Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. Derrida, Jacques. Of grammatology. This year his monumental Glas has appeared.3 J acq ues Derrida. Derrida_Jacques_Glas_1986.pdf ‎ (file size: 17.27 MB, MIME type: application/pdf) J. Derrida, Glas, trans. And Richard Rand, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. (in English) File history. Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) was the founder of“deconstruction,” a way of criticizing not only bothliterary and philosophical texts but also political institutions.Although Derrida at times expressed regret concerning the fate of theword “deconstruction,” its popularity indicates thewide-ranging influence of his thought, in philosophy, in literarycriticism and theory, in art and, in particular, architectural theory,and in political theory. Indeed, Derrida’s fame nearly reachedthe status of a media star, with hundreds of people fillingauditoriums to hear him speak, with films and televisions programsdevoted to him, with countless books and articles devoted to histhinking. Beside critique, Derridean deconstruction consists in anattempt to re-conceive the difference that divides self-consciousnes(the difference of the “of” in consciousness of oneself). But evenmore than the re-conception of difference, and perhaps moreimportantly, deconstruction attempts to render justice. Indeed,deconstruction is relentless in this pursuit since justice isimpossible to achieve.

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1. Life and Works

Derrida was born on July 15, 1930 in El-Biar (a suburb of Algiers),Algeria (then a part of France), into a Sephardic Jewishfamily. Because Derrida’s writing concerns auto-bio-graphy(writing about one’s life as a form of relation to oneself),many of his writings are auto-biographical. So, for instance inMonolingualism of the Other (1998), Derrida recounts how,when he was in the “lycée” (high school), the Vichyregime in France proclaimed certain interdictions concerning thenative languages of Algeria, in particular Berber. Derrida calls hisexperience of the “interdiction” “unforgettable andgeneralizable” (1998, p. 37). In fact, the “Jewishlaws” passed by the Vichy regime interrupted his high schoolstudies.

Immediately after World War II, Derrida started to study philosophy.In 1949, he moved to Paris, where he prepared for the entrance exam inphilosophy for the prestigious École Normale Supérieure.Derrida failed his first attempt at this exam, but passed it in hissecond try in 1952. In one of the many eulogies that he wrote formembers of his generation, Derrida recounts that, as he went into thecourtyard toward the building in which he would sit for the secondtry, Gilles Deleuze passed him, smiling and saying, “My thoughtsare with you, my very best thoughts.” Indeed, Derrida enteredthe École Normale at a time when a remarkable generation ofphilosophers and thinkers was coming of age. We have already mentionedDeleuze, but there was also Foucault, Althusser, Lyotard, Barthes, andMarin. Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Levi-Strauss, Lacan,Ricœur, Blanchot, and Levinas were still alive. The Fifties inFrance was the time of phenomenology, and Derrida studied closelyHusserl’s then published works as well as some of the archivalmaterial that was then available. The result was a Masters thesis fromthe academic year 1953–54 called The Problem of Genesis inHusserl’s Philosophy; Derrida published this text in1990. Most importantly, at the École Normale, Derrida studiedHegel with Jean Hyppolite. Hyppolite (along with Maurice deGandillac) was to direct Derrida’s doctoral thesis, “TheIdeality of the Literary Object”; Derrida never completed thisthesis. His studies with Hyppolite however led Derrida to a noticeablyHegelian reading of Husserl, one already underway through the works ofHusserl’s assistant, Eugen Fink. Derrida claimed in his 1980speech “The Time of a Thesis” (presented on the occasionof him finally receiving his doctorate) that he never studiedMerleau-Ponty and Sartre and that especially he never subscribed totheir readings of Husserl and phenomenology in general. With so muchMerleau-Ponty archival material available, it is possible now howeverto see similarities between Merleau-Ponty’s final studies ofHusserl and Derrida’s first studies. Nevertheless, even if oneknows Merleau-Ponty’s thought well, one is taken aback byDerrida’s one hundred and fifty page long Introduction to hisFrench translation of Husserl’s “The Origin ofGeometry” (1962). Derrida’s Introduction looks to be aradically new understanding of Husserl insofar as Derrida stresses theproblem of language in Husserl’s thought of history.

The 1960s is a decade of great achievement for this generation ofFrench thinkers. 1961 sees the publication of Foucault’smonumental History of Madness (Madness andCivilization). At this time, Derrida is participating in a seminartaught by Foucault; on the basis of it, he will write “Cogitoand the History of Madness” (1963), in which he criticizesFoucault’s early thought, especially Foucault’sinterpretation of Descartes. “Cogito and the History ofMadness” will result in a rupture between Derrida and Foucault,which will never fully heal. In the early 60s, Derrida reads Heideggerand Levinas carefully. The recently published lecture course from1964–1965, Heidegger: The Question of Being andHistory, allows us to see how Derrida developed his questions toHeidegger. In 1964, Derrida publishes a long two part essay onLevinas, “Violence and Metaphysics.” It is hard todetermine which of Derrida’s early essays is the most important,but certainly “Violence and Metaphysics” has to be aleading candidate.

What comes through clearly in “Violence and Metaphysics”is Derrida’s great sympathy for Levinas’s thought ofalterity, and at the same it is clear that Derrida is taking somedistance from Levinas’s thought. Despite this distance,“Violence and Metaphysics” will open up a lifetimefriendship with Levinas. In 1967 (at the age of thirty-seven), Derridahas his “annus mirabilis,” publishing three books atonce: Writing and Difference,Voice and Phenomenon, and Of Grammatology. In allthree, Derrida uses the word “deconstruction” (to which weshall return below) in passing to describe his project. The wordcatches on immediately and comes to define Derrida’sthought. From then on up to the present, the word is bandied about,especially in the Anglophone world. It comes to be associated with aform of writing and thinking that is illogical and imprecise. It mustbe noted that Derrida’s style of writing contributed not only tohis great popularity but also to the great animosity some felt towardshim. His style is frequently more literary than philosophical andtherefore more evocative than argumentative.

Certainly, Derrida’s style is not traditional. In the samespeech from 1980 at the time of him being awarded a doctorate, Derridatells us that, in the Seventies, he devoted himself to developing astyle of writing. The most clearest example is his 1974 Glas(“Death Knell” would be an approximate Englishtranslation; the current English translation simply uses the word“glas”); here Derrida writes in two columns, with the left devoted toa reading of Hegel and the right devoted to a reading of the Frenchnovelist-playwright Jean Genet. Another example would be his 1980Postcard from Socrates to Freud and Beyond; the opening twohundred pages of this book consist of love letters addressed to no onein particular. It seems that sometime around this time (1980), Derridareverted back to the more linear and somewhat argumentative style, thevery style that defined his texts from the Sixties. He never howeverrenounced a kind of evocation, a calling forth that truly definesdeconstruction. Derrida takes the idea of a call fromHeidegger. Starting in 1968 with “The Ends of Man,”Derrida devoted a number of texts to Heidegger’s thought. But,it is really with the 1978 publication of The Truth inPainting, and then throughout the 1980s, that Derrida intensifiedhis reading of Heidegger. In particular, he wrote a series of essayson the question of sex or race in Heidegger (“GeschlechtI-IV”). While frequently critical, these essays often providenew insights into Heidegger’s thought. The culminating essay inDerrida’s series on Heidegger is his 1992 Aporias.

While Derrida's intensive work on Husserl and phenomenology wasprimarily limited to the late 1960s, and to the publication ofVoice and Phenomenon in 1967, this one book produced manycriticisms of his reading of Husserl. Most notable is J. Claude Evans'Strategies of Deconstruction: Derrida and the Myth of theVoice in 1991 (for other criticisms, see Bernet 1988, Brough1993, Mohanty 1997, and Zahavi 1999). Although throughout his careerDerrida would mention Husserl in passing, he surprisingly wrote achapter on Husserl in his Touching: Jean-Luc Nancy. One ofthe places where he mentions Husserl is his 1971 address to acommunication conference in Montreal, “Signature EventContext.” He publishes this article as the final chapter ofMargins of Philosophy in 1972. While “Signature EventContext” contains a short discussion of Husserl, its real focusis Austin's speech act theory. The connection Derrida makes betweenHusserl's phenomenology and Austin's speech act theory is that bothreject citations from the realm of meaningfulness (Husserl) or of theperformative (Austin). (Speech theory had a substantial influence onFrench philosophy at this moment, and Derrida would continue to referto the constative/performative distinction throughout his career.) Inany case, the English translation of “Signature EventContext” appeared in the first volume of the new journalGlyph in 1977. The editor of Glyph, Sam Weber,invited John Searle to write a response to “Signature EventHistory.” In his response, “Reiterating the Differences: AReply to Derrida,” Searle points out a number of flaws inDerrida's argumentation and his understanding of Austin. For thesecond volume of Glyph (also published in 1977), Derridacontributed a response to Searle's “Reply” called“Limited Inc a b c.” In contrast to Searle's ten page“Reply,” Derrida's “Limited Inc” ran to ninetypages. Derrida's “Limited Inc” is an almost mercilesscriticism of Searle, whom he calls “Sarl.” For instance,he points out that Searle in his “Reply” hardly mentionssignature, event, or context. “Limited Inc” indicatesDerrida's growing frustration with the reception of his work,especially in the Anglophone world. His frustration must haveculminated when he was offered an honorary degree at CambridgeUniversity in 1992. A group of analytic philosophers wrote an openletter (available online) to the Times of London,in which they objected to Derrida receiving this honorarydegree. Despite the letter, Cambridge University awarded Derrida thedegree.

Throughout the Sixties, having been invited by Hyppolite andAlthusser, Derrida taught at the École Normale. In 1983, hebecame “Director of Studies” in “PhilosophicalInstitutions” at the École des Hautes Études enSciences Sociales in Paris; he will hold this position until hisdeath. Starting in the Seventies, Derrida held many appointments inAmerican universities, in particular Johns Hopkins University and YaleUniversity. From 1987, Derrida taught one semester a year at theUniversity of California at Irvine. Derrida’s closerelationship with Irvine led to the establishment of the Derridaarchives there. Also during the Seventies, Derrida associated himselfwith GREPH (“Le Groupe de Recherche sur l’EnseignementPhilosophique,” in English: “The Group Investigating theTeaching of Philosophy”). As its name suggests, this groupinvestigated how philosophy is taught in the high schools anduniversities in France. Derrida wrote several texts based on thisresearch, many of which were collected in Du droit à laphilosophie (1990, one part of this book has been translated intoEnglish as Eyes of the University. Right to Philosophy 2). In1982, Derrida was also one of the founders of the CollègeInternationale de Philosophie in Paris, and served as its firstdirector from 1982 to 1984.

In the 1990s, Derrida’s works went in two simultaneousdirections that tend to intersect and overlap with one another:politics and religion. These two directions were probably firstclearly evident in Derrida’s 1989 “Force of Law.”But one can see them better in his 1993 Specters of Marx,where Derrida insisted that a deconstructed (or criticized) Marxistthought is still relevant to today’s world despite globalizationand that a deconstructed Marxism consists in a new messianism, amessianism of a “democracy to come.” But, even thoughDerrida was approaching the end of his life, he produced manyinteresting texts in the Nineties and into the new century. Forinstance, Derrida’s 1996 text on Levinas, “A Word ofWelcome,” lays out the most penetrating logic of the same andother through a discussion of hospitality. In his final works onsovereignty, in particular, Rogues (2003), Derrida shows thatthe law always contains the possibility of suspension, which meansthat even the most democratic of nations (the United States forexample) resembles a “rogue state” or perhaps is the most“roguish” of all states. Based on lectures first presentedduring the summer of 1998,The Animal that Therefore I am)appeared as the first posthumous work in 2006; concerning animality,it indicates Derrida’s continuous interest in the question oflife. We see this interest in life also in Derrida's lectures on thedeath penalty, where he questions the meaning of cruelty (which ismore cruel, the death penalty or life in prison?). Animal life andpower is the theme of Derrida’s last lecture courses on“The Beast and the Sovereign.” (For a study of this finalcourse, see Krell 2013.)

Sometime in 2002, Derrida was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Hedied on October 8, 2004. Since his death two biographies have appeared(Powell 2006 and Peeters 2013).

2. “The Incorruptibles”

As we noted, Derrida became famous at the end of the 1960s,with the publication of three books in 1967. At this time, other greatbooks appear: Foucault’s Les mots et les choses (TheOrder of Things is the English language title) in 1966;Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition in 1968. It is hardto deny that the philosophy publications of this epoch indicate that wehave before us a kind of philosophical moment (a moment perhapscomparable to the moment of German Idealism at the beginning of the19^th century). Hélène Cixous calls thisgeneration of French philosophers “the incorruptibles.” Inthe last interview Derrida gave (to Le Monde on August 19,2004), he provided an interpretation of “theincorruptibles”: “By means of metonymy, I call thisapproach [of ‘the incorruptibles’] an intransigent, evenincorruptible, ethos of writing and thinking …, withoutconcession even to philosophy, and not letting public opinion, themedia, or the phantasm of an intimidating readership frighten or forceus into simplifying or repressing. Hence the strict taste forrefinement, paradox, and aporia.” Derrida proclaims that today,more than ever, “this predilection [for paradox and aporia]remains a requirement.” How are we to understand thisrequirement, this predilection for “refinement, paradox, andaporia”?

In an essay from 1998, “Typewriter Ribbon,” Derridainvestigates the relation of confession to archives. But, before hestarts the investigation (which will concern primarily Rousseau), hesays, “Let us put in place the premises of our question.”He says, “Will this be possible for us? Will we one day be ableto, and in a single gesture, to join the thinking of the event to thethinking of the machine? Will we be able to think, what is calledthinking, at one and the same time, both what is happening (we callthat an event) and the calculable programming of an automaticrepetition (we call that a machine). For that, it would be necessaryin the future (but there will be no future except on this condition)to think both the event and the machine as two compatible or evenin-dissociable concepts. Today they appear to us to beantinomic” (Without Alibi, p. 72). These two conceptsappear to us to be antinomic because we conceive an event as somethingsingular and non-repeatable. Moreover, Derrida associates thissingularity to the living. The living being undergoes a sensation andthis sensation (an affect or feeling for example) gets inscribed inorganic material. The idea of an inscription leads Derrida to theother pole. The machine that inscribes is based in repetition;“It is destined, that is, to reproduce impassively,imperceptibly, without organ or organicity, the received commands. Ina state of anaesthesis, it would obey or command a calculable programwithout affect or auto-affection, like an indifferent automaton”(Without Alibi, p. 73). The automatic nature of the inorganicmachine is not the spontaneity attributed to organic life. It is easyto see the incompatibility of the two concepts: organic, livingsingularity (the event) and inorganic, dead universality (mechanicalrepetition). Derrida says that, if we can make these two conceptscompatible, “you can bet not only (and I insist on not only)will one have produced a new logic, an unheard of conceptual form. Intruth, against the background and at the horizon of our presentpossibilities, this new figure would resemble a monster.” Themonstrosity of this paradox between event and repetition announces,perhaps, another kind of thinking, an impossible thinking: theimpossible event (there must be resemblance to the past which cancelsthe singularity of the event) and the only possible event (since anyevent in order to be event worthy of its name must be singular andnon-resembling). Derrida concludes this discussion by saying:“To give up neither the event nor the machine, to subordinateneither one to the other, neither to reduce one to the other: this isperhaps a concern of thinking that has kept a certain number of‘us’ working for the last few decades” (WithoutAlibi, p. 74). This “us” refers to Derrida’sgeneration of thinkers: “the incorruptibles.” What Derridasays here defines a general project which consists in trying toconceive the relation between machine-like repeatability andirreplaceable singularity neither as a relation of externality(external as in Descartes’s two substance or as in Platonism’s twoworlds) nor as a relation of homogeneity (any form of reductionismwould suffice here to elucidate a homogeneous relation). Instead, therelation is one in which the elements are internal to one another andyet remain heterogeneous. Derrida’s famous term“différance” (to which we shall return below)refers to this relation in which machine-like repeatability isinternal to irreplaceable singularity and yet the two remainheterogeneous to one another.

Of course, Cixous intends with the word “incorruptibles”that the generation of French philosophers who came of age in theSixties, what they wrote and did, will never decay, will remainendlessly new and interesting. This generation will remain pure. But,the term is particularly appropriate for Derrida, since his thoughtconcerns precisely the idea of purity and therefore contamination.Contamination, in Derrida, implies that an opposition consisting intwo pure poles separated by an indivisible line never exists. In otherwords, traditionally (going back to Plato’s myths but also Christiantheology), we think that there was an original pure state of being(direct contact with the forms or the Garden of Eden) whichaccidentally became corrupt. In contrast, Derrida tries to show thatno term or idea or reality is ever pure in this way; one term alwaysand necessarily “infects” the other.

Nevertheless, for Derrida, a kind of purity remains as a value. In his1992 The Monolingualism of the Other, Derrida speaks of his“shameful intolerance” for anything but the purity of theFrench language (as opposed to French contaminated with English wordslike “le weekend”). Derrida says, “I still do notdare admit this compulsive demand for a purity of language exceptwithin boundaries of which I can be sure: this demand is neitherethical, political, nor social. It does not inspire any judgment inme. It simply exposes me to suffering when someone, who can bemyself, happens to fall short of it. I suffer even further when Icatch myself or am caught ‘red-handed’ in theact. … Above all, this demand remains so inflexible that itsometimes goes beyond the grammatical point of view, it even neglects‘style’ in order to bow to a more hidden rule, to‘listen’ to the domineering murmur of an order whichsomeone in me flatters himself to understand, even in situations wherehe would be the only one to do so, in a tête-à-têtewith the idiom, the final target: a last will of the language, in sum,a law of the language that would entrust itself only to me. …Itherefore admit to a purity which is not very pure. Anything but apurism. It is, at least, the only impure ‘purity’ forwhich I dare confess a taste” (Monolingualism,p. 46). Derrida’s taste for purity is such that he seeks the idioms ofa language. The idioms of a language are what make the languagesingular. An idiom is so pure that we seem unable to translate it outof that language. For example, Derrida always connects the Frenchidiom “il faut,” “it is necessary,” to“une faute,” “a fault” and to “undéfaut,” “a defect”; but we cannot make thislinguistic connection between necessity and a fault in English. Thisidiom seems to belong alone to French; it seems as though it cannot beshared; so far, there is no babble of several languages in the onesole French language. And yet, even within one language, an idiom canbe shared. Here is another French idiom: “il y va d’un certainpas.” Even in French, this idiom can be “translated.” On the onehand, if one takes the “il y va” literally, one has asentence about movement to a place (“y”: there) at acertain pace (“un certain pas”: a certain step). On theother hand, if one takes the “il y va” idiomatically(“il y va”: what is at issue), one has a sentence (perhapsmore philosophical) about the issue of negation (“un certainpas”: “a certain kind of not”). This undecidabilityin how to understand an idiom within one sole language indicates that,already in French, in the one French language, there is alreadytranslation and, as Derrida would say, “Babelization.”Therefore, for Derrida, “a pure language” means a languagewhose terms necessarily include a plurality of senses that cannot bereduced down to one sense that is the proper meaning. In other words,the taste for purity in Derrida is a taste for impropriety andtherefore impurity. The value of purity in Derrida means that anyonewho conceives language in terms of proper or pure meanings must becriticized.

3. Basic Argumentation and its Implications: Time, Hearing-Oneself-Speak, the Secret, and Sovereignty

Already we are very close to Derrida’s basic argumentation. The basicargumentation always attempts to show that no one is able to separateirreplaceable singularity and machine-like repeatability (or“iterability,” as Derrida frequently says) into twosubstances that stand outside of one another; nor is anyone able toreduce one to the other so that we would have one pure substance (withattributes or modifications). Machine-like repeatability andirreplaceable singularity, for Derrida, are like two forces thatattract one another across a limit that is indeterminate anddivisible. Yet, to understand the basic argumentation, we must be, asDerrida himself says in Rogues, “responsible guardiansof the heritage of transcendental idealism” (Rogues,p. 134; see also Limited Inc, p. 93). Kant had of courseopened up the possibility of this way of philosophizing: arguing back(Kant called this arguing back a “deduction”) from thegivenness of experience to the conditions that are necessarilyrequired for the way experience is given. These conditions wouldfunction as a foundation for all experience. Following Kant (but alsoHusserl and Heidegger), Derrida then is always interested in necessaryand foundational conditions of experience.

So, let us start with the simplest argument that we can formulate.If we reflect on experience in general, what we cannot deny is thatexperience is conditioned by time. Every experience, necessarily, takesplace in the present. In the present experience, there is the kernel orpoint of the now. What is happening right now is a kind of event,different from every other now I have ever experienced. Yet, also inthe present, I remember the recent past and I anticipate what is aboutto happen. The memory and the anticipation consist in repeatability.Because what I experience now can be immediately recalled, it isrepeatable and that repeatability therefore motivates me to anticipatethe same thing happening again. Therefore, what is happening right nowis also not different from every other now I have everexperienced. At the same time, the present experience is anevent and it is not an event because it is repeatable. This “atthe same time” is the crux of the matter for Derrida. Theconclusion is that we can have no experience that does not essentiallyand inseparably contain these two agencies of event andrepeatability.

This basic argument contains four important implications.First, experience as the experience of the present is never asimple experience of something present over and against me, rightbefore my eyes as in an intuition; there is always another agencythere. Repeatability contains what has passed away and is no longerpresent and what is about to come and is not yet present. Thepresent therefore is always complicated by non-presence. Derrida callsthis minimal repeatability found in every experience “thetrace.” Indeed, the trace is a kind of proto-linguisticality(Derrida also calls it “arche-writing”), since language inits most minimal determination consists in repeatable forms.Second, the argument has disturbed the traditional structureof transcendental philosophy, which consists in a linear relationbetween foundational conditions and founded experience. In traditionaltranscendental philosophy (as in Kant for example), an empirical eventsuch as what is happening right now is supposed to bederivative from or founded upon conditions which are notempirical. Yet, Derrida’s basic argument demonstrates that theempirical event is a non-separable part of the structural orfoundational conditions. Or, in traditional transcendental philosophy,the empirical event is supposed to be an accident that overcomes anessential structure. But with Derrida’s argument, we see that thisaccident cannot be removed or eliminated. We can describe this secondimplication in still another way. In traditional philosophy we alwaysspeak of a kind of first principle or origin and that origin is alwaysconceived as self-identical (again something like a Garden of Edenprinciple). Yet, here we see that the origin is immediately divided,as if the “fall” into division, accidents, and empiricalevents has always already taken place. In Of Spirit, Derridacalls this kind of origin “origin-heterogeneous”: theorigin is heterogeneous immediately (Of Spirit, pp.107–108). Third, if the origin is always heterogeneous, thennothing is ever given as such in certainty. Whatever is givenis given as other than itself, as already past or as still to come.What becomes foundational therefore in Derrida is this“as”: origin as the heterogeneous “as.” The“as” means that there is no knowledge as such, there is notruth as such, there is no perception, no intuition of anything as such. Faith, perjury, andlanguage are already there in the origin. Fourth, ifsomething like a fall has always already taken place, has taken placeessentially or necessarily, then every experience contains an aspectof lateness. It seems as though I am always late for the origin sinceit seems to have always already disappeared. Every experience then isalways not quite on time or, as Derrida quotes Hamlet, time is“out of joint.” Late in his career, Derrida will call thistime being out of joint “anachronism” (see for instanceOn the Name, p. 94). As we shall see in a moment, anachronismfor Derrida is the flip side of what he calls “spacing”(espacement); space is out of place. But we should also keepin mind, as we move forward that the phrase “out of joint”alludes to justice: being out of joint, time is necessarily unjust orviolent.

So far, we can say that the argument is quite simple although it haswide-ranging implications. It is based on an analysis of experience,but it is also based in the experience of what Derrida has called“auto-affection.” We find the idea of auto-affection (orself-affection) in ancient Greek philosophy, for example inAristotle’s definition of God as “thought thinkingitself.” Auto-affection occurs when I affect myself, when theaffecting is the same as the affected. As we said above, Derrida willfrequently write about autobiography as a form of auto-affection orself-relation. In the very late The Animal that Therefore Iam, Derrida tells us what he is trying to do with auto-affection:“if the auto-position, the automonstrative autotely ofthe ‘I,’ even in the human, implies the ‘I’ tobe an other that must welcome within itself some irreduciblehetero-affection (as I [that is, Derrida] have tried todemonstrate elsewhere [my emphasis]), then this autonomy ofthe ‘I’ can be neither pure nor rigorous; it would not beable to form the basis for a simple and linear differentiation of thehuman from the animal” (The Animal that Therefore I am,p. 95). Always, Derrida tries to show that auto-affection ishetero-affection; the experience of the same (I am thinking aboutmyself) is the experience of the other (insofar as I think aboutmyself I am thinking of someone or something else at the sametime). But, in order to understand more fully the basic argumentation,let us look at three of these “other places” where Derridahas “attempted” to show that an irreduciblehetero-affection infects auto-affection.

The first occurs in Voice and Phenomenon, Derrida’s1967 study of Husserl. While this is a small book, it aims tocriticize what Husserl calls the “principle of all principles” forphenomenology, that is, that evidentness is based in an intuition,intuition being different from a sign (Husserl 2014, 43–44,paragraph 24). In Voice and Phenomenon Derrida recognizesthat perception, for Husserl, is that of adumbrations, with anintentional meaning unifying the different profiles. However, Derridasees in the principle of all principles and in Husserl's introductionof an Idea in the Kantian sense (Husserl 2014, 284–285,paragraph 143) the imposition of a telos for perception towards a pureintuition, pure presence or givenness, uncontaminated bysignification.

More specifically, Derrida argues that, when Husserl describeslived-experience (Erlebnis), even absolute subjectivity, heis speaking of an interior monologue, auto-affection ashearing-oneself-speak. According to Derrida, hearing-oneself-speakis, for Husserl, “an auto-affection of an absolutelyunique type” (Voice and Phenomenon, p. 67). It isunique because there seems to be no external detour from the hearingto the speaking; in hearing-oneself-speak there is self-proximity. Itseems therefore that I hear myself speak immediately in the verymoment that I am speaking. According to Derrida, Husserl’sown description of temporalization however undermines the idea that Ihear myself speak immediately. On the one hand, Husserl describes whathe calls the “living present,” the present that I amexperiencing right now, and yet Husserl also saysthat the living present is thick. The living present is thick becauseit includes phases other than the now, in particular, what Husserlcalls “protention,” the anticipation (or“awaiting,” we might say) of the approaching future and“retention,” the memory of the recent past. As is wellknown, Derrida focuses on the status of retention in Voice andPhenomenon. Retention in Husserl has a strange status sinceHusserl wants to include it in the present as a kind of perception andat the same time he recognizes that it is different from the presentas a kind of non-perception. For Derrida, Husserl’s descriptions implythat the living present, by always folding the recent past back intoitself, by always folding primary memory into the present perception, involves adifference in the very middle of it (Voice andPhenomenon, p. 56). In other words, in the very moment, whensilently I speak to myself, it must be the case that there is aminiscule hiatus differentiating me into the speaker and into thehearer. There must be a hiatus that differentiates me from myself, ahiatus or gap without which I would not be a hearer as wellas a speaker. This hiatus also defines the trace, a minimalrepeatability. And this hiatus, this fold of repetition, is found inthe very moment of hearing-myself-speak. Derrida stresses that“moment” or “instant” translates the German“Augenblick,” which literally means “blink of theeye.” When Derrida stresses the literal meaning of“Augenblick,” he is in effect “deconstructing”auditory auto-affection into visual auto-affection. When I look in themirror, for example, it is necessary that I am “distanced”or “spaced” from the mirror. I must be distanced frommyself so that I am able to be both seer andseen. The space between, however, remains obstinatelyinvisible. Remaining invisible, the space gouges out the eye, blindsit. I see myself over there in the mirror and yet, that self overthere is other than me; so, I am not able to see myself as such. WhatDerrida is trying to demonstrate here is that this“spacing” (espacement) or blindness isessentially necessary for all forms of auto-affection, even tactileauto-affection which seems to be immediate.

Now, let us go to another “other place,” which can befound in “How to Avoid Speaking.” Here Derrida discussesnegative theology by means of the idea of“dénégation,” “denegation” or“denial.” The French word“dénégation” translates Freud’s term“Verneinung.” Both words’ prefixes imply an emphasis ofnegation (although the French prefix also implies a negation of anegation). Yet, within psychoanalysis and in particular in Freud, theterm ,“Verneinung” implies that when the patient denies adesire or wish, he or she has indicated to the analyst precisely whathe or she unconsciously desires or wishes. The denial then functionsas a sort of disguised confirmation of the analyst’s interpretation ofthe patient’s symptoms or problem. In short, and this is what Derridais most interested in, psychoanalysis has isolated a negation which isin fact an affirmation. The fundamental question then for negativetheology, but also for psychoanalysis, and for Derrida is how to denyand yet also not deny. This duality between not telling andtelling is why Derrida takes up the idea of the secret. In “Howto Avoid Speaking,” Derrida says, and this is an importantcomment for understanding the secret in Derrida: “There is asecret of denial [dénégation] and a denial[dénégation] of the secret. The secret assuch, as secret, separates and already institutes a negativity;it is a negation that denies itself. It de-negates itself”(Languages of the Unsayable, p. 25, my emphasis). HereDerrida speaks of a secret as such. A secret as such issomething that must not be spoken; we then have the first negation:“I promisenot to give the secret away.” And yet, in order topossess a secret really, to have it really, I musttell it to myself. Here we can see the relation ofhearing-oneself-speak that we just saw in Voice andPhenomenon. Keeping a secret includes necessarily auto-affection:I must speak to myself of the secret. We might however say more, wemight even say that I am too weak for this speaking of the secret tomyself not to happen. I must have a conceptual grasp of it; I have toframe a representation of the secret. With the idea of are-presentation (I must present the secret to myself again inorder to possess it really), we also see retention, repetition, andthe trace or a name. A trace of the secret must be formed, in whichcase, the secret is in principle shareable. If the secret must benecessarily shareable, it is always already shared. In other words, inorder to frame the representation of the secret, I must negate thefirst negation, in which I promised not to tell the secret: I musttell the secret to myself as if I were someone else. I thereby make asecond negation, a so to speak “de-” or“un-negation,” which means I must break the promise not totell the secret. In order to keep the secret (or the promise), I mustnecessarily not keep the secret (I must violate the promise). So, Ipossess the secret and do not possess it. This structure has theconsequence of there being no secret as such. A secret isnecessarily shared. As Derrida says in “How to AvoidSpeaking,”

This denial [dénégation] does not happen [tothe secret] by accident; it is essential and originary. … Theenigma … is the sharing of the secret, and not only shared to mypartner in the society but the secret shared within itself, its‘own’ partition, which divides the essence of a secret thatcannot even appear to one alone except in starting to be lost, todivulge itself, hence to dissimulate itself, as secret, in showingitself: dissimulating its dissimulation. There is no secret as such; Ideny it. And this is what I confide in secret to whomever allieshimself to me. This is the secret of the alliance. (Languages ofthe Unsayable, p. 25)

Now, finally, let us go to one of the most recent of Derrida’swritings, to his 2002 “The Reason of the Strongest,” thefirst essay in the book called Rogues. There Derrida isdiscussing the United Nations, which he says combines the twoprinciples of Western political thought: sovereignty and democracy.But, “democracy and sovereignty are at the same time, but alsoby turns, inseparable and in contradiction with one another”(Rogues, p. 100). Democracy and sovereignty contradict oneanother in the following way. And here Derrida is speaking of puresovereignty, the very “essence of sovereignty”(Rogues, p. 100). On the one hand, in order to be sovereign,one must wield power oneself, take responsibility for its use byoneself, which means that the use of power, if it is to be sovereign,must be silent; the sovereign does not have to give reasons; thesovereign must exercise power in secret. In other words, sovereigntyattempts to possess power indivisibly, it tries not to share,and not sharing means contracting power into an instant—theinstant of action, of an event, of a singularity. We can see theoutline here of Derrida’s deconstruction not only of thehearing-oneself-speak auto-affection but also of the auto-affection ofthe promising-to-oneself to keep a secret. On the other hand,democracy calls for the sovereign to share power, to give reasons, touniversalize. In democracy the use of power therefore is always anabuse of power (see Haddad 2013, pp. 51–65). Derrida can also say thatsovereignty and democracy are inseparable from one another (thecontradiction makes them heterogeneous to one another) becausedemocracy even though it calls for universalization (giving reasons inan assembly) also requires force, freedom, a decision, sovereignpower. For Derrida, in democracy, a decision (the use of power) isalways urgent; and yet (here is the contradiction), democracy takestime, democracy makes one wait so that the use of power can bediscussed. Power can never be exercised without its communication; asDerrida says, “As soon as I speak to the other, I submit to thelaw of giving reason(s), I share a virtually universalizable medium, Idivide my authority” (Rogues, p. 101). There must besovereignty, and yet, there can be no use of power without the sharingof it through repetition. More precisely, as Derrida says,“Since [sovereignty] never succeeds in [not sharing] except in acritical, precarious, and unstable fashion, sovereignty canonly tend, for a limited time, to reign without sharing. Itcan only tend toward imperial hegemony. To make use of the time isalready an abuse” (Rogues, p. 102, Derrida’semphasis). This tendency defines what Derrida calls “theworst,” a tendency toward the complete appropriation orextermination of all the others.

4. Elaboration of the Basic Argumentation: The Worst and Hospitality

Throughout his career, Derrida elaborates on the basic argumentationin many ways. But Derrida always uses the argumentation against oneidea, which Derrida calls “the worst” (le pire).We can extract a definition of the worst from “Faith andKnowledge” (Religion, p. 65). It revolves around anambiguous phrase “plus d’un,” which could be translated inEnglish as “more than one,” “more of one,” or“no more one.” On the one hand, this phrase means that inauto-affection, even while it is “auto,” the same, thereis more than one; immediately with one, there is two, the self andother, and others. On the other hand, it means that there is a lotmore of one, only one, the most one. The worst derives from thissecond sense of “plus d’un.” The worst is a superlative;it is the worst violence. Derrida, it seems, distinguishes the worstviolence from what Kant had called “radical evil.” Radicalevil is literally radical, evil at the root. It consists in the small,“infinitesimal difference” (see Of Grammatology,p. 234) between me and an other, even between me and an other inme. Derrida would describe this infinitesimal hiatus as the address,the “à” or the “to”; it is not onlydifference, across the distance of the address, it is alsorepetition. And, it is not only a repetition; this self-divergence isalso violence, a rending of oneself, an incision. Derrida’sappropriation of Kant’s idea of radical evil has led certaincommentators to stress a kind of fundamental atheism in Derridadespite the fact that he seems very interested in religion and faith(see Hägglund, 2008, pp. 112–113; for an opposing viewpoint, seeCaputo, 1999, p. 312). Despite this controversy around Derrida’salleged theism or atheism, it looks as though, for him, radical evilis not absolute evil (see Philosophy in a Time of Terror,p. 99). The worst violence occurs when the other to which oneis related is completely appropriated to orcompletely in one’s self, when an address reaches itsproper destination, when it reaches only its properdestination. Reaching only its proper destination, theaddress will exclude more, many more, and that “manymore,” at the limit, amounts to all. It is thiscomplete exclusion or this extermination of the most– there is no limit to this violence—that makes thisviolence the worst violence. The worst is a relation that makes ofmore than one simply one, that makes, out of a division, anindivisible sovereignty. We can see again that the worst resembles the“pure actuality” of Aristotle’s Prime Mover, the One God:the sphere, or better, the globe of thought thinking itself(Rogues, p. 15).

What we have just laid out is the structure of the worst inDerrida’s thinking. But the structure, for Derrida, can alwayshappen as an event. Derrida thinks that today, “in a time ofterror,” after the end of the Cold War, when globalization istaking place, the fragility of the nation-state is being tested moreand more. Agencies such as the International Criminal Court, the demandfor universal human rights encroach on nation-state sovereignty. Butthe result of this universalization or “worlding”(“mondialisation” is the French word for globalization) isthat the concept of war, and thus of world war, of enemy, and even ofterrorism, along with the distinctions between civilian and military orbetween army, police, and militia, all of these concepts anddistinctions are losing their pertinence. As Derrida says here inRogues “what is called September 11 will not havecreated or revealed this situation, although it will have surelymedia-theatricalized it” (Rogues, pp. 154–55). Now, withglobalization, there is no identifiable enemy in the form of a“state” territory with whom one (in Rogues Derridauses this phrase: “the United States and its allies”) wouldwage what could still be called a “war,” even if we thinkof this as a war on international terrorism. The balance of terror ofthe Cold War that insured that no escalation of nuclear weapons wouldlead to a suicidal operation, Derrida says, “all that isover.” Instead, “a new violence is being prepared and intruth has been unleashed for some time now, in a way that is morevisibly suicidal or auto-immune than ever. This violence no longer hasto do with world war or even with war, even less withsome right to wage war. And this is hardly re-assuring – indeed,quite the contrary” (Rogues, p. 156).

What does it mean to be “more suicidal”? To be moresuicidal is to kill oneself more. The “more” meansthat, since there is only a fragile distinction between states (thereis no identification of the enemy), one’s state or self includesmore and more of the others. But, if one’s self includes othersthat threaten (so-called “terrorist cells,” for example),then, if one wants to immune oneself, then one must murder more andmore of those others that are inside. Since the others areinside one’s state or one’s self, one is requiredto kill more and more of oneself. This context is very different fromthe rigid and external opposition, symbolized by the so-called“Iron Curtain,” that defined the Cold War. There and then,“we” had an identifiable enemy, with a name, whichallowed the number of the enemies to be limited. But here and now,today, the number of “enemies” is potentially unlimited.Every other is wholly other (“tout autre esttout autre” [cf. The Politics of Friendship, p. 232])and thus every single other needs to be rejected by the immune system.This innumerable rejection resembles a genocide or what is worse anabsolute threat. The absolute threat can no longer be contained when itcomes neither from an already constituted state nor even from apotential state that might be treated as a rogue state(Rogues, p. 105). What Derrida is saying here is that theworst is possible, here and now, more possible than ever.

As I said, Derrida always uses the basic argumentation that we havelaid out against the idea of the worst; today the tendency towards theworst is greater than ever. The purpose in the application –this purpose defines deconstruction—is to move us towards, notthe worst violence, not the most violence, but the least violence(Writing and Difference, p. 130). How does the application ofthe argumentation against the worst work? Along with globalization,the post-Cold War period sees, as Derrida says in “Faith andKnowledge,” a “return of the religious”(Religion, pp. 42–43; see also Caputo 1997, pp. 152–159). So,in “Faith and Knowledge,” Derrida lays out the etymologyof the Latin word “religion” (he acknowledges that theetymology is problematic). The etymology implies that there are“two sources” of religion: “religio,” whichimplies a holding back or a being unscathed, safe and sound; and“re-legere,” which implies a linking up with anotherthrough faith (Religion, p. 16). We can see in this etymologythe inseparable dualities we examined above: singular event andmachine-like repeatability; auto-affection as hetero-affection. Mostimportantly, Derrida is trying to understand the “link”that defines religion prior to the link between man as such and thedivinity of God. What we can see in this attempt to conceive the linkas it is prior to its determination in terms of man and God is anattempt to make the link be as open as possible. Derrida is attemptingto “un-close,” as much as possible, the sphericity orenglobing of thought thinking itself – in order to open the linkas wide as possible, open it to every single other, to any otherwhatsoever. Throughout his career, Derrida is always interested in thestatus of animality since it determines the limit between man andothers. As his final book demonstrates, L’animal que donc jesuis, Derrida is attempting to open the link even to animals.Animals are other and, because “every other is whollyother” (tout autre est tout autre), the link must beopen to them too. Here despite the immense influence they have had onhis thought, Derrida breaks with both Heidegger and Levinas both ofwhom did not open the link this wide (see Points, p. 279).Here, with the “door” or “border” open as wideas possible, we encounter Derrida’s idea of “unconditionalhospitality,” which means letting others in no matter what,without asking them for papers, without judging them, even when theyare uninvited. All are to be treated not as enemies who must beexpelled or exterminated, but as friends. Nevertheless, as Derridaconstantly stresses, we cannot really identify the friend assuch. Unconditional hospitality is dangerous.

This danger explains why unconditional openness of the borders is notthe best (as opposed to what we were calling the worst above); it isonly the less bad or less evil, the less violence. Indeed, it looks asthough the unconditional opening is not possible. There always seemsto be factual conditions. Among all the others we must decide, we mustassign them papers, which means that there is always, still,necessarily violence at the borders. At once, in hospitality, there isthe force that moves towards to the other to welcome and the force toremain unscathed and pulled back from the other, trying to keep thedoor closed. Here too, in hospitality, we see Derrida’s idea of a“messianicity without messiah.” Because letting all theothers in is impossible (but we must note that Derrida’s concept ofpossibility or virtuality, of the “perhaps,” is complicated; see inparticular Politics of Friendship, p. 29), this de-closing isalways to come in the future like the messiah coming or coming back(Derrida plays on the French word for the future,“l’avenir,” which literally means “to come,”“à venir”). We must make one more point. Theimpossibility of unconditional hospitality means that any attempt toopen the globe completely is insufficient. Being insufficient, everyattempt therefore requires criticism; it must be“deconstructed,” as Derrida would say. But thisdeconstruction would be a deconstruction that recognizes its owninsufficiency. Deconstruction, to which we now turn, never thereforeresults in good conscience, in the good conscience that comes withthinking we have done enough to render justice.

5. Deconstruction

As we said at the beginning, “deconstruction” is themost famous of Derrida’s terms. He seems to have appropriated theterm from Heidegger’s use of “destruction” inBeing and Time. But we can get a general sense of what Derridameans with deconstruction by recalling Descartes’s FirstMeditation. There Descartes says that for a long time he has beenmaking mistakes. The criticism of his former beliefs both mistaken andvalid aims towards uncovering a “firm and permanentfoundation.” The image of a foundation implies that thecollection of his former beliefs resembles a building. In the FirstMeditation then, Descartes is in effect taking down this old building,“de-constructing” it. We have also seen how much Derrida isindebted to traditional transcendental philosophy which really startshere with Descartes’ search for a “firm and permanentfoundation.” But with Derrida, we know now, the foundation is nota unified self but a divisible limit between myself and myself as another (auto-affection as hetero-affection:“origin-heterogeneous”).

Derrida has provided many definitions of deconstruction. But threedefinitions are classical. The first is early, being found inthe 1971 interview “Positions” and in the 1972 Preface toDissemination: deconstruction consists in “twophases” (Positions, pp. 41–42,Dissemination, pp.4–6). At this stage of his careerDerrida speaks of “metaphysics” as if the Westernphilosophical tradition was monolithic and homogeneous. At times healso speaks of “Platonism,” as Nietzsche did. Simply,deconstruction is a criticism of Platonism, which is defined by thebelief that existence is structured in terms of oppositions (separatesubstances or forms) and that the oppositions are hierarchical, withone side of the opposition being more valuable than the other. Thefirst phase of deconstruction attacks this belief byreversing the Platonistic hierarchies: the hierarchiesbetween the invisible or intelligible and the visible or sensible;between essence and appearance; between the soul and body; betweenliving memory and rote memory; between mnēmē andhypomnēsis; between voice and writing; between finallygood and evil. In order to clarify deconstruction’s “twophases,” let us restrict ourselves to one specific opposition,the opposition between appearance and essence. Prior to Derrida,Nietzsche had also criticized this opposition, and it is criticized ina lot of Twentieth Century philosophy. So, in Platonism, essence ismore valuable than appearance. In deconstruction however, we reversethis, making appearance more valuable than essence. How? Here wecould resort to empiricist arguments (in Hume for example) that showthat all knowledge of what we call essence depends on the experienceof what appears. But then, this argumentation would imply that essenceand appearance are not related to one another as separate oppositionalpoles. The argumentation in other words would show us that essence canbe reduced down to a variation of appearances (involving the roles ofmemory and anticipation). The reduction is a reduction to what we cancall “immanence,” which carries the sense of“within” or “in.” So, we would say that whatwe used to call essence is found in appearance, essence ismixed into appearance. Now, we can back track a bit in thehistory of Western metaphysics. On the basis of the reversal of theessence-appearance hierarchy and on the basis of the reduction toimmanence, we can see that something like a decision (a perhapsimpossible decision) must have been made at the beginning of themetaphysical tradition, a decision that instituted the hierarchy ofessence-appearance and separated essence from appearance. Thisdecision is what really defines Platonism or“metaphysics.” After this retrospection, we can turn nowto a second step in the reversal-reduction of Platonism, which is thesecond “phase” of deconstruction. The previously inferiorterm must be re-inscribed as the “origin” or“resource” of the opposition and hierarchy itself. Howwould this re-inscription or redefinition of appearance work? Here wewould have to return to the idea that every appearance or everyexperience is temporal. In the experience of the present, there isalways a small difference between the moment of now-ness and the pastand the future. (It is perhaps possible that Hume had alreadydiscovered this small difference when, in the Treatise, hespeaks of the idea of relation.) In any case, this infinitesimaldifference is not only a difference that is non-dualistic, but also itis a difference that is, as Derrida would say,“undecidable.” Although the minuscule difference isvirtually unnoticeable in everyday common experience, when we in factnotice it, we cannot decide if we are experiencing a memoryor a present perception, if we are experiencing a present perceptionor an anticipation. (Bergson makes a similar claim in his“Memory of the Present and False Recognition”[Mind-Energy, pp. 109–151] and Deleuze extendsBergson's insight in his “The Actual and the Virtual”[Dialogues, pp. 148–152].) When we notice thedifference, we are indeed experiencing the present, but the present isrecognized as “contaminated” by the past andfuture. Insofar as the difference is undecidable (perception –what we see right now – contaminated with memory or the presentcontaminated with the past: the experienced difference is anexperience of what Derrida would call the “trace”), thedifference destabilizes the original decision that instituted thehierarchy. After the redefinition of the previously inferior term,Derrida usually changes the term’s orthography, for example,writing “différence” with an “a” as“différance” in order to indicate thechange in its status. Différance (which is found in appearanceswhen we recognize their temporal nature) then refers to theundecidable resource into which “metaphysics”“cut” in order to makes its decision. In“Positions,” Derrida calls names like“différance” “old names” or“paleonyms,” and there he also provides a list of these“old terms”: “pharmakon”;“supplement”; “trace”; “hymen”;“gram”; “spacing”; and “incision”(Positions, p. 43). These names are old because, like theword “appearance” or the word “difference,”they have been used for centuries in the history of Western philosophyto refer to the inferior position in hierarchies. But now, they arebeing used to refer to the resource that has never had a name in“metaphysics”; they are being used to refer to theresource that is indeed “older” than the metaphysicaldecision.

This first definition of deconstruction as two phases gives way to therefinement we find in the “Force of Law” (which dates from1989–1990). This second definition is less metaphysical andmore political. In “Force of Law,” Derrida says thatdeconstruction is practiced in two styles (Deconstruction and thePossibility of Justice, p. 21). These “two styles” donot correspond to the “two phases” in the earlierdefinition of deconstruction. On the one hand, there is thegenealogical style of deconstruction, which recalls the history of aconcept or theme. Earlier in his career, in Of Grammatology,Derrida had laid out, for example, the history of the concept ofwriting. But now what is at issue is the history of justice. On theother hand, there is the more formalistic or structural style ofdeconstruction, which examines a-historical paradoxes or aporias. In“Force of Law,” Derrida lays out three aporias, althoughthey all seem to be variants of one, an aporia concerning the unstablerelation between law (the French term is “droit,” whichalso means “right”) and justice.

Derrida calls the first aporia, “the epocheof the rule” (Deconstruction and the Possibility ofJustice, pp. 22–23). Our most common axiom in ethical or politicalthought is that to be just or unjust and to exercise justice, one mustbe free and responsible for one’s actions and decisions. HereDerrida in effect is asking: what is freedom. On the one hand, freedomconsists in following a rule; but in the case of justice, we would saythat a judgment that simply followed the law was only right, not just.For a decision to be just, not only must a judge follow a rule but alsohe or she must “re-institute” it, in a new judgment. Thus adecision aiming at justice (a free decision) is both regulated andunregulated. The law must be conserved and also destroyed orsuspended, suspension being the meaning of the word“epoche.” Each case is other, each decision is differentand requires an absolutely unique interpretation which no existingcoded rule can or ought to guarantee. If a judge programmaticallyfollows a code, he or she is a “calculating machine.”Strict calculation or arbitrariness, one or the other is unjust, butthey are both involved; thus, in the present, we cannot say that ajudgment, a decision is just, purely just. For Derrida, the“re-institution” of the law in a unique decision is a kindof violence since it does not conform perfectly to the institutedcodes; the law is always, according to Derrida, founded in violence.The violent re-institution of the law means that justice is impossible.Derrida calls the second aporia “the ghost of theundecidable” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice,pp. 24–26). A decision begins with the initiative to read, tointerpret, and even to calculate. But to make such a decision, one mustfirst of all experience what Derrida calls“undecidability.” One must experience that the case, beingunique and singular, does not fit the established codes and therefore adecision about it seems to be impossible. The undecidable, for Derrida,is not mere oscillation between two significations. It is theexperience of what, though foreign to the calculable and the rule, isstill obligated. We are obligated – this is a kind of duty—togive oneself up to the impossible decision, while taking account ofrules and law. As Derrida says, “A decision that did not gothrough the ordeal of the undecidable would not be a free decision, itwould only be the programmable application or unfolding of a calculableprocess” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice,p. 24). And once the ordeal is past (“if this everhappens,” as Derrida says), then the decision has again followedor given itself a rule and is no longer presently just. Justicetherefore is always to come in the future, it is never present. Thereis apparently no moment during which a decision could be calledpresently and fully just. Either it has not followed a rule, hence itis unjust; or it has followed a rule, which has no foundation,which makes it again unjust; or if it did follow a rule, itwas calculated and again unjust since it did not respect thesingularity of the case. This relentless injustice is why the ordeal ofthe undecidable is never past. It keeps coming back like a“phantom,” which “deconstructs from the inside everyassurance of presence, and thus every criteriology that would assure usof the justice of the decision” (Deconstruction and thePossibility of Justice, pp. 24–25). Even though justice isimpossible and therefore always to come in or from the future, justiceis not, for Derrida, a Kantian ideal, which brings us to the thirdaporia. The third is called “the urgency that obstructsthe horizon of knowledge” (Deconstruction and the Possibilityof Justice, pp. 26–28). Derrida stresses the Greek etymology ofthe word “horizon”: “As its Greek name suggests, ahorizon is both the opening and limit that defines an infinite progressor a period of waiting.” Justice, however, even though it isun-presentable, does not wait. A just decision is always requiredimmediately. It cannot furnish itself with unlimited knowledge. Themoment of decision itself remains a finite moment of urgency andprecipitation. The instant of decision is then the moment of madness,acting in the night of non-knowledge and non-rule. Once again we have amoment of irruptive violence. This urgency is why justice has nohorizon of expectation (either regulative or messianic). Justiceremains an event yet to come. Perhaps one must always say“can-be” (the French word for “perhaps” is“peut-être,” which literally means “canbe”) for justice. This ability for justice aims however towardswhat is impossible.

Even later in Derrida’s career he will formalize, beyond theseaporias, the nature of deconstruction. The third definition ofdeconstruction can be found in an essay from 2000 called “EtCetera.” Here Derrida in fact presents the principle that definesdeconstruction:

Each time that I say ‘deconstruction and X (regardless of theconcept or the theme),’ this is the prelude to a very singulardivision that turns this X into, or rather makes appear in this X,an impossibility that becomes its proper and sole possibility,with the result that between the X as possible and the‘same’ X as impossible, there is nothing but a relation ofhomonymy, a relation for which we have to provide an account….For example, here referring myself to demonstrations I have alreadyattempted …, gift, hospitality, death itself (and therefore somany other things) can be possible only as impossible, as theim-possible, that is, unconditionally (Deconstructions: aUser’s Guide, p. 300, my emphasis).

Even though the word “deconstruction” has been bandiedabout, we can see now the kind of thinking in which deconstructionengages. It is a kind of thinking that never finds itself at the end.Justice – this is undeniable – is impossible (perhapsjustice is the “impossible”) and therefore it is necessaryto make justice possible in countless ways.

Finally, with the publication of the death penalty lectures, we haveanother definition of deconstruct, one also dating from 2000 (lecturedated March 1/8, 2000). Here is what Derrida says:

To deconstruct death, then, that is the subject, while recalling thatwe do not know what it is, if and when it happens, and towhom. ... The dream of deconstruction, a convulsive movement to havedone with death itself. Not to put into question again the question,what is death? when and where does it take place? etc. What comesafterward? and so forth. But to deconstruct death. Final period. Andwith the same blow, to come to blows with death and put it out ofaction. No less than that. Death to death (The Death Penalty(Volume 1), pp. 240–241).

“No less than that. Death to death”: This shows us thatperhaps even more than justice deconstruction values (if we can speakof a moral value) life more than anything else. But, this life is notunscathed; it is life in its irreducible connection to death. Thuswhat deconstruction values is survival.

Bibliography

Primary Literature

Works by Derrida

• Adieu à Emmanuel Levinas. Paris:Galilée, 1997. English translation by Michael Naas andPascalle-Anne Brault as Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1999.
• L’animal que donc je suis, Paris: Galilée,2006.
• Anne Dufourmantelle invite Jacques Derrida àrépondre. De l’hospitalité, Paris:Calmann-Lévy, 1997.
• Apories, Paris: Galilée, 1996.
• L’Archéologie du frivole: Lire Condillac, Paris:Denoël/Gontheier, 1973.
• Béliers, Paris: Galilée, 2003.
• La Carte Postale de Socrate à Freud et au-dela,Paris: Flammarion, 1980.
• Chaque fois unique, la fin du monde, Paris:Galilée, 2003.
• Le “concept” du 11 septembre, Dialogues àNew York (octobre-décembre 2001) avec Giovanna Borradori,with Jürgen Habermas, Paris: Galilée, 2004.
• Demeure, Paris: Galilée, 1998.
• Demeure, Athènes. Photographies de Jean-FrançoisBonhomme, Paris: Galilée, 2009.
• La Dissemination, Paris: Seuil, 1972.
• Donner le temps: 1. La fausse monnaie, Paris:Galilée, 1991.
• Du droit à la philosophie, Paris: Galilée,1990.
• L’Ecriture et la différence, Paris: Seuil,1967.
• “Et cetera… (and so on, und so weiter, and so forth,et ainsi de suite, und so überall, etc.),” in JacquesDerrida, edited by Marie-Louise Mallet et Ginette Michaud, Paris:Editions de l’Herne, 2004, pp. 21–34.
• États d’âme de la psychanalyse,Paris: Galilée, 2000.
• Foi et savoir suivi de Le siècle et le pardon,Paris: Seuil, 2001.
• Force de loi, Paris: Galilée, 1994.
• Glas, Paris: Denoël/Gontheier, 1981 [1974], twovolumes.
• De la grammatologie, Paris: Minuit, 1967.
• De l’esprit, Paris: Galilée, 1987.
• Heidegger: la question de l’Être etl’Histoire, Cours de l’ENS-Ulm 1964–1965, Paris:Galilée, 2013.
• Histoire du mensonge. Prolégomènes,Paris:Galilée, 2012.
• “Je suis en guerre contre moi-même,” interview inLe Monde, August 19, 2004.
• Khôra, Paris: Galilée, 1993.
• Limited Inc, Paris: Galilée, 1990.
• Marges de la philosophie, Paris: Minuit,1972.
• Memoires for Paul de Man, Paris: Galilée,1988.
• Le monolinguisme de l’autre, Paris: Galilée,1996.
• L’Oreille de l’autre: otobiographies, transferts,traductions, Textes et débats avec Jacques Derrida,Montreal: VLB, 1982.
• Edmund Husserl, L’Origine de la géométrie,traduction et introduction par Jacques Derrida, Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France, 1974 [1962].
• Papier Machine, Paris: Galilée,2001.
• Pardonner. L’impardonnable etl’imprescriptible, Paris: Galilée, 2012.
• Points de suspension, Entretiens, Paris: Galilée,1992.
• Politiques de l’amitié, Paris:Galilée, 1994.
• Positions, Paris: Minuit, 1972.
• Le Problème de la genèse dans la philosophie deHusserl, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990.
• Psyche: Inventions de l’autre, Paris: Galilée,1987.
• Psyche: Inventions de l’autre, II, Paris:Galilée, 2003.
• De quoi demain… Dialogue, Paris:Fayard/Galilée, 2001.
• La Religion (edited with Gianni Vattimo), Paris: Seuil,1996.
• Sauf le nom, Paris: Galilée, 1993.
• Schibboleth pour Paul Celan, Paris:Galilée, 1986.
• Séminaire. Le bête et le souverain. Volume I(2001–2002), Paris: Galilée, 2008.
• Séminaire. Le bête et le souverain. Volume II(2002–2003), Paris: Galilée, 2010.
• Séminaire. La peine de mort. Volume 1(1999–2000), Paris: Galilée, 2012.
• Séminaire. La peine de mort, Volume II(2000–2001), Paris: Galilée, 2015.
• Spectres de Marx, Paris: Galilée,1993.
• Théorie et pratique. Cours de l'ENS-Ulm 1975–1976,Paris: Galilée, 2017.
• Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy, Paris: Galilée,2000.
• La Vérité en peinture, Paris: Flammarion,1978.
• La Voix et le phénomène, Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France, 1983 [1967].
• Voyous, Paris: Galilée, 2003.
• UlysseGramophone, Paris: Galilée,1987.

English translations

• Acts of Religion, ed., Gil Anidjar, London: Routledge,2002.
• Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans., Michael Naas andPascalle-Anne Brault, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
• The Animal that Therefore I am, ed., Marie-Loiuse Mallet,trans., David Wills, New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
• Aporias, trans., Thomas Dutoit, Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 1993.
• The Archeology of the Frivolous: ReadingCondillac, trans., John P. Leavey, Jr., Pittsburgh: DuquesneUniversity Press, 1980.
• Athens, Still Remains: The Photographs of Jean-FrancoisBonhomme, trans., Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas, New York:Fordham University Press, 2010.
• The Beast and the Sovereign (Volume 1), trans. GeoffreyBennigton, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
• The Beast and the Sovereign (Volume 2), trans. GeoffreyBennington, Chicago: University of Chicago, 2011.
• The Death Penalty (Volume 1), trans. Peggy Kamuf, Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2014.
• The Death Penalty (Volume 2), trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg,Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
• Dissemination, trans., Barbara Johnson, Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1981.
• The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference,Translation, trans., Peggy Kamuf, New York: Schocken, 1985.
• Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: AnIntroduction, trans., John P. Leavey, Jr., Lincoln, NE: University ofNebraska Press, 1989 [1978].
• “Et Cetera,” translated by Geoff Bennington, inDeconstructions: A User’s Guide, edited by Nicolas Royle,London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, pp. 282–305.
• Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2, Stanford:Stanford University Press, 2004.
• For What Tomorrow … A Dialogue, trans., Jeff FortStanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.
• “Force of Law,” trans., Mary Quaintance, inDeconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, eds.,Drucilla Cornell, Michael Rosenfeld, and David Gray Carlson, New York:Routledge, 1992, pp. 3–67.
• The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret. SecondEdition, trans., David Wills, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,2008.
• Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money, trans., Peggy Kamuf,Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992.
• Glas, trans., John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand, Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
• Heidegger: The Question of Being and History, trans.,Geoffrey Bennington, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
• “How to Avoid Speaking: Denials,” translated by KenFrieden, in Languages of the Unsayable, eds., Sanford Budickand Wolfgang Iser, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, 3–70.
• Learning to Live Finally: The Last Interview, trans.,Pacalle-Ann Brault and Michael Naas, Hoboken, NJ: Meilville HousePublishing, 2007.
• Limited Inc, trans., Samuel Weber, Evanston: NorthwesternUniversity Press, 1988 [1977].
• “Limited Inc,” in Glyph 2: Johns Hopkins TextualStudies, 1977, 162–254.
• Margins of Philosophy, trans., Alan Bass, Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1982.
• Memoirs for Paul de Man, trans., Cecile Lindsay, JonathanCuller, and Eduardo Cadava, New York: Columbia University Press,1986.
• Monolinguism of the Other, trans., Patrick Mensah,Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
• Of Grammatology, trans., Gayatri Spivak, Baltimore: The JohnsHopkins University Press, 1974.
• Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida toRespond, trans., Rachel Bowlby, Stanford: Stanford University Press,2000.
• On the Name, ed., Thomas Dutoit, Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 1995.
• Of Spirit, trans., Rachel Bowlby, Chicago: University ofChicago, 1989.
• On Touching – Jean-Luc Nancy, trans., ChristineIrizarry, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.
• Paper Machine, trans., Rachel Bowlby, Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 2005.
• Philosophy in the Time of Terror: Dialogues with JürgenHabermas and Jacques Derrida, ed., Giovanna Borradori, Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2003.
• Points … Interviews, 1974–1994, trans., PeggyKamuf and others, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.
• Politics of Friendship, trans., George Collins, London:Verso, 1997.
• Positions, trans., Alan Bass, Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1981.
• The Postcard from Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans., AlanBass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
• The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy, trans.,Marion Hobson, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
• Religion, trans., Samuel Weber,. Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 1998.
• Rogues, trans., Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas,Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.
• “Signature Event Context,” in Glyph: Johns HopkinsTextual Studies, 1977, 172–197.
• Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan,eds., Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen, New York: Fordham UniversityPress, 2005.
• Specters of Marx, trans., Peggy Kamuf, New York: Routledge,1994.
• Theory and Practice, trans. David Wills, Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 2019.
• The Truth in Painting, trans., Geoff Bennington and IanMcLeod, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
• Speech and Phenomena, trans., David B. Allison, Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 1973.
• Voice and Phenomenon, trans., Leonard Lawlor, Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2011.
• Without Alibi, edited, translated, and with anintroduction by Peggy Kamuf, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.(The French versions of many of these essays can be found in JacquesDerrida, edited by Marie-Louise Mallet et Ginette Michaud. Paris:Editions de l’Herne, 2004.)
• The Work of Mourning, eds., Pascale-Anne Brault andMichael Naas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
• Writing andDifference, trans., Alan Bass, Chicago:University of Chicago, 1978.

Secondary Literature

• Bergson, Henri, 1920, Mind-Energy, trans. H. Wildon Carr,London: Macmillan and Company.
• Bernet, Rudolf, 1988, “Husserl's Theory of SignsRevisited,” in Edmund Husserl and the PhenomenologicalTradition, Washington: Catholic University of American Press,pp. 1–24.
• Brough, John, 1993, “Husserl and the Deconstruction ofTime,” in Review of Metaphysics, 46 (3): 503–536.
• Caputo, John D., 1999, ThePrayers and Tears of JacquesDerrida, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
• Cheah, Pheng, and Guerlac, Suzanne, eds., 2009, Derrida andthe Time of the Political, Durham: University of North CarolinaPress.
• Cixous, Hélène, and Derrida, Jacques, 2001, Veils,trans., Geoff Bennington, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Cornell, Drucilla; Rosenfeld, Michael; and Carlson, David Gray,eds., 1992, Deconstruction and the PossibilityofJustice, New York: Routledge.
• Cutrofello, Andrew, 2005, Continental Philosophy: A ContemporaryIntroduction, New York and London: Routledge.
• DeArmitt, Pleshette, and Saghafi, Kas, eds., 2006, Epoche(Special Memorial Issue) “An Entrusted Responsibility: Reading andRemembering Jacques Derrida,” 10 (2) (Spring).
• Deleuze, Gilles, and Claire Parnet, 1987, Dialogues,trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press.
• Descombes, Vincent, 1980, Modern French Philosophy, trans., L.Scott-Fox and J.M. Harding, New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Evans, J. Claude, 1991, Strategies of Deconstruction: Derridaand the Myth of the Voice, Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress.
• Gasché, Rodolphe, 1994, Inventions of Difference: On JacquesDerrida, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 1999, Of Minimal Things: Studies on theNotion of the Relation, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• –––, 1986, TheTain of theMirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection, Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.
• Gutting, Gary, 2001, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century,New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Haddad, Samir, 2013, Derrida and the Inheritance ofDemocracy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Hägglund, Martin, 2008, Radical Atheism: Derrida and theTime of Live, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Husserl, Edmund, 2014, Ideas I, tr. Daniel O. Dahlstrom,Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
• Krell, David Farrell, 2013, Derrida and our Animal Others:Derrida’s Final Seminar, “The Beast and the Sovereign”,Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Lawlor, Leonard, ed., 1994, “Spindel Conference 1993:Derrida's Interpretation of Husserl,” The Southern Journalof Philosophy (Supplement), Volume 22.
• –––, 2002, Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problemof Phenomenology, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• –––, 2007, This is not Sufficient: An Essayon Animality and Human Nature in Derrida, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press.
• Mitchell, W.J.T., and Davidson, Arnold, eds., 2007, The LateDerrida, Chicago: University of Chicaog Press.
• Mohanty, Jitendranath, 1997, Phenomenology: BetweenEssentialism and Transcendental Philosophy, Evanston:Northwestern University Press.
• –––, 2003, Taking on the Tradition: JacquesDerrida and the Legacies of Deconstruction, Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press.
• Naas, Michael, 2008, Derrida from now on, Bronx, NY:Fordham University Press.
• –––, 2012, Miracles and Machine: JacquesDerrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and Media,Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press.
• –––, 2015, The End of the World and otherTeachable Moments: Jacques Derrida's Final Seminar, Bronx, NY:Fordham University Press.
• Peeters, Benoist, 2013, Derrida: A Biography, trans.,Andrew Brown, Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Powell, Jason, 2006, Derrida: A Biography, London:Continuum.
• Royle, Nicolas, 2000, Deconstruction: A User’s Guide,London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Saghafi, Kas, 2010, Apparitions – Of Derrida’s Other,New York: Fordham University Press.
• Sallis, John, ed., 1987, Deconstruction and Philosophy,Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Schrift, Alan, 2006, Twentieth Century French Philosophy: KeyThemes and Thinkers, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
• Searle, John, 1977, “Reiterating the Differences: A Reply toDerrida,” in Glyph: Johns Hopkins Textual Studies,198–208.
• Wood, David, ed., 1994, Derrida: A Critical Reader,Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
• –––, ed., 1993, Of Derrida, Heidegger, andSpirit, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
• Wood, David, and Bernasconi, Robert, eds., 1988, Derrida andDifférance, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
• Zahavi, Dan, 1999, Self-Awareness and Alterity, Evanston:Northwestern University Press.

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Deleuze, Gilles | Foucault, Michel | Heidegger, Martin | Husserl, Edmund | Levinas, Emmanuel | phenomenology | postmodernism | Ricoeur, Paul