Page 95 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

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

Self-Assessment Notes
1. Choose the correct options:
(i) Jacques Derrida belongs to ............... philosophers.
(a) 18th century (b) 19th century
(c) 20th century (d) None of these
(ii) Derrida was born into a Jewish family in Algiers in ............... .
(a) 1935 (b) 1931
(c) 1339 (d) 1930
(iii) In ‘memoires: for Paul de Man’ was written in ............... .
(a) 1983 (b) 1980
(c) 1965 (d) None of these
(iv) Derrida was awarded an honorary doctorate at Cambridge in ............... .
(a) 1992 (b) 1990
(c) 1983 (d) None of these
7.8 Summary

• Derrida 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.
• 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'.
• 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.
• Derrida's early and late work is merely the most obvious example of the difficulties involved
in suggesting "deconstruction says this", or "deconstruction prohibits that".
• There are many different terms that Derrida employs to describe what he considers to be the
fundamental way(s) of thinking of the Western philosophical tradition. These include:
logocentrism, phallogocentrism, and perhaps most famously, the metaphysics of presence,
but also often simply 'metaphysics'.
• Derrida has had a long and complicated association with phenomenology for his entire
career, including ambiguous relationships with Husserl and Heidegger, and something closer
to a sustained allegiance with Lévinas. Despite this complexity, two main aspects of Derrida's
thinking regarding phenomenology remain clear.
• However, Derrida has a recurring tendency to resuscitate terms in different contexts, and the
term undecidability also returns in later deconstruction. Indeed, to complicate matters,
undecidability returns in two discernible forms. In his recent work, Derrida often insists that
the condition of the possibility of mourning, giving, forgiving, and hospitality, to cite some
of his most famous examples, is at once also the condition of their impossibility. In his
explorations of these "possible-impossible" aporias, it becomes undecidable whether genuine
giving, for example, is either a possible or an impossible ideal.
• Derrida has recently become more and more preoccupied with what has come to be termed
"possible-impossible aporias" - aporia was originally a Greek term meaning puzzle, but it
has come to mean something more like an impasse or paradox.

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