Derrida on Derrida
October 17, 2004
OK, I said I wasn't going to do any more Derrida postings. But a few discussions I've read tonight have made me think better of this. So many people are ascribing arguments to Derrida he never made. The biggest one always seems to be that he gets rid of notions like reference, right, wrong, true, false, or even the very nature of good readings or bad. Yet he's explicitly denied this. Probably the most forceful place he has done this is in the very clear and readable interview that forms the conclusion to Limited Inc. Since those attacking Derrida so forcefully demonstrate they've not read this interview, allow me a few selected quotes. All critics of late ought really read these. In fact, I'd say that this interview is one of the better explanations Derrida makes of his own philosophy. It is, for that reason alone, a must read text.
[L]et it be said in passing how surprised I have often
been, how amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by
the use or abuse of the following argument: Since the
deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the
skeptical-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed to not believe
in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention
or "meaning-to-say," how can he demand of us now that we
read him with pertinence, precision, rigor? How can he
demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can
he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood, simplified,
deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and
discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple
enough: This definition of the deconstructionist is false
(that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a
bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of
numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must
finally be read or reread. Then perhaps it wil be
understood that the value of truth (and all those values
associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my
writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger,
more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive
contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always
differential-- for example, socio-political-institutional--but
even beyond those determinations) that are relatively stable,
sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to
invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of
consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and
pedagogy." (Derrida, Limited Inc, 146)
Once again (and this probably makes a thousand times I have had to repeat
this, but when will it finally be heard, and why this resistance?): as I
understand it (and I have explained why), the text is not the book, it is not
confined in a volume itself confined to the library. It does not suspend
reference-- to history, to the world, to reality, to being, and especially not
to the other, since to say of history, of the world, of reality, that they
always appear in an experience, hence in a movement of interpretation which
contextualizes them according to a network of differences and hence of referral
to the other, is surely to recall that alterity (difference) is irreducible.
(ibid)
The following is a quote from an interview with Derrida, but I can't seem to find in my notes the reference. I'll post it later when I can find it.
Q: It might be argued that deconstruction inevitably leads to pluralist
interpretation and ultimately to the view that any interpretation is as good
as any other. Do you believe this and how do you select some interpretations
as being better than others?
JD: I am not a pluralist and I would never say
that every interpretation is equal but I do not select. The
interpretations select themselves. I am a Nietzschean in that sense. You
know that Nietzsche insisted on the fact that the principle of
differentiation was in itself selective. The eternal return of the same was
not repetition, it was a selection of more powerful forces. So I would not
say that some interpretations are truer than others. I would say that some
are more powerful than others. The hierarchy is between forces and not
between true and false. There are interpretations which account for more
meaning and this is the criterion.
Q: You would reject, then, the view that
meaning is any response whatever to a sign? That meaning is determined by
the person who reads the sign?
JD: Yes, of course. Meaning is determined by
a system of forces which is not personal. It does not depend on the
subjective identity but on the field of different forces, the conflict of
forces, which produce interpretations.
Q: You would, therefore, reject the
theory of authorial intention as determinate of meaning?
JD: Yes. I would
not say that there is no interest in referring to the intentional purpose.
There are authors, there are intentionalities, there are conscious purposes.
We must analyse them, take them seriously. But the effects of what we caul
author's intentions are dependent on something which is not the individual
intention, which is not intentional.
Q:There is a pragmatic aspect to this
question of intentionality. It has been suggested that it is only in the
field of literary theory that reader-based theories of interpretation are
taken seriously, that all other fields of discourse accept author-based
intention. Reader-based theories of interpretation tend, therefore,
according to this view, to partition off literary speculation from the rest
of experience and thus to trivialise literary speculation. What are your
views on this?
JD: I do not accept this opposition between reader-based and
author-based meaning. It comes from a misunderstanding of deconstruction,
one which sees deconstruction as free interpretation based only on the
fantasies of the reader. No one is free to read as he or she wants. The
reader does not interpret freely, taking into account only his own reading,
excluding the author, the historical period in which the text appeared and so
on.
Q: So you would not consider yourself an anti-historicist?
JD: Not at
all. I think that one cannot read without trying to reconstruct the
historical context but history is not the last word, the final key, of
reading. Without being anti-historicist, I am suspicious of the traditional
concepts of history, the Hegelian and Marxist concepts.
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