The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism, page 43
Rather, Derrida describes iterability as ‘a differential structure’ because it escapes the dialectical oppositional structure of presence and absence, and instead ‘implies both identity and difference’ (53), and which is why the
felicitous is contaminated by the infelicitous, the normal by the parasitic, and vice versa.
In ‘Reiterating the differences’, Searle argues that ‘Derrida has completely mistaken the status of Austin’s exclusion of parasitic forms of discourse’
(Searle 1977: 204). Habermas agrees with Searle, arguing that there are
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parasitic utterances that should and can be excluded from normal ones
(Habermas 1987: 199). Moreover, Habermas also agrees with Austin and
Searle that ‘there are contexts in which the same sentences lose the illocutionary force of a promise’, such as actors getting married on stage (194,
italics are mine). Thus, along with Searle, Habermas argues that there are
definable, determinable contexts in which we can locate a ‘normal’ as opposed to a ‘parasitic’ utterance. This determinable context also enables a felicitous utterance (that is, a transparent and unified meaning) to be conveyed.
Habermas declares that if all utterances are assigned the same meaning, and if participants stick to these references or meanings, then interpretation and mutual understanding can be unproblematically achieved (198).
To the chagrin of both Habermas and Searle, utterance and a unified
meaning are precisely what Derrida deconstructs. Consequently, Habermas
argues that Derrida’s notion of ‘context’ ‘precedes every process of com-
munication and every participating subject’ thereby annulling the distinc-
tion between normal and parasitic utterances. Thus, Habermas insists that
Derrida destroys a genre’s particular autonomy. Interpreting Derrida’s
notion of context as indeterminable, and as an all-embracing context of
texts, leads both Searle and Habermas to argue that for Derrida there is no authentic ‘intention of meaning’ (Searle 1977: 207), thus Derrida relativises meaning and communication (Habermas 1987: 197).
Context
In some respects Habermas and Searle are right to claim that for Derrida
language and context are not absolutely determinable. It does not follow from this, however, that for Derrida communication ceases to be meaningful or valid and that Derrida therefore perpetuates endless textual
freeplay (an absolute indeterminacy), relativism and hence nihilism. In fact, Derrida goes to great length to point out that the ‘ambiguous field
of the word “communication” can be massively reduced by the limits of
what is called a context’ (Derrida 1997: 2). It is precisely because there is context that absolute indeterminacy (as freeplay) and relativism is reduced.
So when Derrida famously states in Of Grammatology that ‘there is nothing outside the text’ (Derrida 1976: 58) this does not mean a rejection of
the transcendental signified or metaphysical system (because one cannot
simply step outside the effects of this system), but rather, as he confirms in Limited Inc, ‘there is nothing outside context’ (Derrida 1997: 136). That is, there is no mark or sign that is ‘valid outside context’ (79). What Derrida is arguing here is that the meanings of signs are limited by the ‘real context’
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in which a sign, or utterance, is situated. For example, limited by envi-
ronment, situation and experience, but also limited and constrained by
‘semiotic context’, by the semantic stratum of language. Nevertheless, ‘by
virtue of its essential iterability, a written syntagma can always be detached from the chain in which it is inserted or given without causing it to lose
all possibility of functioning, if not all possibility of “communicating”
precisely’ (9). That is, due to its iterability, a sign or mark can be grafted or inscribed onto other sematic chains (and this is what allows for some form
of indeterminacy of interpretation). He gives an example of this, arguing
that the sequence of words ‘the green is either’ is unacceptable in the
context of ‘an epistemic intention’, or an intention to know, and yet, ‘the green is either’ is not prevented from ‘functioning in another context as
signifying marks’ (12). For Derrida, then, this is why the sign or utterance
‘can never be entirely certain or saturated’ (3). Yet, while Derrida argues that no context is entirely determinable (9) this does not mean intentional-ity is destroyed, as Searle claims. ‘ On the contrary’, Derrida argues, Sec [‘Signature Event Context’] insists on the fact that ‘the category of intention will not disappear, it will have its place …’ (Let it be said in
passing that this differential-deferring ( différantielle) structure of intentionality alone can enable us to account for the differentiation between
‘locutionary’, ‘illocutionary’ and ‘perlocutionary’ values of the ‘same’
marks or utterances). (Derrida 1997: 58)
For Derrida, the differential-deferring structure ensures that no utterance or speech act is either absolutely determinable or absolutely indeterminable.
Thus, context, on the one hand, constrains the ambiguity of meaning that
comes from the slippage of signifiers into signifiers, so that, for Derrida, there is no absolute indeterminacy or undifferentiated textual freeplay. In fact, Derrida insists – in the same way that he insists that there are effects of subjectivity even if the subject is a fable – that ‘by no means do I draw the conclusion that there is no relative specificity of effects of consciousness, or of effects of speech’ (19). Furthermore, it is precisely because of context as constraint, as a limiting structure, that Derrida can argue that the ‘multiplicity of contexts and discursive strategies that they govern’ are not absolutely relativistic (Derrida 2002: 363).
On the other hand, Derrida believes that the context in which speech acts
or utterances take place cannot ultimately be determined by a single inter-
pretation because, while meaning can be constrained and limited by context, this does not stop altogether the possibility of several interpretations and Untitled-2 279
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meanings being correct at the same time (Wheeler 2000: 4). This possibil-
ity of several simultaneous correct interpretations and meanings is what
Habermas negatively labels the ‘indeterminacy of meaning’, leading to rela-
tivism of meaning and communication and a denial of truth-values inherent
in language. But Wheeler, comparing Derrida to the analytic philosopher
Davidson, sums up the position in this way: for Derrida if there are truth
and truth conditions, indeterminacy means that these notions cannot be
generally applicable (6), and thus ‘truth becomes another fiction, resting
on metaphysical conceptions’ ( 8), while for Davidson if ‘an utterance has
truth conditions and truth value’ indeterminacy means that one cannot
know ‘what that truth value is’ (6). However, as Wheeler interprets them, for Derrida ‘this is not to say that we cannot continue to characterise utterances
[or speech acts] as “true” and “false” ’, rather it is ‘to say that these terms cannot be theoretical tools for grasping what goes on in understanding and
communication’, precisely because, as Davidson argues, ‘no conditions of
speakers and contexts can yield an analysis of truth’ (6).
Yet while the indeterminacy of meaning and context is not equivalent to
nihilism or relativism or endless freeplay, Derrida’s form of indeterminacy can be interpreted positively as that which enables context to open possibilities. Not in the sense of opening to an absolute ‘outside’ the system (a transcendental signified, or ultimate truth), but in the sense that context opens the possibility of recontextualisation, or ‘contextual transformation’
(Derrida 1997: 79). This is because, as we have seen above and as Derrida
points out, ‘one sentence can have two meanings and two effects’, so that
context cannot be saturated and is always ‘open and mobile’ (Derrida 2002:
24). Furthermore, because context is open and mobile, constraint only
delineates and limits a play of endless possibilities, and does not altogether close down possibilities and transformation.
Conclusion
Based on this radicalisation of language as a ‘play of differences’, it is easy to see how Derrida has been used to justify, on one side of the critical field, various types of readings (via Rorty) that have reduced his work to an ‘anything goes’ philosophy exemplified by one aspect of postmodernism. On the
other side of the critical field, more orthodox critics (exemplified in Searle and Habermas) have labelled Derrida’s work as perpetuating indeterminacy
and nihilism. However, Derrida has been very clear: while différance displaces or dismantles metaphysics, and reveals a subjectivity that is not fixed and unified by a certain concept of time and space (play in the world), and Untitled-2 280
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thus challenging the idea of the subject as an ‘originary source’ (presence/
present), this does not mean a rejection of metaphysics and therefore it is
‘neither to give up this passage through the truth of Being, nor is it in any way to “criticise”, “contest”, or fail to recognize the incessant necessity for it’ (Derrida 1973: 154). Rather, this displacement exposes – through the
slippage of signifiers, which destabilise binary oppositions – the privileging of presence in the sign (through the proper name: the nominal). In other
words, while différance disrupts the privilege of unity and totality given to the sign, différance does not necessarily disregard unity/presence because it is what makes the ‘presentation of being-present possible’ (Derrida 1973: 134).
For Derrida, then, the ‘speaking or signifying subject would not be self-
present, insofar as he speaks or signifies, except for the play of linguistic or semiological difference’ (Derrida 1973: 146). Here we have the paradox of
différance. The presence of the present is manifested and exposed; it exists, only because of différance that produces differences through an endless movement of differing and deferral from one signifier to another, which at
the same time, destabilises this presence by exposing the absence, or otherness, within presence itself. It is therefore to miss the point of différance, in fact any deconstructive process of Derrida’s (trace, archewriting, erasure, supplement, and so on), to argue that Derrida abandons metaphysics, truth,
and hence the subject, and endorses an undifferentiated freeplay. Différance is not only not about destroying metaphysics or reconstructing it for that matter, but différance cannot take place outside the system it continually deconstructs. After all, ‘there is no outside the text’.
Notes
1. See also the Heidegger Affair. Both the Cambridge and Heidegger Affairs are reproduced and published in Points … Interviews 1974–1994 (Derrida 1995).
2. Much has been written on Rorty’s appropriation of Derrida’s ideas, most notably by Christopher Norris (see Norris 1987, 1989).
3. While the urgency of combining political and philosophical forces against the ‘West’s’ war with Iraq in 2002 led to the rapprochement between Derrida and Habermas (see Habermas and Derrida 2003), it does not occlude the real
and significant philosophical differences between them, nor the criticism’s Habermas made of Derrida in the 1980s.
4. For more on defending Derrida against Habermas, see Rodolphe Gasché
(1988).
5. Other scholars famous for criticising Derrida’s work as nihilistic, indeterminate and unethical include John Ellis (1989) and Gillian Rose (1984).
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6. For more on Saussure see the chapter in this book, ‘From Structuralism to Poststructuralism’. For Saussure, language is arbitrary and thus contingent precisely because it is constructed by its users (language does not exist apart from its users) (Saussure 1991: 3). This suggests that the world (reality) is always already mediated by the cultural meanings users give to those words/signs.
Reality, and meaning, then, is constructed by its users (by a culture or society).
This is not to deny that a thing in the world exists, rather it is to argue that the interpretation of a ‘thing’ may differ across cultures due to the contingent and contextual construction of language, and therefore this ‘thing’, or the world, may be perceived and thus understood in differing ways.
References
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Derrida, Jacques (1976), Of Grammatology, trans. G. C. Spivak, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Derrida, Jacques (1978), ‘Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the Human Sciences’ in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, London: Routledge, pp.
278–93.
Derrida, Jacques (1982), Positions, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, Jacques (1986), Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, Jacques (1988), The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation, ed. Christie McDonald, trans. Peggy Kamuf, Lincoln, NE: University of
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Derrida, Jacques (1990), Glas, trans. J. P. Leavey Jr, and R. Rand, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
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Derrida, Jacques (1997), Limited Inc, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
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with Christopher Norris’, in A. Papadakis, C. Cooke and A. Benjamin (eds),
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Gasché, Rodolphe (1988), ‘Postmodernism and rationality’, Journal of Philosophy, 85: 10, 528–38.
Habermas, Jürgen (1987), The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. F. Lawrence, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, Jürgen and Jacques Derrida (2003), ‘February 15, or What binds
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Norris, Christopher (1989), ‘Philosophy is not just a “kind of writing”: Derrida and the claim of reason’, in Reed Way Dasenbrock (ed.), Redrawing the Lines: Analytic Philosophy, Deconstruction, and Literary Theory, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
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Rose, Gillian (1984), Dialectic of Nihilism: Post-structuralism and Law, London: Blackwell.
Saussure, Ferdinand (1991), ‘The object of study’ and ‘Nature of the linguistic sign’, in David Lodge (ed.), Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, London: Longman.
Searle, John (1977), ‘Reiterating the differences: a reply to Derrida’, Glyph, 1, 198–208.
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Chapter 12
Hélène Cixous and the Play of Language
Tara Puri
tHemes: language and text
cixous and tHe plaY of language
It is said that words have power over life and death. In my garden of hell
