Page 82 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes in which deconstruction has been roundly criticised, although perhaps unfairly at times. However,
what is clear from the antipathy of such thinkers is that deconstruction challenges traditional
philosophy in several important ways, and the remainder of this article will highlight why this
is so.

7.2 Deconstructive Strategy

Derrida, like many other contemporary European theorists, is preoccupied with undermining the
oppositional tendencies that have befallen much of the Western philosophical tradition. In fact,
dualisms are the staple diet of deconstruction, for without these hierarchies and orders of
subordination it would be left with nowhere to intervene. Deconstruction is parasitic in that rather
than espousing yet another grand narrative, or theory about the nature of the world in which we
partake, it restricts itself to distorting already existing narratives, and to revealing the dualistic
hierarchies they conceal. While Derrida's claims to being someone who speaks solely in the margins
of philosophy can be contested, it is important to take these claims into account. To the extent that
it can be suggested that Derrida's concerns are often philosophical, they are clearly not
phenomenological (he assures us that his work is to be read specifically against Husserl, Sartre
and Merleau-Ponty) and nor are they ontological.
Deconstruction, and particularly early deconstruction, functions by engaging in sustained analyses
of particular texts. It is committed to the rigorous analysis of the literal meaning of a text, and yet
also to finding within that meaning, perhaps in the neglected corners of the text (including the
footnotes), internal problems that actually point towards alternative meanings. Derrida speaks of
the first aspect of this deconstructive strategy as being akin to a fidelity and a "desire to be faithful
to the themes and audacities of a thinking". At the same time, however, deconstruction also
famously borrows from Martin Heidegger's conception of a 'destructive retrieve' and seeks to
open texts up to alternative and usually repressed meanings that reside at least partly outside of
the metaphysical tradition (although always also partly betrothed to it). This more violent and
transgressive aspect of deconstruction is illustrated by Derrida's consistent exhortation to "invent
in your own language if you can or want to hear mine; invent if you can or want to give my
language to be understood". In suggesting that a faithful interpretation of him is one that goes
beyond him, Derrida installs invention as a vitally important aspect of any deconstructive reading.
He is prone to making enigmatic suggestions like "go there where you cannot go, to the impossible,
it is indeed the only way of coming or going", and ultimately, the merit of a deconstructive
reading consists in this creative contact with another text that cannot be characterised as either
mere fidelity or as an absolute transgression, but rather which oscillates between these dual
demands. The intriguing thing about deconstruction, however, is that despite the fact that Derrida's
own interpretations of specific texts are quite radical, it is often difficult to pinpoint where the
explanatory exegesis of a text ends and where the more violent aspect of deconstruction begins.
Derrida is always reluctant to impose 'my text', 'your text' designations too conspicuously in his
texts. This is partly because it is even problematic to speak of a 'work' of deconstruction, since
deconstruction only highlights what was already revealed in the text itself. All of the elements of
a deconstructive intervention reside in the "neglected cornerstones" of an already existing system,
and this equation is not altered in any significant way whether that 'system' be conceived of as
metaphysics generally, which must contain its non-metaphysical track, or the writings of a specific
thinker, which must also always testify to that which they are attempting to exclude.

Deconstruction is, somewhat infamously, the philosophy that says nothing.

These are, of course, themes reflected upon at length by Derrida, and they have an immediate
consequence on the meta-theoretical level. To the minimal extent that we can refer to Derrida's

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