What Derrida Really Meant

[Dave Monroe]

The New York Times
October 14, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR 
What Derrida Really Meant
By MARK C. TAYLOR
 
Along with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger,
Jacques Derrida, who died last week in Paris at the
age of 74, will be remembered as one of the three most
important philosophers of the 20th century. No thinker
in the last 100 years had a greater impact than he did
on people in more fields and different disciplines.
Philosophers, theologians, literary and art critics,
psychologists, historians, writers, artists, legal
scholars and even architects have found in his
writings resources for insights that have led to an
extraordinary revival of the arts and humanities
during the past four decades. And no thinker has been
more deeply misunderstood.

To people addicted to sound bites and overnight polls,
Mr. Derrida's works seem hopelessly obscure. It is
undeniable that they cannot be easily summarized or
reduced to one-liners. The obscurity of his writing,
however, does not conceal a code that can be cracked,
but reflects the density and complexity characteristic
of all great works of philosophy, literature and art.
Like good French wine, his works age well. The more
one lingers with them, the more they reveal about our
world and ourselves. 

What makes Mr. Derrida's work so significant is the
way he brought insights of major philosophers,
writers, artists and theologians to bear on problems
of urgent contemporary interest. Most of his
infamously demanding texts consist of careful
interpretations of canonical writers in the Western
philosophical, literary and artistic traditions - from
Plato to Joyce. By reading familiar works against the
grain, he disclosed concealed meanings that created
new possibilities for imaginative expression. 

Mr. Derrida's name is most closely associated with the
often cited but rarely understood term
"deconstruction." Initially formulated to define a
strategy for interpreting sophisticated written and
visual works, deconstruction has entered everyday
language. When responsibly understood, the
implications of deconstruction are quite different
from the misleading clichés often used to describe a
process of dismantling or taking things apart. The
guiding insight of deconstruction is that every
structure - be it literary, psychological, social,
economic, political or religious - that organizes our
experience is constituted and maintained through acts
of exclusion. In the process of creating something,
something else inevitably gets left out. 

These exclusive structures can become repressive - and
that repression comes with consequences. In a manner
reminiscent of Freud, Mr. Derrida insists that what is
repressed does not disappear but always returns to
unsettle every construction, no matter how secure it
seems. As an Algerian Jew writing in France during the
postwar years in the wake of totalitarianism on the
right (fascism) as well as the left (Stalinism), Mr.
Derrida understood all too well the danger of beliefs
and ideologies that divide the world into diametrical
opposites: right or left, red or blue, good or evil,
for us or against us. He showed how these repressive
structures, which grew directly out of the Western
intellectual and cultural tradition, threatened to
return with devastating consequences. By struggling to
find ways to overcome patterns that exclude the
differences that make life worth living, he developed
a vision that is consistently ethical.

And yet, supporters on the left and critics on the
right have misunderstood this vision. Many of Mr.
Derrida's most influential followers appropriated his
analyses of marginal writers, works and cultures as
well as his emphasis on the importance of preserving
differences and respecting others to forge an identity
politics that divides the world between the very
oppositions that it was Mr. Derrida's mission to undo:
black and white, men and women, gay and straight.
Betraying Mr. Derrida's insights by creating a culture
of political correctness, his self-styled supporters
fueled the culture wars that have been raging for more
than two decades and continue to frame political
debate. 

To his critics, Mr. Derrida appeared to be a
pernicious nihilist who threatened the very foundation
of Western society and culture. By insisting that
truth and absolute value cannot be known with
certainty, his detractors argue, he undercut the very
possibility of moral judgment. To follow Mr. Derrida,
they maintain, is to start down the slippery slope of
skepticism and relativism that inevitably leaves us
powerless to act responsibly. 

This is an important criticism that requires a careful
response. Like Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Mr.
Derrida does argue that transparent truth and absolute
values elude our grasp. This does not mean, however,
that we must forsake the cognitive categories and
moral principles without which we cannot live:
equality and justice, generosity and friendship.
Rather, it is necessary to recognize the unavoidable
limitations and inherent contradictions in the ideas
and norms that guide our actions, and do so in a way
that keeps them open to constant questioning and
continual revision. There can be no ethical action
without critical reflection.

During the last decade of his life, Mr. Derrida became
preoccupied with religion and it is in this area that
his contribution might well be most significant for
our time. He understood that religion is impossible
without uncertainty. Whether conceived of as Yahweh,
as the father of Jesus Christ, or as Allah, God can
never be fully known or adequately represented by
imperfect human beings. 

And yet, we live in an age when major conflicts are
shaped by people who claim to know, for certain, that
God is on their side. Mr. Derrida reminded us that
religion does not always give clear meaning, purpose
and certainty by providing secure foundations. To the
contrary, the great religious traditions are
profoundly disturbing because they all call certainty
and security into question. Belief not tempered by
doubt poses a mortal danger. 

As the process of globalization draws us ever closer
in networks of communication and exchange, there is an
understandable longing for simplicity, clarity and
certainty. This desire is responsible, in large
measure, for the rise of cultural conservatism and
religious fundamentalism - in this country and around
the world. True believers of every stripe - Muslim,
Jewish and Christian - cling to beliefs that, Mr.
Derrida warns, threaten to tear apart our world. 

Fortunately, he also taught us that the alternative to
blind belief is not simply unbelief but a different
kind of belief - one that embraces uncertainty and
enables us to respect others whom we do not
understand. In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what
we don't know so that we can keep the future open. 

In the two decades I knew Mr. Derrida, we had many
meetings and exchanges. In conversation, he listened
carefully and responded helpfully to questions whether
posed by undergraduates or colleagues. As a teacher,
he gave freely of his time to several generations of
students. 

But small things are the measure of the man. In 1986,
my family and I were in Paris and Mr. Derrida invited
us to dinner at his house in the suburbs 20 miles
away. He insisted on picking us up at our hotel, and
when we arrived at his home he presented our children
with carnival masks. At 2 a.m., he drove us back to
the city. In later years, when my son and daughter
were writing college papers on his work, he sent them
letters and postcards of encouragement as well as
signed copies of several of his books. Jacques Derrida
wrote eloquently about the gift of friendship but in
these quiet gestures - gestures that served to forge
connections among individuals across their differences
- we see deconstruction in action.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/opinion/14taylor.html

To the Editor:

Re "Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies in Paris
at 74'' (front page, Oct. 10):

To characterize Jacques Derrida, one of the most
important philosophers of the 20th century, as an
"abstruse theorist'' is to use criteria that would
disqualify Einstein, Wittgenstein and Heisenberg.

You describe deconstruction as another of those
"fashionable, slippery'' philosophies that emerged
from France and one that some Americans felt "was
undermining many of the traditional standards of
classical education.''

In fact, Mr. Derrida wrestled with central works of
the Western tradition, including Plato, Shakespeare
and the Declaration of Independence, none of which he
slighted.

You quote the view that "many otherwise unmalicious
people have in fact been guilty of wishing for
deconstruction's demise - if only to relieve
themselves of the burden of trying to understand it.''


We will leave to others to decide whether your
obituary is unmalicious. There can be no question,
however, that it relieves readers of the burden of
trying to understand Jacques Derrida and
deconstruction. 

Samuel Weber
Kenneth Reinhard
Los Angeles, Oct. 12, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/opinion/l13derrida.html



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