The Discipline of Deconstruction Author(s): Jonathan Culler, James M. Lang, Edward R. Heidt, Jonathan Hillman, Robert A. Hall, Jr.

and Jeffrey T. Nealon Source: PMLA, Vol. 108, No. 3 (May, 1993), pp. 533-540 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/462620 . Accessed: 18/07/2013 18:15
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PMLA invites members of the association to submit letters, typed and double-spaced,commentingon articles in previous issues or on matters of general scholarly or critical interest. Theeditor reserves the right to reject or edit Forum contributionsand offers the authors discussedan opportunityto reply to the letters published. The journal omits titles before persons' names, discouragesfootnotes, and regrets that it cannot considerany letter of more than 1,000 words. Letters should be addressedto PMLA Forum, Modern Language Association, 10 Astor Place, New York, NY 10003-6981.

The Discipline of Deconstruction

To the Editor: Jeffrey T. Nealon's "The Discipline of Deconstruction" (107 [1992]: 1266 -79) is a useful antidote to the widespread idea that deconstruction asserts the meaninglessness of all texts, but to make his argument more dramatic Nealon misrepresents my book On Deconstruction. He has told me that he will revise his discussion for publication in book form, but I want to set the record straight in PMLA. A section of his article called "The Commodification of Deconstruction in America" claims that deconstruction was and watereddown for use in how-tobooks that gave (and continueto simplified give) a generationof literaturestudentsan overviewof what was supposedly attentionto his texts.For example, workwithoutpayingcorresponding Derrida's the followingquotationsare taken from two of the leadinghandbooksused to in theoryseminars-the firstis from JonathanCuller's deconstruction represent on whichit reliesandbetween .. .: "Inundoingthe oppositions OnDeconstruction in an reader to choose,the textplacesthe [deconstructive] whichit urgesthe reader impossiblesituationthat cannotend in triumphbut only in an outcomealready choiceor a failureto choose"(81). ... In an unwarranted deemedinappropriate: a formalist is essentially deconstruction Culler's readingmethod characterization, fall into meaninglessness that emphasizesa predetermined resultingfrom the in any text. of oppositions self-cancellation (1269;Nealon'sinterpolation) Now, this quotation from my book comes not from any "characterization" of deconstruction, not even from my 140-page chapter entitled "Deconstruction," but from the first chapter, "Stories of Reading." I am discussing one sort of "story of reading," which refuses happy endings, and take as example Paul de Man's account of Rousseau's Profession defoi. The sentence Nealon quotes is not a "characterization"of deconstruction but a description of what de Man says this work does to every reader. Nealon inserts "deconstructive" before "reader" to make the passage look like a description of deconstructive method. The main claim in this section of "The Discipline of Deconstruction" is that commentators (specifically Christopher Norris and I) have distorted Derrida by failing to acknowledge the importance he gives to the displacement and reinscription of binary oppositions. But what do I say when I do

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set out to define and describe deconstruction? My chapter "Deconstruction" begins by quoting Derrida on "une strategie generale de la deconstruction": "To deconstruct an oppositionis above all, at a certain the hierarchy." moment,to reverse Thisis an essential step,but onlya step.Deconstruction must, Derridacontinues,"througha double gesture,a double science, a double writing, put into practice a reversal of the classicaloppositionanda generaldisplacement of the system. It is on that conditionalone that will providethemeansof intervening in the deconstruction fieldof oppositions it criticizes andwhichis also a fieldof non-discursive forces." (85-86) To identify the aspect of Derrida's work that commentators like me are supposed to have neglected, Nealon uses this same quotation (1269), which On Deconstructionemphasizes. This corroboration would be gratifying did he not immediately proceed to criticize me and Norris for failing "to acknowledge the importance of this displacement in Derrida's thought" (1270). I should say, rather, that if my chapter on deconstruction does oversimplify Derrida's work, it is because its first ninety-five pages follow in Derrida's writings (pace Nealon, who says we commentators do not pay attention to Derrida's texts) his engagement with one opposition after anotherspeech versus writing, serious versus nonserious, philosophy versus literature, inside versus outside, literal versus figurative-attempting to show how his deconstruction of these oppositions leads not just to a reversal but to a displacement of the terms and thus to an intervention in the discursive field. There are potential points of disagreement between me and Nealon, which might emerge if he were to attempt to show in detail or in particular cases how reversal and displacement work. He might, for instance, find my description inadequate to what Derrida actually succeeds in doing with such oppositions as speech versus writing, or we might disagree about whether the operations of reversal and displacement are always separable, as Nealon seems to believe, or whether, in some cases, an effective inversion is not already a displacement and reinscription. These are, I think, matters of some interest, on which Nealon might have a significant contribution to make, but for this sort of discussion he would have to abandon a discourse claiming that earlier commentators have simply ignored the operation of displacement. Finally, to support his general claim that I conflate Derrida with de Man, Nealon quotes my observation that deconstruction "emerges from the writings of Derrida and de Man" (1277n5). That it does seems to

me indisputable, but this point does not imply that Derrida and de Man are the same. In fact, my sentence is about the diversity of deconstruction: deconstruction, I write, "emerges from the writings of Derrida and de Man only by dint of iteration: imitation, citation, distortion, parody. It persists not as a univocal set of instructions but as a series of differencesthat can be charted on various axes." Furthermore, I bring together Derrida and de Man far less than the manifest connections between their works would warrant. Derrida's works are the subject of my central chapter, "Deconstruction," where de Man is cited only a few times. De Man's distinctive contribution is discussed in a separate chapter, "Deconstructive Criticism." These corrections are tangential to Nealon's general argument about what Derrida says, with which I fundamentally agree. That they should be tangential and that Nealon's hasty caricature of On Deconstruction serves only to make his argument more simplistic and dramatic raises questions about the purposes such distortions fulfill in the practice of criticism. Some books, including On Deconstruction, have wagered that the institution of professional critical discourse does not in fact make denigration of precursors a condition of success. Is that position correct, or does the institutional demand for controversy and novelty, even in PMLA, require young critics to distort their precursors to gain a hearing? According to John Kronik, the members of PMLA's Editorial Board chose to publish Nealon's essay because they thought it "would stimulate a healthy dialogue." I hope the board was right. JONATHANCULLER Cornell University

To the Editor: JeffreyT. Nealon's essay "The Discipline of Deconstruction" should initiate a welcome trend: the abandonment of programmatic literary "deconstructions" and a return to the thought and writings of Derrida. The reading of Derrida in this essay is sound, and Nealon is certainly right to insist that no reading can be a deconstruction without a reinscription of the hierarchical terms "within a larger field-a 'textual' field that can account for nonpresence as other than lack of presence" (1269). I must take issue, however, with Nealon's choice of Jonathan Culler as the scapegoat for "the commodification of deconstruction in America" (1268). Theory handbooks have indeed become a ubiquitous

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commodity, but Culler's On Deconstruction offers a sustained summary and critique of Derrida and related thinkers, a critique that Nealon seriously misrepresents. Nealon suggests that this passage from Culler represents deconstruction as it is taught in theory seminars: "In undoing the oppositions on which it relies and between which it urges the reader to choose, the text places the [deconstructive]reader in an impossible situation that cannot end in triumph but only in an outcome already deemed inappropriate: an unwarranted choice or a failure to choose" (Nealon's interpolation). Only in the endnote do we learn that Culler is writing here not about Derrida at all but about Paul de Man. Nealon proceeds to debunk this approach, rightly, as representing only the first step of a deconstruction. He then cites the following passage from Derrida's Margins of Philosophy, a passage that delineates the second, and crucial, move, of displacement and reinscription: Deconstruction cannotlimititselfor proceed immediately to a neutralization: it must,by meansof a doublegesture, a doublescience,a doublewriting, an overturning practice of the classicaloppositionand a generaldisplacement of the system.It is only on thiscondition thatdeconstruction will provideitselfthe meanswithwhichto intervene in the field of oppositionsthat it criticizes, whichis also a field of non-discursive forces. (1269) Nealon then explicitly faults Culler for not acknowledging "the importance of this displacement in Derrida's thought" (1270). But in fact Culler, on the first page of his chapter on Derrida and deconstruction (four pages after the passage regarding de Man that Nealon quotes), writes the following: Deconstruction a doumust,Derrida continues, "through ble gesture,a doublescience,a doublewriting,put into a reversal of theclassical anda general practice opposition of the system.It is on that conditionalone displacement that deconstruction will providethe meansof intervening in the field of oppositionsit criticizes and whichis also a field of non-discursive forces"(Marges,p. 392/SEC,p.
195). (85-86)

lets Culler "escape unharmed" (1275) here because anyone who attempts to "explain" Derrida's thought, includingNealon, must rigidify his arguments in some form or another. Are we to assume that Nealon's quotation from Margins, and his contextualization of it, somehow does not rigidify Derrida, while Culler's use of the same quotation does? JAMESM. LANG
Saint Louis University

To the Editor: In the first paragraph of "The Discipline of Deconstruction," Jeffrey T. Nealon writes, "[I]nthe summer of 1992, at the School of Criticism and Theory, Barbara Johnson spoke on 'the wake of deconstruction,' exploring, among other things, its untimely passing away" (1266). I don't know if Nealon was present at Barbara's seminars, but, as a participant in the 1992 session of the School of Criticism and Theory, I remember that the "other things" Barbara did included suggesting that if our gathering was the wake of deconstruction, then we should have been able to open the curtain in front of which she was lecturing and reveal the body. There was no body behind the curtain. My literary-critical-deconstructive imagination tells me that if there is no body at a wake, then the body might well be resurrected. Deconstruction may be alive and well and roaming about seeking and discovering new disciples (and disciplines), appearing in new forms. Or its body may have been stolen by the original disciples ... or the new historicists ... or the postcolonialists ... or the Romans ... EDWARDR. HEIDT
Saint Thomas More College

To the Editor: I would like first and foremost to thank Jeffrey T. Nealon for "The Discipline of Deconstruction." Certainly many students of literatureand philosophy have supposed the work of Derrida to be identical with that of de Man. It is not-as de Man himself would have said. Nealon offers a much needed clarification as he argues for the uniqueness of the Derridean "intervention." He is also circumspect in questioning why Derrida never deliberately distanced himself from de Man. The issue is a complicated one, which it would be hasty to dismiss as mere cronyism, and only

Could Nealon possibly have missed this? It might be helpful to reconsider in the light of Culler's actual presentation Derrida's remark,cited by Nealon, chiding Habermas for "abusing citations of Jonathan Culler at points where, it being a question of relations between a generality and its 'cases,' the latter is occasionally obliged to rigidify my arguments out of pedagogical considerations." Perhaps Derrida

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through careful analysis of the relevant texts could any sort of answer be reached, as Nealon suggests by examining Derrida's confrontation with Habermas. In particular the lectures gathered in Memoiresfor Paul de Man plead for further scrutiny, for it is there that Derrida not only reads de Man but asks the question "have I distorted de Man's thought, pushing it to an extreme?"(59). Second, I would like to say that there are precedents for Nealon's reading of Derrida that go undiscussed and uncited and that are, I think, as important as Rodolphe Gasche's The Tain of the Mirror. In a letter one can only touch on the small but growing body of Derrida scholarship, all of which I would oppose to the many odes and invectives, which seem to be more popular. Interesting in this vein are M. H. Abrams's essays on Derrida, for, although Abrams was not particularly fond of his "opponent's" work, true to form he was able to summarize adeptly many aspects of a view not his own. What Nealon calls "double reading" Abrams calls "double dealing"; the juxtaposition of these terms should show both Abrams's bias and his insight. It would be a shame to overlook, also, John Sallis's Delimitations. Phenomenology and the End of Metaphysics and a collection Sallis edited, Deconstruction and Philosophy. The Texts of Jacques Derrida (to which Gasche contributed "Infrastructures and Systematicity"). And especially akin to Nealon's work are Christopher Norris's most recent essays, many of which have been collected in the volume What's Wrong with Postmodernism. There Norris argues that it is high time Derrida be scrupulously examined, and in "Limited Think" Norris gives some good hints about how such scholarship might proceed. Moreover, Norris specifically considers one of the key issues of Nealon's essay (to what extent Derrida might be responsible for the way in which others have interpreted his work) in "Deconstruction against Itself: Derrida and Nietzsche," first published in the Winter 1986 Diacritics. But I select Norris's work in particular because, while like Nealon's it suggests that Derrida's writings have been widely misconstrued, unlike Nealon's it never suggests that the distortion has had anything to do with the false assumption that de Man and Derrida are somehow interchangeable. Finally, I would like to address a certain misunderstanding concerning Derrida's critique of Saussure. While Derrida has written that he does not question the truth of what Saussure says, he is quick to attach the qualifier "on the level on which he says it" (Of Grammatology 39). Thus, on the notion that "in a

language, in the system of language, there are only differences," he has written that "on the one hand, these differences play, . . . on the other hand, these differences are themselves effects" (Margins of Philosophy 11). "Of what?" it might be asked. Of differance, which "produces" the effects of difference. Given differance,at least provisionally one would have to say that Derrida privileges difference no more than sameness, the signifier no more than the signified, absence no more than presence. This critique of Saussure is not a mere afterthought; rather, it brings us to what is truly unique and most important in Derrida's writing: the ability to articulate simultaneously, on the one hand, conditions of possibility in the a priori (Kantian) sense and, on the other hand, conditions of impossibility in the spirit of Goedel's proof. Unfortunately Nealon's essay does not take up the particularintervention of differance.This omission is a fault only because Nealon, too, in the end seems to place the Derridean text in complicity with the rather leaky notion of "difference without positive terms." Many of Derrida's detractors have taken up his readings of Saussure as a point of attack. In Myth, Truth,and Literature. Towardsa TruePostmodernism, Colin Falk reads Saussure much as Derrida does, and Falk proceeds to show how Saussure is philosophically naive. J. Claude Evans, in Strategies of Deconstruction, argues that Derrida has misread Saussure. Falk and Evans are careful thinkers, and their arguments are convincing. But both authors seem to think that they have, as it were, pulled the rug out from under Derrida, because both assume without question that Derrida's effort relies in some inextricable way on Saussure. Again, this assumption cannot be simply made. What would have to be analyzed is what is entailed in Derrida's provisional appropriation of Saussure's work. The question would be whether Derrida does not in truth remain bound to Saussure even after breaking with him-whether, that is, Derrida does not somewhere make difference into a foundation and in so doing fall short of the rigor necessitated by the demanding "sous rature." But any discussion of Derrida's writings is preliminary to the further question of what bearing they have on the study of literature, if any at all. These writings are relevant to the study of literature when they are read as Nealon attempts to take them rather than as some simple machine for cranking out interpretations. Specifically, diffirance, as a condition of (im)possibility, should be of great interest to students of theories of figuration, including scholars who are historically inclined or are concerned with "imagination." But

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since, as Nealon says, the discipline of deconstruction is dead, his essay is a much needed addition to a discussion that is struggling to live. JONATHANHILLMAN
Northfield, MN

To the Editor: In "The Discipline of Deconstruction," Jeffrey T. Nealon discusses extensively the objections made to the deconstructionist doctrines of Jacques Derrida, but Nealon takes exclusively the point of view of literary theory. Aside from one passing reference to Saussure (1274), Nealon makes no mention of linguistics, or of the considerations based thereon that demonstrate the total untenability of the dogmas of deconstruction (Derridean or any other kind). I can only summarize those considerations briefly here. First and most fundamental, Derrida's insistence on the primacy of writing over speech is wholly unfounded. On the contrary, the primary importance of speech is shown by four major aspects of human language: (1) the universality of speech in contrast to the relatively narrow diffusion of writing among human beings; (2) the length of time that human beings must have been speaking (many tens of thousands of years) in contrast to the few millennia (usually placed at six) since writing began to be used; (3) the ontogeny of language in individuals (the child learns to speak between one and three years of age, but never learns to write before four); and (4) the universal, but also almost universally neglected, fact that no reading or writing goes on without at least some speech activity taking place in the brain of the reader or writer, as demonstrated in experimental psychology with electromyograms. The defense that Derrida and others use ecriture metaphorically, to mean any kind of semiotic marking, would be invalid. (In discussing Derrida, Walter Ong uses the term "semiotic marking" to refer to any visible or sensible indication, not only writing but also, say, animals' use of excreta to indicate possession of turf.) Metaphors always blur meaning, and there is never any excuse for using a metaphor to describe a phenomenon when more exact terms are available. Derrida and other deconstructionists have badly misinterpreted the Saussurian notion of "'Tarbitraire du signe." In the "vulgate" of Saussure's Cours de linguistique generale (i.e., the editions of 1916 and later), "the arbitrarinessof the sign" does not refer to

a supposed "opacity" of the signifier and resultant inaccessibility of the signified. This arbitrariness is simply the absence of any inherent, necessary correlation between the structures of the signifiant and the signifie-as exemplified by the use of, say, English dog, French chien, German Hund, Russian sobaka, and so on, to refer to the same class of animal. This observation has been a truism ever since Plato, in the Cratylus,discussed whether meanings were originated "by nature" or "by convention." The binary opposition of signifierand signified goes back through Saussure and Descartes to the medieval Modistae. It is, however, untenable, inasmuch as we must recognize (with Ogden and Richards and with Stephen Ullmann) not two but three aspects of meaning: the linguistic form, its sense, and its referent. This is because the essence of meaning lies in the correlative tie (C. F. Hockett's term) connecting sequences of sounds with the phenomena of the world we live in (phenomena that include, in a minor way, language itself). This correlation, the sense involved in a linguistic event, exists only in the "mind" (however we define that term) of each individual speaker and hence has to be recognized as distinct from both linguistic form and referent. It is nonsense to say that language refers only to itself, since virtually all normal human use thereof involves reference to relatively observable or deducible phenomena of our experience. Yet, even though the sense of a linguistic form or construction exists only in individual speakers, it does not follow that any individual can "arbitrarily"decide what sense he or she will choose to give it, as does Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland,and expect others to accept that new sense. In ordinary human life, and in all but the least representative varieties of literature, the range of meaning of words and their combinations is kept within the limits of ordinary (even if inevitably approximative) comprehension by each speaker's need to communicate and collaborate with other members of the speech community. What Locke, Derrida, and others have forgotten is that language is a social, as well as an individual, phenomenon. Sudden, unannounced use of a term in a meaning very differentfrom that of normal speakers is semantic wrenching, as in Derrida's use of ecriturefor any kind of semiotic marking. (In as early a work as De la grammatologie, for instance, Derrida uses ecriture in this way from the beginning but informs the reader of the word's broadened reference only on page 65.) Similar drastic and needless shifts of reference are present in deconstructionists' use of, say, inscrire for

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"insert [e.g., a semiotic mark]" or reinscrire for "reinstate." These word shanghaiings are, mutatis mutandis, comparable to the paper-and-pencil manipulations and formula juggling of Chomskyan "linguistics." They are good examples of Derridean logomanganeia 'word juggling' or 'verbal sleight of hand' and logogoeteia 'intellectually meretricious verbal razzle-dazzle.' Limitations of space have compelled me to omit even a small amount of exemplification and justification of my assertions (for which my two articles listed below must be consulted) and to forgo detailed references to other discussions. When both defenders and critics of deconstruction make any reference at all to linguistics, it is normally only to that of Saussure in the (not wholly reliable) Cours, usually reflecting an Sausincreasingly widespread Vulgarsaussureanismus. sure was not (as is often asserted) "the founder of modern linguistics," nor is his work, as presented in the Cours, wholly unexceptionable. Very little, if any, mention is ever made of such fundamental works as William Dwight Whitney's The Life and Growth of Language (1876); the three books all entitled Language of Edward Sapir (1921), Otto Jespersen (1922), and Leonard Bloomfield (1933); Kenneth L. Pike's Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of Human Behavior (1967); Charles F. Hockett's Man's Place in Nature (1973); and Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy (1982). The only two criticisms of deconstruction from a linguistic point of view that have come to my attention are my own "Deconstructing Derrida on Language" (1985; reprintedin my Linguistics and Pseudo-Linguistics, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1987, 116-22) and "Misconceptions of Language in Current Literary Theory" (Fourteenth LACUS Forum, ed. Sheila Embleton, Lake Bluff: LACUS, 1988, 269-77). ROBERTA. HALL,JR. CornellUniversity

Reply: I thank Jonathan Culler, James M. Lang, Edward R. Heidt, Jonathan Hillman, and Robert A. Hall, Jr., for contributing to the "healthy dialogue" concerning my essay. As Heidt points out, it seems that deconstruction is alive and well, even after its death as a literary-criticaldominant. I especially thank Hillman for pointing out several important precedents for my argument (I had the good fortune to study with John Sallis), and I can only second his recommendations.

In addition, he rightly points out that Norris's later work takes up a critique much like the one that I follow in my essay. Indeed, Norris's 1991 afterword to the second edition of Deconstruction. Theory and Practice criticizes "the vulgar-deconstructionist view that 'all concepts come down to metaphors in the end"' (143). Norris is, however, equally suspicious of his own earlier reading of Derrida on metaphor, admitting that it grew out of "a false-or very partial -reading of Derrida's arguments in 'White Mythology' and elsewhere. For it is precisely his point in that essay that one has said nothing of interest on the topics of metaphor, writing, and philosophy if one takes it as read (whether on Nietzsche's or Derrida's authority) that all concepts are a species of disguised metaphor . . ." (151). The letter from Hall seemingly would be more fruitfully addressed to Derrida than to me, but both he and Hillman interestingly inflect Derrida's reading of Saussure, and I thank them for their contributions. The major concern over the essay seems to come from Culler and Lang. Certainly Culler is justifiably taken aback by my implication that he does not pay sufficient attention to Derrida's texts. The debt that deconstructive discourse owes to Culler is enormous, and I regret that in an attempt to emphasize our differences, I occasionally adopt an unwarranted polemical tone. The debt that I owe to Culler is easily readable in the amount of Derrida's text that I quote from Culler's book, but this debt is not adequately acknowledged in the body of my essay. Likewise, the concern that I do not pay sufficient attention to Culler's discussion of "displacement" or "reinscription" in On Deconstruction is a valid one. This is, however, not to agree that I have misrepresented Culler. I too welcome the chance to "set the record straight in PMLA." As Culler points out, On Deconstructiondoes argue for the centrality of deconstructive "reinscription"or "displacement" and against a reading of deconstruction as mere destruction; he writes, "[A]n opposition that is deconstructed is not destroyed or abandoned but reinscribed" (133). Culler likewise discusses the "double, aporetic logic" of deconstruction (109), wherein the first movement levels an opposition and the second reinscribesor displaces the opposition. For example, he writes, "Affirmations of equality will not disrupt the hierarchy. Only if it includes an inversion or reversal does a deconstruction have the chance of dislocating the hierarchicalstructure"(166). So at first blush it would seem that Culler and I read Derrida similarly-and, in some respects, we do; however, Culler's notion of the displacement or reinscription of

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a deconstructed opposition can be shown to be part of what I call a first-level movement of neutralization. As Culler confirms in his letter, for him the reversal or inversion of an opposition is its displacement. He writes in On Deconstruction, "There is no program [of deconstruction] already established, Derrida says, because attempts to reverse and thus displace major hierarchical oppositions of Western thought open possibilities of change that are incalculable" (158; my emphasis). According to Culler, it is reversal-in and of itself-that causes Derridean displacement. As a concrete example of the displacement caused by such "deconstructive reversals"(161), he cites the power of Freud's discourse, a power that "is linked to the ability of its hierarchical reversals to transform thought and behavior.... Indeed, Freudian theory is an excellent example of the way in which an apparently specialized or perverse investigation may transform a whole domain by inverting and displacing the oppositions that made its concerns marginal" (159; my emphasis). While for Derrida it is deconstructively essential that there be a disruption-a reversal or an inversion-of traditional metaphysical oppositions, such a dialectical inversion is a first-level deconstructive maneuver that, in the end, adds up to a neutralization of the opposition. In other words, for Derrida the overturning of an opposition will not, in and of itself, "transform a whole domain" of thinking. In fact, such a movement tends to leave the field intact, rearranging the terms rather than examining the structure of the opposition itself. According to Derrida, there needs to be an other reading after the inversion or reversal of terms-a reading that can account for such chiasmic reversal as other than failure or lack of plenitude. Ironically, the quotation from Margins of Philosophy that I am twice lambasted for ignoring in Culler makes this point crystal clear: Derrida argues for both "an overturningof the classical opposition and a general displacementof the system." It is the crucial emphasis in Derrida's writing on this second movement, of "general displacement," that rhetorical deconstructive critics ignore when they conflate displacement with overturning or inversion. If there is a second or "reinscribing"movement of deconstruction for Culler, it remains characterized by the first-level movement or moment of paralyzation. According to Culler, an opposition is reinscribed when it is "reinstat[ed]with a reversal that gives it a different status and impact" (150), and he metaphorizes such a "double procedure of deconstruction" as "sawing off the branch on which one is sitting." If this deed "seems foolhardy to men of common sense, it is not so for Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida;

for they suspect that if they fall there is no 'ground' to hit and that the most clear-sighted act may be a certain reckless sawing . . ." (149). Although this is not, to use Culler's words, a definitive "'characterization' of deconstruction but a description" of deconstructive effects, I think the metaphor chosen here describes nicely the neutralizing upshot of deconstruction as inversion: the first movement of deconstruction walks out on a limb (risks the reversal or inversion of an opposition), and the second reinscribes the opposition as a marker of the failure (chiasmic reversal) of such a binary economy of meaning-it saws the limb off. Even if one were to see Culler's double reading as having the same movement as Derrida's-a restricted economy opening onto a general one, writing opening onto archiwriting-Culler's thematization of that other economy as one of constant failure would radically separate the project of rhetorical deconstructive criticism from Derrida. As Culler writes, for Derrida "proto- or archi-writing displaces the ordinary distinction between speech and writing" (174)in other words, the restricted distinction between speech and writing is based on a prior general economy of meaning, an economy of archiwriting or differance (see also 212 on Derrida's pli). This is a point well taken (and it could, if there were time or space, provide a point of departure for a response to Hall's comments about speech and writing in Derrida), but Culler's understanding of this other economy is, I think, different from Derrida's. Culler writes about Derrida's famous reading of speech and writing in Rousseau: to speech, a supplement Writingcan be compensatory, only becausespeech is alreadymarkedby the qualities generallypredicatedof writing:absenceand misunderstanding. ... Derrida'sdiscussionof "this dangerous in Rousseau describesthis structurein a supplement" varietyof domains:Rousseau'svariousexternalsupplebecausethere mentsare calledin to supplement precisely an originary lack. is always a lackin whatis supplemented, (103;my emphasis) In Culler's reading, supplementation is made possible and necessary because of a general economy of failure or lack that grounds all other economies: the "absence and misunderstanding" characteristic of this general economy cannot be purged in any particularrestricted economy. I argue throughout my essay that revealing this absence or misunderstanding as a kind of ontological antiground is then the work of rhetorical deconstructive criticism. As Culler writes, "Rousseau's texts, like many others, teach that presence is

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always deferred, that supplementation is possible only because of an originary lack" (105; my emphasis). Of course, once this lack is seen to be originary, the door is wide open for the critic to show this differance-aslack at work always and everywhere-in Rousseau's texts and "many others." Criticism is here reinvested with a well-defined deconstructive job to do; instead of revealing the meaning of texts, the critic reveals the failure of that meaning. In the end, it is certainly true that Culler has paid a great deal of attention to the topic of deconstructive double reading (pace some of my comments), but he has not, in my opinion, dealt sufficiently with the logic of double reading in Derrida's texts.
JEFFREY T. NEALON Penn State University, UniversityPark

Zionism and Daniel Deronda To the Editor: I wish to thank Phyllis Lassner, Karen AlkalayGut, and Chanita Goodblatt for their perceptive letter (Forum, 107 [1992]: 1281-82) calling attention to the gratuitous anti-Zionism embedded in a parenthetical aside in Bruce Robbins's January 1992 PMLA article, "Death and Vocation: Narrativizing Narrative Theory." Robbins claims that Daniel Deronda's Zionism "excludes and marginalizes [Gwendolen] Harleth much as Zionism has continued to exclude and marginalize the Palestinians" (44). For political critics like Robbins, it seems no opportunities are to be lost promoting one's political cause. Lassner, AlkalayGut, and Goodblatt point out that Robbins inserts a highly controversial polemic within an "aside" so that the contention operates rhetorically as common sense, not requiring the ordinary rigors of argument, or even more sinisterly as a "subliminal message." Robbins's reply to the letter is even more disturbing. The unrepentant author claims that among the people with whom he speaks it is common sense that Zionism is a hideous political movement; a commonsensical aside therefore is perfectly appropriate. To defend his hatred of Israel, he uses his identity as a Jew to dramatize his revulsion at the treatment of the Palestinians by the Zionists. So loathsome is Zionism that Robbins can bring himself to use the word "Israel" only once! There are several issues of note here. First, Robbins's aside and his more extended comments indicate the sorry depths to which political criticism can de-

scend. One might hope that politically oriented criticism could sustain in its analysis the complexity of insight and subtly nuanced reflection that a literary critic can bring to bear on a literary work. No such luck here! Instead, one finds a simplemindedness (or, to be more generous, an ignorance) that would be out of place in most newspapers. At a time when an Israeli Labor government is negotiating with its Arab neighbors and the Palestinians, Robbins can speak of Zionism as something that only mistreats-"marginalizes and excludes"-Palestinians. Absurdly, Robbins concludes his Forum reply with a patronizing recommendation to Lassner, Alkalay-Gut, and Goodblatt to "exemplify" dissent and diversity within Israel, which he says is in dire need of these two qualities. Robbins has maybe missed the last four decades of Israeli history, not to mention the century or so of contentious Zionist history? Israel has long had a vociferous and at times large peace movement favorable to compromise with the Arabs. I would gladly argue the merits of Zionism and justify Israel's right to exist and to defend itself, but the PMLA Forum is not the appropriate place. At the very least, a fair-minded, informed person cannot reduce the complexities of the Israeli-Arab conflict into a simple matter of the Zionists' being unfair to the Arabs. In the aside Robbins had to be brief, but it is clear from his reply that he really takes a simplistically negative view of Israel. Second, there is the issue of literary representations of Jews and Judaism. According to Robbins, Daniel Deronda's Zionist vocation "excludes and marginalizes" Gwendolen Harleth; as Lassner, Alkalay-Gut, and Goodblatt accurately point out, Harleth does not have to marry Deronda to fulfill her fictional destiny, which Eliot suggests is not exhausted by the marriage and romance plots. Just as many readers complained to Walter Scott that Ivanhoe should have wed the more interesting heroine, Rebecca (presumably a baptized Rebecca), so readers have wanted to pair Deronda and Harleth-Gwendolen being more interesting than Mirah, or perhaps than any other character in the novel. The reader as matchmaker! Daniel's marrying Mirah and Rebecca's not marrying the gentile Ivanhoe evoke Jewish endogamy, which can generate anxiety about "exclusion," especially when at least one of the characters-Scott's Rebecca, Eliot's Deronda-is so attractive and appealing as to "deserve"membership in the majority gentile society. Is it not the case that Jewish endogamy has been judged much more harshly (as clannishness, in the negative characterization) than any other kind of endogamy?

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