A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds

667 Pages·1991·10.52 MB·English

by  Peggy Kamuf

A DERRIDA READER
BETWEEN THE BLINDS
Edited,
with an introduction and notes,
by Peggy Kamuf
Columbia University Press New York
Copyright acknowledgments continue
at the back of the book.
.) ;
Columbia University Press
New York Oxford
Copyright © 1991 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
ca~oein\-in-Publication
Library of Congress Data
Derrida, Tacques.
[Selections. English. 1991j
A Derrida reader : between the blinds I edited by Peggy Kamuf.
p. cm.
"With only one exception, all the excerpted translations
have been previously published" - Pref.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-231-06658-9 (cloth).-ISBN 0-231-06659-7 (paper)
r. Philosophy. 2. Deconstruction.
I. Kamuf, Peggy, 1947- . II. Title.
B2430.D481D4713 1991
194-dc20
90-41354
CIP
Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are Smyth-sewn
and printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper
Book design by Tennifer Dossin
Printed in the United States of America
C IO 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction: Reading Between the Blinds xiii
Part One: Differance at the Origin 3
r. From Speech and Phenomena 6
2. From Of Grammatology 31
3. From "Differance" 59
4. "Signature Event Context" Bo
5. From "Plato's Pharmacy" II2
Part Two: Beside Philosophy-"Literature" 143
6. "Tympan" 146
7. From "The Double Session" 172
8. From "Psyche: Inventions of the Other" 200
9. "Che cos'e la poesia?" 22!
Part Three: More Than One Language 241
ro. From "Des Tours de Babel"
r r. From "Living On: Border Lines"
12. "Letter to a Japanese Friend"
13. From "Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing"
vi Contents
Part Four: Sexual Difference in Philosophy 313
14. From Glas 31 s
15. From Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles 353
16. "Geschlecht: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference" 378
17. From "At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am" 403
18. From "Choreographies"
Part Five: Tele-Types (Yes, Yes) 459
19. From "Le Facteur de la verite" 463
20. From "Envois" 484
21. From "To Speculate-on 'Freud' 11 516
22. From "Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce" 569
Bibliography of Works by Jacques Derrida 601
Selected Works on Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction 613
Index of Works by Jacques Derrida 617
Index 619
Preface
In 1962, Jacques Derrida published a long critical introduction to his
translation of Husserl's The Origin of Geometry. With that work he
began what has proved to be one of the most stunning adventures of
modem thought. It promised, from its first public acts, an explana
tion with philosophical traditions unlike any other. That promise
has since been realized in more than twenty-two books and count
less other uncollected essays, prefaces, interviews, and public inter
ventions of various sorts. Many of these have been translated, inte
grally or in part, into English. And new texts are appearing regularly,
as Derrida continues to write and to teach, in Europe and North
America and indeed throughout the world.
Today, it is with the word deconstruction that many first associ
ate Derrida's name. This word has had a remarkable career. Having
first appeared in several texts that Derrida published in the mid-
196os, it soon became the preferred designator for the distinct ap
proach and concerns that set his thinking apart. Derrida has con
fessed on several occasions that he has been somewhat surprised by
the way this word came to be singled out, since he had initially
proposed it in a chain with other words-for example, differance,
spacing, trace-none of which can command the series or function
as a master word.
No doubt the success of deconstruction as a term can be explained
in part by its resonance with structure which was then, in the 1960s,
the reigning word of structuralism. Any history of how the word
deconstruction entered a certain North American vocabulary, for
instance, would have to underscore its critical use in the first text
by Derrida to be translated in the United States, "Structure, Sign,
viii Preface
and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." This was the
text of a lecture delivered at Johns Hopkins University in 1966. In
that lecture, he considered the structuralism of ethnologist Claude
Levi-Strauss whose thought, as Derrida remarked, was then exerting
a strong influence on the conjuncture of contemporary theoretical
activities. The word de-construction occurs in the following passage
concerned with the inevitable, even necessary ethnocentrism of any
science formed according to the concepts of the European scientific
tradition. And yet, Derrida insists, there are different ways of giving
in to this necessity:
But if no one can escape this necessity, and if no one is there
fore responsible for giving in to it, however little he may do so,
this does not mean that all the ways of giving in to it are of
equal pertinence. The quality and fecundity of a discourse are
perhaps measured by the critical rigor with which this relation
to the history of metaphysics and to inherited concepts is
thought. Here it is a question both of a critical relation to the
language of the social sciences and a critical responsibility of
the discourse itself. It is a question of explicitly and systemati
cally posing the problem of the status of a discourse which
borrows from a heritage the resources necessary for the de
construction of that heritage itself. A problem of economy and
strategy.*
As used here, "de-construction" marks a distance (the space of a
hyphen, later dropped! from the structuring or construction of dis
courses, such as Levi-Strauss', that have uncritically taken over the
legacy of Western metaphysics. If, however, it cannot be a matter of
refusing this legacy-"no one can escape from it"-then the dis
tance or difference in question is in the manner of assuming respon
sibility for what cannot be avoided. Deconstruction is one name
Derrida has given to this responsibility. It is not a refusal or a
destruction of the terms of the legacy, but occurs through a re
marking and redeployment of these very terms, that is, the concepts
of philosophy. And this raises the problem, as Derrida puts it, ltof
the status of a discourse which borrows from a heritage the resources
necessary for the de-construction of that heritage itself." It is in the
critical space of this problem, which needs to be thought through
rigorously, systematically, and responsibly, that Derrida proposes to
situate his discourse.
•Writing and Difference [1967], p. 289. All quotations of Derrida's works are from
published translations where available. For complete reference, consult the bibliography at
the end of this volume by the date given in brackets (e.g., here 1967!.
Preface ix
Since its introduction, the work of Jacques Derrida has traced
wide and diverse paths of influence both within and without the
academic disciplines, wherever the relation to the heritage of West
ern thought has become critical. Although this influence may have
been felt first among literary theorists, it quickly overran the bound
aries of literary studies or of any academic discipline. Theologians,
architects, film makers and critics, painters, legal scholars, musi
cians, dramatists, psychoanalysts, feminists, and other political and
social theorists have all found indispensable support for their reflec
tion and practice in Derrida's writing. Even philosophy in America,
which began trying to purge itself of continental influences more
than a century ago, has had to yield significant ground to Derrida's
insistent questioning of the philosophical discipline. Thus, although
one can still hear or read statements to the effect that Derridean
deconstruction is the affair of a few North American literary critics,
the odds are good that they are coming from a philosopher who is
trying to ignore the obvious of what is going on all around him or
her.
Such discursive tactics of containment or denegation have flour
ished in the vicinity of deconstruction, and not only among philoso
phers. Both academic journals and the popular press have now and
then bristled with indignation when confronted with the evidence
that deconstruction is taking hold in the North American cultural
landscape. But this is understandable; Derrida's work is disconcert
ing and deliberately so. The present collection of essays and extracts
will not conceal that fact. A reader who wants to approach this
writing is therefore urged to proceed patiently, as well as carefully.
Be advised that the most familiar may well begin to appear strangely
different. As Derrida writes in one of the extracts from Of Gramma
tology included here, his final intention is "to make enigmatic what
one thinks one understands by the words 'proximity,' 'immediacy,'
'presence'," that is, the very words with which we designate what is
closest to us.
As to the choice and arrangement of texts, I have followed several
principles and endeavored to make them compatible with each other.
The easiest and most conventional of these is a very roughly chro
nological ordering that can serve to illustrate some of the ways
Derrida has reshaped his thought over the last twenty or so years.
Between the earliest texts included here (extracts from Speech and
Phenomena and Of Grammatology) and the most recent ones, how
ever, there is also an undeniable constancy and coherence which
belie any superficial impression that Derrida has revised or moved
x Preface
away from some former or initial way of thinking. Indeed, one of the
more extraordinary things about Derrida's thought is the way it has
shaped itself along a double axis or according to a double exigency:
it seems always to be moving beyond itself and yet nothing is left
behind. The first writings remaining implied in the succeeding ones,
they are literally folded into different shapes and yet do not lose
their own particular shape in the process. Nevertheless, because the
work advances by bringing its past along, it is necessary up to a point
to respect its chronology.
No sooner, however, has one underscored the coherence of these
writings than one must acknowledge as well their remarkable diver
sity in subject, theme, form, tone, procedure, occasion, and so on.
Here a second principle is called for, one that does not present itself
so easily. The solution I have come to for grouping texts is, needless
to say, only one of the many that could have been chosen to repre
sent this diversity. As the reader will soon see, I have applied in
effect no single principle but have grouped the sets of selections
according each time to a different, loosely defined criterion. Numer
ous other criteria suggested themselves as did so many other texts
that had to be left out. What is more, almost all of the texts included
here would fit in several of the categories. This is but one of many
possible Derrida "readers."
As to why there are so many extracts and so few complete essays,
I decided, rightly or wrongly, that only this method permitted a
tolerable, though still insufficient representation of the diversity and
continuity of Derrida's work. I admit, however, that I hesitated long
before adopting this procedure. Derrida's writings are intricately
structured and perform a delicate balancing act between recalling
where they have been and forewarning where they are going. The
majority of them are deployed around extensive quotation of other
works and they elaborate complex patterns of renvois, Most often
the texts juxtapose and counter one style or tone with another,
shifting, for example, between the strictest form of philosophical
commentary and writing of a sort that such commentary has always
by definition, excluded. Needless to say, much of this intricacy,
balance, and counterplay has been sacrificed by the technique of
cutting out excerpts of the texts. On the one hand, I have consoled
myself for this loss with the thought that, with few exceptions, all
of the works excerpted here are readily available in extenso, and thus
no reader of A Derrida Reader need be content with shortened ver
sions (see the appended bibliography which also lists some sugges
tions for secondary reading). I made a mental note to remind readers
Preface xi
of this fact which is what I am doing now. On the other hand, I
garnered a certain courage to excerpt so ruthlessly from Derrida's
own repeated insistence on the partialness of any text, a partialness
that is not recuperable in some eventual whole or totality. Moreover,
the notions of cutting, grafting, piecing together-extracting-are
everywhere in evidence in Derrida's texts, both as themes and as
practices, until they are virtually coextensive with the text he is
always interrogating and performing. Indeed, the masterful work
Glas may be read as a long reflection on cutting, which is always
culpable, put into practice. This is one reason I have placed a series
of brief passages from that work in the spaces between the sections.
These may be thought of as blinds or jalousies lowered into place as
reminders: "Look at the holes, if you can"; read between the blinds.
Ultimately, however, there is no final justification of this cutting
and splicing. A desire was always obscurely in play (and desire is the
very order of the unjustifiable) to offer up for another reading texts
that I have returned to more than once out of love and respect, but
also probably out of an unfathomable puzzlement. No doubt it is the
utterly naive desire that, by presenting these texts to be read again, I
will get back some signs of my own understanding.
And that leads me to a final principle-or rather, less a principle
than a wish that accompanied the editing of these pages. It is that
this volume should engage each of its readers differently even as it
made certain texts available to a broader general comprehension. I
wanted it to be possible, in other words, for every reader to encoun
ter both the same and a different book as all other readers, and for
the same prepared trajectory to be nevertheless each time singular
and unpredictable. How to reconcile these two aims? No answer
presented itself in simple terms; instead, a reflection on that ques
tion resulted in the essay "Reading Between the Blinds" which is
given here in the guise of an introduction to the selected excerpts
and essays. It may be read as the record of a negotiation, or exposi
tion, between two versions of A Derrida Reader.
With only one exception, all the excerpted translations have been
previously published and are reproduced here most often with only
minor changes, if any. It should be said that Derrida's writing ac
tively resists translation by seeking out the most idiomatic points in
the language, by reactivating lost meanings, by accumulating as far
as possible the resources of undecidability which lie dormant in
syntax, morphology, and semantics. The result can often seem ob
scure to whoever has been taught that a standard of so-called clarity
xii Preface
of style is the first and indispensable criterion of expository prose.
But Derrida never cultivates this "obscurity" for its own sake; on
the contrary, the apparent density of his writing has its correlative
in a relentless demand for clarity of another order, which may be
called, in a seeming paradox, a clarity about the obscurity, opacity,
and fundamental difference of language. Standard notions of clarity
or "correct" style, when viewed from this perspective, must be seen
as, themselves, obscurantist since they encourage a belief in the
transparency of words to thoughts, and thus a "knowledge" con
structed on this illusion. Deconstructing this knowledge will neces
sarily be a matter of some difficulty.