Experiencing the Postmetaphysical Self: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction PDF
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Experiencing the Postmetaphysical Self This page intentionally left blank Experiencing the Postmetaphysical Self Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction Fionola Meredith © Fionola Meredith2005 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-4447-4 All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988,or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,90 Tottenham Court Road,London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St.Martin’s Press,LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States,United Kingdom and other countries.Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-52252-1 ISBN 978-0-230-50433-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230504332 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Meredith,Fionola,1973– Experiencing the postmetaphysical self :between hermeneutics and deconstruction / Fionola Meredith. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1.Feminist theory.2.Subjectivity.3.Experience.4.Self. 5.Self(Philosophy) I.Title. HQ1190.M47 2004 305.42(cid:1)01—dc22 2004050539 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 To Aaron, Cait and Robbie This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgements viii Introduction: Difference Unleashed 1 1 Difference and Undecidability: Post-Saussurean Thought 5 2 Woman as Text: The Influence of Post-structuralism on Feminist Theory 41 3 The Post-structuralist Erasure of Experience 80 4 Frameworks for Experience 111 5 ‘It’s me here’: Writing the Singular Self, Writing the Postdeconstructive Female Self 157 Conclusion 197 Notes 201 Bibliography 233 Index 245 vii Acknowledgements I am indebted to friends, family and colleagues for their encouragement during the writing of this book. In particular, Hugh Bredin and Jennifer FitzGerald provided invaluable intellectual guidance, as well as affection and support far beyond the call of duty. It is deeply appreciated. Thanks also to Sioban Harth for her long and generous friendship, and to Janice Hoadley for feminist hilarity which kept me sane. My children, Aaron and Cait, are an enduring source of wonder to me. They pop up occasionally in this book, and I thank them for the joy and inspiration they continue to provide. Thanks to Robbie Meredith, dear partner, friend and co-celebrant of many sublime Saturday nights. (Who said philosophers can’t dance?) Thanks to my parents Yvonne and Michael McCaughan, whose unwavering love and support have always sustained me. Thanks to all at Palgrave for their assistance and professionalism. I am grateful also to the British Academy for a research grant (1997–2000) which enabled me to begin the philosophical journey which has resulted in the publication of this book. Thanks are due to Routledge for permission to reproduce material from my essay ‘A Postmetaphysical Approach’ in Pamela Sue Anderson and Beverley Clack (eds.) Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Critical Readings, London and New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. 54–73. viii Introduction Difference Unleashed it is a dead world [the post-structuralists] are building.1 The currency of post-structuralism is alterity. Otherness, absence, difference, lack, non-identity, misrecognition, incommensurability, dis- continuity, simulacra stand in opposition to ‘bare pure being’,2 the originary presence of the self to itself. As Gianni Vattimo observes, with Heidegger ontological difference emerges as ‘the denial and de-stitution of presence, an “ungrounding” of any claim of presence to definitiveness’.3With Saussure’s assertion of difference as the absolutely final law of language, the principle of semi- ological difference forms a major tributary to structuralist and neo- structuralist thought: In language there are only differences…without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system. Language is a form, not a substance.4 Yet with Derrida and the post-structuralists, the notion of difference becomes différanceand reaches its zenith with ‘the delirious production of more and more simulacra’ and the acknowledgement that ‘every alleged immediacy is always already a duplication, the duplication of an original that is not there’.5 Moreover, with Derrida – ‘the thinker of uncancellable difference’6 – pure system becomes the celebrated antithesis to pure being, while alterity provides the very condition of 1 F. Meredith, Experiencing the Postmetaphysical Self © Fionola Meredith 2005
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