paper-204 assignment " Jacques Derrida's Deconstruction of Western Metaphysics "

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This blog is a my assignment blog.

Name :- Aditi Vala

Ma sem :- 03

Batch :- 2020-2022

Paper no.:- 204 [ Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies ]

 Topic :- Jacques Derrida's Deconstruction of Western Metaphysics

Roll no. :- 01

Enrollment no. :- 3069206420200018

Email id :- valaaditi203@gmail.com

Submitted to :-

Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, MKBU

Introduction :

Jacques Derrida was born at El-Biar close to French Algiers in 1930. In 1949, he went to Paris where he did his studies at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand and Ecole Normale Superieur. He was a devoted and also a brilliant student of Jean Hyppolite and Michel Foucault. Later he taught at the ENS as maitre-colleague until he turned into the directeurd'etudes at the Ecole des Hartes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in 1984.

Logocentrism and the Metaphysics of Presence :

According to Jacques Derrida(1930-2004), the history of metaphysics is closely linked to the systematic “repression andsuppression of writing" . For Derrida,metaphysics, “in spite of all differences, not only from Plato toHegel (even including Leibniz) but also, beyond these apparentlimits, from the pre-Socratics to Heidegger, always assigned theorigin of truth in general to the logos” . Withinthis history, writing is systematically differentiated from, andaccorded an inferior position in relation to, a domain of “full”speech. For Derrida, who, here, indicates the influence of MartinHeidegger, this “logocentric” or “phonocentric” metaphysics isconnected with the historical determination of the meaning of being in general aspresence. 

According to MartinHeidegger,from Parmenides, Plato and afterwards, Being is comprehendedas a simple unit, a completely transparent and self-subsistentorigin or foundation. This determination of Being manifests itselfin the historical forms of metaphysics through the “presence ofthe thing to the sight aseidos”,presence as “substance”,“essence” or “existence” , “temporal presence as point(stigmé)”, the “self-presence of the cogito, consciousness,subjectivity”. Concepts, such as, essence, truth,origin, are linked and grounded in the conception of a directpresence.

This “metaphysics of presence”, according to Derrida,conceives meaning only on the basis of presence. For thistradition, a foundation exists beneath every meaning, whichconstitutes an immediate presence. For Plato, this foundation arethe “Ideas”, for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it is the “passions”, whilefor Edmund Husserl it is “pure consciousness”. This origin,which is present-in-itself, confers an immediate and intuitivemeaning upon what is expressed through language. Itpresupposes nothing beyond itself and, therefore, does notdevelop a system of signs other as a mere repository of alreadyfully formed concepts. For the “metaphysics of presence”, speechis an articulation which remains nearer to this present-in-itselforigin of meaning than that of writing. 

Spoken language–as written language–isalwaysalreadystructured by difference and non-presence. Consequently,what applies to the written sign applies also to spoken language.More generally, difference and non-presence constitute thecondition of possibility for any linguistic sign. Derrida’s claim isthat presence, identity, speech, meaning, etc., include preciselythose elements which they seek systematically to exclude, which,in turn, renders the priority ofthese phenomena, and the entire system of logocentrism or phonocentrism, impossible.

“Différance” :

Derrida’s remarks on meaning, language, presence or origin,are condensed in the neologism, or betterneographism“différance”.Derrida produces the neographismdifférancefromthe present participledifférantof the French verbdifférer, whichhas two different meanings, those of “to differ and defer”,meanings that it draws etymologically from the Latin verbdiffere.Différance encapsulates what finally emerges from themetaphysical texts through their deconstruction, namely, thatdespite the desperate efforts of their metaphysical authors to found and maintain meaning in presence, meaning is always already conditioned by difference and non-presence.

As such,différancenames and renders more radical a series of gestures,which emerged, in part, from the separate critiques of presenceby Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas.For Saussure, the linguistic sign“unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image” or, respectively, a signified (signifié) and a signifier(signifiant).

Moreover, these differences are not differencesbetween positive terms, that is, between pre-existing identities,because “in language there are only differenceswithout positiveterms”.Language possesses neither ideas nor sounds that wouldpre-exist the linguistic system, but only conceptual differencesand phonetic differences that emanate solely from this system,and have meaning only within it.

Deconstructive Reading :

Contrary to some Anglo-American analytic philosophers, who seem to believe in the possibility of theexistence and elaborationof a formal language that could deliver philosophy from thetribulations of metaphysics, Derrida thinks that such an escapefrom metaphysics is not feasible, since we do not possess alanguage, which would be free from metaphysicalpresuppositions, and within which a non metaphysical discoursecould be articulated . Derrida agrees with bothLudwig Wittgenstein, who writes, picturekept us captives.

However, Derrida thinks as equally insufficient that strategy ofovercoming of metaphysics–the strategy that he identifies withsome French philosophers, particularly with Levinas–whichconsists in deciding “to change terrain, in a discontinuous andirruptive fashion, by brutally placing oneself outside, and byaffirming an absolute break and difference” .This strategy is insufficient, because “the simple practice oflanguage ceaselessly reinstates the new terrain on the oldestground”. Thus,while the first “strategy”, that of Heidegger,rightly recognizes that someone is forced to draw the means forthe deconstruction of a certain conceptual edifice from thebuilding itself, something that the second strategy overlooks.

The impossibility of a simple and unproblematic escape frommetaphysics, compels us, according to Derrida, to abide within it,to a critical re-examination of its history, to a continuous re-reading of it-a practice, which Derrida names “deconstruction”.Derrida undertakes to oppose the western metaphysical traditionwithin its own field, with its own weapons, but to operatethrough an extended and radicalized concept ofwriting thatmetaphysics cannot control;a writing which “no longer issuesfrom logos” and which “inaugurates the destruction, not thedemolition but the de-sedimentation, the de-construction, of allthe significations that have their source in that of the logos” .

The aim of deconstructive reading is, initially, to render visiblethe latent metaphysical structure of a text. In the readings thathe undertakes, during the 1960s and 1970s, Derrida shows thatthe particular philosophical text is constituted by a set ofhierarchical binary oppositions (e.g. identity/difference,speech/writing, inside/outside, man/woman, nature/civilization,good/evil, etc). This hierarchical ordering is generated from oneelement of a binary opposition which expresses the meaning ofan originary “presence”. This attribution is simultaneously theconstitution of its primacy in relation to which the other elementis necessarily constituted as subordinate.

According to Derrida, a metaphysical text isnever“homogeneous”, “self-identical”, “never totally governed by‘metaphysical assumptions’”. In short, a text does not alwayscoincide with its declared intentions. Together with the "dominant”“metaphysical model”, there are “counter-forceswhich threaten or undermine this authority”.maleficent).A deconstructive reading, therefore, contains both a“dominant”,reproductive reading and a “critical”, productivereading. Thefirstreading, which Derrida calls a “doublingcommentary” 

While binary logic takes place between the limits of adisjunctive“either… or”, the “undecidable” logic ofsupplementarity constitutes the conjunctive logic of“both… and”,which, not only denies, but also disorganises classical binarythought.During 1960s and 1970s, Derrida’s deconstructive readings ofphilosophers such as Plato, Rousseau,27Hegel, Husserl or Levi-Strauss, are accompanied by the composition of more overtlyplayful texts (e.g.Glas). His aim is to show that any exhaustiveinterpretative determinationof a text is impossible, because language does not draw its “meaning” from some deeperconceptual layer, a “transcendental signified”, which would existoutside of any system of the sign and, which, at some point,“would place a reassuring end to the reference from sign to sign. 

Conclusion :

Derrida, this phrase“does not mean that all referents are suspended, denied, orenclosed in a book, as people have claimed, or have been naiveenough to believe and to have accused me of believing. But itdoes mean that every referent, all reality has the structure of adifferential trace, and that one cannot refer to this “real” exceptin an interpretive experience. The latter neither yields meaningnor assumes it except in a movement of differential referring.

Refrence :

Abel,Lion,“JacquesDerrida:His‘Difference’withMetaphysics”,Salmagundi25,1974, pp.3-21

Derrida, Jacques,Resistances of Psychoanalysis, trans.P. Kamuf, P.-A.Brault, & M.Naas,Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1998.

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