The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (125 page)

WRITING
is not a sign of a sign, except if one says it of all signs…. If every sign refers to a sign, and if ‘sign of a sign’ signifies
WRITING
, certain conclusions … will become inevitable…. [A] certain model of
WRITING
[will be] necessarily … imposed … as instrument and technique of representation of a system of language. (
Grammatology
, p. 43)

The maintenance of the rigorous distinction … between the
signans
and the
signatum
[i.e. the signifier and the signified], the equation of the
signatum
and the concept …, inherently leaves open the possibility of thinking a
concept signified in and of itself
, a concept simply present for thought, independent of a relationship to language, that is of a relationship to a system of signifiers. By leaving open this possibility … Saussure … accedes to the classical exigency of what I have proposed to call a ‘transcendental signified,’ which in and of itself, in its essence, would refer to no signifier, would exceed the chain of signs, and would no longer itself function as a signifier…. Of course [questioning the possibility of such a transcendental signified] is an operation that must be undertaken with prudence for … it must pass through the difficult deconstruction
³⁹
of the entire history of metaphysics which imposed … upon semiological science in its entirety this fundamental quest for a ‘transcendental signified’ and a concept independent of language; this quest not being imposed from without by something like ‘philosophy,’ but rather by everything that links our language, our culture, our ‘system of thought’ to the history and system of metaphysics. (‘Semiology’, p. 19, emphasis in original)

From the moment that there is meaning there are nothing but signs. We
think only in signs
…. One could call
play
the absence of the transcendental signified as limitlessness of play,
that is to say as the destruction of … the metaphysics of presence. (
Grammatology
, p. 50, emphasis in original)
⁴⁰

4. Deconstruction

Derrida rejects the prioritization of
SPEECH
over
WRITING
then. We might be tempted to say that he reverses it, prioritizing
WRITING
over
SPEECH
instead. But that would be wrong.
⁴¹
It would be wrong even if denying the existence of
SPEECH
, and concluding that all there is is
WRITING
, could count as a limiting case of prioritizing
WRITING
over
SPEECH
. Derrida denies the very idea of a distinction between the exercise of direct marks and the exercise of indirect marks. That is why, when he eventually concludes that all there is is
WRITING
, the notion of
WRITING
involved is an extended notion of
WRITING
that does not need to be understood in terms of that distinction. In the terminology that I used in the previous section it comprises not indirect marks, but non-direct marks. (Cf.
Grammatology
, pp. 68–69, and ‘Structure’, p. 281.)

On the other hand, as I tried to make clear, Derrida does not completely dissociate his notion of
WRITING
from that distinction either. The notion of
WRITING
as it occurs in that distinction is a kind of prototype of his notion of
WRITING
. And while there is a clear sense in which he rejects the former, as he does its complementary notion of
SPEECH
, there is another clear sense in which he does not: the sense in which ‘reject’ means something like ‘have nothing to do with’ (cf.
Grammatology
, pp. 13–14). For those two notions are his starting point. He subjects them to scrutiny, reflects on their history, and considers what may become of them. In particular, he considers whether either of them can adapt and evolve in such a way as to survive the discredited distinction between them, with its own implicit prioritization. And he believes that one of them can. Hence his own extended notion of
WRITING
.
⁴²

We see here an instance of a practice that Derrida adopts more widely, the practice to which he gives the name ‘deconstruction’.
⁴³
I use the word ‘practice’ advisedly. Derrida expressly denies that deconstruction is a ‘method’, or that it ‘[can] be transformed into one[,] especially if the technical and procedural significations of the word are stressed,’ or that it
‘[can] be reduced to … a set of rules and transposable procedures,’ or even that it is ‘an
act
or an
operation
’ (‘Letter to a Friend’, p. 3, emphasis in original).

Roughly,
⁴⁴
deconstruction involves focusing on some prioritization in how sense has been made of things, whether on a large scale or on a small scale, and then, with the help of forces at work in the very sense-making concerned, to ask questions of the prioritization: to challenge it, to unsettle it, to consider what goes unsaid as a result of it, if appropriate to reverse or reject it, at the very least to toy with its reversal or rejection, and to see what new or renewed ways of making sense of things may emerge from the process. (See e.g.
Grammatology
, p. 24; ‘Structure’, passim; and ‘Implications’, passim.) Such new or renewed ways of making sense of things may or may not be an improvement on what preceded them. This is an exploratory exercise, not some foolproof recipe for coming to a better understanding of things.

Nor is it as iconoclastic or as bloody as it is sometimes presented as being.
⁴⁵
‘It is not,’ Derrida insists, ‘a question of junking [certain] concepts, nor do we have the means to do so’ (‘Semiology’, p. 22). Rather, as he goes on to say,

it is more necessary … to transform concepts, to displace them, to turn them against their presuppositions, to reinscribe them in other chains, and little by little to modify the terrain of our work and thereby produce new configurations. (Ibid.; cf. ‘
Sec
’, p. 329)

‘I do not believe in decisive ruptures,’ he adds (ibid.; cf. ‘Positions’, pp. 37ff.). In any case, deconstruction is largely a matter of allowing extant ways of making sense of things to run their own course, to succumb to their own inner logic. ‘There is,’ Derrida says, ‘always already deconstruction, at work in works…. Texts deconstruct
themselves
by themselves’ (
Memoires
, p. 123).

The repudiation of traditional metaphysics is for Derrida a paradigmatically deconstructive project – which means that, here again, he is following Heidegger. In
Chapter 18
, §4, we saw how for Heidegger the repudiation of traditional metaphysics involved appropriating traditional metaphysical concepts and traditional metaphysical methods. It was not, in other words, a simple matter of turning one’s back on the tradition. It was a matter of using the tradition’s own resources to subvert it from
within.
⁴⁶
Likewise for Derrida, who never tires of reminding us of how the project is situated within its own target area. Here are some pertinent quotations:
⁴⁷

In order to exceed metaphysics it is necessary that a trace be inscribed within the text of metaphysics. (‘
Ousia
and
Gramm
’, p. 65; cf.
Grammatology
, p. 162)

The revolution against reason, in the historical form of classical reason … , … can be made only within it. (‘Cogito’, p. 36)

I have insisted again and again that I am not ‘rejecting’ metaphysics. I do not ‘reject’ metaphysics. Not even Platonism. Indeed, I think there is an unavoidable necessity of reconstituting a certain Platonic gesture. (‘Baldwin’, p. 105)
⁴⁸

There is no sense in doing without the concepts of metaphysics in order to shake metaphysics. We have no language – no syntax and no lexicon – which is foreign to [the history of metaphysics]; we can pronounce not a single destructive proposition which has not already had to slip into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest. To take one example from many: … we cannot do without the concept of the sign, for we cannot give up [its] metaphysical complicity without also giving up the critique we are directing against this complicity…. [The] metaphysical reduction of the sign needed the opposition it was reducing. (‘Structure’, pp. 280–281)
⁴⁹

All of this notwithstanding, the Platonic ideals listed in §2(a) – those abiding presences in whose name much of traditional metaphysics has been practised, all of which presuppose some variation of the prioritization of presence over absence
⁵⁰
– are ultimately to be rejected. Each of the following, in its capacity as a member of the Platonic pantheon, gets defied, dumbfounded, and eventually deposed at Derrida’s deconstructive hands:

• rationality (e.g. ‘Reason’, p. 9, and ‘
Ousia
and
Gramm
’, p. 38)

• consciousness (e.g. ‘
Différance
’, pp. 16ff.)

• truth (e.g.
Grammatology
, pp. 10ff.; ‘
Différance
’, p. 18; and ‘
Ousia
and
Gramm
’, p. 84; cf. also ‘Moore’, p. 84)

• identity (e.g.
Speech and Phenomena
, pp. 81–82, and ‘Semiology’, pp. 21–22)
⁵¹

and of course

• presence (e.g.
Grammatology
, pp. 46ff.).
⁵²

5. Différance

Derrida’s most famous coinage is the word ‘
différance
’, which differs by one letter from the familiar French word ‘
différence
’.
⁵³
Why this addition to the lexicon?

The French verb ‘
différer
’ can be translated either as ‘to differ’ or as ‘to defer’. The noun ‘
différence
’, with an ‘e’, corresponds to only one of these. It can be translated as ‘difference’ but not as ‘deferral’. Derrida wants a noun that does double duty – not, however, simply by standing ambiguously for both difference and deferral, but in what we shall see to be a much more
subtle way that involves having connotations of both. Hence his coinage. (See ‘
Différance
’, esp. pp. 3–9.
⁵⁴
)
⁵⁵