Derrida and Deconstruction
The most sophisticated philosopher of post-structuralism is Jacques Derrida. His influence is widespread, clearest of all perhaps in philosophy and literary studies but with an implicit or explicit effect on nearly all the social sciences except economics and cognitive psychology.
The spirit of his philosophy is often more apparent than the letter, although the term ‘deconstruction’ in now fairly common in academic circles.Derrida is best situated in the tradition of Nietzsche and Heidegger (another German philosopher who is commonly labelled an existentialist). The focus of his work is again language and the way in which language relates to our world and our experience. Our way into this chapter was through Lacan’s interpretation of Saussure, and the priority that he gave to the signifier, but it will be remembered that while Lacan was aware of the continual movement through signifiers, along, if you like, the signifying chain, he also argued that there were points where that movement was fixed. For Derrida there is no fixed point: he is the philosopher of absence, and what we suggested was a methodological strategy for Saussure becomes what can only be called a metaphysical assumption for Derrida, although doubtless he would deny that, as metaphysics is a crime that only others commit.
The others who commit metaphysics include nearly everybody who has contributed to Western philosophy, and the metaphysical assumption Derrida criticizes is the assumption that there is some final presence which is signified. Again we find the idea we met with Lacan, that when we try to give a final meaning to a word we are embarking on an endless (and circular) task of travelling around the signifiers. As a way of showing this, Derrida puts some concepts ‘under erasure’, a disturbing habit of writing the concept and putting a large X through it. Meaning is always elsewhere, never in the words we use; it is always absent, but most philosophers have assumed or sought a meaning that was present.
Derrida develops a series of critiques of philosophers he regards as guilty of assuming a presence on two levels (Derrida 1973, 1976, 1978). The first level is a critique of phonocentrism, of giving priority to the spoken word rather than the written word - Saussure is seen as guilty of this. Speech can give an impression or illusion of selfidentity in a way that writing cannot - when I talk I can think that I am expressing my real self; it is only when I sit down at my desk and try to write that I begin to question what I am saying. If a student in a class asks me what Derrida means by ‘phonocentrism, I could give a short answer which I could feel to be sufficient: ‘He means giving priority to spoken language over written language.' However, looking at my computer screen and trying to elaborate on the idea I find myself asking whether this is what he really means - it can't be that he says this because written language precedes speech historically, or because it is higher than speech in some conceptual hierarchy, since it is precisely that sort of hierarchy that he is contesting. Or have I found a weak point in his argument? And so on.
The second level is a critique of ‘logocentricity', the overarching belief in a presence, something to which the word refers, some firm and finite meaning. Logocentric thought looks for the foundations of knowledge, something Husserl does by means of the phenomenological reduction, or for the goals of knowledge, as did Hegel for example when he argued that the development of thought led to the end of history, a final totalization. And it also looks for a principle around which ideas can be organized in a hierarchy. For Derrida language is metaphorical and we can never break free of metaphor. There is no way out of here.
Deconstruction, a term now in use well beyond the boundaries of post-structuralism, involves a constant questioning and dismantling of implicit or explicit notions of presence and a concentration on the play of metaphors, the play of language.
The author becomes a means by which metaphors reproduce and extend themselves. Thus my attempt to explain Derrida's work here cannot possibly achieve its goal, since, strictly speaking, there is no work to explain, no pure meaning out there in his books to which I or anybody can gain access. All I can do is produce metaphors for his metaphors in the endless play of texts upon one another. A distinctly Derridean notion in literary criticism is that of ‘intertextuality' - literary texts being written about and upon each other with is a constant interpenetration between them. There is no one meaning or even one set of meanings to a novel, or a philosophical system or even a scientific theory. If we wish we can read our computer manual as a poem. The late Madan Sarup sums up all this as well as anybody: with deconstruction there is a shift from ‘identities to differences, unities to fragmentations, ontology to philosophy of language, epistemology to rhetoric, presence to absence' (Sarup 1993: 59).