes, "if While words may possess numerous meanings which alter according to words ... receive meaning only in sequences of differences, one can justify one's different readings, this does not entail a complete lack of margins for interpretation. language, and one's choice of tenns, only within ... an orientation in space." There are no absolute standards; readers must make decisions regarding the Elsewhere, Derrida suggests that the notion of "objectiVity" implies a certain contextual boundaries of a given text. With the recognition that contextual context, for ."what is called 'objectivity,' ... imposes itself only within a context decisions must be made by the reader, we have stumbled upon something that is which is extremely vast, old, powerfully established, stabilized or rooted in a invariably and necessarily the case in interpretation--contextual structural network of conventions ... which still remains a context."g Moreover, Derrida's dependency. As a procedural condition for the possibility of reading, this structural assumption of the critical role played by the reader's context-fonnation decisions dependency provides a partial basis for interpretive adjudication. is the very thing that fuels his critique of Searle's interpretation (or misinterpreta­ tion) of deconstruction. Derrida argues that Searle's misinterpretation is a result of 9 Contextual Structural Dependency his misunderstanding of the context of deconstruction. The above examples illustrate Derrida's acknowledgment that the reader's Derrida's writings present no exception to the rule that words mutually affect one context-fonnation decisions provide a condition for the possibility of reading, and ·another to fonn a structural dependency. If, as Derrida maintains, words contain that such decisions contribute to the success or failure of interpretation. Without alterity, then they necessarily affect and point to other words. The otherness in absolute grounds, the reader can appeal to structural dependency in judging an every word implies that words necessarily have effects. All writing is an effect of interpretation. In this light we can read Derrida's comment that "we would have to differance. That effects are integral to writing is further evident in Derrida' s reexamine all these concepts in tenns of what more and more clearly appears to be description of the supplement. In pointing toward and being dependent upon its their concantenation, not their ... identity"l0 as an indication that all is not lost in supplement, writing "marks an irreducible and generative multiplicity," where what resolving interpretive conflict. is written "unceasingly dislocates itself in a chain of differing and deferring Reading is a process wherein an interpreter, at the very least, attempts to substitutions." Differance makes supplementation not only possible but, more sketch out the margins of a structurally dependent context. The reader must decide importantly, necessary. Writing, as differance, requires a chain of affects and what he/she will regard as the "best" structurally dependent context for a given effects. Remarking that ''the concept of experience in general ... remains governed text. In attempting to make sense of a text, he/she highlights contextual connec­ by the theme of presence ... [and] difJerance finds itself enmeshed in the work that tions, thereby reducing ambiguity to a minimum. Without eliminating ambiguity pulls it through a chain of other 'concepts,' other 'words,' other textual configura­ absolutely, we can certainly limit it. This is precisely what we try to do when we tions," Derrid~ clearly acknowledges that words mutually affect, and simulta­ decide upon the "best" possible context for a text. On precisely this point, Derrida neously impose themselves upon, one another. 5 writes: To speak of a structural dependency is to acknowledge that writing must generate effects; it is structurally impossible to employ words without generating In addressing my answers to you, in the first place and as effects (words affecting other words as well as affecting the reader). Reading is a directly as possible, in entrusting myself to the contextual limits process of focusing on and winding around efficacious and dynamic word detennined by your questions, I shaH reduce just a little the connections. Despite the fact that readers never exhaust all possible connections, violence and the ambiguity. For that is what we want, isn't it, to 26 Contradiction and Confmnation Contradiction and Confirmation 27 reduce them, if possible. denied, or enclosed in a book." While the community of interpreters does not exist in a realist sense, "the reconstitution of a context ... is [nonetheless] a regulative Without identifying a context, reading and speaking about a t{;xt would be ideal in the ethics of reading, of interpretation, or of discussion." The reader's impossible. As Derrida observes: belief in the "regulative ideal" of a larger interpretive community provides a partial basis for contextual decisions. The reader's contextual decisions revolve around the Without a solid competence in this domain, the most venture­ establishing of boundaries of what is believed to be