History

In Of Grammatology (1967) Derrida introduces the term deconstruction to describe the

manner that understanding language, as “writing” (in general) renders infeasible a
straightforward semantic theory. In first using the term deconstruction, he “wished to
translate and adapt to my own ends the Heideggerian word Destruktion or Abbau”.[2]
Martin Heidegger’s philosophy developed in relation to Edmund Husserl’s, and Derrida’s
use of the term deconstruction is closely linked to his own (Derrida’s) appropriation of
the latter’s understanding of the problems of structural description.

Sources of deconstruction

Deconstruction emerged from the influence upon Derrida of several thinkers, including:

• Edmund Husserl. The greatest focus of Derrida's early work was on Husserl,
from his dissertation (eventually published as The Problem of Genesis in
Husserl's Philosophy), to his "Introduction" to Husserl's "Essay on the Origin of
Geometry," to his first published paper, "'Genesis and Structure' and
Phenomenology" (in Writing and Difference), and lastly to his important early
work, Speech and Phenomena.
• Martin Heidegger. Heidegger's thought was a crucial influence on Derrida, and
he conducted numerous readings of Heidegger, including the important early
essay, "Ousia and Gramme: Note on a Note from Being and Time" (in Margins of
Philosophy), to his study of Heidegger and Nazism entitled Of Spirit, to a series of
papers entitled "Geschlecht."
• Sigmund Freud. Derrida has written extensively on Freud, beginning with the
paper, "Freud and the Scene of Writing" (in Writing and Difference), and a long
reading of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle in his book, The Post Card.
Jacques Lacan has also been read by Derrida, although the two writers to some
extent avoided commenting on each others' work.
• Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's singular philosophical approach was an
important forerunner of deconstruction, and Derrida devoted attention to his texts
in Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles and The Ear of the Other.
• André Leroi-Gourhan. Of Grammatology makes clear the importance of Leroi-
Gourhan for the formulation of deconstruction and especially of the concept of
différance, relating this to the history of the evolution of systems for coding
difference, from DNA to electronic data storage.
• Ferdinand de Saussure. Derrida's deconstruction in Of Grammatology of
Saussure's structural linguistics was critical to his formulation of deconstruction,
and his insertion of linguistic concerns into the heart of philosophy.

Theory
Derrida began speaking and writing publicly at a time when the French intellectual scene
was experiencing an increasing rift between what could broadly be called
"phenomenological" and "structural" approaches to understanding individual and
collective life. For those with a more phenomenological bent the goal was to understand
experience by comprehending and describing its genesis, the process of its emergence
from an origin or event. For the structuralists, this problematic was a very misleading
avenue of interrogation, and the "depth" and originality of experience could in fact only
be an effect of structures which are not themselves experiential. It is in this context that in
1959 Derrida asks the question: Must not structure have a genesis, and must not the
origin, the point of genesis, be already structured, in order to be the genesis of
something?[3]

In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history, and the
structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis.[4] At the same time, in
order that there be movement, or potential, the origin cannot be some pure unity or
simplicity, but must already be articulated—complex—such that from it a "diachronic"
process can emerge. This originary complexity must not be understood as an original
positing, but more like a default of origin, which Derrida refers to as iterability,
inscription, or textuality.[5] It is this thought of originary complexity, rather than original
purity, which destabilises the thought of both genesis and structure, that sets Derrida's
work in motion, and from which derive all of its terms, including deconstruction.[6]

Derrida's method consisted in demonstrating all the forms and varieties of this originary
complexity, and their multiple consequences in many fields. His way of achieving this
was by conducting thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of
philosophical and literary texts, with an ear to what in those texts runs counter to their
apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). By
demonstrating the aporias and ellipses of thought, Derrida hoped to show the infinitely
subtle ways that this originary complexity, which by definition cannot ever be completely
known, works its structuring and destructuring effects.[7]

Derrida initially resisted granting to his approach the overarching name "deconstruction,"
on the grounds that it was a precise technical term that could not be used to characterise
his work generally. Nevertheless, he eventually accepted that the term had come into
common use to refer to his textual approach, and Derrida himself increasingly began to
use the term in this more general way.

Différance

Crucial to Derrida's work is the concept of différance, a complex term which refers to the
process of the production of difference and deferral. According to Derrida, all difference
and all presence arise from the operation of différance. He states that:

To "deconstruct" philosophy [...] would be to think – in the most faithful, interior way –
the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time to determine –
from a certain exterior [...] – what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid [...]
By means of this simultaneously faithful and violent circulation between the inside and
the outside of philosophy [...a] putting into question the meaning of Being as presence.[8]
To deconstruct philosophy is therefore to think carefully within philosophy about
philosophical concepts in terms of their structure and genesis. Deconstruction questions
the appeal to presence by arguing that there is always an irreducible aspect of non-
presence in operation. Derrida terms this aspect of non-presence différance. Différance is
therefore the key theoretical basis of deconstruction. Deconstruction questions the basic
operation of all philosophy through the appeal to presence and différance therefore
pervades all philosophy. Derrida argues that différance pervades all philosophy because
"What defers presence [...] is the very basis on which presence is announced or desired in
what represents it, its sign, its trace".[9] Différance therefore pervades all philosophy
because all philosophy is constructed as a system through language. Différance is
essential to language because it produces "what metaphysics calls the sign
(signified/signifier)".[10]

In one sense, a sign must point to something beyond itself that is its meaning so the sign
is never fully present in itself but a deferral to something else, to something different. In
another sense the structural relationship between the signified and signifier, as two
related but separate aspects of the sign, is produced through differentiation. Derrida states
that différance "is the economical concept", meaning that it is the concept of all systems
and structures, because "there is no economy without différance [...] the movement of
différance, as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the
common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language [...] différance is
also the production [...] of these differences."[9] Différance is therefore the condition of
possibility for all complex systems and hence all philosophy.

Operating through différance, deconstruction is the description of how non-presence

problematises the operation of the appeal to presence within a particular philosophical
system. Différance is an a-priori condition of possibility that is always already in effect
but a deconstruction must be a careful description of how this différance is actually in
effect in a given text. Deconstruction therefore describes problems in the text rather than
creating them (which would be trivial). Derrida considers the illustration of aporia in this
way to be productive because it shows the failure of earlier philosophical systems and the
necessity of continuing to philosophise through them with deconstruction.

Of Grammatology

Derrida first employs the term deconstruction in Of Grammatology in 1967 when

discussing the implications of understanding language as writing rather than speech.
Derrida states that:

[w]riting thus enlarged and radicalized, no longer issues from a logos. Further, it
inaugurates the destruction, not the demolition but the de-sedimentation, the de-
construction, of all the significations that have their source in that of the logos.[11]

In this quotation Derrida states that deconstruction is what happens to meaning when
language is understood as writing. For Derrida, when language is understood as writing it
is realised that meaning does not originate in the logos or thought of the language user.
Instead individual language users are understood to be using an external system of signs,
a system that exists separately to them because these signs are written down. The
meaning of language does not originate in the thoughts of the individual language user
because those thoughts are already taking place in a language that does not originate with
them. Individual language users operate within a system of meaning that is given to them
from outside. Meaning is therefore not fully under the control of the individual language
user. The meaning of a text is not neatly determined by authorial intention and cannot be
unproblematically recreated by a reader. Meaning necessarily involves some degree of
interpretation, negotiation, or translation. This necessity for the active interpretation of
meaning by readers when language is understood as writing is why deconstruction takes
place.

To understand this more fully, consider the difference for Derrida between understanding
language as speech and as writing. Derrida argues that people have historically
understood speech as the primary mode of language[12] and understood writing as an
inferior derivative of speech.[13] Derrida argues that speech is historically equated with
logos,[14] meaning thought, and associated with the presence of the speaker to the listener.
[15]
It is as if the speaker thinks out loud and the listener hears what the speaker is thinking
and if there is any confusion then the speaker's presence allows them to qualify the
meaning of a previous statement. Derrida argues that by understanding speech as thought
language "effaces itself."[16] Language itself is forgotten. The signified meaning of speech
is so immediately understood that it is easy to forget that there are linguistic signifiers
involved - but these signifiers are the spoken sounds (phonemes) and written marks
(graphemes) that actually comprise language. Derrida therefore associates speech with a
very straightforward and unproblematic theory of meaning and with the forgetting of the
signifier and hence language itself.

Derrida contrasts the understanding of language as speech with an understanding of

language as writing. Unlike a speaker a writer is usually absent (even dead) and the
reader cannot rely on the writer to clarify any problems that there might be with the
meaning of the text. The consideration of language as writing leads inescapably to the
insight that language is a system of signs. As a system of signs the signifiers are present
but the signification can only be inferred. There is effectively an act of translation
involved in extracting a significaton from the signifiers of language. This act of
translation is so habitual to language users that they must step back from their experience
of using language in order to fully realise its operation. The significance of understanding
language as writing rather than speech is that signifiers are present in language but
significations are absent. To decide what words mean is therefore an act of interpretation.
The insight that language is a system of signs, most obvious in the consideration of
language as writing, leads Derrida to state that "everything [...] gathered under the name
of language is beginning to let itself be transferred to [...] the name of writing."[17] This
means that there is no room for the naive theory of meaning and forgetting of the signifier
that previously existed when language was understood as speech.
Much later in his career Derrida retrospectively confirms the importance of this
distinction between speech and writing in the development of deconstruction when he
states that:

[F]rom about 1963 to 1968, I tried to work out - in particular in the three works published
in 1967 - what was in no way meant to be a system but rather a sort of strategic device,
opening its own abyss, an unclosed, unenclosable, not wholly formalizable ensemble of
rules for reading, interpretation and writing. This type of device may have enabled me to
detect not only in the history of philosophy and in the related socio-historical totality, but
also in what are alleged to be sciences and in so-called post-philosophical discourses that
figure among the most modern (in linguistics, in anthropology, in psychoanalysis), to
detect in these an evaluation of writing, or, to tell the truth, rather a devaluation of writing
whose insistent, repetitive, even obscurely compulsive, character was the sign of a whole
set of long-standing constraints. These constraints were practised at the price of
contradictions, of denials, of dogmatic decrees"[18]

Here Derrida states that deconstruction exposes historical constraints within the whole
history of philosophy that have been practised at the price of contradictions, denials, and
dogmatic decrees. The description of how contradictions, denials, and dogmatic decrees
are at work in a given text is closely associated with deconstruction. The careful
illustration of how such problems are inescapable in a given text can lead someone to
describe that text as deconstructed.

Speech and Phenomena

Derrida's first book length deconstruction is his critical engagement with Husserl's
phenomenology in Speech and Phenomena published in 1967. Derrida states that Speech
and Phenomena is the "essay I value the most"[19] and it is therefore a very important
example of deconstruction. Husserl's philosophy is grounded in conscious experience as
the ultimate origin of validity for all philosophy and science. Derrida's deconstruction
operates by illustrating how the originary status of consciousness is compromised by the
operation of structures within conscious experience that prevent it from being "the
original self-giving evidence, the present or presence of sense to a full and primordial
intuition."[20] Derrida argues that Husserl's "phenomenology seems to us tormented, if not
contested from within, by its own descriptions of the movement of temporalization and
language."[21] Derrida argues that the involvement of language and temporalisation within
the "living present"[21] of conscious experience means that instead of consciousness being
the pure unitary origin of validity that Husserl wishes it be, it is compromised by the
operation of différance in the structures of language and temporalisation. Derrida argues
that language is a structured system of signs and that the meanings of individual signs are
produced by the différance between that sign and other signs. This means that words are
not self sufficiently meaningful but only meaningful as part of a larger structure that
makes meaning possible. Derrida therefore argues that the meaning of language is
dependent on the larger structures of language and cannot originate in the unity of
conscious experience. Derrida therefore argues that linguistic meaning does not originate
in the intentional meaning of the speaking subject. This conclusion is very important for
deconstruction and explains the importance of Speech and Phenomena for Derrida.
Informed by this conclusion the deconstruction of a text will typically demonstrate the
inability of the author to achieve their stated intentions within a text by demonstrating
how the meaning of the language they use is, at least partially, beyond the ability of their
intentions to control. Similarly, Derrida argues that Husserl's description of temporal of
consciousness - where he describes the retension of past conscious experience and
protension of future conscious experience - introduces the structural différance of
temporal deferral, temporal non-presence, into consciousness. This means that the past
and future are not in the living present of conscious experience but they taint the presence
of the living present with their conscious absence through retension and protension.
Husserl's description of temporal consciousness therefore compromises the total self
presence of conscious experience required by Husserl's philosophy once again.

Writing and Difference

Writing and Difference is a collection of essays published by Derrida in 1967. Each essay
is a critical negotiation by Derrida of texts by philosophical or literary writers. These
essays have come to be termed deconstructions even though some of them were written
before Derrida's first use of the term in Of Grammatology. For example, the chapter
"Cogito and the History of Madness," dating from 1963, has been referred to as a
deconstruction of the work of Michel Foucault, yet the term "deconstruction" does not
actually appear in the chapter.

Derrida's later work

While Derrida's deconstructions in the 1960s and 1970s were frequently concerned with
the major philosophical systems, in his later work he is often concerned to demonstrate
the aporias of specific terms and concepts, including forgiveness, hospitality, friendship,
the gift, responsibility and cosmopolitanism.

The difficulty of definition

When asked "What is deconstruction?" Derrida replied, "I have no simple and
formalisable response to this question. All my essays are attempts to have it out with this
formidable question" (Derrida, 1985, p. 4). Derrida believes that the term deconstruction
is necessarily complicated and difficult to explain since it actively criticises the very
language needed to explain it.

Secondary definitions

The popularity of the term deconstruction combined with the technical difficulty of
Derrida's primary material on deconstruction and his reluctance to elaborate his
understanding of the term has meant that many secondary sources have attempted to give
a more straightforward explanation than Derrida himself ever attempted. Secondary
definitions are therefore an interpretation of deconstruction by the person offering them
rather than a direct summary of Derrida's actual position.

• Paul de Man was a member of the Yale School and a prominent practitioner of
deconstruction as he understood it. His definition of deconstruction is that,"It's
possible, within text, to frame a question or undo assertions made in the text, by
means of elements which are in the text, which frequently would be precisely
structures that play off the rhetorical against grammatical elements." (de Man, in
Moynihan 1986, at 156.)

• Richard Rorty was a prominent interpreter of Derrida's philosophy. His definition

of deconstruction is that, "the term 'deconstruction' refers in the first instance to
the way in which the 'accidental' features of a text can be seen as betraying,
subverting, its purportedly 'essential' message" (Rorty 1995). (The word
accidental is used here in the sense of incidental.)

• John D. Caputo attempts to explain deconstruction in a nutshell by stating that:

"Whenever deconstruction finds a nutshell—a secure axiom or a pithy maxim—

the very idea is to crack it open and disturb this tranquility. Indeed, that is a good
rule of thumb in deconstruction. That is what deconstruction is all about, its very
meaning and mission, if it has any. One might even say that cracking nutshells is
what deconstruction is. In a nutshell. ...Have we not run up against a paradox and
an aporia [something contradictory]...the paralysis and impossibility of an aporia
is just what impels deconstruction, what rouses it out of bed in the morning..."
(Caputo 1997, p.32)

• David B. Allison is an early translator of Derrida and states in the introduction to

his translation of Speech and Phenomena that :

[Deconstruction] signifies a project of critical thought whose task is to locate and 'take
apart' those concepts which serve as the axioms or rules for a period of thought, those
concepts which command the unfolding of an entire epoch of metaphysics.
'Deconstruction' is somewhat less negative than the Heideggerian or Nietzschean terms
'destruction' or 'reversal'; it suggests that certain foundational concepts of metaphysics
will never be entirely eliminated...There is no simple 'overcoming' of metaphysics or the
language of metaphysics.[22]

• Paul Ricoeur was another prominent supporter and interpreter of Derrida's

philosophy. He defines deconstruction as a way of uncovering the questions
behind the answers of a text or tradition (Klein 1995).

A survey of the secondary literature reveals a wide range of heterogeneous arguments.

Particularly problematic are the attempts to give neat introductions to deconstruction by
people trained in literary criticism who sometimes have little or no expertise in the
relevant areas of philosophy that Derrida is working in relation to. These secondary
works (e.g. Deconstruction for Beginners[23] and Deconstructions: A User's Guide[24])
have attempted to explain deconstruction while being academically criticized as too far
removed from the original texts and Derrida's actual position.[citation needed] In an effort to
clarify the rather muddled reception of the term deconstruction Derrida specifies what
deconstruction is not through a number of negative definitions.

Derrida's negative descriptions

Derrida has been more forthcoming with negative than positive descriptions of
deconstruction. Derrida gives these negative descriptions of deconstruction in order to
explain "what deconstruction is not, or rather ought not to be"[25] and therefore to prevent
misunderstandings of the term. Derrida states that deconstruction is not an analysis, a
critique, or a method[26] in the traditional sense that philosophy understands these terms.
In these negative descriptions of deconstruction Derrida is seeking to "multiply the
cautionary indicators and put aside all the traditional philosophical concepts."[26] This
does not mean that deconstruction has absolutely nothing in common with an analysis, a
critique, or a method because while Derrida distances deconstruction from these terms, he
reaffirms "the necessity of returning to them, at least under erasure."[26] Derrida's
necessity of returning to a term under erasure means that even though these terms are
problematic we must use them until they can be effectively reformulated or replaced.
Derrida's thought developed in relation to Husserl's and this return to something under
erasure has a similarity to Husserl's phenomenological reduction or epoché. Derrida
acknowledges that his preference for negative description “has been called...a type of
negative theology.”[27] The relevance of the tradition of negative theology to Derrida's
preference for negative descriptions of deconstruction is the notion that a positive
description of deconstruction would over-determine the idea of deconstruction and that
this would be a mistake because it would close off the openness that Derrida wishes to
preserve for deconstruction. This means that if Derrida were to positively define
deconstruction as, for example, a critique then this would put the concept of critique for
ever outside the possibility of deconstruction. Some new philosophy beyond
deconstruction would then be required in order to surpass the notion of critique. By
refusing to define deconstruction positively Derrida preserves the infinite possibility of
deconstruction, the possibility for the deconstruction of everything.[original research?]

Not a method

Derrida states that “Deconstruction is not a method and cannot be transformed into
one.”[27] This is because deconstruction is not a mechanical operation. Derrida warns
against considering deconstruction as a mechanical operation when he states that “It is
true that in certain circles (university or cultural, especially in the United States) the
technical and methodological “metaphor” that seems necessarily attached to the very
word “deconstruction” has been able to seduce or lead astray.”[27] Commentator Richard
Beardsworth explains that

Derrida is careful to avoid this term [method] because it carries connotations of a

procedural form of judgement. A thinker with a method has already decided how to
proceed, is unable to give him or herself up to the matter of thought in hand, is a
functionary of the criteria which structure his or her conceptual gestures. For Derrida [...]
this is irresponsibility itself. Thus, to talk of a method in relation to deconstruction,
especially regarding its ethico-political implications, would appear to go directly against
the current of Derrida's philosophical adventure.[28]

Beardsworth here explains that it would be irresponsible to undertake a deconstruction

with a complete set of rules that need only be applied as a method to the object of
deconstruction because this understanding would reduce deconstruction to a thesis of the
reader that the text is then made to fit. This would be an irresponsible act of reading
because it ignores the empirical facticity of the text itself - that is it becomes a prejudicial
procedure that only finds what it sets out to find. To be responsible a deconstruction must
carefully negotiate the empirical facticity of the text and hence respond to it.
Deconstruction is not a method and this means that it is not a neat set of rules that can be
applied to any text in the same way. Deconstruction is therefore not neatly transcendental
because it cannot be considered separate from the contingent empirical facticity of the
particular texts that any deconstruction must carefully negotiate. Each deconstruction is
necessarily different (otherwise it achieves no work) and this is why Derrida states that
“Deconstruction takes place, it is an event.”[29] On the other hand deconstruction cannot
be completely untranscendental because this would make it meaningless to, for example,
speak of two different examples of deconstruction as both being examples of
deconstruction. It is for this reason that Richard Rorty asks if Derrida should be
considered a quasi-transcendental philosopher that operates in the tension between the
demands of the empirical and the transcendental. Each example of deconstruction must
be different but it must also share something with other examples of deconstruction.
Deconstruction is therefore not a method in the traditional sense but is what Derrida
terms "an unclosed, unenclosable, not wholly formalizable ensemble of rules for reading,
interpretation and writing."[18]

Not a critique

Derrida states that deconstruction is not a critique in the Kantian sense.[27] This is because
Kant defines the term critique as the opposite of dogmatism. For Derrida it is not possible
to escape the dogmatic baggage of the language we use in order to perform a pure
critique in the Kantian sense. For Derrida language is dogmatic because it is inescapably
metaphysical. Derrida argues that language is inescapably metaphysical because it is
made up of signifiers that only refer to that which transcends them - the signified. This
transcending of the empirical facticity of the signifier by an ideally conceived signified is
metaphysical. It is metaphysical in the sense that it mimics the understanding in
Aristotle's metaphysics of an ideally conceived being as that which transcends the
existence of every individually existing thing. In a less formal version of the argument it
might be noted that it is impossible to use language without asserting being, and hence
metaphysics, constantly through the use of the various modifications of the verb "to be".
In addition Derrida asks rhetorically "Is not the idea of knowledge and of the theory of
knowledge in itself metaphysical?"[30] By this Derrida means that all claims to know
something necessarily involve an assertion of the metaphysical type that something is the
case somewhere. For Derrida the concept of neutrality is suspect and dogmatism is
therefore involved in everything to a certain degree. Deconstruction can challenge a
particular dogmatism and hence desediment dogmatism in general, but it cannot escape
all dogmatism all at once.

Not an analysis

Derrida states that deconstruction is not an analysis in the traditional sense.[27] This is
because the possibility of analysis is predicated on the possibility of breaking up the text
being analysed into elemental component parts. Derrida argues that there are no self-
sufficient units of meaning in a text. This is because individual words or sentences in a
text can only be properly understood in terms of how they fit into the larger structure of
the text and language itself. For more on Derrida's theory of meaning see the page on
différance.

Not poststructuralist

Derrida states that his use of the word deconstruction first took place in a context in
which "structuralism was dominant"[31] and its use is related to this context. Derrida states
that deconstruction is an "antistructuralist gesture"[31] because "Structures were to be
undone, decomposed, desedimented."[31] At the same time for Derrida deconstruction is
also a "structuralist gesture"[31] because it is concerned with the structure of texts. So for
Derrida deconstruction involves “a certain attention to structures"[31] and tries to
“understand how an 'ensemble' was constituted."[26] As both a structuralist and an
antistructuralist gesture deconstruction is tied up with what Derrida calls the "structural
problematic."[31] The structural problematic for Derrida is the tension between genesis,
that which is "in the essential mode of creation or movement,"[32] and structure, "systems,
or complexes, or static configurations."[33] An example of genesis would be the sensory
ideas from which knowledge is then derived in the empirical epistemology. An example
of structure would be a binary opposition such as good and evil where the meaning of
each element is established, at least partly, through its relationship to the other element.
For Derrida, Genesis and Structure are both inescapable modes of description, there are
some things that "must be described in terms of structure, and others which must be
described in terms of genesis,"[33] but these two modes of description are difficult to
reconcile and this is the tension of the structural problematic. In Derrida's own words the
structural problematic is that "beneath the serene use of these concepts [genesis and
structure] is to be found a debate that...makes new reductions and explications
indefinitely necessary."[34] The structural problematic is therefore what propels
philosophy and hence deconstruction forward. Another significance of the structural
problematic for Derrida is that while a critique of structuralism is a recurring theme of his
philosophy this does not mean that philosophy can claim to be able to discard all
structural aspects. It is for this reason that Derrida distances his use of the term
deconstruction from poststructuralism, a term that would suggest philosophy could
simply go beyond structuralism. Derrida states that “the motif of deconstruction has been
associated with "poststructuralism"" but that this term was "a word unknown in France
until its “return” from the United States."[26] As mentioned above in section on Derrida's
deconstruction of Husserl Derrida actually argues for the contamination of pure origins
by the structures of language and temporality and Manfred Frank has even referred to
Derrida's work as "Neostructuralism"[35] and this seems to capture Derrida's novel concern
for how texts are structured.

Developments after Derrida

The Yale School

Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s many thinkers were influenced by
deconstruction, including Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller. This
group came to be known as the Yale school and was especially influential in literary
criticism. Several of these theorists were subsequently affiliated with the University of
California Irvine.[citation needed]

The Inoperative Community

Jean-Luc Nancy argues in his 1982 book The Inoperative Community for an
understanding of community and society that is undeconstructable because it is prior to
conceptualisation. Nancy's work is an important development of deconstruction because
it takes the challenge of deconstruction seriously and attempts to develop an
understanding of political terms that is undeconstructable and therefore suitable for a
philosophy after Derrida.

The Ethics of Deconstruction

Simon Critchley argues in his 1992 book The Ethics of Deconstruction that Derrida's
deconstruction is an intrinsically ethical practice. Critchley argues that deconstruction
involves an openness to the other that makes it ethical in the Levinasian understanding of
the term.

Derrida and the Political

Richard Beardsworth, developing on Critchley's Ethics of Deconstruction, argues in his

1996 Derrida and the Political that deconstruction is an intrinsically political practice.
He further argues that the future of deconstruction faces a choice (perhaps an undecidable
choice) between a theological approach and a technological approach represented first of
all by the work of Bernard Stiegler.

Criticism
This article's Criticism or Controversy section(s) may mean the article does not
present a neutral point of view of the subject. It may be better to integrate the
material in those sections into the article as a whole. (November 2009)
Derrida has been involved in a number of high profile disagreements with prominent
philosophers including Michel Foucault, John Searle, Willard Van Orman Quine, Peter
Kreeft, and Jürgen Habermas. Most of the criticism of deconstruction were first
articulated by these philosophers and repeated elsewhere.

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was the subject of Derrida's early paper "Cogito and the History of
Madness" in which Derrida makes the controversial claim that:

In this 673-page book, Michel Foucault devotes three pages- and, moreover, in a kind of
prologue to his second chapter- to a certain passage from the first of Descartes's
Meditations. [... in] alleging- correctly or incorrectly, as will be determined- that the
sense of Foucault's entire project can be pinpointed in these few allusive and somewhat
enigmatic pages, and that the reading of Descartes and the Cartesian Cogito proposed to
us engages in its problematic the totality of this History of Madness...[36]

The audacity of Derrida's claim to problematise the whole of the History of Madness by
working with such a small section of the text outraged Foucault. Foucault responds in the
new preface to the 1972 edition of the History of Madness by complaining that after the
initial publication of the text "fragments of it pass into circulation and are passed off as
the real thing."[37] This comment may form the basis of the allegation that deconstruction
does not adhere to conventional academic standards by failing to deal substantially with
the texts it appears to criticise (see how deconstruction uses empirical evidence to
demonstrate the limits of the transcendental meaning of a text in the theory section).
Foucault also states in the appendix to the 1972 edition titled "My Body, This Paper, This
Fire" that Derrida's deconstruction is a:

[H]istorically well-determined little pedagogy, which manifests itself here in a very

visible manner. A pedagogy which teaches the student that there is nothing outside the
text, but that in it, in its interstices, in its blanks and silences, the reserve of the origin
reigns; that it is never necessary to look beyond it, but that here, not in the words of
course, but in words as crossings-outs [sic], in their lattice, what is said is "the meaning
of being". A pedagogy that inversely gives to the voice of the masters that unlimited
sovereignty that allows it indefinitely to re-say the text.[38]

This stinging rebuke by Foucault caused a rift between the two thinkers and they did not
speak to each other for ten years. Foucault refers in this passage to certain claims that
Derrida makes in Of Grammatology, though without quotation or citation to indicate that
he is doing so. Foucault's mention of "crossings-outs" refers to the return to problematic
terms under erasure (see the section on Derrida's negative descriptions of deconstruction).
Foucault also alludes critically to the problematisation of presence in deconstruction as a
reading of what isn't there in the text. This aspect of Foucault's argument may have
encouraged Derrida to strongly emphasise the importance of fidelity to the text being
deconstructed. Foucault's reference to Derrida's assertion that "there is nothing outside
the text" is undoubtedly the basis of much criticism of deconstruction as being nihilistic,
relativistic, a-political, or confined to the ivory tower of academia. In fact, this infamous
quote is subtly but essentially mistranslated (as Foucault well knew, and thus this
acknowledgement does not necessarily confute his argument), and literally reads "there is
no outside-text (il n'y pas hors-texte)," or, as Derrida himself paraphrased it in Limited
Inc., "there is nothing outside context." Thus, Derrida does not argue that only what is
written in the text is relevant to it, but rather that no text can or should be interpreted
without considering the various "external" factors (historical, biographical, material,
ideological, etc.) that contributed to its production. At the same time, according to
Derrida, these allegedly "external" phenomena (e.g. "humanism," "the age of
enlightenment," "logic," and, perhaps most importantly, "human nature") need to be
considered as historically contingent (i.e. as subject to contextualization and thus critical
reading) rather than as immutable and inevitable facts of life.

[edit] John Searle

Derrida wrote "Signature Event Context", a paper in which he critically engages with
Austin's analytic philosophy of language. John Searle is a prominent supporter of Austin's
philosophy and objected to "the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate
obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to
give the appearance of profundity by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under
analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial."[39] Searle also reported that Michel Foucault
criticized Derrida's writings as "terroristic obscurantism":

Michel Foucault once characterized Derrida's prose style to me as "obscurantisme

terroriste." The text is written so obscurely that you can't figure out exactly what the
thesis is (hence "obscurantisme") and then when one criticizes it, the author says, "Vous
m'avez mal compris; vous êtes idiot" (you have misunderstood me; you are a fool) (hence
"terroriste").[40]

Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas criticized what he considered Derrida's opposition to rational discourse.

Further, in an essay on religion and religious language, Habermas criticized Derrida's

insistence on etymology and philology.

Criticisms in popular media

Popular criticism of deconstruction also intensified following the Sokal affair, which
many people took as an indicator of the quality of deconstruction as a whole.[41]

Deconstruction has been directly used and also parodied in a large number of literary
texts. Native American novelist Gerald Vizenor claims an extensive debt to
deconstructionist ideas in attacking essentialist notions of race. Writer Percival Everett
goes further in satire, actually incorporating fictional conversations between a number of
leading deconstructionists within his fictions. Comic author David Lodge’s work, such as
his novel Nice Work, contains a number of figures whose belief in the deconstructionist
project is undermined by contact with non-academic figures.