-"There is no Transcendental Signified"
Here I tempt the fates and attempt the (maybe) impossible task of summarizing Derrida's post-structuralism as it was developed during the 60s and 70s in such books as Of Grammatology and others. These days the word "deconstruction" and the verb "to deconstruct" are used ubiquitously more or less as a synonym for "analysis" as in breaking things down into their component parts. For Derrida, however, deconstruction is a tactic which is used to obliterate or explode what he sees as 2,400 years of post-Platonic metaphysics. Though both Nietzsche and Heidegger-- Derrida's greatest influences-- claimed to do this earlier, Derrida thought that all earlier breaks with the Western metaphysical tradition were partial. He saw traces of what he called logocentrism in everything from phenomenology to structuralism, and set out to explode it from within once and for all.
But just what are logocentrism and post-Platonic metaphysics? Derrida, following Heidegger, looks at the entire history of Western philosophy since Plato (if not Parminedes, the presocratic) as the search for a universal center of meaning and an undefiled or pure origin. The first elaborate logocentric system was Plato's Theory of the Forms. All things that exist in time and space owe their existence and meaning to "Ideal Forms" which are timeless and outside of sensory experience. For example, my desk here is only a physical imitation ("mimesis") of other physical imitations of the immaterial origin of all physical desks, i.e. the ideal form ("eidos") of desks. If there are airplanes and boats, then they too must be inferior instantiations of transcendent and immaterial Platonic forms. In The Republic and elsewhere The Ideal Form of The Good (To Agathon) becomes the transcendental, universal Idea/Eidos, though we are told it is ineffable. It is unfolded via analogy to the Sun which we cannot look at directly for more than an instant but which allows everything else to be visible. The Platonic form of the Good is elusive yet it is allows everything we do and everything we know to be intelligible. It is the origin and permanent center of truth, meaning and goodness. It is the prototypical Western logos (the universal structure and organizing principle of reality). Derrida often calls such central terms Transcendental Signifieds.
Now to be fair to Plato, it is debatable whether or not he personally stood by this particular metaphysical scheme. Plato wrote only in the form of dramatic dialogues, and it is his version of Socrates (who never wrote a thing) that becomes the mouthpiece of this theory. Even then, we see a young Socrates and his theory cleverly demolished by a brilliant dialectician from Ionia in the dialogue, Parmenides. Never the less, it is the received or standardized interpretation of Plato that counts here because it influenced philosophy profoundly right up to the present time. So again, the important idea is that everything that exists owes its existence and meaning to a Universal Center/Transcendental Signified which is both the origin of all, and that by which everything is made intelligible,meaningful and coherent.
Crucially, through Augustine and the Church Fathers, this metaphysical view became the Theological foundation of Christianity. As Nietzsche said, "Christianity is Plato for the people." In The Gospel of John we learn that Jesus Christ is the Logos, "the Word made flesh" or the incarnation of God in the world of time and space, life and death. Thus the holy and undefiled metaphysical being that is outside of time and nature is God. God is the source or origin of all beings and the guarantor of truth and meaning. He becomes accessible to ordinary mortals in the person of Jesus Christ even though ordinary mortals live in the imperfect material world and are subject to change, corruption and evil. This, in the hands of the Church Fathers, leads to a merger of Platonic metaphysics and Christianity which gives rise to what Derrida, following Heidegger, sometimes calls "onto-theology" (blending the theory of that which is real--ontology-- and the doctrines that address the divine creator/creation, i.e. theology). Just as Plato's forms were "superior" to the "mere imitations" of them here on Earth in time and space, so God/Jesus Christ/The Spirit (The Trinity) is vastly superior to wayward human beings and other "lesser" beings.
This brings out an essential feature of logocentric thinking. All logocentric thought is expressed in terms of binary terms which are inherently hierarchical. One term is always "privileged" or "central" and the other is always "marginal" or "subordinate." Derrida's is an almost political reading of logocentric thinking as a form of oppression in the name of the alleged universal center or most privileged term i.e. the Transcendental Signified Below is a table arranged quasi-chronologically listing some of the central binaries of metaphysics which have shaped European history according to Derrida. The terms on the left side of the page are the superior or "Privileged" terms, (Transcendental Signifieds) while those to the right are inferior and "Marginal."
TABLE 1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANS. SIGNIFIED/ CENTER--------------SUBORDINATE TERM/MARGINAL
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plato's Forms/Ideas ---------------------The sensory and material world
Being (that which does not change)-----------Becoming (the world of change)
God/Creator/Source of Truth and Meaning--------Man (corrupt but with eternal soul)
Man (most rational and wise being in Earthly realm-----Woman (often "irrational")
Divine Law (e.g. God's chosen rulers)--------------------------Positive Law (man-made)
Natural Law(John Locke) -------------------------Conventional Law/Not always moral
Soul---------------------------------------------------------------------------Body
Mind (Descartes)------------------------------------------------------------------------------Matter
Transcendental Ego/Universal Structure of Thought (Kant)-----------Empirical Selves
("Empirical Selves" are, for Kant, the particular individuals (e.g. John/Jane etc.)
The Absolute(Hegel's equivalent to God)------------------------------- The World/History
(For Hegel, the Absolute exists both outside of time and immanently as the author of all history)
Obviously I can't explain all these doctrines in any detail, but I think the main point can be clarified. What all of these apparently different metaphysical binaries share is their structure rather than any specific content. The master-terms or "Transcendental Signifieds" on the left side all act as the universal centers of each epochal worldview. Most familiar of course is the Universal Centrality of God to those who worship Him. Without some kind of access to this Origin and Principle of the World Order (or *structure*) there is no guarantor of Truth, Goodness, and Meaning in the world. Everything gets its place, its meaning within a divine structure whose architect is God. The divine structure of God in medieval Christianity is The Trinity. In the early modern period God may recede further into the background as philosophers like Descartes seem to call on Him only to make sure we are not deluded or in error when we think. The Cogito is the Cartesian central term. Cogito Ergo Sum ("I think therefore I am") makes the act of human thinking (cogito/cogitation) the central term from which each "I" can infer the existence of all else (res extensa, or the world of things in space and time). Kant is, perhaps, the first *structuralist* (recall, Derrida is a post- structuralist) and his privileged term is Transcendental Ego. This is often compared to a software program that gives structure and order to what would otherwise be an unintelligible welter of sensations and disjointed imaginings and concepts. The Kantian structure includes the innate forms of time and space, as well as categories such as causality, unity, quantity and quality among others. All sensory experience is filtered through these categories and related innate schemes producing a world which all humans experience in mostly similar ways allowing for inquiry, knowledge and science. Particular individual selves require the universal "software", but as individuals they are not important to the study of knowledge and understanding itself. Hegel (living in the Romantic Age) gives us a Universal Center which is originary, and grounds all meanings, namely,The Absolute Spirit. Basically, this is God conceived as being immanent (working through, for ex., "great individuals" who are God's instrument for changing important aspects of society in history). God is thus omnipresent, permeating all significant events. We can only see the intelligence and order when we look back, as Hegel did in his historical writings and his Phenomenology, to canvas what one critic calls "God's Autobiography as written by Hegel." Most individuals in this binary structure have to make peace with the status quo in their age, because it is the status quo (or Zeitgeist) that manifests God in the form of flesh and blood history. In Hegel we find God incarnated not as a single man but as the entire history of the world! Particular individuals and their arbitrary wishes (wilkur) have some place in all this, but it is marginal while the Absolute is universal and central --yet another "transcendental signified" in a long series of post-Platonic structures.
I stopped with Hegel because many historians and thinkers believe that once we move into the age of Materialism (e.g. Marx, Freud, Positivists) we have left post-Platonic metaphysics or logocentrism behind. But following Nietzsche and Heidegger, Derrida wants to show that these more recent world-views/structures are different mainly by virtue of the content while the hierarchical binary structures remain unchallenged. This brings us closer to an understanding of deconstruction. The first step in any act of deconstruction is to identify the binary structure in play, and then specify which term is Privileged/ Central and which Marginal. We have done that already for Ancient and early modern systems. Let's look at one or two binaries from the Late Modern period, since these are the structures Derrida emphasizes. Two of great importance are Freud and anthropologist, Levi-Strauss.
Freud understood himself to be completely against metaphysics and theology. Indeed several of his books treated religion as a neurotic illusion which we must give up to become mature and civilized. He shocked many because he claimed that contrary to received wisdom, we are not usually rational but driven by emotional--often sexual-- pulls and pushes. Below I diagram a few Freudian binaries. Notice that now the Central/Privileged terms on the left are terms that in the earlier binaries would belong on the right because they were marginalized. This stage of deconstruction takes note of the inversion or reversal of binary terms. The structure (the binaries themselves) remain, though the hierarchical orders get reversed.
TABLE 2 (Freudian Reversal of Terms):
Unconscious Processes (e.g. dreams)-------------------------Ordinary Consciousness
Emotion/Irrational & conflicting drives-----------------------------------Rationality, Plans
Libidinal Drive/Id/craving pleasure---------------------------Self-control,discipline/ego
I could go on, but the point can be made with these examples. In terms of content, Plato's world or that of Christian Civilization has been turned upside down. But this structure is as rigidly dogmatic and hierarchical as any of the earlier structures, and it has the same conceptual form. Now it is the Unconscious and not the Cartesian or Kantian Ego which runs the show. Ego is marginal. It's job is mainly to give it's master, the Id as much pleasure as it desires without breaking the laws and norms of society as represented in the Conscience and Ego Ideal (i.e. the Superego). Sexual appetites, dreams, fantasies and slips of the tongue appear to run the roost, while our experience of self-control is largely based on compromises with our drives for pleasure or, worse, illusions of self-control. When we fail to control ourselves, says Freud, we employ defenses which is really where the Ego excels. This is not about philosophical "rationality" but Freudian rationalization and other defenses (projection, displacement, denial etc.) We are not "captains of the soul" but errand runners of the soul (die steele). Heaven is an illusion. There is no world outside of the material one in which we all die, largely unfulfilled. End of story. (pathetic drum roll please!)
Yet for all of that we are still looking at a static, hierarchical set of fixed meanings which have one Origin which is "The Unconscious." All our acts and thoughts can be traced back to that origin. All our desires and purposes are merely compromised versions of our unconscious desires (adjusted so as to not offend the conscience and thus produce guilt ). The center for a Christian is the divine spark of the soul and ultimately God . All acts that are desirable and meaningful can be traced back to the soul and God. For Kant all experience can be traced back to the shared structure of human cognition and experience, the Transcendental Ego. Freud's system reflects his age, but continues in the logocentric tradition. Meanings are not fluid but fixed by virtue of an unchanging central principle or agency-- here the irrational unconscious.
Derrida emphasizes the strength of the desire for a center to anchor all meaning and account for our existence. Most of us, he thinks, seek the provision of an alleged source or origin from whence we and our thoughts and desires came. So desperate is this thirst for universal centers that intellectuals in the West reflexively posit them, even if they are just made up. His claim is that there is no origin that remains present through time and across cultures ("Originary Presence") such as Logos,God, The Good, Mind,Cogito, The Absolute etc. There is, additionally, no privileged or controlling logic (root word = logos) by means of which we can render all meanings (or most) stable, unambiguous and fixed. So Freud's tripartite theory of the psyche (Id, Ego, Superego) may as well be the the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) as far as the fixity of meaning and dogmatic Truth are concerned. For Freud gives us meanings that are presented as True, unambiguous and positively scientific. His attitude is that of someone who has discovered the universal laws (logos) underlying everyday meanings and experience just as philosophers and theologians have always claimed to do.
Derrida gives Freud credit for "de-centering" the Rational Ego or thinking subject. That is, for showing that the privileged term Rationality is actually dependent on what was seen as the marginal term, Emotion. In the first step of deconstruction we identified binary hierarchies (see table 1 above) which try to freeze meanings. Now, in the second step, we see that it is possible that what was marginalized before (Emotion) can become central; and what was privileged ordominant before (Reason) can be removed from the Center (i.e."decentered") and marginalized. It is the emotionally loaded Unconscious that is the Freudian Central Term. It is the conscious Ego which *was* seen as transcendent that is now marginalized. Put simply, in this context the unconscious *rules* the ego. There is an inversion of the orders here. Thus the second stage is called the "reversal." But reversing the order, though important, is only a proximate step in the process of deconstruction. What is important about decentering privileged terms is that it shows that the binary hierarchies are not inevitable or etched in stone, but contingent, and reversible.
But the reversal is not the goal of deconstruction. That would be like insisting that women are superior to men rather than the old binary hierarchy that privileged men over women. The goal (which has political implications ) is to disrupt the entire binary structure which, we should recall, comes out of logocentric (metaphysical) thinking which insists on freezing meanings once and for all.The 2nd stage of Reversal of terms only hints at the possibility that meanings can be put into free play where a multiplicity of possible meanings in flux preempts every attempt to nail meanings and truths down "once and for all." How does decentering hint at such a possibility? Well, in terms of this essay, consider that if our most cherished hierarchical schemes can seem self-evident in one epoch (e.g. Reason over Emotion) and then seem equally self-evident when the central and marginal terms are reversed (Emotion over Reason) only one or two hundred years later, then it seems we are capable of finding truths and meanings in exactly the opposite loci depending on the era. How is it that the grandson of a conservative Priest, Minister, Rabbi or Hegelian thinker comes to debunk God and Rationality as constitutive of "human essence" and trades it all in for a belief that he is the instrument of irrational, tyrannical emotional drives (maybe even including the death drive, Thanatos in Freud's late works)? How is it that rather than seeking the counsel of a Priest or wise Moral Philosopher he surrenders himself to the couch and confessional of a Psychiatric office? Derrida suggests that what is most important to such a person and most Westerners is having some "fix" or hold on universal and unchanging truths and meanings. Most of us want to be oppressed, limited and placed in ruts and grooves that move us this and that way, just as long as we don't have to experience the alternative which is Aporia, or the sense that one doesn't really have such firm knowledge after all, but only temporary interpretations within shifting structures With the reversal of terms we see that the content , the interpretation of the signifiers can change radically over time. But this is still relatively superficial for Derrida when compared to his real goal which is to explode and obliterate all such binary structures once and for all.
To do this requires ongoing deconstruction. There is no formula, it is a tactic that rests on the skills and insights of the thinker that is doing these deconstructions. Derrida is one such thinker, and as such will try to show that all interpretations of all signifiers (for our purposes "terms")are contingently different from each and every other one in some way (however small); and also that all of them are subject to change without limit, in principle. This results in something like the thesis of the indeterminacy of meaning (which is more familiar to analytic philosophers from WVO Quine). Construals or interpretations are thus a) different at any given time relative to context and also b) different now than they will be later, implying that no meaning is complete and finished, but rather meanings are deferred or disclosed in an ongoing "free play" of future interpretations. These are not determinable in advance. The "free play" stresses an almost political move that Derrida makes in cutting the terms loose from their binary structures which he sees as oppressive and rigidly prejudiced (e.g. Man over Woman, Reason over Emotion etc.). To make the theme of oppression even more clear just consider the examples of binaries like Christian/Heathen, Light/Dark, White/Black, Civilization/Barbarism, Modern/Underdeveloped, Occidental/Oriental and others which clearly impact social, cultural and political thought and relations. He has thus inspired feminists and students of post-colonialism very profoundly.
The absence of controlling binary structures which subsume all particulars is thus liberating in Derrida's view. For many others who are committed to what philosophers calls "Grand Narratives" (e.g. Religious dogmas, metaphysical systems, etc.) it is often met with disdain and accusations of nihilism. But the entailments of D's texts should not be exaggerated. Derrida's deconstructions all presuppose quasi-stable or provisional meanings, or he could not perform the deconstructions at all. There is a big difference between obliterating meanings that pose as eternally privileged (Being, God, Logos, The Absolute etc.) and denying meaningfulness altogether! Meanings stripped of metaphysical pretenses are seen as being historically and culturally contextual. All concepts have histories and are provisional and quasi-stable. No meanings are inevitable and final. If we could use a time machine and go back to start from some given point in the past there would be no reason to assume we'd end up with the discursive formations and meanings we have right now. Looking to the future we can likewise have no knowledge of the way meanings and understandings will play out. Put differently, the whole point of deconstruction is to see that when confronted with a binary structure, we a) realize that the hierarchy *could* be reversed (see table 2 of Freudian Reversal) and b) that neither term is inherently superior or privileged and that c) once we displace or disrupt the binaries we see that there are always multiple meanings for the terms , that meaning changes with context and cannot be decided in advance. This last point is sometimes called the"Undecidability" of meaning by Derrida. This is another way of talking about the "free play of meanings" I alluded to above.
I have tried to give an historically oriented summary of Derrida's project which is to destroy the binary structures that have paraded through Western history like so many regimes controlling the symbolic universes of various epochs. I discussed the main concepts, but deconstruction is ultimately a tactic which is used to disrupt hierarchical structures. Perhaps in a future post I will write a post on one or two examples of Derrida in action deconstructing the privileging of speech over writing and/or that of culture over nature. In discussing these binaries, Derrida maddeningly exploits word-plays, textual ambiguities and playful alternative meanings of terms-- all in order to show how they can be shown to unravel themselves. This is supposed to establish the non-final nature of all readings. His deconstructions involve Plato's dialogues as well as Rousseau. But he also focuses on the texts of Saussure, Freud, Heidegger, Levi-Strauss and other near contemporaries. I will try to get to that if any one indicates an interest. (Often I don't get many comments, much less indications of what people may be interested in reading about for future reference. Any such feedback would be appreciated. Sorry if this post feels incomplete. Derrida's project is notoriously difficult to put plainly, and I have tried to do it in a compact way primarily by focusing on his reading of the history of philosophy.)
Suggested Question: Must there be a "center that holds?" If so, why? If not, why not?
Here I tempt the fates and attempt the (maybe) impossible task of summarizing Derrida's post-structuralism as it was developed during the 60s and 70s in such books as Of Grammatology and others. These days the word "deconstruction" and the verb "to deconstruct" are used ubiquitously more or less as a synonym for "analysis" as in breaking things down into their component parts. For Derrida, however, deconstruction is a tactic which is used to obliterate or explode what he sees as 2,400 years of post-Platonic metaphysics. Though both Nietzsche and Heidegger-- Derrida's greatest influences-- claimed to do this earlier, Derrida thought that all earlier breaks with the Western metaphysical tradition were partial. He saw traces of what he called logocentrism in everything from phenomenology to structuralism, and set out to explode it from within once and for all.
But just what are logocentrism and post-Platonic metaphysics? Derrida, following Heidegger, looks at the entire history of Western philosophy since Plato (if not Parminedes, the presocratic) as the search for a universal center of meaning and an undefiled or pure origin. The first elaborate logocentric system was Plato's Theory of the Forms. All things that exist in time and space owe their existence and meaning to "Ideal Forms" which are timeless and outside of sensory experience. For example, my desk here is only a physical imitation ("mimesis") of other physical imitations of the immaterial origin of all physical desks, i.e. the ideal form ("eidos") of desks. If there are airplanes and boats, then they too must be inferior instantiations of transcendent and immaterial Platonic forms. In The Republic and elsewhere The Ideal Form of The Good (To Agathon) becomes the transcendental, universal Idea/Eidos, though we are told it is ineffable. It is unfolded via analogy to the Sun which we cannot look at directly for more than an instant but which allows everything else to be visible. The Platonic form of the Good is elusive yet it is allows everything we do and everything we know to be intelligible. It is the origin and permanent center of truth, meaning and goodness. It is the prototypical Western logos (the universal structure and organizing principle of reality). Derrida often calls such central terms Transcendental Signifieds.
Now to be fair to Plato, it is debatable whether or not he personally stood by this particular metaphysical scheme. Plato wrote only in the form of dramatic dialogues, and it is his version of Socrates (who never wrote a thing) that becomes the mouthpiece of this theory. Even then, we see a young Socrates and his theory cleverly demolished by a brilliant dialectician from Ionia in the dialogue, Parmenides. Never the less, it is the received or standardized interpretation of Plato that counts here because it influenced philosophy profoundly right up to the present time. So again, the important idea is that everything that exists owes its existence and meaning to a Universal Center/Transcendental Signified which is both the origin of all, and that by which everything is made intelligible,meaningful and coherent.
Crucially, through Augustine and the Church Fathers, this metaphysical view became the Theological foundation of Christianity. As Nietzsche said, "Christianity is Plato for the people." In The Gospel of John we learn that Jesus Christ is the Logos, "the Word made flesh" or the incarnation of God in the world of time and space, life and death. Thus the holy and undefiled metaphysical being that is outside of time and nature is God. God is the source or origin of all beings and the guarantor of truth and meaning. He becomes accessible to ordinary mortals in the person of Jesus Christ even though ordinary mortals live in the imperfect material world and are subject to change, corruption and evil. This, in the hands of the Church Fathers, leads to a merger of Platonic metaphysics and Christianity which gives rise to what Derrida, following Heidegger, sometimes calls "onto-theology" (blending the theory of that which is real--ontology-- and the doctrines that address the divine creator/creation, i.e. theology). Just as Plato's forms were "superior" to the "mere imitations" of them here on Earth in time and space, so God/Jesus Christ/The Spirit (The Trinity) is vastly superior to wayward human beings and other "lesser" beings.
This brings out an essential feature of logocentric thinking. All logocentric thought is expressed in terms of binary terms which are inherently hierarchical. One term is always "privileged" or "central" and the other is always "marginal" or "subordinate." Derrida's is an almost political reading of logocentric thinking as a form of oppression in the name of the alleged universal center or most privileged term i.e. the Transcendental Signified Below is a table arranged quasi-chronologically listing some of the central binaries of metaphysics which have shaped European history according to Derrida. The terms on the left side of the page are the superior or "Privileged" terms, (Transcendental Signifieds) while those to the right are inferior and "Marginal."
TABLE 1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANS. SIGNIFIED/ CENTER--------------SUBORDINATE TERM/MARGINAL
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plato's Forms/Ideas ---------------------The sensory and material world
Being (that which does not change)-----------Becoming (the world of change)
God/Creator/Source of Truth and Meaning--------Man (corrupt but with eternal soul)
Man (most rational and wise being in Earthly realm-----Woman (often "irrational")
Divine Law (e.g. God's chosen rulers)--------------------------Positive Law (man-made)
Natural Law(John Locke) -------------------------Conventional Law/Not always moral
Soul---------------------------------------------------------------------------Body
Mind (Descartes)------------------------------------------------------------------------------Matter
Transcendental Ego/Universal Structure of Thought (Kant)-----------Empirical Selves
("Empirical Selves" are, for Kant, the particular individuals (e.g. John/Jane etc.)
The Absolute(Hegel's equivalent to God)------------------------------- The World/History
(For Hegel, the Absolute exists both outside of time and immanently as the author of all history)
Obviously I can't explain all these doctrines in any detail, but I think the main point can be clarified. What all of these apparently different metaphysical binaries share is their structure rather than any specific content. The master-terms or "Transcendental Signifieds" on the left side all act as the universal centers of each epochal worldview. Most familiar of course is the Universal Centrality of God to those who worship Him. Without some kind of access to this Origin and Principle of the World Order (or *structure*) there is no guarantor of Truth, Goodness, and Meaning in the world. Everything gets its place, its meaning within a divine structure whose architect is God. The divine structure of God in medieval Christianity is The Trinity. In the early modern period God may recede further into the background as philosophers like Descartes seem to call on Him only to make sure we are not deluded or in error when we think. The Cogito is the Cartesian central term. Cogito Ergo Sum ("I think therefore I am") makes the act of human thinking (cogito/cogitation) the central term from which each "I" can infer the existence of all else (res extensa, or the world of things in space and time). Kant is, perhaps, the first *structuralist* (recall, Derrida is a post- structuralist) and his privileged term is Transcendental Ego. This is often compared to a software program that gives structure and order to what would otherwise be an unintelligible welter of sensations and disjointed imaginings and concepts. The Kantian structure includes the innate forms of time and space, as well as categories such as causality, unity, quantity and quality among others. All sensory experience is filtered through these categories and related innate schemes producing a world which all humans experience in mostly similar ways allowing for inquiry, knowledge and science. Particular individual selves require the universal "software", but as individuals they are not important to the study of knowledge and understanding itself. Hegel (living in the Romantic Age) gives us a Universal Center which is originary, and grounds all meanings, namely,The Absolute Spirit. Basically, this is God conceived as being immanent (working through, for ex., "great individuals" who are God's instrument for changing important aspects of society in history). God is thus omnipresent, permeating all significant events. We can only see the intelligence and order when we look back, as Hegel did in his historical writings and his Phenomenology, to canvas what one critic calls "God's Autobiography as written by Hegel." Most individuals in this binary structure have to make peace with the status quo in their age, because it is the status quo (or Zeitgeist) that manifests God in the form of flesh and blood history. In Hegel we find God incarnated not as a single man but as the entire history of the world! Particular individuals and their arbitrary wishes (wilkur) have some place in all this, but it is marginal while the Absolute is universal and central --yet another "transcendental signified" in a long series of post-Platonic structures.
I stopped with Hegel because many historians and thinkers believe that once we move into the age of Materialism (e.g. Marx, Freud, Positivists) we have left post-Platonic metaphysics or logocentrism behind. But following Nietzsche and Heidegger, Derrida wants to show that these more recent world-views/structures are different mainly by virtue of the content while the hierarchical binary structures remain unchallenged. This brings us closer to an understanding of deconstruction. The first step in any act of deconstruction is to identify the binary structure in play, and then specify which term is Privileged/ Central and which Marginal. We have done that already for Ancient and early modern systems. Let's look at one or two binaries from the Late Modern period, since these are the structures Derrida emphasizes. Two of great importance are Freud and anthropologist, Levi-Strauss.
Freud understood himself to be completely against metaphysics and theology. Indeed several of his books treated religion as a neurotic illusion which we must give up to become mature and civilized. He shocked many because he claimed that contrary to received wisdom, we are not usually rational but driven by emotional--often sexual-- pulls and pushes. Below I diagram a few Freudian binaries. Notice that now the Central/Privileged terms on the left are terms that in the earlier binaries would belong on the right because they were marginalized. This stage of deconstruction takes note of the inversion or reversal of binary terms. The structure (the binaries themselves) remain, though the hierarchical orders get reversed.
TABLE 2 (Freudian Reversal of Terms):
Unconscious Processes (e.g. dreams)-------------------------Ordinary Consciousness
Emotion/Irrational & conflicting drives-----------------------------------Rationality, Plans
Libidinal Drive/Id/craving pleasure---------------------------Self-control,discipline/ego
I could go on, but the point can be made with these examples. In terms of content, Plato's world or that of Christian Civilization has been turned upside down. But this structure is as rigidly dogmatic and hierarchical as any of the earlier structures, and it has the same conceptual form. Now it is the Unconscious and not the Cartesian or Kantian Ego which runs the show. Ego is marginal. It's job is mainly to give it's master, the Id as much pleasure as it desires without breaking the laws and norms of society as represented in the Conscience and Ego Ideal (i.e. the Superego). Sexual appetites, dreams, fantasies and slips of the tongue appear to run the roost, while our experience of self-control is largely based on compromises with our drives for pleasure or, worse, illusions of self-control. When we fail to control ourselves, says Freud, we employ defenses which is really where the Ego excels. This is not about philosophical "rationality" but Freudian rationalization and other defenses (projection, displacement, denial etc.) We are not "captains of the soul" but errand runners of the soul (die steele). Heaven is an illusion. There is no world outside of the material one in which we all die, largely unfulfilled. End of story. (pathetic drum roll please!)
Yet for all of that we are still looking at a static, hierarchical set of fixed meanings which have one Origin which is "The Unconscious." All our acts and thoughts can be traced back to that origin. All our desires and purposes are merely compromised versions of our unconscious desires (adjusted so as to not offend the conscience and thus produce guilt ). The center for a Christian is the divine spark of the soul and ultimately God . All acts that are desirable and meaningful can be traced back to the soul and God. For Kant all experience can be traced back to the shared structure of human cognition and experience, the Transcendental Ego. Freud's system reflects his age, but continues in the logocentric tradition. Meanings are not fluid but fixed by virtue of an unchanging central principle or agency-- here the irrational unconscious.
Derrida emphasizes the strength of the desire for a center to anchor all meaning and account for our existence. Most of us, he thinks, seek the provision of an alleged source or origin from whence we and our thoughts and desires came. So desperate is this thirst for universal centers that intellectuals in the West reflexively posit them, even if they are just made up. His claim is that there is no origin that remains present through time and across cultures ("Originary Presence") such as Logos,God, The Good, Mind,Cogito, The Absolute etc. There is, additionally, no privileged or controlling logic (root word = logos) by means of which we can render all meanings (or most) stable, unambiguous and fixed. So Freud's tripartite theory of the psyche (Id, Ego, Superego) may as well be the the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) as far as the fixity of meaning and dogmatic Truth are concerned. For Freud gives us meanings that are presented as True, unambiguous and positively scientific. His attitude is that of someone who has discovered the universal laws (logos) underlying everyday meanings and experience just as philosophers and theologians have always claimed to do.
Derrida gives Freud credit for "de-centering" the Rational Ego or thinking subject. That is, for showing that the privileged term Rationality is actually dependent on what was seen as the marginal term, Emotion. In the first step of deconstruction we identified binary hierarchies (see table 1 above) which try to freeze meanings. Now, in the second step, we see that it is possible that what was marginalized before (Emotion) can become central; and what was privileged ordominant before (Reason) can be removed from the Center (i.e."decentered") and marginalized. It is the emotionally loaded Unconscious that is the Freudian Central Term. It is the conscious Ego which *was* seen as transcendent that is now marginalized. Put simply, in this context the unconscious *rules* the ego. There is an inversion of the orders here. Thus the second stage is called the "reversal." But reversing the order, though important, is only a proximate step in the process of deconstruction. What is important about decentering privileged terms is that it shows that the binary hierarchies are not inevitable or etched in stone, but contingent, and reversible.
But the reversal is not the goal of deconstruction. That would be like insisting that women are superior to men rather than the old binary hierarchy that privileged men over women. The goal (which has political implications ) is to disrupt the entire binary structure which, we should recall, comes out of logocentric (metaphysical) thinking which insists on freezing meanings once and for all.The 2nd stage of Reversal of terms only hints at the possibility that meanings can be put into free play where a multiplicity of possible meanings in flux preempts every attempt to nail meanings and truths down "once and for all." How does decentering hint at such a possibility? Well, in terms of this essay, consider that if our most cherished hierarchical schemes can seem self-evident in one epoch (e.g. Reason over Emotion) and then seem equally self-evident when the central and marginal terms are reversed (Emotion over Reason) only one or two hundred years later, then it seems we are capable of finding truths and meanings in exactly the opposite loci depending on the era. How is it that the grandson of a conservative Priest, Minister, Rabbi or Hegelian thinker comes to debunk God and Rationality as constitutive of "human essence" and trades it all in for a belief that he is the instrument of irrational, tyrannical emotional drives (maybe even including the death drive, Thanatos in Freud's late works)? How is it that rather than seeking the counsel of a Priest or wise Moral Philosopher he surrenders himself to the couch and confessional of a Psychiatric office? Derrida suggests that what is most important to such a person and most Westerners is having some "fix" or hold on universal and unchanging truths and meanings. Most of us want to be oppressed, limited and placed in ruts and grooves that move us this and that way, just as long as we don't have to experience the alternative which is Aporia, or the sense that one doesn't really have such firm knowledge after all, but only temporary interpretations within shifting structures With the reversal of terms we see that the content , the interpretation of the signifiers can change radically over time. But this is still relatively superficial for Derrida when compared to his real goal which is to explode and obliterate all such binary structures once and for all.
To do this requires ongoing deconstruction. There is no formula, it is a tactic that rests on the skills and insights of the thinker that is doing these deconstructions. Derrida is one such thinker, and as such will try to show that all interpretations of all signifiers (for our purposes "terms")are contingently different from each and every other one in some way (however small); and also that all of them are subject to change without limit, in principle. This results in something like the thesis of the indeterminacy of meaning (which is more familiar to analytic philosophers from WVO Quine). Construals or interpretations are thus a) different at any given time relative to context and also b) different now than they will be later, implying that no meaning is complete and finished, but rather meanings are deferred or disclosed in an ongoing "free play" of future interpretations. These are not determinable in advance. The "free play" stresses an almost political move that Derrida makes in cutting the terms loose from their binary structures which he sees as oppressive and rigidly prejudiced (e.g. Man over Woman, Reason over Emotion etc.). To make the theme of oppression even more clear just consider the examples of binaries like Christian/Heathen, Light/Dark, White/Black, Civilization/Barbarism, Modern/Underdeveloped, Occidental/Oriental and others which clearly impact social, cultural and political thought and relations. He has thus inspired feminists and students of post-colonialism very profoundly.
The absence of controlling binary structures which subsume all particulars is thus liberating in Derrida's view. For many others who are committed to what philosophers calls "Grand Narratives" (e.g. Religious dogmas, metaphysical systems, etc.) it is often met with disdain and accusations of nihilism. But the entailments of D's texts should not be exaggerated. Derrida's deconstructions all presuppose quasi-stable or provisional meanings, or he could not perform the deconstructions at all. There is a big difference between obliterating meanings that pose as eternally privileged (Being, God, Logos, The Absolute etc.) and denying meaningfulness altogether! Meanings stripped of metaphysical pretenses are seen as being historically and culturally contextual. All concepts have histories and are provisional and quasi-stable. No meanings are inevitable and final. If we could use a time machine and go back to start from some given point in the past there would be no reason to assume we'd end up with the discursive formations and meanings we have right now. Looking to the future we can likewise have no knowledge of the way meanings and understandings will play out. Put differently, the whole point of deconstruction is to see that when confronted with a binary structure, we a) realize that the hierarchy *could* be reversed (see table 2 of Freudian Reversal) and b) that neither term is inherently superior or privileged and that c) once we displace or disrupt the binaries we see that there are always multiple meanings for the terms , that meaning changes with context and cannot be decided in advance. This last point is sometimes called the"Undecidability" of meaning by Derrida. This is another way of talking about the "free play of meanings" I alluded to above.
I have tried to give an historically oriented summary of Derrida's project which is to destroy the binary structures that have paraded through Western history like so many regimes controlling the symbolic universes of various epochs. I discussed the main concepts, but deconstruction is ultimately a tactic which is used to disrupt hierarchical structures. Perhaps in a future post I will write a post on one or two examples of Derrida in action deconstructing the privileging of speech over writing and/or that of culture over nature. In discussing these binaries, Derrida maddeningly exploits word-plays, textual ambiguities and playful alternative meanings of terms-- all in order to show how they can be shown to unravel themselves. This is supposed to establish the non-final nature of all readings. His deconstructions involve Plato's dialogues as well as Rousseau. But he also focuses on the texts of Saussure, Freud, Heidegger, Levi-Strauss and other near contemporaries. I will try to get to that if any one indicates an interest. (Often I don't get many comments, much less indications of what people may be interested in reading about for future reference. Any such feedback would be appreciated. Sorry if this post feels incomplete. Derrida's project is notoriously difficult to put plainly, and I have tried to do it in a compact way primarily by focusing on his reading of the history of philosophy.)
Suggested Question: Must there be a "center that holds?" If so, why? If not, why not?
No comments:
Post a Comment