Michael Peterson
Is his writing difficult? I suppose so, in the sense that it uses a technical vocabulary specific to his work and the tradition he is working from. These are, most basically: phenomenology, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and Western philosophical history.
Combined, this leaves us in a position where the objects of his inquiry are varied and risk being construed as overly general. He writes about ethics, politics, language, time, space, forgiveness, the death penalty, sovereignty, Marxism, etc.
But there is a through-line that links his approaches to all of these subjects and you probably already know what the word here is: deconstruction. We will look at that in a second but first I want to balance that thought with a qualification
Namely, Derrida is always writing about specific things. He isn’t writing about ‘language’ he is writing about Plato’s Phaedrus or Austin’s How to Do Things with Words. He isn’t writing about ‘time,’ but about a specific footnote in Heidegger.
Which is to say that whatever deconstruction turns out to mean, Derrida never ‘does deconstruction.’ Rather, as he says, he reads texts carefully and they deconstruct themselves. So what does that mean?
Deconstruction is simple. It is a term used to refer to those cases when conditions for a phenomenon’s emergence are also conditions that render it impossible. D’s work demonstrates that this structure holds across a variety of phenomena.
So, e g, philosophical attempts to abolish the death penalty repeat the logic of sovereignty that establish the death penalty’s necessity. Hence Derrida’s claim that even in being abolished, the death penalty will survive.
Or, to use a famous example, the logic that would privilege speech over writing due to its ostensible immediacy depends on the mediation that typifies writing, thus asserting the anachronistic primacy of writing over speech.
This latter is important because it establishes D’s so-called critique of the metaphysics of presence AND establishes the problem of writing as a general problem. In Signature Event Context he applies this argument to ‘experience in general’
By ‘impossible,’ then, we really just mean that a given concept, experience, phenomenon, whatever, never coincides with itself fully. It is never present to itself insofar as it depends on a binary that itself cannot be sustained rigorously.
(In this sense, Derrida is also heir to French existentialism, particularly de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity – an under-explored inheritance, in my estimation)
And so Derrida’s work allows us to be rigorous in our critique of texts that seek to establish rigid boundaries and binaries through a thinking of exclusion OR assimilation. And to do so by way of that particular text’s own operation.
Derrida is really just asking us to be attentive readers in all we do. And he has noticed that when we do so, texts (experiences) tend to become less stable and our inheritances from these allow for greater possibilities to come and which remain.
Q&A
Q: NO! That sounds like you’re saying deconstruction is just analysis, which is what bugs me so much about the popular use of the term ‘deconstruct’.
A: I share this worry. I tried here to distinguish deconstruction from the practice Derrida is encouraging, which I here call attentive reading. Deconstruction is not an analysis, as you say, or a method. It is a self reflexive operation of concepts and texts.
Comments
The scent of these moments when the impossible is possible, not in the sense that it would become possible, but in a more radical sense in which the impossible, as impossible, is possible. Winston Fettner
Derrida saying, I never did like the term deconstruction, I love very much everything that I “deconstruct.”
Source
Further reading
Derrida coined deconstruction. He was inspired by Heidegger’s Destruktion of the history of philosophy. Heidegger was shaped by Luther’s destructio. Deconstruction is at the heart of the Protestant Reformation.
Disclaimer #1: There are many iterations & variations of what ‘deconstruction’ has come to mean. It would be reductive to try to encapsulate all of them here. Indeed, the very meaning of the term suggests that texts & words have multiple meanings.
Disclaimer #2: there are HUGE distinctive differences between Luther, Heidegger & Derrida. For one thing, Derrida, a Jew who experienced the effects of anti-Semitism and colonialism, would want nothing to do with Luther’s blatant anti-Judaism or Heidegger’s Nazism.
Scholars, traditions, religions often take ideas from one thinker they disagree w/ & use for a new purpose. But there is a certain spirit that is continuous in Luther > Heidegger > Derrida. Most notably, for ALL of them, deconstruction is a positive phenomenon
Luther was inspired by Erasmus’s “to the sources!” Luther’s critique of the tradition was initiated by an appreciation for tradition. He thought the trad. had become so dependent on philosophical interpretations that they had stopped looking at what their texts actually said.
For Luther, then, “destructio” was BOTH a method of critiquing the tradition but also a passive event, namely, what God does to us. A key point here is that this ‘destructio’ is ultimately positive. Destruction results in edification; our own unmaking results in a new creation.
Heidegger extracts ‘destructio’ from Luther’s theological context & applies it to his analysis of Western philosophyl tradition, accusing the trad. of getting so comfortable w/ a well-worn def. of Being it ultimately conceals how being is actually revealed in our everyday lives.
Like Erasmus’ “to the sources” Heidegger [& Derrida] was inspired by Husserl’s “to the things themselves.” That clarion call ushered in the field of phenomenology. He thought a stronger foundation for philosophy could be attained by an appreciation for everyday experience.
A “destruction” was in order. But not one that despises tradition, but one that invigorates it with new life, one that “should stake out the positive possibilities in that tradition” (BT 22). Destruktion sought to refreshingly open up the tradition to innovation and creativity.
So Derrida develops deconstruction. He offered many def. At times, he speaks of deconstruction as passive, as something that happens: texts turn in on themselves, are self-contradictory, & it is precisely from this undecidability that we gain meaning—interpretation is a risk
My favorite example is hospitality, a term Derrida discussed. “Hospitality” comes from the Latin hospes, which we get ‘hospitality.’ But it can also mean ‘foreign.’ Hospes is a combo of two Latin words: hostis & potis. Hostis is where we get the word ‘host’ but ALSO hostile.
Hostis originally meant stranger, but also went on to mean guest, or enemy, or army (as in the KJV ‘Lord of hosts’). Potis is were we get the word power. SO hospitality hinges on the paradox of having power to let someone in my house and giving up my power so they enjoy my things
A radical, pure notion of hospitality (like a Platonic Form) would then be incomprehensible, as if I invited you to my house and then gave you the keys – like the Bishop in Les Miserables who gives Jean Valjean the candlesticks after he stole his silverware.
And hospitality hinges on the dynamic, vulnerable risk of inviting the stranger who might actually be an enemy. That dynamic is most beautifully articulated in the words of Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker who recently survived a hostage situation.
But Derrida also spoke of deconstruction as a positive method for reading like Luther and Heidegger. as Catherine Keller summarizes: “To deconstruct is not to destroy but to expose our constructed presumptions.”
Say you have a favorite book you’ve highlighted. Over time you become so used to the portions you highlighted that that becomes the text, a kind of myth of the full text. A deconstructive reading wonders: what have I missed from the parts that I didn’t highlight?
But Derrida saw deconstruction as an act of justice. Consistent w/ the Jewish trad of midrashic interpretation which seeks to discern meaning by reading between the lines, deconstruction asks: Who is missing from this text? What voices have been silenced from this trad?
What are ways in which our reading of texts/traditions have become calcified that they’ve been reduced to an algorithm, to a mechanic one-size-fits all law, a hardened past? Deconstruction is an act of justice speaking through the cracks of the law, inviting us to an open future.
As John Caputo summarizes, deconstruction is an attempt to open texts and traditions with new life. It is not an attempt to destroy texts/traditions but to preserve them. The conservation of our traditions requires an inherent progressive openness to an unknown future.
Now before you call this postmodern relativism, one more connection btwn Derrida & Luther: they were both inspired by Augustine. Augustine was shaped by a tradition that thought a good book SHOULD have many meanings not unlike the Jewish trad which says ‘the Torah has 70 faces.’
In Confessions bk 12 Auggie doesn’t think original authorial intent is primary. Thinking abt Genesis, he says not only is it impossible to know Moses’ mind, but he might have intended multiple meanings & might not even have been able to foresee all the meanings in his own text.
Even if we could get the original intent, that’d be useless in itself as it just gives us a bare fact. The goal of reading is not Truth; the goal is the Good. He concludes that many interps. of the Bible should be permitted so long as they contribute to “the fullness of charity.”
So when @kkdumez @bethallisonbarr @socofthesacred or @jemartisby and so many other beautiful people asking important questions are slandered for “deconstruction,” I have to say, well none of them are citing Derrida (& none of them are really proposing anything all that radical!).
But the spirit of their work IS deconstructive: Projects that don’t want to destroy tradition but take it more seriously by reevaluating & innovating it w/ new life, through a concern for justice, for voices that have been silenced due to a calcified tradition. Here I stand.