314 framework Flashcards
The Afterword (Derrida): Elaborate on what Derrida understands pertaining to the nature of the decision.
Searle accuses Derrida of putting forth a strawman argument:
“Some American critics of your work (Searle among them) accuse you of setting up a kind of “all or nothing” choice between pure realization or self-presence and complete Freeplay or undecidability’. They argue that you posit a state of “ideal purity”… as the goal of language or of interpretation, and then when this goal predictably proves illusory, you conclude that language and interpretation are in some profound way problematized.”
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Derrida’s response to this accusation starts off by addressing his notion of undecidability/ Freeplay/ jeu.
He says that the strawman Searle is accusing him of, isn’t a viewpoint to which he would subscribe.
- ||Complete uncertainty is complete and hence impossible ||.
“Greatly overestimated in my texts in the United States, this notion of “Freeplay” is an inadequate translation of the lexical network connected to the word ‘jeu’, which I used in my first texts, but sparingly and in a highly defined manner.”
The three understandings of ‘jeu’ include (TA p 116,117):
1. Freeplay as anti-dialectical, meaning it resists binarity.
2. Freeplay as calculable, meaning that it defines within the order of the calculable, “the LIMITS OF DECIDABILITY, OF CALCULABILITY OR OF FORMALISABLE COMPLETENESS”
3. Freeplay as HETEROGENOUS to the dialectic and the calculable.
(An understanding which is essential for the DECISION and ethical-political RESPONSIBILITY).
Jeu doesn’t perfectly fit into neither the order of the dialectic nor the calculable, even as a challenge to this order.
|| “ In accordance with what is only ostensibly a paradox, this particular UNDECIDABLE opens the field of DECISION or of DECIDABILITY. It calls for DECISION in the order of ethical-political RESPONSIBILITY ||.
“A decision can only come into being in a space that EXCEEDS the calculable program that would destroy all responsibility by transforming it into a programmable effect of determinate causes. There can be no moral or political responsibility without this trial and this passage by way of the undecidable. Even if a decision seems to take only a second and not to be preceded by any deliberation, it is structured by this EXPERIENCE AND EXPERIMENT OF THE UNDECIDABLE .”
Essentially, this third definition of play, which can’t be thought of as the order of logic/the calculable, is necessary to instantiate decision. It refers to the undecidable which paradoxically, ENABLES US TO DECIDE.
Derrida is pitting the calculable against the undecidable, and he says that a decision can only be a decision, once we transgress the order of the calculable. So, a decision only comes into being only when we leave logic and calculation behind and jump into the dark. This is good news because this is what gives us moral autonomy -> it is what grounds our agency in the world. Why? Because, without this, decisions would be mere calculations. I.o.w., being moral would be as simple as reading/following a recipe. For a decision to be a decision, it cannot be a calculation.
A decision can only be made when the road is blocked, the decision is an act that can only occur when there is something (the undecidability of the moment) acting against it. It is in this singular moment that the decision takes place, and the moment it is made it is reinscribed into the calculable.
Thus, there can be no moral nor ethical responsibility without this trial/passage of the undecidable. We are forced to act and act in such a way without knowing precisely. It is daunting, but it is that which gives us agency and ethical responsibility. Undecidability is a necessary condition for deciding.
Links the nature of play to the notion of decidability. He thus emphasises the importance of play in decision-making. Rather than Searle’s idea that he takes on relativism, it’s actually the prominence of undecidability.
The Afterword (Derrida): In reaction to the accusation against Derrida that he is putting forth a strawman argument, Derrida, in part, argues against this accusation by asserting that "all or nothing" differentiations are a structural precondition of conceptual language. Explain what Derrida meant by this statement, and elaborate on why he believed that, for this reason, a "supplementary complication" must be introduced when working with conceptual language.
Searle accuses Derrida of putting forth a strawman argument:
“Some American critics of your work (Searle among them) accuse you of setting up a kind of “ALL OR NOTHING” choice between pure realization or self-presence and complete Freeplay or undecidability’. They argue that you posit a state of “ideal purity”… as the goal of language or of interpretation, and then when this goal predictably proves illusory, you conclude that language and interpretation are in some profound way problematized.”
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Derrida’s second step in addressing this accusation is in his claim that conceptual language, by its nature, necessarily operates within an ALL OR NOTHING framework.
“I have certainly not sought to keep ‘certain linguistic superstitions alive in order to legitimate the project of calling them into question.’” He is not keeping the superstitions of logical positivism alive, namely the idea that meaningful problems are only those that can be solved by logical analysis, in order to legitimate setting up the strawman to knock it down and advocate pure free-play.
He looks at the nature of conceptual language and the differentiations that we draw in conceptual language.
|| All or nothing differentiations are a structural precondition for making differentiations ||.
He concedes that conceptual language is tied to the conditions of logic.
This is a “precondition” for science and philosophy and language. “Every concept that lays claim to any rigour whatsoever implies the alternative of ‘all or nothing,’ A CONCEPT DETERMINES ITSELF ONLY ACCORDING TO ‘ALL OR NOTHING.’”
You (necessarily) commit yourself wholly to concepts at the moment that you use them. In conceptual language something is either something or it is not.
“Even if in “reality” or in “experience” everyone believes he knows that there is never “all or nothing,” a concept determines itself only according to “all or nothing. “ Even the concept of “difference of degree,” the concept of relativity is, qua concept, determined according to the logic of all or nothing, of yes or no: differences of degree or nondifference of degree. It is impossible or illegitimate to form a philosophical concept outside this logic of all or nothing.”
In other words, conceptual language is committed to the distinction of all or nothing. Even vague approaches are expressed as concepts in the language of all or nothing.
“Whenever one feels obliged to stop doing this [accepting the logic of all or nothing when working with concepts] (as happens to me when I speak of différance, of mark, of supplement, of iterability and of all they entail), it is better to make explicit in the most conceptual, rigorous, formalizing, and pedagogical manner possible the reasons one has for doing so, for thus changing the rules and the context of discourse.” When we are committed to conceptual language, we naturally have to commit also to distinctions of all or nothing.
But, what he is contesting, is that the conceptual language of all-or-nothing DOESN’T EXHAUST THE CONDITIONS FOR MEANING.
|| Meaning beyond conceptual meaning is possible||.
Derrida draws on deconstructive terminology to make this point.
|| Différance, however, ensures that differentiations are never completed or complete ||. Differance is the ‘new logic’/ the supplementary complication/ a-conceptual concept that is introduced when dealing with concepts, in order to demonstrate that their all or nothing differentiation does not exhaust meaning.
Nor can one replace it with a vague or “statistical” approach. These rather point to the limitations of conceptual language without throwing us to conceptual relativism. the supplementary complication/ ‘new logic’ cannot be replaced by merely listing other ‘fringe’ cases, because there will always exist an infinity of ‘fringe’ cases that the all or nothing framework of the concept cannot accomodate.
Therein, he argues that conceptual language doesn’t exhaust the conditions of meaning as opposed to Searle who aims to debunk conceptual language. Differentiations have to be made (as it is your responsibility), but at the same time, THEY NEED TO BE SUPPLEMENTED.
“To this oppositional logic, which is necessarily, legitimately, a logic of ‘all or nothing’, and without which the distinction and the limits of a concept would have no chance, I oppose nothing …; rather I add a SUPPLEMENTARY COMPLICATION that calls for other concepts, for other thoughts BEYOND the concept and another form of “general theory,” or rather another discourse, ANOTHER “LOGIC” that accounts for the impossibility of concluding such a ‘general theory.’”
“This OTHER DISCOURSE doubtless takes into account the conditions of this classical BINARY LOGIC, but it NO LONGER DEPENDS ENTIRELY UPON IT. If the proponents of binary opposition think that the “ideal purity” to which they are obliged to appeal reveals itself to be “illusory,” as you say, then they are obliged to account for this fact. They must transform concepts, construct a different “logic,” a different “general theory,” perhaps even a discourse that, more powerful than this logic, will be able to account for it and reinscribe its possibility. This is what I try to do.”
“I try to show not only that the IDEAL PURITY of the distinctions proposed (By Searle, for example) is INACCESSIBLE, but also that its practice WOULD NECESSITATE EXCLUDING CERTAIN ESSENTIAL TRAITS of what it claims to explain or describe - and yet cannot integrate into the ‘general theory’.”
He recognises that he’s in a performative difficulty because he writes “To be sure, all conceptual production appeals to idealisation. Even the “concept” of iterability, which plays an organizing role in “Limited Inc …,” supposes such idealization. But it has a strange status. Like that of “différance” and several others, it is an A-CONCEPTUAL CONCEPT or another kind of concept, heterogeneous to the philosophical concept of the concept, a “concept” that MARKS BOTH THE POSSIBILITY AND THE LIMIT OF IDEALISATION AND HENCE OF ALL CONCEPTUALISATION.”
Here, he is pointing to the performative difficulty of the deconstructive language. On the one hand, we have to express the terminology of deconstruction in a conceptual language in order for it to be meaningful, but on the other hand, what these deconstructive concepts are trying to do is BREAK FREE of conceptual language and point to conditions of meaning BEYOND all or nothing distinctions. He is aware of the difficulties he is in by putting forward the supplementary theory to challenge the hegemony of conceptual language.
|| He is pointing towards meaning beyond conceptual language, but he only has conceptual language to use ||.
This maintains the deconstruction of Searle and Austin’s hierarchy (wherein the non-serious is marginal) by showing the importance of the marginal, the a-conceptual, alterity and context within iterability.
The Afterword (Derrida): Elaborate on: Derrida's critique of an Ideal or pure language (and how ideality is both constituted and undermined by iterability) as well as how and why he believes that a language theory must be able to account for marginal cases.
Criticism of an Ideal or Pure Language
‘You asked, then: “could one not object to attributing the goal of ‘ideal purity to language to begin with?”’ Derrida answers yes BUT IT IS SEARLE (not him) WHO SUBSCRIBES TO A CERTAIN IDEAL PURITY.
Derrida takes issue that Searle accuses him of setting up the distinction between IDEAL LANGUAGE AND/OR FREEPLAY because he never made this distinction in the first place. It’s SEARLE AND AUSTIN’S THEORY THAT DEPENDS ON IDEAL PURITY.
“I am obliged to cite Searle once again to make this clear: " ... certain forms of analysis, especially analysis into necessary and sufficient conditions, are likely to involve (in varying degrees) idealization of the concept analysed. In the present case, our analysis will be directed at the centre of the concept of promising. || I AM IGNORING MARGINAL, FRINGE AND PARTIALLY DEFECTIVE promises ||. Furthermore, in the analysis I confine my discussion to full blown explicit promises and ignore promises made by elliptical turns of phrase, hints, metaphors, etc. In short, I AM GOING TO DEAL ONLY WITH A SIMPLE AND IDEALISED CASE .... Without abstraction and idealization there is no systematization. "” (i.e. dealing with base of idealisation)
Derrida acknowledges a certain legitimacy in classical exigency/urgency, but criticises Searle for the following reasons:
- Searle’s use of scientific analogies to explain a theory of language are faulty.
|| He argues that it is doubtful that a theory of language could be studied and subscribe to the same requirements/methods as of formal science ||.
“It is not certain that what we call language or speech acts can ever be exhaustively determined by an entirely objective science or theory.” - He criticises Searle’s language theory because the ideal purity of concepts is defective: IT CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR MARGINAL CASES. Searle explicitly says that he ignores deviant, marginal promises, rather focusing on idealisations. || It then cannot be complete because these marginal cases are part of meaning and must be accounted for ||.
“I objected to the series of exclusions practiced by Searle… Inasmuch as it DOES NOT INTEGRATE THE POSSIBILITY OF BORDERLINE CASES, the essential possibility of those cases called “marginal,” of accidents, anomalies, contaminations, parasitism, inasmuch as it does not account for how, in the ideal concept of a structure said to be “normal,” “standard,” etc. (for example, that of the promise), such a divergence is possible, it may be said that the formation of a general theory or of an ideal concept remains insufficient, weak, or empirical.”
|| Here Derrida says that Searle’s language theory cannot be complete, because the marginal cases are part of meaning and must be accounted for. Derrida says that one can’t relegate these cases to the margins, they rather have to be incorporated into a language theory that accounts for meaning ||.
These marginal cases should be included because they define the heart of the way in wich we conduct meaning. Idealisations are necessarily limited due to iterability. - IDEALISATIONS ARE LIMITED DUE TO ITERABILITY. Derrida explains how iterability ALLOWS for the notion of idealisation THROUGH REPEATABILITY, but, BECAUSE OF DIFFERENCE and ALTERITY, UNDERMINES possibility of idealisation.
“It must be shown why, for what reasons (which are structural, and not empirical or accidental) such idealization finds its limit. This limit is neither external nor internal; it is not simply negative since it renders possible the very idealization that it at the same time limits. Such is the strange alogical logic of what I call “iterability.’”
“Let us not forget that “iterability” does not signify simply, as Searle seems to think, repeatability of the same, but rather alterability of this same idealized in the singularity of the event, for instance, in this or that speech act. It entails the necessity of thinking at once both the rule and the event, concept and singularity.”
||Language is iterable, thus it cannot be studied through resources (or language theories) of idealisation, because then we deny the fundamental iterate nature of language itself. A theory of language must be able to deal with both the IDENTIFICATORY - that allows for idealisation-but also the ALTERING ITERABILITY -that destroys calculation.
One therefore cannot simplify. “One shouldn’t complicate things for the pleasure of complicating, but one should also NEVER SIMPLIFY OR PRETEND TO BE SURE OF SUCH SIMPLICITY WHERE THERE IS NONE. If things were simple, word would have gotten around, as you say in English.”
* Idealisations are dangerous in this regard. Those who oversimplify are dogmatists! He is showing how a desire for idealisation betrays a desire for purity (as seen with historical politicians who advocate for immoral politics).
Derrida summarises by reminding us that: 1. The ‘all or nothing’ choice was not set up by him. All or nothing is a necessary condition of conceptual language, therefore not his choice.
2. He did not pose a “state of ideal purity” as the goal of all language, rather Searle resorts to these categories and needs these for his language theory. Searle himself reminds us of ideal concepts. 3. Derrida did not say ideal purity is illusionary, but inaccessible (due to iterability). It is “not illusory but instead rendered inaccessible by the very iterability that nevertheless produces it and renders its project possible.” Language and all interpretation is problematised. Idealisations are made possible by the repeatability of iterability, and simultaneously destroyed by the alterity of context. Hence, we cannot escape the problem of interpretation as much as we can’t escape the need for decision. Language cannot be figured out or calculated according to definitive conclusive criteria when it subscribes to the conditions of ideality, rather interpretation is always needed. The fact that language is subject to iterability is a stroke of luck because the alterity of context is what drives meaning forward.
The Afterword (Derrida): Explain what Derrida considers to be the danger of idealisation and intentionality and how it relates to Austin and Searle's idea that true language is serious language is a good language.
“Your first question goes on to refer to two examples. First, that of intention.” The criticism is that Derrida ascribes more to intention in Searle’s work than what Searle means by the term.
Derrida argues that Searle’s contention that a language act, a “serious” language act, is the realisation of intention is not only a (1) metaphysical move (the language act is fulfilled as it answers to its telos), but it also contains a (2) moral dimension: true language is pure language, is a serious language act, is a good language act.
- INTENTIONALITY IMPLIES REALISATION AS IS NECESSARILY A METAPHYSICAL MOVE.
“But "metaphysical claim" does not signify here, or at least not in my mind, a futile or obscure speculation.” “Moreover, the telos of "fulfilment"… is not an accidental element, separable from the concept of intentionality. It is not a "metaphysical supplement," ... , a residue that need only be eliminated in order finally to speak scientifically (and not metaphysically) about intentionality. || This telos of "fulfilment" is constitutive of intentionality; it is part of its concept. INTENTIONAL MOVEMENT TENDS TOWARDS THIS FULFILMENT ||. This is the origin or the fatality of that "longing for metaphysical plenitude" which, however, can also be presupposed, described, or lived without the romantic, even mystical pathos sometimes associated with those words.” We can forget about ‘longing’ and its romanticism, but as soon as we are talking about intentionality, we are IMPLYING AN ENDPOINT / TELOS. It, therefore, has as its goal the realisation of an a priori (priorly determined) objective.
“The “realization” of intentions is explicitly defined by Searle as the “sentence” itself, as the exemplary “sentence,” which is to say, the sentence ‘in serious literal speech.’” “He himself formulates, as seriously and literally as possible, this telos of full “realization”.”
- The second dimension to this is the THE MORAL/ETHICAL DIMENSION.
|| If we already, through virtue of intentional serious speech acts, know what the endpoint/realisation of language acts SHOULD be, then we suppose to know what SERIOUS, PURE, AND GOOD language is as we are in a position of judgement (how language acts should play out, in reality, informs our judgement). The moment we presuppose to know what the outcome is, we become TYRANNICAL because we CLOSE LANGUAGE OFF TO OTHER INTERPRETATIONS (because we are not including the marginal cases, we are not recognising iterability as a structural condition for meaning).
[ remember that we need undecidability in order to act just/ethical (as is the impetus of deconstruction) so if we assume to know exactly what is expected, we are putting language forward as merely calculable, but diffErAnce and iterability has shown us that this is not the case; so we will never know the outcome, and this is a good thing because it ensures that we are acting autonomously and responsibly (i.e. not tyrannical) and it ensures that the language we use is open to other interpretations.]
Therefore, there is “a certain ethicity inscribed in language.” It is the same ethicity inscribed in language which Derrida warns of.
“But often while analyzing a certain ethicity inscribed in language - and this ethicity is a metaphysics (there is nothing pejorative in defining it as such) - they reproduce, under the guise of describing it in its ideal purity, the given ethical conditions of a given ethics. They EXCLUDE, ignore, relegate to the margins other conditions no less essential to ethics in general, whether of this given ethics or of another, or of a law that would not answer to Western concepts of ethics, right, or politics. Such conditions, which may be anti-ethical with respect to any given ethics, are not therefore anti-ethical in general.”
- IDEALISATIONS ARE NECESSARILY UNDERMINED BY ALTERITY and hence language always requires interpretation. Isn’t this a good thing because it allows us to debate? “It is tantamount to stating, in a normative or prescriptive manner, that toward which language ought to tend: only a serious and literal language can fully realize an intention, or, reciprocally, the best language is, will be, ought to be serious and literal because only in this way can expression become the “realization” of “intention.””
Idealisation and intention sit together to make all marginal cases subject to ethical perspective. Intentionality and idealisation proport to know what ethics is at the exclusion of all other frameworks. “They exclude, ignore, relegate to the margins other conditions no less essential to ethics in general, whether of this given ethics or of another, or of a law that would not answer to Western concepts of ethics, right, or politics.” “This intentionalist teleology is inseparable, in Searle, from this logic of “all or nothing” that you suspect me of projecting.” As soon as we deconstruct by introducing supplementarity, we open up the space for new ethics to come to light, thus opening up to new meaning.
The Afterword:
Elaborate on: Why Searle is being disingenuous by accusing Derrida of a strawman argument (i.e. an all or nothing choice between ideal language and free play/ ‘jeu’).
Furthermore, indicate how Derrida demonstrates that it is actually Searle’s view that depends on this distinction.
“I have difficulty seeing how [Searle] is able to write this phrase, cited by you, in which he credits me with the “assumption,” “oddly enough derived from logical positivism,” “that unless a distinction can be made rigorous and precise, it isn’t a distinction at all.” In other words, Searle criticises Derrida for purportedly being a logical positivist.
1. It is Searle who distinguishes between literal and metaphorical, and serious and non-serious speech acts.
2. Just because you believe in the necessity of analytical distinctions (distinctions of all-or-nothing which define conceptual language), it does not mean that you are a logical positivist.
“How can one dare, resorting to such a worn-out rhetorical procedure, to make the pretence of attributing the demand for “rigorous and precise distinction” to a philosophical doctrine or tendency (“logical positivism”) which one ostensibly holds to be very circumscribed, even outmoded, and in any case without any presumed relationship to my philosophical “style,”” All philosophers working with conceptual language accept this distinction, not just the outdated school of logical positivism.
- It is SEARLE WHO NEEDS RIGOROUS DISTINCTIONS, otherwise his entire project will collapse. But he tries to disguise this fact by simultaneously affirming and denying the necessity of precise distinctions. Searle furthermore distinguishes sharply between real life and theory, and paradoxically makes real life a consequence of theory. Derrida therefore shows in detail how Searle himself is completely dependent on precise differentiations and hence is engaged in an unethical rhetorical move when he accuses Derrida of making this “mistake”.
Searle, then, “On the one hand, he maintains at all costs, in his books, the most rigid and most traditional form of the excluded third [a logical premise that states that a proposition is true or a negation of a proposition is true, but no third possibility exists], he applies the principle even when it obliges him to practice the most brutal and least motivated exclusions [all nonserious speech acts which he excludes as marginal]. But on the other hand, when he has to retreat into journalistic polemics, he resorts to denial and pretends to have renounced trenchant distinction. For that, he distinguishes (all the same!) calmly (but this time what is the status of this distinction?) between theoretical concepts on the one hand and “real life” on the other.”
Derrida is maintaining that Searle relies on these distinctions for his theory to hold, but he retreats into journalistic rhetoric and distinguishes between real theory and real life. What is the status of theory when it comes before the object/what it is describing? A theory should be able to depict what we experience in real life rather than make real life a consequence of itself. Searle is therefore dependent on precise differentiations and hence is engaged in an unethical criticism of Derrida.
The Afterword:
With regards to Derrida’s understanding of the notion and role of ‘police’, explain why he claims that the police is not necessarily repressive, but that it can, however, never be neutral.
Police are any enforcers of rules. Their existence is a structural precondition for the existence of rules.
Derrida writes that ‘there is always a police and a tribunal ready to intervene each time a rule… is invoked in a case involving signatures, events, or contexts’ – this is the basis for Question Two.
-------------Clarification on What Derrida Means by Police---------------
Before answering Derrida opens a parenthesis, where he accounts that recollecting the context of Limited Inc. is not a neutral move - fixing a context is a political move.
Here, he is trying to draw our attention to the political nature of ALL MEANING. There is no such thing as a neutral context or a neutral rule. But that does not imply that all rules are necessarily REPRESSIVE, but that when producing meaning within a certain context, we are necessarily involved in a type of delimitation or politics.
“The reconstitution of a context can never be perfect and irreproachable even though it is a regulative ideal in the ethics of reading, of interpretation, or of discussion. But since this ideal is unattainable, … the simple recalling of a context is never a gesture that is neutral, innocent, transparent, disinterested.”
“To come back to your formulation, “the very project of attempting to fix the contexts of utterances” may not be “SOMETHING POLITICALLY SUSPECT,” to be sure, BUT IT ALSO CANNOT BE POLITICALLY NEUTRAL OR A-POLITICAL. And the analysis of the political dimension of all contextual determination is never a purely theoretical gesture. It always involves a political evaluation.”
In recalling the context of Limited Inc., he is also involved in a certain context. In answering this question, he pulls our attention to political nature because there ISN’T A NEUTRAL CONTEXT/ A NEUTRAL RULE. We therefore can’t disengage from our involvement in a context because creating meaning within it is involved with politics. He then closes the parentheses and continues with his answer.
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“My intention was therefore not primarily to determine the law, the tribunal, or the police as political powers repressive in themselves.”
In his engagement with Searle, in invoking law, police, political powers, the rules that determine nature of copyrights etc., he’s not referring to a politics that is necessarily repressive in itself. Derrida makes it clear that the police (seen as any enforcers of rules) should not automatically be associated with repressive politics.
With a red light, for example, we stop at a red light which isn’t repressive, and rather enables traffic to flow and prevent from accidents. He’s therefore not putting forward the idea that police are always repressive, he’s rather saying that there are politics involved.
“Every police is not repressive, no more than the law in general, even in its negative, restrictive, or prohibitive prescriptions… the essence of the law is not necessarily tied to negativity (prohibition, repression, etc.).”
The Existence of Police as a Structural Precondition of Rules
He’s trying to recall the logical necessity that “No signature is possible without recourse, at least implicitly, to the law. The test of authentication is part of the very structure of the Signature. That amounts to saying that “forgery” is always possible, the possibility of transgression is always inscribed in speech acts (oral or written).”
He moves from the general case of saying that all meaning is governed by police, but the police aren’t necessarily repressive, to looking at speech-act theory and the law underwriting speech act theory. “In the description of the structure called “normal,” “normative,” “central,” “ideal,” this possibility [of transgression] must be integrated as an essential possibility. The possibility cannot be treated as though it were a simple accident-marginal or parasitic.” If we look at the structure of laws, be it country or of copyright or signature or academia, then by the very fact of its nature, they can be transgressed. Transgression is important because it tells us about the structure of the law: we know a law is at play if it’s possible to transgress that law. Legal must necessarily have illegal as its counterpart. It is thus a structural precondition.
Therefore, he’s articulating that we must not think of laws and police as repressive because they can be enabling. The fact that they are enabling doesn’t mean that they are neutral. A law only functions by virtue of the fact it can be transgressed. He further points out that laws are saturated with ethical and political consequences.
The Afterword:
Explain why Derrida claims that the existence of ‘police’ is a structural precondition of rules, and why transgression is a fundamental to the structure of law.
The Existence of Police as a Structural Precondition of Rules
He’s trying to recall the logical necessity that “No signature is possible without recourse, at least implicitly, to the law. The test of authentication is part of the very structure of the Signature. That amounts to saying that “forgery” is always possible, the possibility of transgression is always inscribed in speech acts (oral or written).”
He moves from the general case of saying that all meaning is governed by police, but the police aren’t necessarily repressive, to looking at speech-act theory and the law underwriting speech act theory. “In the description of the structure called “normal,” “normative,” “central,” “ideal,” this possibility [of transgression] must be integrated as an essential possibility. The possibility cannot be treated as though it were a simple accident-marginal or parasitic.” If we look at the structure of laws, be it country or of copyright or signature or academia, then by the very fact of its nature, they can be transgressed. Transgression is important because it tells us about the structure of the law: we know a law is at play if it’s possible to transgress that law. Legal must necessarily have illegal as its counterpart. It is thus a structural precondition.
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Therefore, he’s articulating that we must not think of laws and police as repressive because they can be enabling. The fact that they are enabling doesn’t mean that they are neutral. A law only functions by virtue of the fact it can be transgressed. He further points out that laws are saturated with ethical and political consequences.
The Afterword:
Explain what Derrida means by his claim that the status of law rests on a certain fictionality, yet law cannot be equated with fiction.
He further points out that laws are saturated with ethical and political consequences.
The Status of Law as Resting on a Certain Fictionality
“One cannot subordinate or leave in abeyance the analysis of fiction in order to proceed firstly and “logically” to that of “nonfiction or standard discourse. “ For part of the most originary essence of the latter is to allow fiction, the simulacrum, parasitism, to take place - and in so doing to “de-essentialize” itself as it were.” He is therein juxtaposing fiction with nonfiction. He isn’t trying to flatten the distinction between the two, rather arguing that their difference is defined by the double movement. The distinction marks the place of distinction, and the space of difference wherein neither of them can be kept pure. Nonfiction/standard discourse is already informed by a metaphorical dimension because it is open to interpretation and relies on interpretative frameworks. The moment we recognise that nonfiction/standard discourse is also pervaded by metaphor, it usurps its position.
“The real question, or at any rate in my eyes the indispensable question, would then become: what is “nonfiction standard discourse,” what must it be and what does this name evoke, once its fictionality or its fictionalization, its transgressive “parasitism,” is always possible (and moreover by virtue of the very same words, the same phrases, the same grammar, etc.)? This question is all the more indispensable since the rules, and even the statements of the rules governing the relations of “nonfiction standard discourse” and its fictional “parasites,” are not things found in nature, but laws, symbolic inventions, or conventions, institutions that, in their very normality as well as in their normativity, entail something of the fictional.” Here, he is drawing our attention that laws, too, are manmade instruments and therefore are subject to interpretation and interpretive gestures which inform our construction of illegal/legal. This needs to be accounted for as these laws isn’t natural, rather constructed by man. This does not make them fictions, but confirms that, on a structural level, they possess a certain inevitable fictionality (in the sense that they are not naturally given).
In drawing our attention to this, Derrida reiterates that he isn’t trying to say that laws are equivalent to fictions. “Not that I assimilate the different regimes of fiction, not that I consider laws, constitutions, the declaration of the rights of man, grammar, or the penal code to be the same as novels. I only want to recall that they are not “natural realities” and that they depend upon the same structural power that allows novelesque fictions or mendacious inventions and the like to take place.” He is again reacting against critics saying that he’s flattening the distinction between the two. He is trying to complicate this dispensation through the double-movement. He is drawing our attention to the fact that this distinction cannot hold categorically because all language as a metaphorical dimension to it in as much as it requires interpretation.
The Afterword:
Identify the different types of police that Derrida mentions and elaborate on their different responsibilities.
Those who come up with the rule, those who perform the rule,
brutal vs sophisticated police,
police as found in every institution - which includes academia.
Responding to Second Part of Question through theorising Different Types of Police
This is given the reality that rules are often exploited in practice. He says that no, we cannot blame the codifiers. But what is the status of the codifier? “[D]oes it refer to those who produce the rules” (complex, performative gesture)? i.e. those who formulate the rules, OR “[D]oes it refer to ‘theoreticians who formalize or systematize a code and its implications?” i.e. those who enact and perform the rule. This process of codification is not neutral. Given the complexities involved and the difficulty in attributing responsibility as ambiguous, “the codification of the rules ought to take into account or try to account for the possibility of abuse insofar as the latter is inscribed in the structure of normality itself.” This refers to the point made previously that transgression is part of the structure of rules. People must recognise this.
He goes on to talk about the theoretical limit. “This theoretical limit can only be explained, and in any case can only impose itself and ultimately pretend to any measure of legitimacy by virtue of enormous networks of presuppositions.” This implies the limit governing the theoretical frames or the limit governing the theoretical frames which we use to apprehend the world. We cannot live without rules, we cannot live without delimiting contexts, because we can’t experience the world in an immediate fashion, rather interpreting through a frame whose limits we need to recognise. “What is called deconstruction endeavours to analyse and if possible to transform this situation.” It engages with these limits because although we cannot live without limits, these rules cause structural distortions. The presuppositions marking the theoretical limit must be investigated via deconstruction. We must therefore be aware of its exclusions which define our frames. Every choice is firstly an ethical choice. We have an ethical responsibility for making the status and potential weaknesses of our rules and laws known.
Derrida addresses the question of whether Searle’s rules can be invoked by those contesting police power. He simply answers: yes, why not? “But once again, what police are we talking about?” What do we mean by police power and Searle’s rules?
The Afterword:
Explain what Derrida means when he claims that all experience is political.
Correlating Searle’s Assumptions with a Particular Politics
Derrida states that Searle’s assumptions are political but are also tied up with the axioms of numerous politics in the West. It is the task of deconstruction to investigate these axioms.
Derrida wants to distinguish between:
1. Certain practices of Searle, namely his method of discussing, arguing, polemicising, using rhetoric, of which Derrida sometimes disapproves. See footnote 12, where Derrida discusses Searle’s appropriation of Foucault’s remark about him as ‘terrorist obscurantism’ (as the explanation follows). This concerns politics of engagement with Derrida.
2. The nucleus of a theoretical structure which enables and informs speech-act theory in which he sees a certain necessity, even if it is open for deconstruction
We have to pull these two levels apart. Deconstruction is interested in deconstructing the history of Western philosophy. Yet, there are also practices of Searle’s which he disapproves of.
He discusses Searle’s appropriation of a remark made by Foucault to Searle in which Derrida is called a ‘terrorist obscurantism’. These politics Derrida finds negative.
Searle states that “Michel Foucault once characterized Derrida’s prose style to me as ‘obscurantisme terroriste.’ The text is written so obscurely that you can’t figure out exactly what the thesis is (hence ‘obscurantisme’) and when one criticizes it, the author says, ‘Vous m ‘avez mal compris; vous etes idiot’ (hence ‘terroriste’).”
Derrida wants to “raise the question of what precisely a philosopher is doing when, in a newspaper with a large circulation, he finds himself compelled to cite private and unverifiable insults of another philosopher in order to authorize himself to insult in turn and to practice what in French is called a jugement d’autorite, that is, the method and preferred practice of all dogmatism.” This, Derrida says, refers to bad politics.
He refers to another incident where an established philosopher wrote “to protest my nomination (in truth the unanimous election by my colleagues) to the position of Director of the International College of Philosophy. I cite this letter: ‘To establish an ‘International College of Philosophy’ under Derrida’s charge is something of a joke or, more seriously, raises the question as to whether the Ministere d’Etat is the victim of an intellectual fraud. Most of those informed in philosophy and its interdisciplinary connections would agree with Foucault’s description of Derrida as practicing ‘obscurantisme terrioriste’ “” “. I have cited these facts in order better to delimit certain concepts: in such cases, we certainly are confronted with chains of repressive practices and with the police in its basest form, on the border between alleged academic freedom, the press, and state power.”
He calls the interplay between the police and power and a type of repressive politics at play, not just in state institutions, but in academic institutions and others. Whilst all politics aren’t necessarily repressive, we must always take responsibility for this through deconstructive analysis. Thus, all experience is political.
The Violence of Deconstruction (Gasche):
Identify Derrida’s threefold understanding of violence and explain what the relationships are between these levels of violence, in terms of the example of the Nambikwara’s prohibition against proper names.
The three levels of violence according to Derrida:
1) arche-violence/ originary violence/ archi-writing
2) Reparatory violence/ normalising violence
3) Manivest violence/ visceral violence/ empirical violence.
Derrida’s Typology of Violence
1. Originary Violence
Originary violence of arche-writing is both the first violence and the violence needed for origination in general (of language and meaning). It is the original splicing of the world into differential meaning systems. Hence, it is an enabling violence. Originary violence obliterates the proper (as it breaches uniqueness of the referent), and forces things into relation with others. Proper names only function by virtue of their relation with other names. This allows for interrelated wholes such as societies to function in the first place, and enables communication between people. Because meaning is differentially defined, we are capable of relating with one another.
“Inscribing within a difference, in classifying, in suspending the vocative absolute”. Arche-violence as arche-writing signifies the “loss of the proper… of a self-presence that has never been given but only dreamed of and always already split … incapable of appearing to itself except in its own disappearance.” The loss of the proper and self-presence isn’t given, only dreamed of. A proper name which refers exclusively to its reference wasn’t destroyed by language, rather it didn’t exist in the first place. We have an originary complexity, rather than an originary simplicity. The dream of the proper as self-correspondence is a dream. Self-presence never existed which means that language doesn’t destroy it, only the dream of it.
It is a violence that has always already taken place because it marks the start of meaning and language. It is unavoidable because as soon as we have language and meaning, we have this originary violence. These go hand-in-hand. This violence is a fundamental and structurally necessary violence which cannot be avoided. It is thus the violence of naming, of splicing the world into concepts.
2. Reparatory Violence
This is the violent covering over, concealing, drawing a protective veil over that which has always already taken place (namely originary violence). When we function in our daily lives, we aren’t aware of originary violence. The reason is because of reparatory violence which conceals it. This is done by instituting a law (or a ‘moral’) to prescribe the concealment of proper names that are not really proper.
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This is why the Nambikwara case study works. This concealment is taken up in the rule against the use of proper names. It is there to conceal the differential nature of naming, the splicing of the world, the fact that proper names never existed in their properness.
However, this is a fact of meaning which can be universally applied. In Western thought, it manifests as metaphysics, namely the desire to explain difference away or make it derivative of an originary self-presence. It is uncomfortable living with this notion of originary violence and an originary division. We cover over it by positing the ideal of a pure presence, of categorically binding truths. The law works like this as well. The law is instituted through an originary violence. The moment of proclaiming the law as law, one is splicing the world, creating this system rather than that system. The law is also founded on a moment of originary violence. Through enacting the law, we cover over the originary violence, the fact that the law is manmade and constructed (as seen in The Afterword). This is done through a performative gesture which normalizes the law. This is a part of reparatory violence.
Like originary violence, this violence is also inevitable (although it is a function of how originary violence is perceived and experienced). Derrida links this violence to ‘consciousness’, which denotes the dream of self-proximity, self-presence, self-affection, and self-consciousness. Reparatory violence is facilitated by a form of consciousness which dreams of this self-presence. As such, this consciousness is coextensive with the effort to protect against the loss of the proper by concealing from oneself the originary violence. Reparatory violence goes hand in hand with originary violence. Originary violence is structurally necessary for meaning to be instituted, and reparatory violence is necessary to cover over the structural force which allows for the birth of meaning in the first place.
Hence, this level of violence protects against and affirms originary violence. It affirms originary violence because it reacts against it to cover it, thus affirming it in protecting us. Although it is unavoidable, it must also be recognized that it covers over differences (of forms of law, moral systems, different ways of being, different types of philosophies aside from metaphysics etc.). Its job is to cover over differences produced by originary violence. In acting against difference, it can produce evils such as racism, xenophobia, sexism, chauvinism etc. Thus, although it is necessary, we cannot live in a state of acknowledging it at all times, rather we have to be vigilant in not endorsing this type of violence at the expense of difference.
This is where the goal of deconstruction sits. It attempts to denaturalize our systems of meaning. It draws our attention to reparatory violence and exposing differences and different ways of being. This refers to The Afterword (wherein Derrida articulates that conceptual language always functions via all-or-nothing distinctions, but because these don’t exhaust meaning, we must introduce supplementary complication). This deconstruction introduces a supplementary complication which guards against the potential evils of reparatory violence. Deconstructive thought is thus a way of remaining vigilant.
3. Manifest or Empirical Violence In the case study, this manifest or empirical violence is exhibited through the tribal girls transgression of the interdict and their revelation of the names to the anthropologist. The violence consists in disclosing the so-called proper names (by exposing reparatory violence) and the severing of the proper (which exposes originary violence). Manifest violence thus refers to both arche-violence and the law. Manifest violence reacts against rules and prohibitions, transgressing them which thus exposes the rule for what it is, a differentiation. It exposes the rule as a non-natural constructed entity which could have been different, hence exposing the moment of rule formation (namely originary violence). In exposing the proper names, they expose the fragility of the
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rule which prohibits against the use of proper names, and in so doing they expose the fact that meaning exists in a differential system.
The use of proper names is likened within the Nambikwara society to evil, war, indiscretion, rape i.e. modern day forms of manifest violence. The prohibition of the rule against using proper names is linked to preventing against modern forms of manifest and empirical violence. All these forms of evil are considered the consequence of tearing apart the veil violently drawn over originary violence (our fragile social consciousness). This exposes or denudes the lack of foundation for any claim by the members of the tribe to something proper. Simultaneously, when the law is transgressed, it exposes the lack of foundation for legal claim.
Social consciousness merely functions by virtue of the fact that we partake in reparatory violence as covering over the foundation. This is necessary for societies to function. When there is manifest/empirical violence, the fragility of the rules/prohibitions become clear, similarly the lack of foundation underlying these institutions. The evil lies in denying everyone in the group the status of empirical difference based on an albeit fabricated attribution of natural properties. In using everyone’s proper names, the girls show through virtue of the practice of language that proper names are not proper. And hence, they take from the members the illusion of their properness. The prohibition is to protect against the loss of the proper. It is the recognition of the loss of the proper which leads to the institution of the rule, and when the girls transgress the rule, the protection of the proper by virtue of the prohibition is destroyed. Once the proper is destroyed, a proper name cannot refer exclusively to its referent, as the members of the tribe don’t have natural properties which ground the proper. It is the radical destruction of the proper and the other. The girls deny the tribal members a claim to the proper.
This can result in literal extermination. By exposing the foundationlessness of meaning, we also stand to destroy the categories that we rely on which respect and show responsibility, to endorse the properness of the other. This is because we deny the other meaning by showing that the foundation of meaning is baseless. Derrida calls this a violence of reflection. It is not inevitable but the outcome of a second intention, i.e. an act of reflection by social or moral consciousness. We have to reflect on reparatory and originary violence to engage in manifest or empirical violence. It is not a necessary outcome.
**The Violence of Deconstruction (Gasche):
Explain what Derrida’s argument is (against Levi-Strauss) as to why he asserts that the Nambikwara did have writing.
Derrida reframes Levi-Strauss’s discussion in terms of essential violence (or writing as violence). He shows that the “so-called innocent language of the Nambikwara is essentially violent and must, therefore, be understood as a kind of writing. Without this essential violence it would not be a language in the first place.”
Secondly, in arguing that writing is a form of violence, Derrida is not drawing a distinction between innocent speech and violent writing. Rather, Derrida draws on Saussure’s insight that difference is the source of linguistic meaning to argue that:
1. The linguistic sign (spoken and written) implies an originary writing. By originary writing, Derrida refers to the original splicing of the world which Saussure hypothesizes that there is no meaning without a system of differences. This insight holds both for spoken and written language. He speaks of a system of differences and this original splicing of the world. This is an originary type of violence of differentiation. We can’t escape this violence of differentiation.
2. Proper names (understood as self-identical) cannot exist in a system of differential linguistic values. This point is significant in terms of Derrida’s engagement with Levi-Strauss. If we think of a proper name, it refers to a unique reference. Derrida argues that a proper name can’t refer uniquely or singularly to a reference. It doesn’t carry meaning if it isn’t embedded in a differential system of meaning. My name has meaning not because it is self-identical to me, but because it is already functioning in a differential system of other names. Proper names, if they are understood as only referring to unique reference, as self-identical to these references, then a proper name cannot exist in a differential system because it immediately becomes referential. Properness of the proper name is destroyed insomuch as it is taken up in a system of differences.
The Violence of Deconstruction (Gasche):
What, if any, is the ‘violence’ of deconstruction?
- Both manifest violence and deconstruction aim to expose reparatory violence, but for different reasons.
Gasche asks that, as with manifest violence, is deconstruction not also a violent exercise in denuding the illusion of the proper? What is the difference between manifest violence and deconstruction?
Both have reparatory violence as their subject. In Force of Law, Derrida writes that “the exercise of a deconstruction … fundamentally, always proceeds to questions of law and to the subjects of law,” therein exposing reparatory violence. Gasche argues that the young girls (as with deconstruction) also expose reparatory violence, but in so doing deny the tribal members identity through the denuding of the proper names. “Indeed, the second violence distinguished in the context of the analysis of the battle of proper names concerns the social and moral consciousness of the Amazon tribe, more precisely, the interdiction against using the proper names of the members of the tribe, in short, the law of and in their society.” “However, the young girls’ defiance of the interdict also amounts to an act of violence in the common sense in which the other is denied any self-sameness and identity.” The young girls expose reparatory violence but in doing so, they draw radical attention to the foundationlessness of meaning which serves to deconstruct the identity of the community members who now cannot lay claim to any natural attributes associated with the proper.
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Deconstruction, on the other hand, violently transgresses the law in order to acknowledge the originary dividedness and differentiation of identity, namely arche-violence. Deconstruction transgresses reparatory violence not to destroy any claim to identity, but with the aim of showing how identity is differentially determined. Deconstruction doesn’t want to destroy identity of the other which is often the case with empirical violence (like murder, genocide, rape). Deconstruction rather intends to transgress reparatory violence in order to expose our originary dividedness. This acknowledgement is the condition for opening up a relation to the other. “But rather than leading to an act of violence against the other, the violence of deconstruction consists in revealing that the originary violence, the violence of arche-writing, or arche-violence, is the very condition for opening up a relation to the other in the first place, which should be clear from what we have said about the differential nature of naming the other.” The goal of exposing reparatory violence isn’t to destroy identity, but rather to focus on our attention on our relation with the other. It aims to challenge binaries by placing terms in a differential relationship. It draws attention to differance, to the differential relation of meaning. Hence, “the irreducible violence of the relation to the other, is at the same time nonviolence, since it opens the relation to the other.” If meaning wasn’t created differentially, we wouldn’t need to communicate. It is originary violence, the originary differentiation in the constitution of meaning, which opens us up to the other and is thus a form of nonviolence.
The dividing line between the Nambikwara girls’ act of war in speaking proper names and denying their tribal members identity, by denuding the loss of the proper and claims to natural attributes versus Derrida’s reminder of the loss of the proper to draw our attention to originary differentiation and to open up relation with the other, is a thin line – but one that makes all the difference!
Deconstruction, Law & Justice (Caputo):
Elaborate on what is meant by the notion that deconstruction is undertaken in the name of the undeconstructible. Include an explanation of what the nature of the undeconstructible is in general, and at the hand of the example of justice.
Caputo opens with a defence of Derrida, entitled Doing Justice for Derrida. He names the criticisms levelled against Derrida and addresses these by emphasizing the ethico-political impetus of Derrida’s (especially later) works. Through the eyes of critics, deconstruction has been seen as an apolitical mechanism, dedicated more to analyzing discourse than power, rather concerned with puns than politics. They claim that deconstruction is frivolous, but on the other hand, where it threatens to infiltrate the world of ethics and politics, we will have anarchy. Thus, knights of good conscience must protect the political legal order from deconstruction. “We have to put a stop to it; that is our ethical and civic duty, we Knights of Good Conscience.” It is characterized as lawlessness. It serves to flatten the very distinctions we require for legal theory to function, turning the law into lawlessness.
Caputo takes issues with these critiques. He defends Derrida, saying that it has always had an ethical-political impetus and doesn’t threaten the world as it is inherently ethical and political. These ethical political themes become more prominent in Derrida’s later works, but they were also present in his earlier works. There’s a progression in which this ethical political tenet has worked its way to the front of his writings. Caputo makes the point that deconstruction has always been concerned with ethical political issues.
His central tenet is thus the following: “The misbegotten notion that deconstruction is some kind of random intellectual violence, a merely destructive and negative assault on anything still standing, arises from the failure to see what deconstruction affirms, a failure to see that every deconstructive analysis is undertaken in the name of something, something affirmatively undeconstructible.” Deconstruction would not have critical impetus if it wasn’t undertaken in the name of something. What it undertakes is in the affirming undeconstructible, namely justice.
The Nature of the Undeconstructible
However, the undeconstructible is not a transcendental signified, a new ‘-centrism’, God, and Ideal etc. It isn’t like the Kantian ideal nor the Platonian idea as something towards which we strive. It isn’t a present or future-present because it isn’t guided by a driving telos towards something which is a priori defined/assumed to exist a prior. It isn’t something missing from the present, but something that we hope to attain in the future. It isn’t attainable as a future present.
The undeconstructible is not positive in any sense - the affirmative is not the same as a positive entity. We must think of it neither in terms of foundationalism (as a positive entity) or in terms of pure anti-foundationalism (something that destroys rather than drives). It is what gives deconstruction impulse, rather an “ec-centric ecstasis toward what is to-come” is incited by the desire to yield to ‘Come!’ (but will never arrive). “But the undeconstructible is likewise beyond foundationalism, because the undeconstructible is not knowable or foreseeable or forehavable but hangs on by a prayer, “Come.”” The undeconstructible isn’t anti-foundationalism because it provides deconstruction with impetus, but it isn’t geared towards a future present nor the future realisation of something which we grasp in the present, but something which will never come, and which we fathom by the prayer ‘Come!’. We must distinguish between the future present as an open horizon which we chase, and the love and leave because we can’t attain it. It hangs on this ‘to come’ which will never be realised. Deconstruction is internally related to the undeconstructible. Deconstruction needs to be taken in the name of something. This is a driving force towards a structurally open future. What is undeconstructible, namely justice, the gift, etc., isn’t real, nor ideal, existent nor idealizable, and this is why it incites our idea and drives deconstruction. These are empty of meaning in any positive
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sense, because as soon as there is meaning, it can be deconstructed. It cannot have meaning in the positive sense of the thing. It only has meaning insofar as it drives us towards the impossible ‘to come’/structurally open future which we can never realise.
The Possibility of Justice
The text the Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority is one of the most poignant expressions of deconstruction’s affirmation of the undeconstructible. It was introduced as a lecture on deconstruction and justice. During the lecture, Derrida addresses the question of deconstruction and the possibility of justice. It’s seen as a ‘dare’ into deconstruction and justice. It opens with an interrogation of the conjunction (and) between deconstruction and justice. However, he wanted to do something more radical on the relationship between the two. Derrida claims that deconstruction is justice. This claim turns on the distinction between law and justice. “Deconstruction is a discourse on, indeed a discourse of, justice. Justice’s own words if it had a voice.”
Deconstruction, Law & Justice (Caputo):
Elaborate on the relationship between the law, justice and deconstruction.
Law and Justice
According to Derrida, the Law (droit, loi) is the positive structures that make up judicial systems. It is legal, legitimate, properly authorized by these judicial structures. The law is constructed, namely historical constituted, forged and framed, ratified and amended, and is therefore deconstructible. “The law, he says, is deconstructible, and this is because the law is constructed in the first place. The law, whether it admits to being purely conventional or claims to be natural, whether it is actually written down or passed on orally, whether it is Anglo-Saxon, Napoleonic, or something else, whether it is imposed from above by fiat or composed from below by consensus, is historically instituted or constituted, forged and framed, ratified and amended.” As seen in The Afterword, the law is constructed, manmade, and instituted within contexts. This is exactly the fact that it is constructed which makes it deconstructible. It is on the deconstructibility of law which forms a condition of legal progress. Before Rosa Parks visited the un-deconstructibility of justice upon Montgomery law, for example, it was legal, legitimate and authorized to force African Americans to the back of the bus. Deconstruction thus opens something up to be amendable, revisable. The deconstruction of law is undertaken in the name of justice.
As much as it can be deconstructed, law also enables deconstruction. Caputo writes that deconstruction and the law mutually enable one another and render each other possible.
“Whenever a legal system has been good, whenever it has been something more than a blind and inflexible tyrant, whenever laws have protected the weak against the strong and prevented the winds of injustice from sweeping across the land, then the law has been deconstructible. Deconstructibility is the condition of legal progress, of a perfectible and gradually perfected, a self-revising and self-correcting ensemble of norms that distils the knowledge of the generations. As a legal theorist, Derrida is not a strict constructionist, but a strict deconstructionist.”
The argument is that deconstruction exists insofar as the object that it acts upon is law. Law is possible of transformation and progress insofar as it is deconstructible. This isn’t progressing towards some kind of goal because deconstruction isn’t teleological. The type of progress is that defined as opening up the norm to the exclusion of others. It challenges laws which exclude the other. Thus, it is interventionalist.
“Deconstruction and the law mutually enable each other, mutually support and render each other possible. The thing that makes the wheels of the law turn is deconstruction, even as the thing that makes the wheels turn in deconstruction is the possibility of deconstructing the law.” “But this deconstructibility of the law goes hand in hand with the undeconstructibility of justice.”
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However, the deconstructibility of law goes hand in hand with the un-deconstructibility of justice. It means that it is not a ‘thing’, a present entity or order, a reality or a regime. Whilst there is no telos to deconstruction, it does have a point (a thrust or a cutting edge). Everything can be deconstructible. “Justice, if some a thing exists, is not a thing.” “Justice is the absolutely unforeseeable prospect (a paralyzing paradox) in virtue in which the things that get deconstructed are deconstructed.” Thus, when we deconstruct the law, we do it in service of justice. This view of justice isn’t a positive thing, a positive idea, or a regulative ideal which has specific content. It corresponds to the undeconstructible but can manifest in the world. It is an empty ideal. Justice is what the deconstruction of law brings about, and deconstruction works in service of justice; or, more radically, deconstruction is justice. Derrida takes the conjunction ‘and’ away, and makes the claim that deconstruction serves justice and thus is justice.
Law and Justice
The argument Derrida puts forward for the relationship between law and justice is the following:
1. The deconstructibility of law makes deconstruction possible. Deconstruction does work, it performs something, and it needs something to work with. The object of its’ interrogation is the law, and thus acts on the law. However, simply deconstructing the law without purpose, means that it wouldn’t have impetus.
2. The undeconstructibility of justice also makes deconstruction possible (indeed is equivalent to it in as far as Derrida says it is justice). Deconstruction acts upon the object/thing of law in service of the deconstructibility of justice which is what gives deconstruction its impetus.
3. Therefore, deconstruction takes place in the interval (the necessary structural gap) that separates the undeconstructibility of justice from the deconstructibility of law. It is “watching out for the flowers of justice that grow up in the cracks of law.” Deconstruction affirms (and does!) justice. It is performative because deconstruction makes justice possible. To deconstruct, is to open the law for justice. It opens up the law and prevents it from becoming too legalistic through folding in on itself. The undeconstructibility of justice combined with the deconstructibility of law makes it possible. Hence, not only deconstruction and the possibility of justice, but also justice and the possibility of deconstruction. Because it serves justice, justice enables the possibility of deconstruction because it serves as the impetus for deconstruction.
Perhaps ‘possibility’ is not the right word… because it implies something positive, something that can be realised.
