Jacques Derrida

 

Jacques Derrida took an hermetic view of language. Words refer to other words, not to things or thoughts. His quarrel was with 'logocentrism', that assumption (as he saw it) that we have an idea in our minds which our writing or speaking attempts to express. That is not at the case. No one possesses the full significance of their words. Texts in some sense write themselves: i.e. are independent of an author or his intentions.

Derrida is commonly explained by developing a concept of Saussure's. Just as phenomes derive their significance from their ability to contrast recognizably with other sounds, and to replace other phenomes in words, so our understanding of a word depends on other words — on an endless chain of signifiers, pointing to nothing beyond themselves and developing out a history of usage entirely lost to us. In short, language depends on nothing, no fundamental ground of logic, science or society. But though signifiers continually defer to each other (différance), they may leave a trace of their deferments (discernible through Derrida's deconstruction) where the author of the text in question has suppressed meaning by choosing one word in preference to another. Whence comes the author's authority to make this choice? Not from any conception of "what he meant", as this has no existence outside words. Nor from any unvoiced, inner intention, which is again without any final determinant of meaning, being just the product of repeated suppressions of other thoughts.

As to be expected from its approach, Derrida's terminology shifted over the years: new words were coined and old words given new meanings. Concepts don't have settled definitions, indeed can't have, but assume new shapes depending on what deconstruction is 'reading' at the time. That opens new possibilities as Derrida, for example, built on Kierkegaard's leap of faith, distinguishing decision from undecidability. Since the effect or significance of some decision is never wholly known, but refers to some future event (which is undeciderable in its turn), every decision must to some extent be an act of faith. This is the feature that makes it a decision, rather than a mechanical follow on from the facts.

Derrida has been called philosopher, anti-philosopher, literary theorist, literary subverter and intellectual joker. {2} But his central tenets are clear. Once we use language (speech or writing) to refer to reality, that reality is linguistically formulated and therefore indeterminate. Meaning is not something preexisting in the mind that we struggle to express. Like the main analytical schools of language philosophy from Hume onwards, and contrary to Saussure, Derrida does not regard words as the expression of ideas.

As practised by his many disciples, deconstruction has become method of reading a text: interpreting it (or misinterpreting it, as critics would say). Reading should be a free, joyous, creative performance, and literary deconstruction does just that — encourages texts to undermine themselves, subvert any settled or sensible meaning.

Derrida himself was serious, and not entirely as literary critics interpret him. Certainly he did not sharply distinguish between literature and philosophy. Nor did he like the specialization of ivory-tower philosophy. Like Foucault and Lacan, Derrida belonged to the intelligentsia, and would have been failing in his social responsibilities not to have demonstrated how words are used for political ends, often to intimidate and repress the less-advantaged communities.

Why was he so popular? Because his views, incompletely understood, furnish grounds for rewriting the canon of western literature. If everything is merely interpretation — individual, shifting, groundless — there are no reasons for preferring Jane Austin to a slush romance. But Derrida is then being misinterpreted.

Certainly he understood the irony, if not absurdity, of employing as weapons the very words he criticized. But Derrida's was guerrilla warfare, attack and retreat, with no ground held. Awareness of the fundamental problems is what he aimed at — problems which persist even if we ground understanding in brain processes and regard words as articulations of behaviour which is largely instinctive and unconscious. Derrida's revelations were not revelations at all, only late and perhaps sensible reactions to the overblown claims of philosophy.

An expanded article can be found on TextEtc.

 

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Jacques Derrida

 

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