Criticism in Society

Imre Salusinszky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136494529
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

First Published in 2002. It is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and radical social change. New Accents is intended as a positive response to the initiative offered by such a situation. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change; to stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study. Literary criticism, if it is a discipline, is surely that discipline which has been most exclusively concerned with the question of its own function. The main subject within criticism seems always to have been "The Function of Criticism". Featuring nine authors, the early history of these essays is the attempt to separate criticism off from the art that it deals with, generally with unhappy consequences for criticism.

Jacques Derrida

1

Jacques Derrida

“I would say that deconstruction is affirmation rather than questioning, in a sense which is not positive: I would distinguish between the positive, or positions, and affirmations. I think that deconstruction is affirmative rather than.questioning; this affirmation goes through some radical questioning, but is not questioning in the final analysis.”

Jacques Derrida teaches philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, in Paris, as well as a course each spring in the Department of Comparative Literature at Yale. He was born in Algiers in 1930, and first went to France for military service. Derrida’s enormous influence on the course of literary studies in the United States began to be felt in the early and middle 1970s, with the appearance in English of three books which had been published in French in 1968: Speech and Phenomena, Writing and Difference, and Of Grammatology.

In 1966, Derrida had been invited to a now-famous conference at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, which was intended to introduce structuralism to the American university intelligentsia. In fact, and primarily in the person of Derrida himself, the conference was announcing not the advent of structuralism, but its demise. Derrida’s impact on literary studies – we cannot even begin to summarize here his broader philosophical contribution – has been through a mode of reading he inaugurated as “deconstruction,” which has become the major strand in the wider intellectual movement referred to as “poststructuralism.” Derrida’s paper at the Johns Hopkins conference was a critique of the notion of “structure” in the structuralist anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss. The paper depicts structuralism as the latest moment in a long succession of philosophical structuralities, and as the latest one willingly to “neutralize” or “reduce” itself by referring its entire structure to a point of presence, or fixed origin, or center:

The function of this center was not only to orient, balance, and organize the structure – one cannot in fact conceive of an unorganized structure – but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the play of the structure. By orienting and organizing the coherence of the system, the center of a structure permits the play of its elements inside the total form. And even today the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself.

(Writing and Difference, pp. 278–9)¹

Derrida reads the history of philosophy as the genealogy of such stabilizing centers or godly “transcendental signifieds,” and he calls this history the “metaphysics of presence,” or “logocentrism.”

Thinking the “unthinkable itself” involves thinking through and beyond dialectic, and this gesture is amply illustrated in Derrida’s treatment of the other cardinal concept of structuralism, that of the sign. In structuralist or Saussurean linguistic theory, language is a synchronic system of signs, these signs being constituted out of the unity of a signifier (the sensible, audible, or material aspect) and a signified (the intelligible concept or meaning). Signs are arbitrary and conventional, in that they are defined by relation rather than essence – so that the sign “dog,” for example, is constituted not out of any direct connection with a canine quadruped, but rather by virtue of its not being “log” or “hog” or “bog.” Derrida takes this notion of a differential relation between signs and reinscribes it within them. The stability of the opposition between signifier and signified, which serves to unite the sign, cannot be maintained unless we are willing once again to accede to some version of a theological or philosophical “transcendental signified” which would arrest the play of significations. Derrida’s critique forces us to recognize that every signified is also in the position of a signifier, and so does not function to anchor the sign securely in any extra-linguistic reality. How, after all, are we supposed to gain access to a pure, pre-linguistic signified? We cannot explain what any sign or text “means” without producing another text – that is, a parallel set of signifiers. Signs differ not only from each other, but also from themselves, and their nature consists neither in essence nor in relational difference, but in displacement or trace – the trace left by a chain of infinite and unstable re-signification. The notion of the trace marks the presence of the sign with an absence in the form of internal difference and deferral – the infinite deferral of any final meaning. This has led Derrida to his famous neologism: différance, or the effect by which an opposition reproduces itself inside each of its constituent terms. The word, in French, is suspended between “to differ” and “to defer,” and involves the idea that meaning is always deferred, as there is always one more supplement to be assimilated into it.

Wherever Derrida comes across a binary opposition, he treats it in much the same way as he treats the signifier/signified opposition. The most famous and important example is his treatment in the Grammatology of the traditional opposition between speech and writing – an opposition which, since the Phaedrus, has been consistently used to privilege speech over writing. Once again, Derrida undoes the opposition, not by reversing or abolishing it, but by showing that it cannot be sustained as an opposition. Writing, in its exteriority and secondarity, is in precisely the position of the signifier in the signifier/signified pair. But we will find speech constantly turning into an aspect or species of writing, in the same way as every signified becomes another signifier the moment we turn our backs on it; and the relaxation of surveillance which permits this reversal to occur takes place constantly in those very texts which most want to privilege speech over writing.

If we are looking for parallels to this skeptical side of Derrida’s work in recent British thought, we need look no further than – strange as it may sound – the work of A. J. Ayer. Ayer’s analysis of metaphysical statements as statements, and his eventual conclusion that they are in fact non-statements about nothing – containing an absence in place of an object – is strictly proto-deconstructive. Ayer proceeds to distinguish stringently between empirical or verifiable knowledge and metaphysics. The properly deconstructive extension of his point might be to ask questions about the status of a system of knowledge founded upon its opposition to an absence, and to ask whether that absence might not infect the entire opposition, rather than simply one of its terms.

The fascination of Derrida’s texts is in large measure a function of the fact that he is himself a product of the deductive-analytical philosophic tradition of which his work is such a powerful critique. In this affiliation – and in this alone – he may be compared with Northrop Frye. The greatest texts of this tradition always fascinate and influence, because they hold out to us the promise that we may discover really important things about the world by meditating on the meaning of very simple words. In Plato, these are words like “piety” and “good”; in Frye, they tend to be the traditional terms of literary criticism – words like “comedy,” “symbol” and “image”; in Derrida, they are words as simple as “writing,” “supplement” and “difference.” Derrida has himself remarked on the fact that those who seek to destroy metaphysics, like Nietzsche and Heidegger, are “trapped in a kind of circle,” which describes the “form of the relation between the history of metaphysics and the history of the destruction of metaphysics” (Writing and Difference, p. 280). In the difference between wanting to “destroy” metaphysics and wanting to “deconstruct” it there is inscribed one’s awareness, at least, of borrowing all of one’s resources from that which one seeks to undo. But I still don’t know that Derrida would want to deny being inside that “circle,” or being the latest – though not the last – “last Platonist.”

Whatever the source of Derrida’s influence, it has affected literary studies in countless ways. For example, there has been an increased interest in all of those things which a text seems not to want to say, or to say only quickly or marginally: these are often the points from which a “deconstruction” of the text can proceed. But Derrida’s way of showing how hopelessly the two sides of a binary opposition will always cross-infect each other has been especially influential – which is why I have stressed that aspect here. Criticism, after all, has been an obsessively dualistic enterprise. It has taught us to read works of literature in terms of their carefully balanced thematic, imagistic and linguistic oppositions. One level of generality up, it has distinguished works of literature from each other on the basis of such distinctions as comedy and tragedy, poetry and prose, romanticism and classicism. Then it has distinguished literary language from other kinds of verbal discourse on the basis of its radical metaphoricity, immediately breaking that metaphoricity down into vehicle and tenor (an opposition which comes apart very much along the lines of signifier/signified, and which Derrida himself deconstructs in the essay “White Mythology”). All of these favorite oppositions of criticism are open to deconstruction, but none more so than the really big, heavily invested ones that criticism has sought to establish between literature as a whole and all the things that it isn’t: literature against philosophy, literature against history, literature against reason. And not forgetting, lastly, the daddy of them all, the distinction made inside criticism between criticism and its own object. I mean, of course, the inaugurating distinction between criticism and literature itself, made at criticism’s degree-zero, only to be muddied at critical zero-plus-one by all those speculations about the “literary” element in criticism, and the “critical” element in literature.

The following interview – the first which Derrida has ever given in English – was recorded at Yale University in April, 1985. After struggling for so long with the difficult rigour of his texts, one is intimidated at the prospect of actually meeting Jacques Derrida – so of course he turns out to be the most genial and easygoing of men. There is a great sense of liveliness about him: he fidgets constantly with his pipe, and there is always a smile playing about his lips. He seems to enjoy having questions – even stupid ones – thrown at him; he visibly savors those which are less stupid. The whole sense is of a man whose pleasure is in communicating whatever is obscure, illuminating whatever is dark.

Imre Salusinszky: I’d like to talk, today, about the university, and the place of the university in society. First, I want to ask you a question about teaching.

The sorts of discourses that occur in the university are supposed, eventually, to have a “trickle down” effect whereby, if they meet with a certain success, they come to affect educational practices in schools, and other institutions. I hope it isn’t too trivial a question, but I was wondering whether it’s possible for us to imagine what grammatology or deconstruction would look like at the school level. I suppose I’m asking: what would a school be like, in which the teachers were conscious of such concepts as trace, différance, logocentrism, and phonocentrism? Have you ever considered how your own ideas might eventually apply in the educational system, outside the university?

Jacques Derrida: In high schools?

IS: That’s right.

JD: I have no clear answer to that. Of course, I’ve been anxious about this, about clarifying these questions, especially in France – I’m not very familiar with the high schools in this country, or in other countries. But in France, in fact, with friends or colleagues or students of mine, I was involved in trying to make a topic, a thematic problem, of this. We founded a group, in 1975, which is called “Groupe de Recherche sur I’Enseignements Philosophique,” dealing not only with the teaching of philosophy in high schools – as you know, in France we have philosophy in the last grade of high school. At the time, this teaching of philosophy was threatened by the government, which intended more or less to suppress philosophy in the high schools. So we had to fight against this policy, but at the same time to analyze what this teaching of philosophy in the high schools was, or should be. We advocated the teaching of philosophy before the last grade of high school, beginning at the age of 10 or 11, which implied not exactly the transportation of the existing teaching, but a general transformation of teaching in the high school, in all disciplines: a new structure of teaching, which was not, for us, a matter of political decisions coming from the top and being applied, but, as I say, a transformation in the minds of the teachers, of the families, of the children, and so on. We thought that it was just a prejudice to think that philosophy could be taught only at a certain age. We tried to analyze what this prejudice was, on what grounds it was founded – on what grounds, or non-grounds, or fantasies, or fears. Which implied, at the same time, the study of the structure of the institutions, especially in France, but not only in France.

So: it implied that we analyze the institutions, but also philosophy itself, getting to the roots of this prejudice within the history of philosophy: for what social or sexual reasons it has been believed, since Plato, that having an access to philosophy before, let’s say, 17 or 18, was impossible or dangerous. We think it’s not. We’ve made experimental teachings of philosophy in what in France we call sixième et septième, which means at the age of 10 or 11, and it was quite a success. Those young boys and girls were not only interested, but were demanding and enjoying philosophy, and having access to what we would call difficult texts. This move, of course, won’t be possible for a long time, but our idea has made some progress. It implies a general transformation of everything: not only in schools, but the family, the state, the city, and so on.

This doesn’t mean that I have the precise idea of what they could call an application of deconstruction or grammatology in teaching. I was the founder of this group, and wrote the preamble, but I didn’t want to transform it into my own group, or into a doctrine, so I refrained from imposing my views. But, all the time, I was asking myself the question you are asking me, and I have no clear answer in terms of methods or institutions. I cannot say that there could be a deconstructionist teaching, even in the university. I think that deconstruction, to the extent that it’s of some interest, must first insinuate itself everywhere, but not become a method or a school. So I’ve no firm answer to such a question – especially improvising in English! But I’m sure it’s an important question and, if deconstruction is of some interest, it must have effects on teaching at all levels. I would say this without hesitation. But from this point to another step, a constructing step, I couldn’t really speculate.

IS: Following on from that, those who have been reading your work in English have heard you mention the new International College of Philosophy, which you have been involved with in Paris. I’d be fascinated to hear a little of what is envisaged in this project.

JD: It’s not only a project, it’s already a reality. We submitted a project to the French government, who agreed in principle to support the thing. They asked me and three other colleagues to write a report, before creating the institution, and the report was accepted. The institution was created, on a provisional basis, in October 1983, and it has worked since. Now it’s in the process of becoming a public establishment. At the moment it could still be called a private association with public support – but that’s a fiction: in fact, it’s a public institution.

Well, what is the general structure of this institution? First, it wants to be international, which means not only open to foreign scholars, in the form of invitation and so on, but really international. Which means that we want non-French people to share the responsibilities in the decisions. Already, there are some non-French people who are associate members, but we hope that they will be full members. So: really international in its administration. Also, international to the extent that the themes that will be privileged here will have do do mainly with the problems of differences of culture, with translation, with the problem of the institution in its international problematic, and so on. So the substance of the research – it will be a research institution – should have to do with internationality, in a new mode. That’s what we hope.

IS: It’s not a teaching institution?

JD: It’s not simply a teaching institution. The regulating principle of this institution could be formulated in the following manner (it’s easy to formulate, not so easy to practice): it would be an institution which would give priority to problematics, topics, research, which are not legitimized or accepted in the given institutions in France and in the other countries. Wherever a topic, even if it’s necessary, is already received and practiced in other institutions, it’s not of interest for the International College. We are interested, in a privileged manner, in new objects, in new disciplines – not only in interdisciplinary things, but in objects which are not already determined as disciplines, in departments. As soon as something appears as such – something not well received in other institutions but which to us looks necessary, well, we open the college to at least an attempt to constitute this as a real object of research.

The college will be, and is already, open to anybody, without consideration of academic title. Everybody can apply to be a student, or to run a program in this college. The only thing that has to be done is to send a project, according to the lines I was just defining. Titles don’t matter; age, nationality and, of course, sex don’t matter. There will be no tenured positions, no Chairs, only contracts for a rather short period, be it a lecture o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• General editor’s preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Jacques Derrida
• 2 Northrop Frye
• 3 Harold Bloom
• 4 Geoffrey Hartman
• 5 Frank Kermode
• 6 Edward Said
• 7 Barbara Johnson
• 8 Frank Lentricchia
• 9 J. Hillis Miller
• Selected bibliography