The Domestication of Derrida: Rorty, Pragmatism and Deconstruction

159 Pages·2008·2.57 MB·English

by  Lorenzo Fabbri

The Domestication of Derrida
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series
from Continuum. The series features first-class scholarly research mono-
graphs across the field of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a
major contribution to the field of philosophical research.
Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan
Badiou and Derrida, Antonio Calcagno
Badiou, Balibar, Ranciere, Nicholas Hewlett
Deconstruction and Democracy, Alex Thomson
Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy of History, Jay Lampert
Deleuze and the Meaning of Life, Claire Colebrook
Deleuze and the Unconscious, Christian Kerslake
Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston
Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan-Wortham and Allison
Weiner
Foucault’s Heidegger, Timothy Rayner
Heidegger and the Place of Ethics, Michael Lewis
Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis
Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, Jason Powell
Husserl’s Phenomenology, Kevin Hermberg
The Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas
Levinas and Camus, Tal Sessler
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer
The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Du¨ttmann
Sartre’s Ethics of Engagement, T. Storm Heter
Sartre’s Phenomenology, David Reisman
Ricoeur and Lacan, Karl Simms
Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari?, Gregg Lambert
http://avaxho.me/blogs/ChrisRedfield
The Domestication
of Derrida
Rorty, Pragmatism and
Deconstruction
Lorenzo Fabbri
Translated by Daniele Manni
English translation edited by
Vuslat Demirkoparan and Ari Lee Laskin
(University of California, Irvine, USA)
ContinuumInternational Publishing Group
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# Lorenzo Fabbri 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10: HB: 0-8264-9778-0
ISBN-13: HB: 978-0-8264-9778-9
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by YHT Ltd, London
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: Taking Rorty Seriously 1
1. The Contingency of Being 7
Two Ideas of Philosophy: Kant and Hegel 7
The Desire for Autonomy and the Anxiety of Influence 15
Histories of Writing and Masturbation 26
Deconstruction as Circumvention: ‘Envois’ 37
2. Derrida, the Transcendental and Theoretical Ascetism 45
The Double Privacy of Deconstruction 45
On the Very Possibility of Biographical Writing 53
Rorty’s Hidden Reductionism 60
The Disposal of Philosophy 74
3. The Resistance of Theory 87
The Desires We are, The Languages We Speak 87
Casting a Maybe at the Heart of the Present 99
Politics of Conciliation and Politics of Monstrosity 115
Notes 129
Bibliography 141
Index 147

Acknowledgements
Manypeoplehavebeenclosetothisbookinthedifferentphasesofits
realization. My warmest gratitude goes to my family for having sup-
portedmeinallmyendeavours.DonatellaDiCesarehadthepatience
of following and encouraging my work from its very beginning. I am
grateful to Ari Lee Laskin, Arianna Lodeserto, Daniele Manni and
Nicola Zippel, who provided extensive and lively comments to earlier
drafts. I would also like to thank David Carroll, Ellen Burt, Franca
Hamber, Gol Bazargani and my friend James Chiampi for their
impeccable hospitality in the department of French and Italian at the
UniversityofCalifornia,Irvine.ManythanksalsotoNgu˜g˜ıwaThiong’o
andthe InternationalCenterfor Writing andTranslation at UC Irvine
for the generous financial support to this project.
Without Vuslat Demirkoparan, this book would have never come to
light. While I take full responsibility for its weaknesses, she should be
credited for all the good moments of The Domestication of Derrida.
I am also grateful to the following: Milan Kundera and Faber &
Faber Ltd for the permission to quote from The Unbearable Lightness of
Being; Cambridge University Press for the permission to quote from
Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity; Fata Morgana for the
permission to quote from Maurice Blanchot’s L’instant de ma mort (#
1994); Les Editions de Minuit for the permission to quote from Gilles
Deleuze and Fe´lix Guattari’s Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (# 1991);
Random House Inc., for the permission to quote from Michel Fou-
cault’s ‘Polemics, politics, and problematizations: an interview with
Michel Foucault’ (in The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow);
Routledge for the permission to quote from Jacques Derrida’s
‘Remarks on deconstruction and pragmatism’ (in Deconstruction and
Pragmatism, edited by Chantal Mouffe); Stanford University Press for
thepermissiontoquotefromGiorgioAgamben’s‘Pardes:thewritingof
potentiality’ (in Potentialities, edited by Daniel Heller-Roazen); Verso
for the permissionto quote fromJacques Derrida’s‘Marx& Sons’and
Terry Eagleton’s ‘Marxism without Marxism’ (both in Ghostly Demar-
cations, edited by Michael Sprinker).
An earlier andvery different version of this project was published in
ItalianbyMimesisin2006underthetitleL’addomesticamentodiDerrida.
Pragmatismo/Decostruzione.
Rome–Irvine
November 2007
Introduction
Taking Rorty Seriously
ThefirsttimeIreadRichardRorty’sContingency,Irony,andSolidarity–it
was 1999 and I was a sophomore in the Faculty of Philosophy at the
University of Rome – I clearly felt that I was reading one of the most
influential books in contemporary philosophy: not surprisingly,
nobody on the stuffy Italian philosophical scene was talking about it.
Withitsatoncelight-heartedandcorrosiveironyagainstphilosophers’
egotism, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity changed the way I looked at
philosophy both as a discipline and as a faculty. And yet there was
somethingunsettlinginRorty’sattempttostrippost-Hegelianironyof
anykindofpublicdimension:forme,thebookwasapowerfulcritique
of the rigid organization of the programI was attending.
I started reading Jacques Derrida at the same time: Rorty’s inter-
pretation of deconstruction was fundamental for orienting me in
Derrida’s apparently senseless writing. And yet, the more I read Der-
rida, the more I became aware that Rorty’s reading was missing
something very important. Rorty’s account of deconstruction as an
anti-philosophy,asmerelyabrilliantartisticcreation,wastooreductive
insofar as it completely ignored all the essays in which Derrida clearly
resisted the possibility of taking leave from the metaphysical language.
Rorty’s attempt to confine Derrida to prestigious yet strictly academic
venues was excessively disengaged and clashed against the Deleuzian
idea of concepts as weapons to interfere with and intervene into ‘the
real’. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity – the book that changed my way
of thinking about philosophy, the book whose dancing and laughing
style is still unmatched for me – eventually appeared to be profoundly
inadequate. The Domestication of Derrida also tells the story between
Rorty and me (a story of which he was informed only by a couple of
quick emails). The first chapter is marked by my initial trust in Rorty’s
pragmatism, the second and the third testify to my deep disappoint-
ment with it.
In the first section of this book, I will show the strong points of
Rorty’s reading. In order to challenge effectively his attempt to align
deconstruction with the American liberal and pragmatist traditions, I
believe it is important to take some time to get attuned to the reasons
behind Rorty’s interpretation of Derrida. In fact, the vast majority of
the essays that have been dedicated to the relation between