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                Eva Casañ Mínguez

Structuralism/Poststructuralism.
Deconstruction: some assumptions.
A few (over-simplified) definitions.
Barbara Johnson on Derrida and Deconstructive Reading..
Derrida´s voice.

        Heidegger meant by "the end of philosophy" the end of a philosophy rooted in metaphysics. He argued that the only real philosophical questionshave to do with "being" (ontology) and that "transcendental" questionswere meaningless. By the sixties, the notion of the "end of philosophy " haddeveloped into the notion that philosophy was nothing other than theideology of the western ethos. The liberal humanist tradition presented a defacto situation (its own pre-eminence) as a de jure situation (its truth). Inother words, it presented its traditional privilege as a natural superiority.Such a position is ideological.

        Derrida argued that Heidegger had not escaped transcendentalism,that his "Being" was as transcendental as any other "Transcendental Signified." He also argued that even if the charge against philosophy asideology were true, the charge was levelled in the language of philosophy,which can not be escaped. All that was really being asked was that thedominant ideology (philosophy = the ideology of the western ethos) bereplaced by another broader or at least different ideology such as Marxism(philosophy=discourse of the ruling class), Freudianism (philosophy=sexual symptom), anti-Freudianism (philosophy =phallocratic ideology).In the end, he argued, the order of reason is absolute, "since it is only toitself that an appeal against it can be brought, only in itself that a protestagainst it can be made; on its own terrain, it leaves us no other recoursethan to stratagem and strategy."

        Derrida did not quarrel with Heidegger's position that history, asperceived in the philosophic tradition was over; only that Heideggerhimself had not escaped it. Derrida raised the question of what there was tosay after philosophy was over (but ironically still in place, because reasonis absolute and can only be questioned in its own terms). The strategy hechose was duplicity, the playing of a double game. He would operate inthe language of reason, since there was no other, but try to lay traps for itby posing it problems it could not answer, exposing the inherentcontradictions in apparently reasonable positions. He called this strategydeconstruction, after Heidegger's term destruktion.

        For Heidegger, destruktion was essentially, the history of theinquiry into history. Dasein , the individual's being in the world, is oftentrapped by the everyday ordinariness of life into interpreting itself in termsof the world it knows and the tradition it inherits
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        This condition Heideggercalls fallenness, and the individuals who have fallen into it das man (thethey). Anyone who wishes to live authentically must escape from theaverage everyday ordinariness of life and contemplate his/her own death(non-being, or nothingness). This is done through the agency of angst , akind of generalized suffering caused by the fear of dying, and theintellectual exercise of destruktion. Destruktion, then is a combination ofa negative analysis of "today," the average everyday world and a positiveanalysis of history that tries to achieve authenticity through the rigorousquestioning of accepted authority. Often this means breaking a word intoits component parts in order to trace its history.

        Derrida's deconstruction is a more limited but even more rigorousform of interrogation. Since the "speaking subject," when he/she speaks,must speak the language of reason, there must exist some silent regionwhere the double agent deconstructor can sort out his stratagem against theLogos, the rules of reason. In order for this to be possible, two conditionsmust maintain:

1. In order for the double game of duplicity to be played, thelanguage of philosophy must already be full of duplicity (both in its senseof doubleness and its sense of hypocrisy or lying.)

2. The strategist (speaking subject, deconstructor) must resist thepower of Logos (reason) by maintaining a indefensible position ofempiricism, erasing the distinction between truths of fact and truths ofreason. This will be accomplished through différance.

        For Heidegger, difference was the result of temporality. Sincehistory and language precede the self and help construct the self, the selfcan never step outside itself and see itself outside of history and language.The self (in Heidegger's language dasein) can only conceive an historicallypast self, different from the existential self experiencing the world in thepresent. In that sense, the self (as subject) is always different from the self (as object).

        Derrida's concept la différance contains two notions: differenceand deference, a separation of identity and a separation in time. Derridacame to his notion through an attempt to show the impossibility of Husserl's promise of a "phenomenology of history" by deconstructing thenotion. He showed that a phenomenology of history would have to answerthe question "how is a truth possible for us?" But if a truth is to be truth, itmust be absolute, independent of any point of view(unless, of course, weare God, in which case the question is meaningless). Phenomenology seeksthe origin of truth, and it locates this origin in an inaugural fact which bydefinition can only occur once. The phenomenologist argues that only the present exists. The past isretained in the present through the present ruins of a civilization that isabsent. The future is mooted, or predicted, but only in the present. But inorder for the past to be retainedin the present and the future tobeannounced in the present, the present must not only be present. It mustalso be a present that is still to come (future) and a present that is alreadypast (past). At this point difference appears. The present is not identicalwith itself.

        This difference raises again the problem of the inaugural fact Suppose we have the trace of some inaugural event, say the stonefoundations at L'Anse aux Meadows. Out of our present we may forourselves assume these to be Viking remains, though we cannot withcertainty know what meaning they had for their makers. We cannot makeour meaning coincide with their meaning, yet we know that when that pastwas a present, it had all the properties of a present. That other must alsobe a same. Again, this failure of the past to coincide with itself is a sourceof différance.

        If we are to develop a phenomenology of history we must posit whatHusserl called "a principle of principles." This principle is that history ismeaningful, and however confused or in need of mediation, it can betransmitted from generation to generation. It is univocal, even though itcan never be articulated at any moment. Being and meaning can nevercoincide except at infinity, so meaning is always deferred. The de jure situation (what is right) and the de facto situation (what is fact) can alsonever coincide. The reason for this is that there is an originary differencebetween fact and right, being and meaning.

        Another necessary but paradoxical concept is the idea of originarydelay. Derrida argues that a first is only a first by consequence of a secondthat follows it. The first is only recognizable as a first and not merely asingular by the arrival of the second. The second is therefore theprerequisite of the first. It permits the first to be first by its delayedarrival. The first, recognizable only after the second, is in this respect athird. Origin, then is a kind of dress rehearsal, what Derrida calls larépétition d'une première, in terms of the theatre, a representation of thefirst public performance which has not yet occurred. The original, in thatsense, is always a copy. In this way, Derrida deconstructs Husserl'sprinciple of principles which always relied on being able to distinguish theoriginal from later copies.

        If we apply the same analysis to signs and things in the "real" worldwe come to the paradoxical situation that the sign precedes the referent.The sign "dog," precedes the four-legged barking creature because thecreature is only recognizable as that after the sign "dog" has been appliedto it. Derrida has shown that, contrary to Husserl's notion of a pureorigin, consciousness never precedes language,, and we cannot see languageas a representation of a silently lived through experience.

        This is the core of deconstructive thinking. We can only understandthe priority of the sign by an enquiry into writing. Earlier, we looked atgraphemes (the units of writing) as a second-order sign system. Derridasees the relationship between these signs as semiological. The graphic signstands in for the phonemic sign. It is therefore "the sign of a sign," whilethe oral sign is the "sign of the thing." Writing is then supplementary.(Even the oral sign is supplementary, since it exists as supplement to the"real world." The graphic sign of writing is particularly supplemental sinceit is a supplement to a supplement, a sign of a sign.) In Off Grammatology Derrida argues that writing should not be subordinated to speech, and thissubordination is nothing more than an historical prejudice. He arguesfurther that to define a graphic sign is to define any sign. Every sign is asignifier whose signified is another signifier. Think of looking up signifiersin a dictionary. What you get is a list of other signifiers. Meaning is always deferred.

        The idea of the supplement raises some interesting questions. We canthink of the origin as a place where there is no originary, only asupplement in the place of a deficient originary. It is deficient for thisreason. We can think of the supplement as a surplus, something extra addedto the whole and outside of it. But if the whole is really the whole, thennothing can be added to it. If the supplement is something and not nothing,then it must expose the defect of the whole, since something that canaccomodate the addition of a supplement must be lacking something withinitself. Derrida calls this "the logic of the supplement."

        In the same way, the present is only present on the condition that itallude to the absence from which it distinguishes itself. Metaphysics,Derrida argues, is the act of erasing this distinguishing mark, the trace ofthe absent. We may now define trace as the sign left by the absent thing,after it has passed on the scene of its former presence. Every present, inorder to know itself as present, bears the trace of an absent which definesit. It follows then that an originary present must bear an originary trace, the present trace of a past which never took place, an absolute past. In thisway, Derrida believes, he achieves a position beyond absolute knowledge.

        Derrida distinguishes between a meditating on presence, which hedefines as philosophy, and the possibility of meditating on non-presence.How can these two kinds of thinking, one of which takes issue with theother co-exist? Derrida argues that philosophy is always already there(not that it has always been.) Philosophy can only be a thinking ofpresence, since experience is lived and tested in the present. The other kindof thinking which is not philosophical cannot therefore appeal to individualempirical experience. Instead it appeals to a general experience.

        At the level of text, then, the appeal is to writing in general. Everytext is a double text. It is philosophical and and understood by classicalinterpretation at one level of its reading. But it also contains traces andcontradictions, indications of the second text which a classical reading cannever uncover. No synthesis is possible. The second text is not an oppositewhich can be reconciled. It is what Derrida calls its counterpart, slightlyphased. It requires a deconstructive reading of the difference (whatDerrida calls a double science or double séance).

        The meditation on non-presence is a meditation on the self as other. Every metaphysical text is separated from itself by what Derrida calls a"scarcely perceptible veil." A slight displacement in the reading of the text
is sufficient to collapse one into the other, to make comedy wisdom or viceversa. Derrida's duplicity splits the metaphysical text in two, revealing itsinherent contradictions. Derrida's analysis insists on the undecidability ofwords, their unresolvable contradictions.

        One of the most important concepts in Derrida's analysis is the ideaof "sous rature," (under erasure.) Heidegger often crossed out the wordBeing (Being) and let both the word and its erasure stand. He felt the Beingwas prior to and beyond signification or meaning, and hence to signify itwas inadequate, though there existed no alternative. Derrida extends thispractise to all signs. Since any signifier has as its signified anothersignifier, it always defers meaning and it always carries traces of othermeanings. It must therefore be studied as defective, incomplete, undererasure.
 
 

Deconstruction assumptions

In deconstruction the basic structuralist principle of difference is located ontologically as well as semiotically: at the very point of beingness of every thing there is difference -- or différance -- because only through différance is one thing not another thing instead. Différance comes before being; similarly, a trace comes before the presence of a thing (as anything which is is itself by virtue of not being something else, by differing, and that which it differs from remains as a trace, that whose absence is necessary for it to be); so too writing precedes speech -- a system of differences precedes any location of meaning in articulation. See my summary of Derrida,

Différance.Deconstruction, as do other poststructural theories, declines the structuralist assumption that structural principles are essences -- that there are universal structural principles of language which exist 'before' the incidence of language. (The emphasis on the concrete, historical and contingent in opposition to the eternalities of essence reveals one of deconstruction's filiations with existentialism.) All 'principles' of existence (i.e., of experience) are historically situated and are structured by the interplay of individual experience and institutional force, through the language, symbols, environment, exclusions and oppositions of the moment (and of the previous moments through which this one is constructed). Structures are historical, temporary, contingent, operating through differentiation and displacement.

There is no outside of the text; everything that we can know is text, that is, is constructed of signs in relationship. This claim does not mean that there is nothing outside of language: the claim refers to the realm of human knowledge, not to the realm of concrete existence (elusive as that might be). Deconstruction does not deny the existence of an independent, physical world.

All texts are constituted by difference from other texts (therefore similarity to them). Any text includes that which it excludes, and exists in its differences from/filiations with other texts.

Opposites are already united; they cannot be opposites otherwise. Nor can they be a unity, and be themselves. They are the alternating imprint of one another. There is no nihilism without logocentrism, no logocentrism without nihilism, no presence without absence, no absence without presence, and so forth.

Inherent in language itself is difference and deferral; it is impossible for language to be identical with its referents. A word or any other sign can only mobilize the play of the fields of signs from which it is distinguished, and from which it is of necessity removed. See quote from Barbara Johnson, below.

Inherent in language also is the contest between grammar and rhetoric. Grammar is the syntagmatic protocol, meaning as created by placement; rhetoric is the intertextual system of signs which makes what the grammar means, mean something else (irony and metaphor are principal examples). Grammatical and rhetorical meaning cannot be identical, and one may well not be able to assign a priority of 'meaning'.

In a sense deconstruction is profoundly historical: it sees temporality as intrinsic to meaning, in that meaning can only be structured against that which is before it, which is structured against that which is before that. Meaning is that which differs, and which defers. The claim is not that there is no meaning -- that is a misunderstanding of deconstruction: the claim is that what we take to be meaning is a shifting field of relations in which there is no stable point, in which dynamic opposing meanings may be present simultaneously, in which the meaning is textually modulated in a interweaving play of texts. Meaning circulates, it is always meaning by difference, by being other. The meaning-through-difference creates/draws on 'traces' or 'filiations', themselves in some senses historical.

Deconstruction is also historical insofar and it functions etymologically, turning to the root, often metaphorical, meanings of words for an understanding of how they function within the web of differentiation which spans the chasm of the non-human over which we constantly live.

As deconstruction works on (in both senses of 'works on') the web of differentiation which spans the chasm of the non-human over which we constantly live, it is intrinsically and deeply human and humane. It is affirmative of the multiplicity, the paradoxes, the richness and vibrancy, of our life as signifying beings. If it seems to deny affirmation, it is because it knows that affirmation is always, intimately and compellingly, itself, only in the presence of and by virtue of negation. To fully live we must embrace our deaths.

If deconstruction seems to oppose Humanism, it is because Humanism operates by substituting the concept 'man' for the concept 'God'(or 'order', 'nature', 'Truth', 'logos', etc.) and so placing 'man' as the unproblematic ground of meaningfulness for human life. It should be clear, however, that 'man' is then a hypothesized center, substituting for another hypothesized center, in the history of metaphysics. Deconstruction wants to clarify the instability upon which such a concept is grounded.

One can and indeed must work with ideas such as 'center', 'man', 'truth', but must work with them knowing their instability; to do so is, in deconstructive terms, to place them "under erasure." To signify this graphically, use the strikethrough option on your computer. That's the truth.

Deconstructive reading can be applied to any text. It is a theory of reading, not a theory of literature. Derrida generally deconstructs philosophical writing, showing the metaphysical contradictions and the historicity of writing which lays claim to the absolute.

'Literature' is a writing clearly open to deconstructive reading, as it relies so heavily on the multiple meanings of words, on exclusions, on substitutions, on intertextuality, on filiations among meanings and signs, on the play of meaning, on repetition (hence significant difference). In Jakobson's phrasing, literature attends to (or, reading as literature attends to), the poetic function of the text. This, in (one guesses) a Derridean understanding would mean that the naive, thetic, transcendental reading of a text is com-plicated (folded-with) by a counter-reading which de-constructs the thetic impetus and claims.

The more 'metaphysical' or universal and 'meaningful' a text the more powerfully it can provoke deconstructive reading; similarly as 'reading as literature' implies a raising of meaning to the highest level of universality, 'reading as literature' also calls forth the potential for a strong counter-reading. As Derrida says, "the more it is written, the more it shakes up its own limits or lets them be thought."

Some attributes of 'literature' in the deconstructive view are:

that literature is an institution, brought into being by legal, social and political processes;

that literature is that which at the same time speaks the heart of the individual and which shows how the individual is made possible only by otherness, exteriority, institution, law, structures and meanings outside oneself;

that literature is both (simultaneously) a singular, unrepeatable event and a generalizable experience, and demonstrates the tension/ antithesis between these -- as something which is original is also of necessity not original, or it could not have been thought.

It is possible that texts which 'confess' the highly mediated nature of our experience, texts which themselves throw the reader into the realm of complex, contested, symbolized, intertextual, interactive mediated experience, texts which therefore move closer than usual to deconstructing themselves, are in a sense closer to reality (that is, the truth of our real experience) than any other texts. This kind of text conforms to the kind of text known as 'literature' -- most clearly, to modernist literature, but to all texts which participate in one or more of the ironic, the playful, the explicitly intertextual, the explicitly symbolizing -- from Renaissance love poetry to Milton to Swift to Fielding to Tennyson to Ondaatje.

Reading these texts in the deconstructive mode is, however, not a matter of 'decoding the message'; it is a matter of entering into the thoughtful play of contradiction, multiple reference, and the ceaseless questioning of conclusions and responses. The less a text deconstructs itself, the more we can and must deconstruct it, that is, show the structures of thought and assumption which ground it and the exclusions which make its meaning possible. If, as Roman Jakobson suggests, a mark of literature is that it draws attention to its textuality, its constructedness, then literature may be said to be inherently closer to 'reality' than other forms of writing or discourse are, just when it seems to be furthest away, as our 'reality' is symbolic, signified, constructed.

The particular strategy of deconstructive reading is based on fissures in what we take to be the common-sense experience of texts and reality, and on reversals, oppositions and exclusions that are lying in wait in, or implicit in, signification and textuality. Take, for example, the sorts of conflict Jonathan Culler suggests in On Deconstruction that the critic is on the lookout for:

the asymetrical opposition or value-laden hierarchy (e.g. host and parasite, logocentrism and nihilism) in which one term is promoted at the expense of the other. The second term can be shown to constitute or signal the condition for the first, and the hierarchy up-turned (this is not a simple reversal, as the reversal is then in the condition of reversibility, and so forth).

points of condensation, where a single term brings together different lines of argument or sets of values (and hostilities to hosts hosting the Host).

The text will be examined for ways in which it suggests a difference from itself, interpretations which undermine the apparently primary interpretation.

figures of self-reference, when a text applies to something else a description, figure or image which can be read as a self-description, an image of its own operations. This opens up an examination of the stability and cogency of the text itself. An example of self-reference is in the vines and parasites in place of the erased (, i.e. under erasure) antique and learned imagery of Shelley's "Epipsychidion" in Miller's "The Critic as Host," the natural images themselves an image for and replacement for (every image of is also a replacement for) the tracing of writing, which is itself the writing that constitutes the poem; the images of the poem themselves attempt to naturalize what cannot be naturalized, writing itself, in a recuperation in which the act of naturalizing reveals itself as an ancient strategy of meaning, so the imagery is an image of itself.

conflicting readings of a texts can be see as reenactments of conflicts within a text, so that readings can be read as partializing moves simplifying the complex interplay of potential meaning within the text.

Attention to the marginal, and that which supplements -- as with hierarchized oppositions, the margin in fact encompasses or enables the rest, so that a marginalized figure, idea, etc. can be re-read as the 'center', or controlling element; similarly the supplement re-centers and re-orients that which it supplements, as the fact of supplementing reveals the inadequacy, the partiality/incompleteness of the supplemented item.

The deconstructive activity is ceaseless. It can never be resolved in a dialectic (that is, there is no synthesis), 1) but is always reaching back to a pattern of operations, antitheses, displacements and so forth, each 'behind', or 'before', or logically, ontologically, referentially, hierarchically, temporally or semantically or etymologically, etc, 'prior to' the other, and 2) alternating between the poles of antitheses or opposite.

Like the form of mathematics called topography, deconstruction studies surfaces, as there are no depths, however firmly we may think we see them: there are only twists, (con)figurations, (re)visions.