Page 81 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 7: Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences-Jacques Derrida

In this period, the founder of deconstruction turns his attention to ethical themes. In particular, the Notes
theme of responsibility to the other (for example, God or a beloved person) leads Derrida to leave
the idea that responsibility is associated with a behavior publicly and rationally justifiable by
general principles. Reflecting upon tales of Jewish tradition, he highlights the absolute singularity
of responsibility to the other.
Deconstruction has had an enormous influence in psychology, literary theory, cultural studies,
linguistics, feminism, sociology and anthropology. Poised in the interstices between philosophy
and non-philosophy (or philosophy and literature), it is not difficult to see why this is the case.
What follows in this article, however, is an attempt to bring out the philosophical significance of
Derrida's thought.

Metaphysics creates dualistic oppositions and installs a hierarchy that unfortunately
privileges one term of each dichotomy (presence before absence, speech before
writing, and so on).

7.1 Life and Works

In 1930, Derrida was born into a Jewish family in Algiers. He was also born into an environment
of some discrimination. In fact, he either withdrew from, or was forced out of at least two schools
during his childhood simply on account of being Jewish. He was expelled from one school because
there was a 7% limit on the Jewish population, and he later withdrew from another school on
account of the anti-semitism. While Derrida would resist any reductive understanding of his work
based upon his biographical life, it could be argued that these kind of experiences played a large
role in his insistence upon the importance of the marginal, and the other, in his later thought.
Derrida was twice refused a position in the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure (where Sartre,
Simone de Beauvoir and the majority of French intellectuals and academics began their careers),
but he was eventually accepted to the institution at the age of 19. He hence moved from Algiers to
France, and soon after he also began to play a major role in the leftist journal Tel Quel. Derrida's
initial work in philosophy was largely phenomenological, and his early training as a philosopher
was done largely through the lens of Husserl. Other important inspirations on his early thought
include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Saussure, Levinas and Freud. Derrida acknowledges his indebtedness
to all of these thinkers in the development of his approach to texts, which has come to be known
as 'deconstruction'.
It was in 1967 that Derrida really arrived as a philosopher of world importance. He published
three momentous texts (Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena). All of
these works have been influential for different reasons, but it is Of Grammatology that remains his
most famous work (it is analysed in some detail in this article). In Of Grammatology, Derrida
reveals and then undermines the speech-writing opposition that he argues has been such an
influential factor in Western thought. His preoccupation with language in this text is typical of
much of his early work, and since the publication of these and other major texts (including
Dissemination, Glas, The Postcard, Spectres of Marx, The Gift of Death, and Politics of Friendship),
deconstruction has gradually moved from occupying a major role in continental Europe, to also
becoming a significant player in the Anglo-American philosophical context. This is particularly so
in the areas of literary criticism, and cultural studies, where deconstruction's method of textual
analysis has inspired theorists like Paul de Man. He has also had lecturing positions at various
universities, the world over. Derrida died in 2004.
Deconstruction has frequently been the subject of some controversy. When Derrida was awarded
an honorary doctorate at Cambridge in 1992, there were howls of protest from many 'analytic'
philosophers. Since then, Derrida has also had many dialogues with philosophers like John Searle,

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