II

DECONSTRUCTIVE
GESTURES

(a) Introduction

To avoid subsuming “deconstruction” within the metaphysical dichotomy and predetermined opposition of theory and practice, form and content, ideal and real, and thus purity and impurity or inside and outside, we shall propose here to examine what we shall tentatively name: deconstructive gestures. Rather than taking one “privileged example” of Derrida’s analysis, we shall instead attempt to trace a certain parallelism between two particular deconstructive practices. The usage of a “privileged example” shall be avoided here due to the implicit metaphysical determination of “exemplarity” within the notions of sign, origin, presence, absence, and ultimately the representation of the general (law) within the particular (facticity). Since these determinations are issues and structures to be placed in question, indeed deconstructed, by Derrida, we suggest that the tautological formulation of using that which we hope to clarify in the act of clarification should be avoided here. Therefore we shall also attempt to avoid a mimetic procedure concerning the relation of our work to Derrida’s. With this last limitation in mind, we propose therefore to avoid the deconstruction of deconstruction here. This is not our task at present, although it may indeed emerge as not only an unavoidable, essential, necessary, and perhaps timely project but also the most precise clarification of the structure, functioning, and aims of deconstruction itself.

Instead and for the moment, therefore, we propose a more modest approach here. We shall use Derrida’s deconstructions of Husserl and Saussure as our “case studies” and shall attempt to track, by using the notion of parallelism or perhaps parallelogram, a certain process common to both particular studies. Finally, we shall leave the question open as to whether these repeated, repeating, and therefore repeatable (ideal?) gestures do indeed form that which could, within metaphysics, be called the concept of deconstruction; or more precisely, a theory of the practice of deconstructive gestures. We shall perhaps, however, point towards such a necessity.

(b) Announcing the Limits

In Derrida’s analysis of Saussure he states his intention of the deconstruction in the following way:

It is clear, therefore, at least on the level of Derrida’s intentions, that he is not attempting a critique of Saussure, nor is he attempting to overcome or denounce the Saussurian project of the Course. Instead he is concerned with the demarcation—by Saussure and by the project of founding a general science of linguistics—of the limits of that project itself. The limits, for Derrida, invoke certain presuppositions which remain active but latent or hidden within that which is thereby limited or framed. Indeed the notion of “limit,” for Derrida, is precisely that which is “in need” of deconstruction, as we shall see. The limit of a project is a demarcation of its range or field or relevance or applicability. It is the circumscription of the inside and outside of the object of that science. It is the scientificity of science itself, Derrida insists. As he says,

Thus the significance of the “limits” is delimited by Derrida. We might recall that his analysis of Saussure’s Course here is concerned with the possibility of founding a science called Grammatology within which such a “general science of linguistics” as Saussure’s might legitimately be situated. We shall see, however, that Grammatology for Derrida remains an Idea in the Kantian sense. Precisely why this is the case is what will interest us here. But first we must explore Derrida’s demarcation of the “limits” of deconstruction with respect to Husserl.

Derrida’s initial gesture in his deconstruction of Husserl is concerned with the question of whether the “découpage” or demarcation of the limits, indeed the reduction of metaphysics itself, is not already a sign for the very presence of metaphysics which Husserl posits explicitly as absent or exterior to his project. As Derrida says, Husserl

Derrida’s own intention here is therefore brought to light, since he once again focuses on the gesture of “exclusion” which is used to initiate a project—indeed to found a new “science.” In order to pursue the meaning of this gesture of exclusion, Derrida considers it to be a sign for something not presented as such. This transformation of the given, explicit, “vouloir-dire” into a signifying function shall be the focus of the following section concerning Derrida’s use (“borrowing”) of metaphysical structures, but for now we wish to point towards the reason for Derrida’s openings and explicit (stated) intentions in his deconstructions of both Husserl and Saussure. We must pursue this limitation of limits a little further therefore.

Each time Husserl makes a distinction with respect to the sign, language, and signification in general, in particular, Derrida seems to take very careful notice. In fact these are the passages he selects in accordance with his concern for the double significance of exclusion as a more profound but hidden (illegitimate) act of inclusion. For example:

Further:

We shall not trace here the intricacies and complexities of the contexts of Husserl’s phenomenology that Derrida aims to place in question in the demarcation of its limits, as they in turn represent yet larger and therefore a more narrow demarcation of the field itself. We wish however to show that: (i) Derrida’s concern with the “limits” is a concern with that which they “represent”; (ii) he limits himself in the opening gestures of deconstruction to a focus on the explicit intent of the project at hand and how its field of relevance, indeed the “object” of its discourse, is framed or marked using the distinction of inside/outside in accordance with the metaphysical presuppositions therein entailed.

Returning to Saussure we find the “same” intense concern for his limitations or more precisely for his representative gestures of exclusion and inclusion, for Derrida. For instance:

Not only does this concern parallel Derrida’s concern with Husserl, it seems to mirror his approach there almost exactly. The reason for the “limits” being set precisely where they are and therein excluding or including precisely what they do is clearly the concern for deconstruction. It is the opening deconstructive gesture itself one could argue. We shall not explore why this limit is set upon deconstruction itself, yet but wish at least here to mark, indeed to re-mark, that it exists and that it repeats from one deconstruction to another. This repetition is already significant, as we shall explore presently.

A final word on the limits, however, seems necessary here. Derrida’s exploration of the gestures of exclusion (inclusion) also focuses on the “questions left unasked” by the “author/text” under analysis. These questions are absolutely context-specific and must be approached as such by us as well. However, they do once again signify a certain level of “law” within the text, which Derrida will claim is not only unexamined by the author and a fortiori his/her intentions but in fact governs the same. Indeed this duplicity of implicit textual laws and explicit authorial intent will become of increasing significance for us and for Derrida in this examination of deconstructive gestures. But first, the notion of the unasked questions.

For Derrida, as for Heidegger, the form of the question always already prescribes the form and a fortiori the content of the response. The question’s form is precisely the condition of the possibility or impossibility of the response. Thus it may seem perhaps somewhat strange for Derrida to be asking questions which he claims the writers do not ask. On what basis are these questions “ask-able” and why and where do they arise?

In Saussure, Derrida suggests the following implicit contract with metaphysics, based on a certain form of Saussure’s questioning:

The question Saussure does not ask himself here is precisely that which Derrida is concerned with. Why and how is it that this contract presupposes a certain metaphysical determination of writing and a fortiori of the sign? It is the ground of the question that concerns Derrida therefore, at least in this context. With Husserl he is concerned more directly with that which is never placed in question:

And again:

Therefore, in the process of asking or even revealing the “unasked questions” for both Husserl and Saussure, Derrida seems to be concerned with that which remains hidden from view for both Husserl and Saussure but which therein sustains its hold on the form of their discourses and indeed the very projects of their work. In fact, Derrida explicitly claims to be concerned with “the relation between that which a writer commands and does not command of the patterns of language that he or she uses.” This difference will appear in the process of deconstruction initially as a contradiction (within a metaphysical vision) but later, as we shall see, as the movement of différance itself.

The deconstructive gesture thus turns towards this duplicity which it will claim is: (i) irreducible, and thus (ii) constitutive of textuality in general. We are still however at the stage of the initial limitations and circumscriptions of deconstruction itself, we should recall.

The duplicity in Husserl’s project appears for Derrida in the following manner:

Derrida continues here to explain a certain double structure within phenomenology which entails on the one hand, the reduction of “naive ontology” and yet “another necessity also confirms the classical metaphysics of presence and marks the adherence of phenomenology to classical ontology.”¹¹ Further: “it is this adherence that we have chosen to examine further.” Indeed, the interest of deconstruction is here at stake and stated explicitly. It would seem to be none other than the following twofold demonstration: (i) that the duplicity exists; and (ii) that it is essential. With Saussure, we find the same issue therefore rising to the surface, for Derrida, as the intention and thus (perhaps) telos of deconstruction. For example:

And further:

We now have the limits and intentions of the deconstructive gestures clearly stated, or so it would seem. The textual contradictions form a certain center, a certain recurring form or basis for the tracking procedure of deconstruction. We should recall that the principles claim to “leave a track in the text it analyses.” Presumably this track or mark, which remains as the result or product of the deconstructive gesture, is the trace of the trace itself. Presumably this track is therefore: (i) already there in the text; yet (ii) not presented as such but paradoxically (iii) “presented,” to the deconstructive eye at least, as a certain circumscribed, indeed representative and represented absence within the text itself. It is to this constitution of the “track” by the gesture of deconstruction that we shall now turn our attention. The conditions of the possibility of the trace of the trace shall become, if not self-evident or present, at least signified or marked by this our procedure here, we hope.

(c) Borrowed Structures and Inhabiting Texts

Derrida openly claims to “borrow his tools for deconstruction from metaphysics itself” and “to inhabit the text under analysis in a certain way” such that the results of deconstruction and the deconstructive project itself “always and in a certain way falls victim to its own work.”¹³ It is this “adherence that we have chosen to be interested in.” Indeed this borrowing procedure forms the very procedure of deconstruction itself in its “empirical,” contextual manifestations, we suggest. One might consider first that the notion of borrowing from metaphysics involves a certain usage of metaphysics, quite simply. And perhaps a certain misuse since borrowing implies a certain impropriety, a certain “misfitting” of the borrowed and the borrower. However, it is significant to notice that Derrida does not claim to steal, hide, or threaten the “tools of metaphysics” but rather first to borrow them and secondly, to deconstruct them. Indeed the latter is the precondition and telos of the former. Thus we can already see a certain intimacy within the relation of deconstruction to metaphysics; perhaps a certain impropriety but above all a certain contract. In fact an economy is beginning to take shape here. Before exploring these general relations further, we must return to the specific gestures of deconstruction with respect to this “borrowing,” “inhabiting,” and “falling victim to” the tools and structures of metaphysics as exemplified in his analyses of Saussure and Husserl. (We too shall begin to borrow more heavily from metaphysics at this juncture, since it seems in keeping with the tracing or following of the subject matter at hand.)

Derrida’s analyses of Husserl and Saussure use no less than nine major principles or “tools” of classical, traditional, Western metaphysics. These include: (i) the Concept in general; (ii) the transformation of chance into necessity; (iii) metaphysical forms of questions; (iv) the search for “conditions of possibility”; (v) the syllogism; premise/consequence relations of necessity; (vi) criteria of essence or necessity for judgment; (vii) the principle of non-contradiction; (viii) essence/appearance distinctions; and (ix) the metaphysical determination of the sign.

We shall attempt to show precisely where and how Derrida uses metaphysics in specific contexts with respect to these two deconstructions. Finally, we shall propose some possible reasons for Derrida’s heavy reliance on this same structure which, we should not forget, he aims to deconstruct. It is not simply a contradiction, in the classical metaphysical sense, that Derrida will be found engaged in here although it may appear as such initially. Neither is deconstruction, in our case studies, simply: (i) redeemable by metaphysics; (ii) condemned to it; or (iii) detachable from it. As Derrida himself has claimed, it is not the attachment or complicity with metaphysics that he denounces or is concerned with but rather the necessity of this attachment.¹⁴ Despite his attempt to “slowly detach his project from the concepts of metaphysics,” it will be argued here that this is simply (a) not possible and (b) not conceivable except as an Idea in the Kantian sense. Indeed to radically “escape” from metaphysics would mean the end of all communication and all conditions of the possibility of the same. It is this paradoxical conclusion within Derrida’s deconstructive gestures, in particular as he uses/borrows the tools of metaphysics, that we shall attempt to trace here.

(i) The Concept in General

Once Derrida has circumscribed the limits of his concerns with Husserl, with the First Investigation and within the first major distinction between one type of sign and another, he begins to analyze the conditions of the possibility of this “act of exclusion.” If “indication and expression,” the two types of signs, are indeed two types of signs, then Derrida suggests, they necessarily entail the concept of the sign in general. In drawing such a conclusion, the use of the metaphysical structure of genus and species is clearly invoked as well. Derrida explains his conclusion in the following way:

Not only is this “hidden conceptual ground” revealed by Derrida here, or perhaps simply invoked as a necessary presupposition, he goes on to suggest that the very need for such a concept, on the one hand, and yet the absence of Husserl’s recognition of this or questioning of it indicates something more. We should recall that Husserl aimed to reduce all pre-constituted knowledge and to avoid the use of metaphysics in his phenomenology. Derrida suggests however that: “This absence of the question concerning the point of departure and the preunderstanding of the traditional operational concept is necessarily a dogmatism.”¹⁶ And further: “This would be a classical procedure.” In response to his own apparent objections here Derrida seems to save Husserl, however, by showing that perhaps the latter does not in fact presuppose a conceptual unity for the sign and indeed does not require a concept of the sign in general for his distinction. However, Derrida’s “metaphysical démarche” returns again and again to install Husserl solidly and squarely within the tradition of metaphysics on this same basis. Concerning the use of the term “life” to describe both the empirical and the transcendental realm, Husserl seems again to invoke a more general concept of life in general which would both precede and transcend the distinction produced by the reduction. On this point Derrida does not make an alternative suggestion concerning the other possible reasons for such a “common root” but rather “condemns” Husserl outright for presupposing and indeed requiring a metaphysical ground for his phenomenology. Derrida’s line of argument is worthy of repeating here.

And finally:

Thus in finding two uses of the “same” name, or the same term, albeit in different circumstances and in different contexts, Derrida insists in this case in particular at least that a metaphysical concept which unites the two instances is necessarily at work. Indeed the “concept” in general is the condition of the possibility of each individual case for Derrida as for Plato, as we shall see.

Another instance of Derrida’s invocation of the concept in his analysis of Husserl seems particularly relevant here. Husserl distinguishes in an analogous fashion, Derrida tells us, between Hinweiss and Beweiss, or indication and demonstration, just after his initial (and problematic, according to Derrida) distinction between the “two types of signs.” Once again the fact that Hinweiss and Beweiss seem to be sharing the notion of “showing in general” as their ground prior to their distinction leads Derrida to suggest that the distinction presupposes a hidden identity. As he says:

The ultimate conclusions for Husserl’s phenomenology, if Derrida is correct here, are not however our present concern. We do wish to show simply that Derrida’s use of the concept of the concept is in this analysis of Husserl a key gesture within deconstruction itself.

(ii) From Chance to Necessity

In Derrida’s analysis of Saussure he is concerned once again with that which is “hidden” below the surface, as it were, of Saussure’s discourse itself. In Saussure’s examination of the relation of speech to writing, he considers the following characteristics as essential: (i) that speech is more originary than writing; (ii) that writing is thus “exterior” to speech but used to supplement, imitate or copy it; (iii) that the model of writing is based on “phonetic” writing, since this is evidently close to the phonè of speech itself. Derrida considers these preconditions of Saussure’s science of linguistics to be: (i) not arbitrary, yet (ii) not essential either. Paradoxically, Saussure considered them to be “natural” and therefore essential. The difference here is the difference between that which is “not capricious,” yet that which can no longer be considered restrained or captured by the concept of nature.

In detail, Derrida’s analysis takes the following form. He suggests that: “It is not by chance that the exclusive consideration of phonetic writing permits a response to the exigencies of the ‘internal system’. The basic functional principle of phonetic writing is precisely to respect and protect the integrity of the ‘internal system’ of the language, even if in fact, it does not succeed in doing so.” Further, “the Saussurian limit does not respond by a mere happy coincidence to the scientific exigency of the ‘internal system’. That exigency is itself constituted as the epistemological exigency in general, by the very possibility of phonetic writing and by the exteriority of the ‘notation’ to internal logic.”¹⁹ We shall explore further Derrida’s use of the metaphysical notion of the sign at a later stage, but here we should remark that Derrida is concerned to show the necessity—not metaphysical, yet also and necessarily metaphysical—which resides within and behind (indeed controls) a certain distinction and formulation in Saussure’s project.

Saussure also considers writing as a problem and a threat to the interiority of speech and the phonè. This formulation also has a long tradition, Derrida reminds us, as he returns the frame to the text of Plato’s Phaedrus. However, Saussure continues on to expose the problem of writing’s possible “usurpation” of speech—as its replacement, representative, and finally its violent substitute. This moment is no accident either, Derrida insists. The fact that this is possible on the one hand, and indeed a constant threat, indicates a certain necessity also in this chance or apparently accidental, incidental situation. Derrida thus claims:

We shall leave aside the injunction of “ought” here, but we cannot avoid remarking the invocation of the metaphysical injunction of “cannot be an accidental aberration” and the necessity to which this necessarily (it would seem) refers us. This ultimate necessity is, for Derrida, as he says, “a profound possibility of essence.” Paradoxical conclusions to be sure, since it would seem that it is this “essential” structure that deconstruction aims to place in question. Derrida’s reliance on the “structures of metaphysics” must not, however, suggest that he is a metaphysician plain and simple. Instead, or as well, his reliance is a certain infidelity and indeed an infidelity that he seems to be in search of with his “deconstructive gestures” as intrinsic, necessary, and essential to textuality or perhaps to the “act of writing” itself. As he says, he is concerned to reveal laws, economic relations, and certain nесessities by deconstruction and therefore, in the process, “respects” and “uses” metaphysics itself. As a reminder of his notion of différance as it relates to metaphysics we suggest the following distinction: “The instituted trace is ‘unmotivated’ but not capricious. For us, the rupture of that ‘natural attachment’ places in question the idea of naturalness rather than that of attachment.”²¹ If we were to apply Derrida to Derrida here we might suggest a certain common ground between “natural” and “attachment” and indeed the revindication of “attachment” as necessary certainly presupposes a very particular structure and a very particular tradition. But we must return first to Derrida’s other manners of usage or borrowing of the “tools of metaphysics.”

(iii) The Form of the Question

The process of deconstruction of both Husserl and Saussure seems particularly concerned with the presentation of ideas or possibilities of interpretation in the form of questions. Indeed Derrida, as we have already shown, tends to focus on what he calls the “unasked questions,” which seem to necessarily arise in the arguments he analyzes but which seem to have been “hidden from the view” of their respective authors. The significance of the “unasked questions” is always revealing for Derrida. But his own usage of the question explicitly seems a clear investment in the tools of metaphysics since the form of his questions almost always situates the responses within metaphysics itself. For example, the question “what is ...?” necessarily, Derrida himself tells us, situates the response within a metaphysical form so that one therein constitutes an “object” with an inside/outside, the possibility of presence and absence, a subject in relation to it, etc. “What is ...?” is thus the paradigm par excellence of the metaphysically structured question. The second most powerful metaphysical question must be that of “why?” or “pourquoi?” As Derrida once again tells us, this formulation depends on the metaphysical notions of sign, representation, teleology, a certain historicity, presence/absence, etc. Yet we shall find that Derrida himself in his analyses of Husserl and Saussure not only uses these forms but situates his arguments between one set of questions and another continually. The implications of such a framework seem perhaps self-evidently metaphysical, yet once again we should be cautious with such a readily available “usurpation” of Derrida here. The results of his use of metaphysics, even of the asking of these necessarily metaphysically framed questions, do not simply provide a confirmation of that same tradition. We shall see why presently, as the tenets of metaphysics begin to be revealed as in contradition (perhaps necessarily) with themselves. But first, the questions Derrida asks of Husserl and Saussure.

His questions for Husserl, predictably enough according to a certain homology of concern between Derrida and Husserl, focus very often on the issue of origin. Hence he asks: “From whence comes ...?” and “From whence ...?” In addition, he asks (concerning the authority which allows Husserl to do what he does): “How can one justify ...?” and “What gives its authority ...?”²² Are these not metaphysically formulated questions? Do they not presuppose and therein preformulate and precondition their possible responses as necessarily metaphysical as well? As Derrida asks “From whence comes ...?” or “How can one justify ...?” he seems therefore to be presupposing something not presented as such yet: (i) more originary; and (ii) the basis of a certain authority, a certain power, or a certain governing. These assumptions are no accident, as we shall see later.

In his analysis of Saussure, Derrida typically asks the following sorts of questions: (i) “what has been invested ...?”; (ii) “what prohibition ...?”; (iii) “why determine ...?”; (iv) “why should the mother tongue ...?”; (v) “why should ...?”; and (vi) “why wish ...?”²³ Why indeed is the issue here once again. As Derrida tells us, “why” insists upon a hidden or presupposed reason for that which is given, and this reason is thus in a certain sense necessarily: (i) more originary, and (ii) a certain authority, power or controlling force behind that which appears. The parallel structure of the deconstructive gestures for Husserl’s texts are striking and unavoidable here.

It is clear that Derrida is ultimately asking: What do these limits and presuppositions signify? And it is equally clear that his answer is both: (i) metaphysics and (ii) non-metaphysics. The “origin” of the origin is not an origin, we should recall, but rather it is différance. Further, it is clear that Derrida is concerned with a twofold revelatory procedure here. Initially he is concerned with the revelation of metaphysical determinations within a text, behind the back or hidden within that which a “writer controls” in his/her text. Secondly (and no less primarily), he is concerned with the origin and presuppositions or limits of that same metaphysics. Clearly then the asking of metaphysically formed questions sets up the possibility of the extension of our analysis and of looking beyond or beneath that same metaphysics. This will become increasingly clear as we proceed, we expect.

(iv) Conditions of Possibility

Derrida’s questions are but one gesture in his search for the conditions of the possibility of the given text, argument, or stated intention of the author and in turn for the conditions of the possibility of those same conditions. However, this structure itself is not placed in question by Derrida, explicitly at least, as we shall see. Instead he seems to use it to its limits of possibility; indeed to “exhaust” it, as he says, and therein show its range of relevance in the revelation of the moment of irrelevance. We shall therefore attempt here to trace Derrida’s invocation of this formulation (as evidently borrowed from Kant) and to show how this functions within what is becoming apparently a system of “deconstructive gestures.”

As we have already shown by implication (though we have not thematized it as such), Derrida’s approach to the text presupposes a certain duplicity of layers or levels within that same text. One level is the “given,” and the second we might call its “conditions of possibility.” The first three borrowed metaphysical structures analyzed here all lead to this level and open out onto its possibility or presupposition as such. Rather than analyze precisely what these conditions of possibility are (indeed this will be shown to be différance for Derrida, later in this project), we shall here attempt to expose the gesture of distinction introduced in Derrida’s analyses which sets up or reveals a relation of dependence between the given (presented) level and the non-given (non-presented) but nonetheless essential second level.

In the deconstruction of Husserl, we find this gesture in search of the conditions of the possibility at work in the following ways. Derrida asks:

Not only is the given textual structure considered a sign here, for Derrida, it is considered within a teleological system. The reasons for, as telos and origin, the way Husserl does what he does are clearly the concern of deconstruction in this instance. These reasons and this metaphysical organization of what might be termed the entelechy of the text under analysis are nothing less or other than its conditions of possibility.

Another indicative gesture in the search for “underlying conditions” is the establishment of a relation of dependence. For example, Derrida insists that the juridical value of the essential distinction in Husserl’s phenomenology of ‘le fait’ and ‘le droit’ “depends entirely on language and within this, on the validity of the radical distinction between index and expression.”²⁵ As we know, this “radical distinction” cannot be sustained, according to Derrida, and therefore since this distinction is the condition of the possibility of yet another distinction this latter can no longer be rigorously sustained either. Such is the apparent conclusion in this drama. It hinges upon the invocation of a hierarchical system of dependence, indeed of genealogy, one might call it, which once shown to be in a certain sense illegitimate can no longer serve to legitimate other terms or functions which necessarily depend on the same. Two movements of dependence are thus invoked at the same instant in this gesture. On the one hand, the necessity of the bond is invoked with “dépend tout entière” but, on the other hand, another distinction is therein eroded away. Thus it is clear that by invoking the structural necessity of “conditions of possibility” the deconstructive gesture inverts this same structure to illustrate precisely the “conditions of impossibility.” The hinge for this demonstration, of course, is the issue of legitimacy or validity, as Derrida calls it. The presupposed metaphysical determination of “validity” clearly invoked here is not placed in question by Derrida except insofar as he is concerned with its “conditions of possibility” as well. This, as we shall see, is a much larger issue and indeed orients the entire movement of deconstruction itself. Yet another example of the invocation of the conditions of possibility in the deconstruction of Husserl reveals another “form” of positioning this question. As is well known, Husserl considers the possibility of the “absence of intuition” in the usage of discourse as not destructive or harmful to the meaning of that same discourse. In short, he invokes this possibility as a possibility and as a certain allowable situation. For Derrida, however, this opening is not simply one possibility among others but instead a sign of the conditions of the possibility of signification in general. Not only is the absence of the intuition of the object “spoken about” or referred to a structural condition for meaningful discourse, but also the absence of the subject—indeed “my death,” as he says—is structurally required. In the shift from one characteristic among others to the level of essential preconditions, the deconstructive gesture is as follows:

We should recall that Husserl “never asks the question” or even considers the possibility of the notion of “signification in general.” Indeed Derrida points this out as revealing a certain absence of the questioning of Husserl’s presuppositions which are thereby metaphysical ones. In this second gesture, built on the first, Derrida invokes metaphysics—signification in general—in order to show that Husserl does not extend or realize a certain shift in levels from message to code when he speaks of this absence. In addition, Derrida will continue to extend this issue, or circle back, to find absence at the heart of presence. We must not however follow that procedure at this juncture. Suffice it to say that in the end Derrida concludes: “This alterity itself is the condition of presence....”²⁷

With respect to Saussure we find the same Kantian structure at work in the deconstructive effort to separate, in a hierarchical fashion, elements which only apparently seem to be on the same level or logical type. For instance:

The overlapping concern for absence in the heart of presence or full speech shall not be our primary focus here in relating this gesture to those in the deconstruction of Husserl. However, it is worthy of notice. As we have shown, Derrida is concerned with the “ethnocentric” gesture of including speech within the interiority of the Logos and Reason and indeed science and evidence, and simultaneously the exclusion of writing from the same. This gesture, in Saussure, of exclusion/inclusion has “conditions of possibility” Derrida insists, and once again these conditions of possibility reveal precisely the inverse of their apparently stabilizing claim—the conditions of the impossibility of that same distinction. Within this gesture, of course, we shall find a certain essence/appearance distinction being invoked, but we shall return to that shortly. For now, we wish to suggest the paradox within the deconstructive search for the conditions of possibility. The inverse of this form (once it is invoked) is no accident, as we shall see.

A final example of this structure will perhaps help to clarify this essentiality. Derrida, with reference to Saussure’s fears concerning the threats and dangers of writing has claimed earlier that this possibility is no accident but rather the very fact of its possibility indicates something more. Once again possibility is changed or revealed to be essentiality and necessity.

Further:

Thus the deconstructive gesture in this situation transforms what Saussure declares or states into a result or a product of something that he “does not question” and yet does indeed thereby describe. This duplicity will also provide us with evidence at a later stage concerning the role of contradiction and the laws of non-contradiction for textuality, for deconstruction. Suffice it to say that the invocation of conditions of possibility invokes thereby a certain necessity to the possibility and thus an essentiality to the conditions. Indeed how this “trap” is possible shall increasingly be the subject of our concern here.

(v) The Syllogism

The syllogism, in the tradition of Western thought, operates within a twofold possibility. One results in the deductive argument and the other in the inductive. Regardless of whether one proceeds from the general law to the particular example of it (deductively) or the reverse (inductively), one is locked, in this system, into a logic of premise and conclusion; a logic of necessity and ultimately of evidence and truth. Deconstruction is, of course, concerned to deconstruct this same tradition and to place in question the legitimacy or validity of this structure of argumentation. Not a vicious circle, to be sure, but a difficult one to trace. Our concern here, however, is to trace the appearance of this formulation within deconstruction itself. It will be shown indeed to be borrowed, as Derrida says, and yet once again to promote paradoxical conclusions with respect—predictably—to the legitimacy and validity (or truth) or deconstruction’s results as such.

In a certain sense the style of deconstruction is consistently within this syllogistic structure as outlined above. It rarely deviates from this style of “argumentation” characteristic of metaphysics, and this in turn allows for a certain legitimacy of deconstruction in general within the tradition. However, this is not our concern here. Instead we propose to examine where deconstruction exposes the need for certain conclusions or consequences, according to the premises as given, but where such conclusions are not drawn. This absence is seen to be a certain resistance (by Husserl, for instance) and in turn a response to a certain desire, which once again is not by chance and therefore not reducible to the particularity of Husserl’s desire. Specifically, Derrida suggests:

If this can be shown to be the case, that is, if Husserl’s premises should lead us to another conclusion logically, then according to the principles and conditions of legitimacy, Husserl’s argument must be revealed as “illegitimate.” If it responds instead to a desire rather than to Reason, can we accept (in truth as truth) his conclusions? Yet, if these are to be our conclusions here, in accordance with Derrida, we find yet another paradox. All Reason is governed by Desire, for Derrida, and thus the illegitimacy, as the non-essential, non-necessity of Husserl’s position is revealed as its inverse—essential and necessary but only, strictly that is, in accordance with the tenets of Reason. Derrida asks again,

And he answers:

Therefore Derrida will argue that the metaphysical demands are therein found to be not only operative but controlling Husserl’s argumentation. Paradoxically, once again, we find that rather than thereby constituting a certain consistency (i.e., in accordance with the metaphysical demands of the syllogistic form of argumentation itself) this metaphysical governing (from within, as it were) is precisely that which sets Husserl off the track of metaphysics itself. The total control by metaphysics is never total, it would seem.

The deconstructive gestures of concern with the structure of argumentation appear perhaps more clearly with respect to the analysis of Saussure. We should recall that the process of using an example from which one generates a more general, indeed perhaps universal law or rule is known in traditional metaphysics as induction. In Derrida’s choice of Saussure as a “telling example,” therefore, he is forced to expose the reliance of deconstruction on this same structure.

And he continues to demarcate the reasons and range of deconstruction in general. The important point here is that the structure of “exemplarity” is invoked by deconstruction itself in order to show something within Saussure which extends beyond Saussure and indeed is indicative of “a general treatment of writing.” Yet within Saussure’s argument, deconstruction is concerned with the limitations of exemplarity itself as it necessarily moves from the specific particular case to the general, even universal law governing or ordering that same particular. With respect to Saussure’s claims to found a general science of linguistics, therefore, deconstruction takes issue with the basis of this same generality. Phonetic writing is the particular case for Saussure, which is in turn, via the structure of exemplarity, transformed into the model for writing in general. It is no accident that this type of writing—phonetic—is the dominant mode in the western world, however. That this particular type of writing is used as the basis for a “general science of linguistics” in its concern with the relations of speech to writing in general is indicative for deconstruction that an illegitimate, dogmatic prejudice is at work. Thus, on the one hand, Derrida says,

But, on the other, he is concerned to show that this “dogmatism” (non-metaphysics) is not peculiar to Saussure. It is instead exemplary:

Thus the paradox of this deconstructive gesture is revealed. Derrida is concerned to show: (a) that the general science of linguistics is based on an example or model which is in no sense general; yet (b) that this situation itself—or using an illegitimate example as not in fact general but Western—is in fact general. It constitutes that which we call generality itself. The military form here is not by chance either. Thus the syllogism is used by deconstruction, it would seem, to show the illegitimacy of its own claims. This pattern will recur again shortly as we shall see.

(vi) The Criteria

Along with the deconstructive use of metaphysical forms of argumentation, the placing in question of exemplarity itself and the transformation of “chance” into necessity, deconstruction seems to invoke metaphysical criteria; that is, necessity as criteria as one of its tools. More specific than simply “conditions of possibility,” the injunction of criteria seems to be a search for particular rules in operation within the text that allow for its development or functioning as such. We should recall that it is metaphysics that demands criteria for a system of argumentation and especially for conclusions drawn therefrom. Thus deconstruction’s focus on this level seems to be the search for criteria which does not have the criteria of being legitimate or valid criteria, by definition. The criteria for deconstruction’s usage here is of course, as stated initially, in a certain sense illegitimate (since it is a borrowed tool), yet in another sense the most rigorous and legitimate possible—indeed almost indistinguishable from metaphysics itself at this juncture.

Derrida not only uses the metaphysical notion of criteria, he is also in search of the same in his analyses of Husserl and Saussure. The criteria, or that which necessitates the “logic” of their argumentation will be shown to be, on the one hand, metaphysics itself, yet also, paradoxically, non-metaphysics as well. We might recall that one of the guiding threads or intentions of deconstruction itself is to “reveal the law of the relation between metaphysics and non-metaphysics.” It is thus at this point in our analysis that this duplicity itself will begin to take on the form of a law, or at least it should if Derrida’s “practice” here remains within the scope of his principles as outlined above.

In his analysis of Husserl we find certain indicative gestures which at the same time demand criteria that apparently are not legitimately (according to metaphysics) present and yet also rely on those same criteria to make the demands. For example, once Derrida has invoked the concept of the “sign in general” as lurking behind Husserl’s distinction of “two types of signs” (indication and expression), he insists that the following conclusion must be drawn:

Yet

We should notice several metaphysical features of Derrida’s line of argument here: First, the “if/then” structure as relying on ‘premise/conclusion’ or indeed a certain syllogistic formulation; second, the concept of the sign in general, as already mentioned; third, the usage of “originairement” is, it would seem, a euphemism in this context for the metaphysical term essence or even ontology; and fourth, the telos and origin of the argument itself entail a metaphysical or epistemological necessity; that is, the question of the certainty of criteria. Further, without such grounds or foundation Derrida insists: “In declaring the illegitimacy of this distinction one therein prescribes a chain of serious consequences for phenomenology.”³⁶ The reliance on metaphysics at this point should also be transparent. The issue of criteria or necessity as necessarily linked with a certain legitimacy, indeed a proper relation, certainly seems paradoxical in the hands of Derrida. Finally, the (necessary) chain of consequences that would follow for phenomenology is certainly only in accordance with metaphysical claims of necessary logical structures. Yet all of this is precisely the consistent gesture of deconstruction itself, as we shall see shortly. The usage of metaphysics against itself, in this case Husserl against himself, will increasingly become our main concern. This structure, too, tends to repeat from one deconstruction to another.

Returning to Husserl for the moment, we find deconstruction again drawing the conclusions of a certain illegitimacy, indeed insecurity, in the heart of the foundations of phenomenology once another underlying metaphysical concept has been realized. In this case, it is the concept of ‘life’ which, as we have shown earlier, underlies the distinction of ‘empirical life’ and ‘transcendental life’, and which it seems to Derrida that Husserl overlooked. The consequences of this omission are threatening to the “rigor” and indeed very possibility of phenomenology, Derrida insists.

Thus the issue of criteria becomes the issue of foundations in the deconstructive gesture here and in turn threatens the criteria for the same. If the ground of the ground can no longer be established as certain, rigorous, and within the bounds of metaphysics, on the one hand, yet these grounds are precisely within metaphysics, and it is this that menaces the Husserlian project, then, paradoxically, Derrida claims, the basis of the system must be realized as necessarily illegitimate according to its own principle and a fortiori according to the principles of metaphysical grounds and criteria in general. The meeting and the non-meeting of these criteria take place, however, on different levels as we shall see presently.

The question of “rights,” as determined by metaphysics, also enters into the deconstructive gesture at this stage. Using metaphysics again Derrida insists that there is a “common root” (indeed a common origin or concept) which “retention” and “representation” share in Husserl’s analysis, but it is one that the latter fails to expose or thematize as such. The lack of this exposure and yet the dependence thereon is of course significant for Derrida. Absence is always a sign for him, as we have shown. But in this particular case he continues further to draw what seem to be necessary conclusions according to a certain invocation of rights. The rights or criteria here are once again none other than those of metaphysics; in particular its determination of the structure of argumentation. The following statement reveals the open usage not only of this structure by Derrida but also of the terminology by which he formulates his chain of argument here:

The “introduction” of différance at this moment shall occupy us shortly. At this point we wish only to show that the criteria for this deconstructive gesture here are; (i) metaphysical yet (ii) lead to the realm where these criteria not only no longer apply but which Derrida claims is their locus of origin or condition of possibility itself. One might consider the criteria of criteria here as the condition of the possibility and impossibility of criteria in general, therefore. One might also consider the conditions of the possibility of deconstruction here to be a certain overdetermination of the structure of metaphysics itself such that, when its own rules or principles are applied to its practice, the inconsistency between the two levels is therein revealed. And this inconsistency is not a simple contradiction (although it will appear initially as such) but rather an economy; a law-bound formulation or movement which, Derrida will claim, is the “becoming-form of form” or in Saussure’s terms, the “becoming-sign of the symbol.” The process of detachment, separation, exclusion, which (as will become increasingly evident) is never completely possible but necessarily (metaphysically, that is) presupposed. Let us return to Saussure for the moment and trace the path of these “criteria” for criteria which are essentially not criteria at all yet the only criteria possible, as this pattern parallels the same in Husserl.

The illegitimacy in Saussure’s argumentation revolves around the “factor of phonetic writing,” as announced earlier. For Derrida, this “does not correspond to any necessity of an absolute and universal essence.”³⁹ Yet Saussure founds his general science of linguistics by using phonetic writing as his model for all writing in general. The usage, by Saussure in this case of the metaphysical structure of induction based upon an inadequate example is considered to be unfounded, illegitimate, and essentially non-essential but masquerading as essential, by Derrida. However, rather than objecting to the masquerade as such Derrida suggests that

It is right, he says. Right according to what? According necessarily to the criterion of judgment of metaphysics. Right in the sense of necessity. Derrida continues to show that the homology of phonetic writing and the scientific reliance on the phonè in relation to evidence is no accident, but rather responds to something essential within the determination of “scientificity” itself. But this essentiality is only essential within certain limits and boundaries. The infinity of the structure of essentiality is thereby placed in question here in the very recognition of the essential and necessary character of something that is neither essential nor necessary essentially and necessarily. As Derrida says,

The value judgment invoked by the “scandal” in this gesture will be left in the margins for the moment but must be nonetheless noted as such. It does indeed lead to the non-metaphysical and perhaps non-borrowed grounds of deconstruction itself—its origin/telos/conditions of possibility (and impossibility, of course, at the same instant); in short, its illegitimacy according to the criteria set out by metaphysics of legitimacy. The “scandal of usurpation” will thus lead us to the conditions of the possibility of deconstruction itself, but we must remain with Saussure and his criteria for the moment here.

As with his analysis of Husserl, Derrida finds in Saussure the means of “opposing Saussure to himself” via the revealing of a hidden “common root” as the unacknowledged basis for a crucial distinction. Based on this “revelation,” Derrida goes on to argue that a certain necessary consequence is therein realized:

The need invoked here is clearly a result not only of the “recognition” Derrida points out, but also of certain metaphysical criteria invoked at once as the basis of Derrida’s judgment here, and yet also, on another level, as the scandalizing force that is the cause of the illegitimacy of foundations herein revealed. Another paradoxical formulation and another paradoxical conclusion. The need here is double and divided, indeed perhaps even contradictory in its essence, as we shall see shortly. In fact if this is a need based on the criteria of necessity as determined by metaphysics, then a certain curious relation of need to logic seems to emerge here. The need for logic is perhaps the logic of need, just as Derrida will later claim the Desire in Reason is the Reason of Desire, and the hinge between superstition and science is what he calls the “hermeneutic compulsion.”⁴³

A final example of the illegitimate criteria of criteria in Saussure for the deconstructive desire involves the significance of the tone of argumentation, for Derrida. It is, at one point not so much what is being said as the way it is being said which is crucial for him. The tone of Saussure’s “vehement argumentation” thus represents for Derrida a certain adherence to a traditional fear, a traditional tone, and indeed a metaphysically informed and organized tonality as such. Derrida begins:

The indication provided by Saussure’s tone here is none other than the metaphysical denunciation of the body and a heightened concern with the purity of the mind and the sphere of the spiritual. Analogous to this, Derrida claims, is the determination of the speech/writing relation such that speech is allotted a privileged, prior, interior position, yet is thereby threatened with contamination from the body proper of writing and the sign as such. The tone counts, therefore, for the deconstructive gesture here of unravelling, by analogy, the hidden criteria, which are essentially, Derrida will show, not criteria at all (in the logical sense) but responses to desires, fear, etc. As he says:

We find the same tone concerning the “threat of writing” to “pure speech” as far back as Plato’s Phaedrus, Derrida insists, and it is thus this same tradition that Saussure is bound to here and in fact is representing by the tone of his “vehement argumentation.” We shall not pursue the tone of the deconstructive gesture here but suggest that this too is not irrelevant or insignificant in this context. That line of argument would lead us to a deconstruction of deconstruction—borrowing its tools which, as we are trying to show here, are already borrowed from metaphysics itself—and this is not our present concern.

It is clear at this point that the criteria of necessity, in accordance with metaphysics, are at once invoked by deconstruction with respect to Saussure and Husserl and used to reveal that it is precisely these criteria as the foundation for argumentation which neither Saussure nor Husserl fully adhere to. Their projects instead seem to rely on other, unacknowledged metaphysical foundations which, due to this hidden side, therein become illegitimate and undermine the logicity of the arguments as presented. This twofold layering of the textual contradiction, which seems to be the focus or center for deconstructive gestures in general, will now be our focus of concern here. Once again we should recall the principle of deconstruction which aims to reveal “that which a writer controls and that which he or she does not control of the patterns of language that he or she uses” and to show that this relation is not accidental, capricious, or random. Instead it will be precisely the “economy of différance” itself, as we shall attempt to prove as we follow the track of deconstruction itself.

(vii) Principles of Non-contradiction

Despite appearances, perhaps, the gestures of deconstruction concerning the approach to contradiction remain strictly within and true to this initial proclamation of the “principle of non-contradiction” by Aristotle. As we shall see, Derrida uses this principle in order to reveal: (i) a certain necessity of contradiction within textuality; (ii) a certain hierarchy in the relation of the two opponents; and (iii) the basis for the deconstructive gesture of aiming to “oppose the author to himself.” The premise for this gesture might be considered the following claim made by Derrida himself: “No practice is ever totally faithful to its principle.”⁴⁷ As we already know, it is the relation of fidelity to infidelity that concerns Derrida with respect to the tradition of metaphysics itself. With this in mind, his approach to both Husserl and Saussure invokes the principle of non-contradiction in order to legitimate or validate one of the contraries and in turn to invalidate or overturn the legitimacy of the other. Nevertheless, deconstruction intends, as we shall demonstrate, to sustain both aspects, both the legitimate and illegitimate claims made “by the text” in order to provoke the appearance of the tension that is the “play of différance” itself. This tension is increased in the deconstructive gesture at this point so as to draw “inverse” conclusions from the same given premises in each text, respectively. The inversion will in turn be shown to be a sign for something else which in itself is not contradictory and which in fact reveals the truth of the “only apparent” (in some ways) contradiction initially revealed. We shall attempt to follow this twofold process specifically in our two deconstructive examples and shall therein expose the logic of the logic of non-contradiction, at least according to Derrida. A final note of caution seems warranted here, however. To show the reliance of deconstruction on the principle of non-contradiction reveals its adherence, indeed its membership, within the tradition of metaphysics, properly speaking. But once again this is to be considered a means to an end, for Derrida, and not an end in itself, as we shall attempt to demonstrate in the following.

In the treatment of Saussure deconstruction claims to expose the following contradiction and its necessity:

In effect, therefore, deconstruction here is aiming towards that which Saussure “described and effaced at the same instant.” That which he “sees without seeing” is that which his discourse writes, or is “written in the text,” but which contradicts and indeed thereby undercuts his explicit, declared intentions. In short, the limits are beginning to show here for deconstruction. What this means is that two levels of textuality are beginning to appear and that these levels are in opposition to each other in more than one respect, such as: (a) conscious/unconscious and (b) the level of theoretical claims as such and their manner of appearance or, if one prefers, a form/content distinction. The initial concern of deconstruction was the “stated intentions” of Saussure, we should recall, and what these intentions or statements of purpose and hence limits of the project indicated, presupposed, or necessitated. Now we have an apparent inversion within the text itself (“there is nothing outside of the text”) of this intention which leads deconstruction towards the “contradiction.” As Derrida says,

Thus it is what happens “behind the back” of the author here that seems to be of great importance for deconstruction. Indeed Saussure is credited with having “opened the field of a general grammatology,” albeit without having “known what he was doing” and indeed having intended precisely the reverse, (at least according to reversed premises with respect to the priority of speech over writing, etc.). As we know it is the closing that opens which is always significant for deconstruction. The gesture here which seems contradictory is thus embraced, on the one hand, yet overcome, on the other, since evidently a “general science of linguistics,” as explicated and intended by Saussure, cannot be simultaneously sustained with a general grammatology. Or at least not on the face of things. We shall see in the next section precisely how deconstruction does indeed intend to do this by a very specific act of “usurpation.” But for the present, we must remark upon the double usage or use and abuse apparently of the “principle of non-contradiction.” It seems to be abused (closing = opening) in the service of its ultimate sustenance, as we shall see again and again in this demonstration. For instance, concerning Saussure’s problematic exclusions of the usurpation of speech by writing, Derrida says,

Thus Saussure is seen here to violate his own exclusion and to violate the principal characteristic of metaphysics, which necessitates a certain distinction between nature and culture (or institution) which Saussure nevertheless depends upon. This “confusion,” deconstruction will claim, is not without Reason or law. The coincidence of affirming and denying or including and excluding is the link to the principle of non-contradiction upon which deconstruction is based at this point. The raising of this issue as a contradiction thus becomes an objection at the same instant, according to the tradition of metaphysics or of legitimate argumentation, in particular with respect to the founding of a “new science.” Thus Saussure seems to violate the conditions of the possibility of scientificity of his project itself. This violation is the strength of his text, for deconstruction, and not the reverse as we shall see.

The key principle or premise which allows deconstruction to show the “inverse” conclusions necessarily in Saussure is the notion of the “arbitrariness of the sign.” If there is no natural bond between the sign and the thing signified, then the former cannot be considered an “image” or re-presentation of the latter. However Saussure seems to want to have it both ways in the following sense: He argues for the distance or arbitrary relation of the sign to that which it signifies, on the one hand, yet insists: (i) that writing remains a constant threat to speech; (ii) that writing is a sign for speech (consistant with the tradition of metaphysics); and (iii) that the threat posed by writing is necessarily accidental, since the two systems are not tied by any natural, that is necessary, bond. To be sure this might remind us of the “logic of the dream,” as Freud has illustrated, in the sense of its apparent double-binds concerning the necessary and arbitrary characteristics of the sign and in particular the relation of speech to writing. In response to this “contradiction,” Derrida says:

In addition, for Derrida, we never have neither a pure sign nor a pure symbol, but a continual process of the “becoming-sign of the symbol.” This, as we shall see, is the paradoxical work of différance. At this point, however, the deconstructive gesture consists of recording the double invocation of nature or necessity and “the arbitrary” or accidental concerning the same relation at the same instant. Quite simply, this situation is a contradiction in terms. But what it means, for deconstruction, is that “what Saussure saw without seeing” was a certain necessary attachment (neither natural nor arbitrary) of the sign to the symbol, of writing to speech, and of presentation to representation. This conclusion unites the apparent contraries in a broader, wider context or field which, as we shall see shortly, “opens the field of grammatology.” It is no accident that Derrida, with respect to this context in particular, argues for the necessity of usurpation once it has been shown to be a priori possible. The transformation of possibility into necessity will be gradually revealed as the inner coherence and consistency of an apparent initial contradiction. Nonetheless, it is clear that the logic of non-contradiction is here used to show a certain illegitimacy, according to metaphysics, in Saussure’s argumentation.

Returning to the deconstruction of Husserl, we find the “same” process of the double usage of the principle of noncontradiction within Husserl’s text and in the deconstructive gesture applied to it. Once again we initially find a discrepancy between Husserl’s explicitly stated intentions and the conclusions one could necessarily draw from his own premises. More specifically, concerning the issue of the “absence of intuitions” and the meaingfulness of the sign, Husserl allows for the former within the realm of the latter. Yet this seems to be in contradiction with his own premises concerning the nature of the sign and its relation to ideality. The issue for Derrida here is precisely the conditions of the possibility of repeatability, and it is this that Husserl at once provides us with and yet later seems to violate. For instance:

Further:

And finally:

And exactly the opposite here (which would be legitimate) would be to recognize that the very possibility of non-intuition is the condition of the possibility of Bedeutung and not its abnormal, unusual, barely acceptable accidental situation. The very fact that we do understand the word “I” in the situation of the person’s absence, fictionality, or death is testament to the fact, Derrida insists. Indeed that death characterizes the condition of the possibility of the sign is more precisely the absence that Husserl leads us toward yet which he then covers up again by drawing illegitimate, non-logical conclusions. The deconstructive gesture here is revealed once again in its use of the principle of non-contradiction against Husserl initially, but then to reveal a deeper, more profound consistency. The contradiction in the deconstructive gesture here, however, seems to be the following: (i) it condemns Husserl for not being faithful to his premises, that is, for violating the tenets of metaphysics; yet (ii) it condemns Husserl for being all too true to the presuppositions and preconditions of metaphysics itself. Indeed it finds metaphysics and non-metaphysics at the heart of Husserl’s attempt to avoid the same and to establish a phenomenology prior to those same principles. Deconstruction here seems to be caught in a double-bind, until one realizes or recalls that it aims to reveal precisely this relation between “metaphysics and non-metaphysics” which is at one level a contradiction and yet at another not a contradiction at all. The relation of these levels is one of “mutual exclusion” within metaphysics and of mutual inclusion “beyond metaphysics.” This too might be considered a contradiction, except that we shall see it more precisely described as an economy—as a play of presence and absence that, paradoxically to be sure, takes on a very definite, unified, consistent, and indeed repeating and repeatable form. This parallel to the structure of metaphysics itself is no accident.

The overturning of the intentions of the author in this context is not a simple rejection however, and this will be shown more explicitly in the next section. At the moment we should consider the image of inversion in the constitution of the contradiction that deconstruction seems to reveal at this juncture. Derrida’s claims to draw inverse conclusions from the same premises stated by Husserl must be examined more closely. He says the following:

Paradoxically by claiming “and not the inverse,” the deconstructive gesture here is precisely to do what it seems to claim not to do—to invert. The style is significant here, since what appears as an explicit negation is in fact an affirmation. Granted the one side of the coin is attributed to Husserl and the other to deconstruction, but this process itself seems to link deconstruction to Husserl in a profound and perhaps unacknowledged respect. We might well ask: How is this inversion possible? On what grounds can deconstruction claim to invert a condition of dependence, indeed a hierarchical relation, so that the necessary conclusions to be drawn from Husserl’s premises are the inverse of the latter’s conclusions? On what grounds or by what criteria, therefore, can deconstruction operate in such a manner on the text of its choice? The paradoxical answer is certainly in accordance with the tenets of metaphysics, as we maintained from the outset. Deconstruction does not claim to violate metaphysics from without but to “faithfully repeat it in its totality” and to “make it insecure in its most secured self-evidences.” Thus in applying the principle of non-contradiction to an apparent contradiction, two levels of legitimacy seem to be placed in question which include: (i) the legitimacy of explicit conclusions as drawn by the author; and (ii) the legitimacy of the principle of non-contradiction itself, as a principle, since it seems to be revealed as self-contradictory at this point. The inner contradiction of “non-contradiction” is that the shift to a vision of levels or logical types breaks the double bind and only apparently opposing forces. The “other” discreetly shifts to the background as the “same” moves into the field of vision. This play of contradiction and inversion will be shown itself to be irreducible for Derrida, différance and a fortiori deconstruction. Thus in turn and all the more paradoxically, it seems that the principle of non-contradiction, despite or perhaps because of its contradictory nature (as characteristic), is vindicated as essential after all. This contradiction may be the principal hinge which allows for or is the condition of the possibility and hence impossibility of deconstruction itself. It is still, however, too early to tell.

(VIII) Essence and Appearance

The founding opposition of the tradition of metaphysics, for Derrida, is that of form and content or form and matter, an opposition which is henceforth transformed into mind/body, presentation/representation, and ultimately essence and appearance. We should not necessarily, therefore, find it ironic that this opposition, too, shall be borrowed within the work of deconstruction itself. It could only be consistent to find this pattern as one of the animating structures of the very project which aims to undo this same structure by its very usage and “exhaustion.” The deconstructive usage is however distinguishable, on the one hand, from the metaphysical usage in that, as one might expect, the priority of form is reversed or inverted in favor of that which appears at least to be a certain priority of content, or a priority of appearance over that of essence. We shall see that this is not in fact the case, but that this is necessarily the initial appearance of any attempt to overcome that same opposition. The appearance of reversal is, in addition, as we shall attempt to explain more fully later, the unavoidable legacy of the metaphysical predetermination and predestination of our mode of understanding and usage of discourse in the Western world.

In order to reveal this pre-established system of presuppositions as (i) one system among others, and hence (ii) not the only possible or essential mode of understanding or analysis, deconstruction in this context proposes another twofold process. Initially, that which will appear as the essence of the given text or its underlying law or necessity, its system of presuppositions as metaphysically determined, will be made apparent. Secondly the conditions of these conditions or “essence” of this essence will then be addressed, and, in so doing, the deconstructive gesture exposes the limits of the metaphysical system itself as it begins to contradict its own premises and its own laws of functioning. The Hegelian claim that “the essence of essence is appearance and thus the appearance of essence is essence” will not be the principle behind this deconstructive gesture, however, despite appearances. Instead, the very economy of essence/appearance will itself be placed in question or suspended in the same moment that deconstruction itself depends entirely on that system or economy. This duplicity should come as no surprise at this juncture.

In order to reveal this deconstructive gesture as such, we propose to examine: (i) the instances of its explicit occurrence in the analyses of Husserl and Saussure, and (ii) the instances of its necessary presupposition in the deconstructive gestures analyzed above. It is, in fact, a rare occurrence when Derrida explicitly uses the terminology of “essence” and “appearance” or “form” and “content” in his analyses, but this, of course, makes his reliance on this structure nonetheless pertinent and perhaps even more so.

In the deconstruction of Husserl, Derrida draws the following conclusion:

Thus we have the paradox revealed in Husserl’s phenomenology that, despite his attempt to “bracket out” or reduce all metaphysical presuppositions in order to reach unmediated knowledge, Husserl’s project and its presuppositions, in fact, confirm and assure the tradition of metaphysics itself. We should recall that Derrida makes no such claim of exclusion or purity for deconstruction but, in fact, proclaims precisely the reverse, although with an eye to the movement toward a “detachment” from the metaphysical concepts on which it depends. Therefore, the following usage of the form/content system of analysis against Husserl should come to us as no surprise:

Within this deconstructive gesture we find not only the form/content (in the name of “motif/contenu”) distinction applied, but also a certain valorization of the latter as against the former. The contents seem to overturn the form in this instance, since they prohibit or in fact delegitimize a formulation that Husserl professed earlier in his work concerning the presence of consciousness to itself in the instant of absolute evidence or truth. The “legitimacy” or the conditions for this valorization, or, in fact, inversion of a given valorization by Husserl, are not however addressed by Derrida here. This issue will surface again in the context of his presuppositions which ground the former seven deconstructive gestures.

In the analysis of Saussure we find the phrase “reason of essence” invoked as a ground for the findings of deconstruction. As we have shown, Derrida is concerned here with the limits of the model and the presuppositions therein of phonetic writing for the “general science of linguistics” that Saussure proposes. As we have also shown, Derrida explains that this model does not respond to any necessity and by implication carries with it a certain dogmatism and indeed essentially a certain ethnocentrism. In addition, deconstruction claims: “that this model is an ideal explicitly directing a functioning which in fact is never completely phonetic. In fact, but also for reasons of essence to which I shall frequently return.”⁵⁶ Indeed. The deconstructive gesture here seems to equate “fact” or appearance and “essence,” or at least to find them coincident. The paradox of this equation or apparent leveling of what is (by metaphysics’ definition) a hierarchical formulation is that Derrida will insist that the essentiality in Saussure’s project is one of historically situated contiguity, in fact, and that this has been defined as essentiality itself. Hence the neutrality or the universality of “essentiality” is itself placed in question, since it can no longer be used, according to Derrida, as an unlimited, indeed universal, atemporal, aspatial, radically decontextualized, or decontextualizing notion. In fact it is precisely the reverse, as we have shown.

The deconstructive gestures above, although not explicitly invoking the terminology of essence and appearance do, in fact, necessarily rely on this framework for the following reasons: the above gestures are all structures borrowed from metaphysics and since the form/content opposition is (according to Derrida) the founding one of that same structure, then by definition this particular opposition forms the ground, conditions of possibility, necessity, law, criteria, form of the form of the questions, the basis of the syllogism and certainly that of the “concept in general.” Indeed the metaphysics of metaphysics might most appropriately name the conditions of the possibility or “essence” of deconstructive gestures themselves. What concerns us here however is not simply the coherence of the system of metaphysics itself, as borrowed in toto by deconstruction, but rather how and why in effect this “borrowing” procedure inverts that same structure and hence promotes results which do indeed “deconstruct the tradition of metaphysics” yet remains true to its principles in the most faithful, repetitive manner.

The gestures of the constitution of a “concept in general,” the movement from “chance” to “necessity,” the search for the “conditions of possibility” and for “criteria” all invoke a necessary duplicity of the text under analysis such that one level is inconsistent with or differs from the other. In addition, one level is considered the appearance, for deconstruction, and the other, that which it finds hidden “within what is written,” is considered the essence, in a certain sense. This second level, the product or result of the work of deconstruction, is not an essence in the sense of being the law of the text, but rather is the condition of the possibility of revealing the “true” law of the text—the relation between the two levels or what we shall call the economy of différance.

Thus revealing the conditions of possibility or essence at one level or initially is only the first of a two-step process once again. In the second “step back” or questioning of the grounds therein revealed, the deconstructive gesture transforms the “revealed essence” into a “revealed but mere appearance” and turns instead towards yet another hidden level—the true essence. It seems evident therefore that in this process the following double relation of metaphysics to deconstruction can be revealed: (i) the repetition of the metaphysical gesture of the transformation of appearance into essence in fact seems to invert this same structure; yet (ii) the essence, to the second power, (as it were) can no longer be called an essence properly (that is metaphysically) speaking; hence (iii) the essence/appearance structure is vindicated with respect to the first “deconstructive” gesture here and, in turn, overcome with respect to its claims to universality as identical to essentiality. In short, the limits of that which is defined by metaphysics as limitless begin to appear in this process. Indeed deconstruction’s second step in this process takes us out, down or up to a realm which metaphysics does not and indeed cannot define. It is from this “realm,” which it is the telos of the work of deconstruction to reveal, that Derrida will insist requires not a “new set of concepts,” but a new way of using the old ones—a new posture, a new position which will no longer be simple, present, or originary, but which grounds all of these in their innermost possibilities. We shall return to this “usurpation” of metaphysics in the process of revealing its limits in our next section.

The usage of the essence/appearance distinction also appears with respect to the borrowing of the principle of non-contradiction and of the syllogism for perhaps the most obvious of reasons. The syllogism, as we have shown, depends upon, if not the concept as such, at least its possibility. Indeed it presupposes and constitutes the concept as such in its establishment of a necessary relation between the particular and the universal. In turn, therefore, the deconstructive gesture of using the syllogism and of analyzing, for instance, a “telling example” shows the limits of generalizability—or syllogisticity—in the very act of Derrida’s own generalization from that same example. This of course has already arisen in our analysis of Saussure.

The principle of non-contradition also relies on the essence/appearance distinction, not only to reveal the contradiction as such, but also to establish a resultant valorization of one “side” over the other—one is essential and the other mere appearance. But again this is only the first of a two-step process for deconstruction. The valorization of the “practice” as being “untrue” to its principles, or of the unwittingly described aspect of a text as contrary to its explicitly declared intentions leads not to the overcoming of the opposition or a simple Aufhebung or capture of one side by the other as the law of its possibility. Indeed this occurs, but in addition the “other side” is revealed as no less essential—indeed neither is the essence—but what is ultimately and necessarily revealed here will be shown to be the “origin” and “ground” of this duplicity itself. Predictably enough, this will be called différance. It is significant here, however, to realize that the double gesture of deconstruction is again realized. This is not only a repetition, therefore, of the “structure of metaphysics,” but a repetition of a repetition; and it is this second-order repetition that creates the inversion, we suggest. The criterion for repetition, however, as we know from Derrida and a fortiori from Husserl, is a certain ideality. The condition of the possibility of repeatability is thus a certain metaphysical structure. At this juncture one might wonder whether deconstruction’s “open admission” that it intends to ‘borrow the structures of metaphysics’ and to ‘repeat’ them ‘faithfully’ indeed takes this second order borrowing into account. If so, then what must be recognized a priori and from within is the very impossibility of the deconstructive project ever being realized as such. That is, the detachment from metaphysics is not only slow but is, in fact, an infinite task. It is an Idea in the Kantian sense, therefore, and indeed thereby, no more possible than impossible on the level of factuality or appearance and a fortiori on the level of essence or principles. With this second order attachment to metaphysics by deconstruction, we shall approach the final, for the moment, borrowed structure, which inhabits deconstruction as much as deconstruction inhabits it, we suggest. This structure is predictably the ultimate target for the deconstructive project itself—the metaphysical determination of the notion of the sign.

(ix) The Sign of Metaphysics

For Derrida, the idea of the sign, according to metaphysics, involves the following characterizations: (i) a certain derivativeness or secondariness; (ii) a lack or absence; (iii) a duplication of something else, but inadequately done; (iv) a representation of a more originary presentation; and hence, (v) a certain inessentiality in its relation to that which it “re-presents.” It is the sign, metaphysics insists, which is the origin of the contamination of purity—in all its forms—and especially with respect to that founding opposition we have just addressed, namely, form and content or essence and appearance. In turn the notion of writing, as a sign for full speech and that interiority wherein truth, evidence, and first principles are to be found and situated, has always been relegated to this secondary and inessential position. Thus Derrida insists that with the deconstruction of “writing,” as the sign for the sign par excellence, the restitution of the essential place of the sign (indeed paradoxically as essential and irreducible) will be possible. Of course this opposition too must be overcome for Derrida, but we should recall that the apparent reversal of the metaphysical hierarchy is always the first stage of the deconstructive process. What we aim to demonstrate here, however, includes the following: (i) that deconstruction itself “borrows” this same notion of the sign which it aims to deconstruct and considers inappropriate in its very appropriation by metaphysics; and (ii) that the deconstructed notion of the sign and a fortiori of writing does indeed entail a radical shift from this earlier metaphysical position. The results of the deconstructive practices here will thus be shown to undermine (in a certain sense) the apparent conditions of the possibility of deconstruction itself. It is perhaps not a process whose results allow for its own repetition; yet, as we have demonstrated, the deconstructive gestures, to this point at least, do indeed show signs of repetition and therefore repeatability and, in turn, necessarily of a certain (although perhaps limited) ideality. If indeed this ideality in the heart of deconstruction can be demonstrated, as we are here attempting, then a certain profound attachment to metaphysics itself will therein be revealed as unavoidable on the one hand and necessarily essential on the other: an essential contamination which would therein confirm the initial claims and principles stated by Derrida in the process of deconstruction itself.

That deconstruction “borrows” or uses the metaphysical notion of the sign should perhaps by now be rather obvious. Each of the above “metaphysical structures” analyzed as being relied upon by deconstructive gestures can be shown to depend on this same metaphysical idea of the sign. The basic structure of the sign is a twofold one that thereby entails a certain division which is of a hierarchical and temporal nature. The hierarchy involves a certain primordial character given to that “for which” the sign stands—its origin and telos. The temporality of this relation involves the temporal ordering of the hierarchy such that the non-sign is always and necessarily the origin, as if by genealogy or filiation, of the sign. In short, the non-sign is the father and the child of the sign. Explicitly (within metaphysics as such) we have only the recognition of paternity and dependence here, not the reversal or extension of the relation entailed by the recognition of the double nature of the sign. Thus the non-sign as child is left suspended or bracketed out at this juncture but will be revealed by the deconstruction of the same.

The sign, for metaphysics, is, however, not a passive or neutral entity despite (and indeed because of) its “dependence” and secondariness. The inadequacy that characterizes the “sign” inscribes a certain bastardization, a certain illegitimacy and thus perversion or distortion of that which it signifies or represents. Indeed, it is the paradoxical role of the copy that the sign is made to play here. As we know from Plato, the good copy is a bad copy and necessarily vice versa. Thus it would seem that a double bind of adequacy and inadequacy characterizes the sign as well. Its proper function is necessarily that of impropriety, since it is not and can never be its own origin. Derrida’s analysis of Reason for Hegel reveals the paradox of the “Logos believing itself to be its own father,”⁵⁸ but we must leave this issue aside for the moment. It will appear in greater detail within the realm of différance.

As we have shown, the sign for metaphysics is neither passive nor weak but rather provides a “supplement” to the origin which is, on the one hand, a positive addition complementing the former; but also and at the same time, Derrida will insist, its very supplementary function therein threatens that same origin it came along to assist. The representation can be and indeed is very often mistaken for the thing itself—in fact substitutes itself for it, represents it and thereby becomes “a force of its own.” Before turning to the “deconstructed notion of the sign,” which is already emerging here, we must consider the former deconstructive gestures in the light of this initial characterization of the sign.

Does Derrida not approach the text to be analyzed, its explicit intentions, its delimitation of its problematic, its asked and unasked questions as signs for something else which would be: (i) more originary; (ii) hidden yet signaled by the given; (iii) the origin and telos by way of presuppositions and assumptions of the given text; (iv) that which is threatened by that same system of signs as given which is known as the text? This latter characteristic shall be shown to invert the deconstructive claims, on the one hand, and also thereby to sustain and indeed legitimize them at the same time, as we shall proceed to explain.

It has already been shown that the deconstructive gestures above initiate a twofold process which is in search of a second but radically first level of the given text and that this radically first level is the prescription for the apparently first. It is, in short, the origin. If this were simply the case, however, we would find no difference between the deconstructive gestures and those of metaphysics, but in fact this is not the final word in our analysis. Instead, by the usage of this “sign” structure, deconstruction shows, contrary to metaphysics, that: (i) the sign is irreducible; (ii) there is a necessary relation between the “sign” and the “thing signified”; (iii) the thing signified is also a sign essentially and thus (iv) the relation between the representer and represented is not only one of sign to sign (the basis of meaning itself) but also forms an economy whose laws can be revealed and charted, indeed marked, by the work of deconstruction as such.

This deconstructed notion of the sign is thus not simply the return to an origin or to the thing-in-itself. Instead it reveals the constitution of the “origin plain and simple” as a result of the sign function, which in turn effaces that same signification infrastructure. Thus in appearance we have the thing-in-itself, for Derrida. But in appearance, to the second power, that is, on closer inspection or when we look again: “The thing in itself always escapes,” he insists.⁵⁹

In order to analyze more closely the results of these deconstructive gestures, we must consider the act of usurpation (another ultimately metaphysical gesture, we might add) as it relates to the revelation of différance at the heart of presence and a fortiori of différance itself as that which is necessarily “plus ‘originaire’ que l’originarité.”⁶⁰ This usurpation of metaphysics within the economy of différance will appear, at first glance, not unlike the Aufhebung in Hegel’s dialectical system. Indeed the usage by deconstruction of the “principle of non-contradiction” in its search for textual contradictions between “declarations” and “descriptions” will confirm such an analogy with Hegel. However, this interpretation of the economy herein realized should be suspended for the moment at least lest we “usurp” all too rapidly the différance aimed at by deconstruction within traditional metaphysics. We should recall that in the analysis of Saussure, Derrida insists that the usurpation (of speech by writing) that frightens the former should not be considered an “unhappy accident.” Instead its essentiality must be realized. Indeed, in this analysis of the deconstructive gestures as they necessarily relate and are hinged upon (for better or for worse) the structures of metaphysics, we are proposing the same thing in reverse: not that the usurpation of metaphysics by différance is necessary and unavoidable, but rather that the necessity of the attachment that allows for both metaphysics and différance must be realized. It is this attachment which we shall henceforth refer to as the economy of différance.

(d) Reaffirming the Deconstructed: Usurpation Revealed

The final gesture of deconstruction seems to return us to our point of departure, but at a different level or at a different vantage point. In the conclusions of his analyses of both Husserl and Saussure, Derrida insists on the value, truth, and significance of the same systems of thought he has just deconstructed. But the conditions of this seemingly paradoxical affirmation appear to invert such claims. These conditions involve: (i) the acceptance of the revealed contradictions between levels of explicit and implicit argumentation; (ii) the demarcation of the limits of applicability of the “acceptable” truth, evidence, or significance; and finally, therefore, (iii) the recognition of the necessity of a context, indeed a “vast field,” in which the given system of thought must be situated, therein establishing a more general, more universal “system,” a more originary origin which, as we know, will be the economy of différance. We shall here attempt to trace this threefold shift, which, as we have announced, initially appears remarkably similar, in structure at least, to Hegel’s notion of the Aufhebung. That which is overturned is ultimately sustained but nonetheless situated in a “wider,” more all-encompassing context wherein the limits of the former become explicit. The deconstructive gesture at this point, which completes his analyses, entails in addition, however, the outline of the relation or movement which nonetheless continues within this “more general economy” as it relates to and sustains “the restricted one.”⁶¹ The notion of différance is thus at the same instant the “third term” in this “system” and also the movement itself which establishes the conditions of the possibility of deconstruction and metaphysics at the same instant. We must not therefore confuse “usurpation” as per the Aufhebung and its violence with the “usurpation” by différance within, beyond, and prior to the establishment of the classical Western system of thought known as metaphysics. This shall become increasingly evident as we proceed, we hope.

(i) Accepting Contradictions

At the same instant that Derrida reveals the contradictions between the “declared and the described” aspects of both Husserl’s and Saussure’s projects respectively, he insists that these contradictions are irreducible and therefore a necessity. Indeed it is towards the conditions of this necessity that he turns with his deconstructive project.

With respect to his analysis of Husserl, Derrida addresses this duplicity initially with a reaffirmation of the intentional level of Husserl’s claims. For instance:

Further:

And finally:

With an eye to the necessity of Husserl’s system, according to his assumptions and presuppositions, deconstruction thus admits in addition its own necessary attachment to that same system. This attachment takes the form, as we have shown, of the borrowing of the structures of metaphysics in order to reveal the foundation of phenomenology as metaphysics itself. Nevertheless, Derrida insists that this process does not threaten Husserl’s system in the least. Yet, he also shows the reverse. The very fact that Husserl aims to exclude these metaphysical assumptions and presuppositions and in turn relies on them clandestinely, as it were, does indeed threaten a certain level of veracity of his conclusions. It is significant, therefore, to keep this notion of levels of the text and hence of discourse in mind with respect to the “revealed contradictions” which deconstruction aims to “legitimate.” The threat, therefore, posed by deconstruction is expressed by Derrida in the following manner:

We should remark here that what deconstruction claims to have found it situates within the text, indeed within the formulation of the problem by Husserl himself. It does not claim, therefore, to authorize or produce anything, but rather, it would seem, to reveal something already there. This will become increasingly significant as we approach this “motif profond.” But first we must address the threats posed by deconstruction, according to deconstruction, for phenomenology:

No greater threat could be suggested, and indeed, since deconstruction in fact does claim to show that which it treats as the premises of this threat, the conclusions seem obvious. Yet we should not be too quick to draw syllogistic conclusions at this point. A final example of the contradiction Derrida aims to reveal will demonstrate the limit of this threat for us. Derrida has just invoked the possibility of the presupposition of the general concept of sign as the ground for Husserl’s distinction between indication and expression, as we have analyzed earlier. His conclusions, in accordance with such findings, are thus:

Thus it is clear that deconstruction, at this point, seems to overturn, at a certain level, the intentions and indeed the phenomenology of Husserl. But Derrida has also shown that this same phenomenology and those same intentions are not simply reducible to a mistaken identity or to “false” premises or promises. Instead it seems that deconstruction itself sustains a double relation to this same phenomenology. On the one hand, it relies upon it necessarily; on the other, it undermines it—equally necessarily. With this contradiction in mind, we must consider the “contradiction” deconstruction claims to find in Husserl’s text itself. To clarify our issue here, let us return to the deconstructive treatment of Saussure as it applies to this double relation of deconstruction to phenomenology. The contradiction worthy of notice in Saussure’s argument concerns the role of writing as it relates to speech, and the metaphysical presuppositions therein invoked, as we have shown. The conclusions Derrida draws entail the following:

Further, we should recall, his initial recognition of the truth of “what Saussure says” on a certain level, at least: “I hope my intention is clear. I think that Saussure’s reasons are good. I do not question, on the level on which he says it, the truth of what Saussure says in such a tone.”⁶⁹ And finally, with respect to temporality as it is used by and uses Saussure, Derrida says: “What is in question is not Saussure’s affirmation of the temporal essence of discourse but the concept of time that guides this affirmation and analysis.”⁷⁰ We should thus recall that deconstruction’s initial gesture was concerned with the revelation of the limits in the form of inclusions, exclusions, unacknowledged assumptions, and presuppositions. In turn, therefore, its conclusions seem to be concerned with a certain stabilization of the only apparently threatened system under analysis. The search for the conditions of possibility of ‘X’ should not destroy ‘X’, Derrida seems to insist, but rather show how this became necessary. Such is the deconstructive allegiance to philosophy as such, we might add. Thus he safeguards that which he deconstructs, in a certain sense, but at the same time seems to threaten it by virtue of a certain circumscription of applicability, relevance, or significance proclaimed by that same system under analysis. This circumscription is announced in the form of an inner contradiction—within the text at hand—and, in addition, within deconstruction as such, at least in these two cases with which we are concerned at the moment. The double relation of acceptance and rejection of the deconstructed text will be shown to be precisely this movement towards the explicit demarcation of limits: its unacknowledged borders or frontiers, beyond which the system at hand cannot legitimately (according to its own and indeed deconstruction’s adherence to metaphysics itself) extend. In the process, of course, deconstruction itself does extend beyond such limits. But first the outline of the outline must be brought in here.

(ii) Outlining the Limits

We suggest a return to this initial intention of deconstruction in its analysis of Saussure, since at this point the second level of this claim should become “self-evident” or visible. The double structure of announcing the limits of legitimacy and illegitimacy should thus be transparent. The closure, on the one hand, is an opening on the other at the same time, yet also by virtue of temporality itself, as we shall see. It is in short, as Derrida says, what “Saussure saw without seeing, knew without being able to take into account ...” and it is this which will lead us to the conditions of the possibility and impossibility of grammatology, as we have already announced.

The revelation of the limits of Saussure’s claims are thus in turn, for us, the revelation of the limits of deconstruction and its “object,” différance itself. We suggested earlier that “Grammatology” might well be considered an Idea in the Kantian sense, according to Derrida’s own description, and it is this notion that we must now address in more detail. With respect to the closure or limits of Saussure’s linguistics, Derrida claims: “the proper space of a grammatology is at the same time opened and closed by the Course....”⁷² We shall see shortly that this is also the case with Husserl’s phenomenology, for Derrida. The opening that is simultaneously a closure in Saussure, according to deconstruction, is, however, twofold once again. Initially we have the “declared” opening of a general science of linguistics, which via deconstruction we realize to be instead the closure of a general science of linguistics. It is, more precisely, a very specific, socio-politico-historically grounded notion, upon which the extrapolation (thus illegitimately) is performed to a certain universality. But Derrida also claims that there is indeed a certain legitimacy to this system, once its limits are drawn and it is situated in a “larger” more extensive, more general, or indeed truly general science of writing. In short, Saussure’s linguistics retains its value for Derrida only within the context of a general grammatology. In this way the former project announces the latter in the very instant of not announcing it. That is, the unraveling of the truly limited in the apparently general reveals the truly general, which had hitherto been considered a subset or the “truly limited,” originary ground. In short, the conditions of the possibility of the science of writing are announced here. But in turn, Derrida insists that this same science is aborted as such before it could ever be established since “this arche-writing ... cannot and can never be recognized as the object of a science.”⁷³ The issue here is again that with which we began concerning the conditions of the possibility of the scientificity of science, or the constitution of its object as such. If writing, or more precisely arche-writing (which we shall analyze at length in a later chapter) is the condition of the possibility of the constitution of objectivity yet also that which opens this same objectivity to the problematic demarcation of inside and outside (an opposition which we now know can no longer be sustained), then grammatology, as this science of science, can never begin, as Derrida says. Instead, and paradoxically, it has always already begun:

Ths “essential communication” is precisely what interests us here. It is the condition of the possibility of deconstruction itself and of the irreducibility of: (i) the legitimacy of the deconstructed; and of (ii) the paradoxical results of deconstruction itself, which can never lead to “an object” of study. Derrida is not unaware of this plight, since, despite the goal of a certain detachment of the “new concepts” from the old, he says: “Therefore I admit the necessity of going through the concept of the arche-trace.”⁷⁵ The key here is the common root of the concept, of course, which we shall see is ultimately irreducible for deconstruction itself. But first the economy of the relation of inside to outside as it appears in the results of the deconstruction of Saussure.

As we have shown, the notion of the “usurpation” of speech by writing is considered by Derrida to be “no accident,” but rather essential, and therefore an unavoidable, prescribed necessity. The significance of the limits expressed by Saussure were then shown to be precisely their signifying function of an unacknowledged and unstated (yet written) complicity between the inside and outside. The “excluded” (writing) returns in the deconstructive analysis behind the scenes as the unacknowledged origin of that which itself claims to be the origin (speech). As Derrida says:

We shall return to the parallel opening and closing gesture in the deconstruction of Husserl in a moment. At this point, however, the essentiality of “usurpation” must be expanded somewhat. The issue here, it seems to us, is that which has been excluded becomes in turn the key to the conditions of the possibility of that same originally demarcated system. If we consider this relation in terms of deconstruction and metaphysics, and the resultant différance, which is always already operative but excluded, we find a strikingly parallel operation. The initial act of deconstruction is one of the demarcation of the demarcation of limits expressly operative in the given text under analysis. In turn this demarcation by deconstruction reveals something officially exterior to these limits, which is in fact interior. That which is “exterior” to deconstruction is apparently metaphysics itself; yet, as we have shown, this in turn constitutes the very framework of the deconstructive gestures. Derrida acknowledges the same. That which is expressly excluded from metaphysics however must be différance as revealed by deconstruction. And in turn that which is expressly exterior to “différance” must be metaphysics. Yet, as we know from the results of deconstruction, the essentiality of the relations between deconstruction, metaphysics, and différance cannot be reduced. The very complicity of these “systems” is what allows, on the contrary, for the usurpation of metaphysics by différance, we suggest. It is thus not only possible but necessary for Derrida to claim that the limits of Saussure’s project, once exposed, reveal simultaneously the conditions of the possibility and impossibility of grammatology. As he says,

We shall find not only a parallel formulation in the conclusions concerning Husserl but also a more precise (albeit unacknowledged by Derrida) explanation of the simultaneous conditions of possibility and impossibility of grammatology itself and a fortiori the “object” of différance.

Concerning the findings within the deconstruction of Husserl, Derrida initially concludes that the latter’s “discourse is captured within a certain system or economy that it too does not comprehend or recognize.”⁷⁸ Thus the deconstructive gesture appears here to perform a sort of double reverse reduction or a double opening which, as with Saussure, reveals the limits of one system as they open out onto another. As Derrida says,

As we know, “this horizon” is itself already beyond that which Husserl recognized as being within phenomenology proper. It is the horizon of metaphysics, or of the concept of the sign in general, as we have shown. But this horizon too opens out onto the “larger” one of différance, Derrida insists.

We should remark here upon the usage (borrowed from metaphysics) of the terms “originaire” and “original” in the preceding citations. It is thus this “more originary” space that deconstruction is aiming to expose—indeed more originary than originarity itself, Derrida insists. What this means is that, on the one hand, deconstruction aims to replace, or indeed substitute for or represent, the origin of the origin to the second power. In short, this gesture seems to be a certain usurpation of the “notion of origin itself” yet, at the same time, installs a new one in its place. The difference between the first origin and the second, which is essentially not an origin, is simply that the second origin is not reducible to a unitary or simple structure. It is not singular, not an object, not a locus, and a fortiori not a subject as such. It is the realm of différance. Several paradoxes emerge however at this juncture. Initially, it seems that non-simplicity of the “more originary origin” is safeguarded precisely due to the necessity of the relation or the economy between différance and metaphysics itself. It is this relation which allows for the repetition (which is more precisely not repetition, as we shall explore in more detail later) and which produces or is the condition of the possibility of ideality itself. Indeed repeatability and ideality are interchangeable terms at this level. But the possibility of repetition is not a function of metaphysics or différance simply, but only and necessarily, we argue, of this interrelation. The structure of this relation is one of essentiality, in addition, and thus returns us to the realm of metaphysics, on the one hand, yet, due to a certain impropriety, keeps open the possibility of the revelation of différance at the heart of metaphysics. The revelation of this essentiality is betrayed via the notion of the “sign” itself, we suggest. The “common root” here is precisely this formulation in exactly the same manner as “usurpation” was revealed to be not merely possible but essential in our prior analysis of the deconstruction of Saussure. In this case we find an additional homology, however, between the aims of deconstruction and the structure of Husserl’s phenomenology.

The final thrust of the deconstruction of Husserl involves a certain recognition by Derrida of that which he admits Husserl recognized. In short, the relation between ideality and non-ideality between “en droit” and “en fait” is realized as one of “infinite deferment.” The former “principles” are thus established as Ideas in the Kantian sense, so that the latter non-ideality, reality, or practice forms a level intrinsically, abysmally separate from the first, yet guided by it nonetheless. Along these lines the deconstruction of Husserl becomes the realization of the use of différance within the very possibility of phenomenology’s twofold structure itself. Far from “undoing” the Husserlian system, therefore, it seems that, in the end, deconstruction in fact borrows its very telos, and in turn its origin, from that same phenomenology. Let us examine Derrida’s explicit claims on this matter:

As we have shown, this enigmatic conclusion is equally applicable to the “new science of grammatology.” It is, in short, an Idea in the Kantian sense. In his final deconstructive gesture, however, Derrida seems not only to reinstall the legitimacy of Husserl’s phenomenology within a “larger economy” and in turn situate this within the yet larger one of différance, but also to find différance, as the difference between “le droit et le fait” that “makes the world move,” to be explicated as such by Husserl. This is not simply the economy of the contradiction, therefore, between that which Husserl “declares and that which describes,” but rather the very condition of the possibility of the entire edifice of phenomenology and “Husserl le reconnait.” A paradoxical relation to be sure. We should not be surprised however to find that the deconstruction of Husserl seems, on the one hand, to undo its own initial claims concerning this very significant contradiction in Husserl; and yet, on the other, deconstruction sustains itself as irreversible in the very revelation or indeed affirmation of that same “condition of the possibility of phenomenology itself.” It is the recognition of the latter as such which is in turn re-applied to the “whole” of phenomenology, and it is in this return that the law is violated, as it were. Once again we find that the condition of its possibility is also and at the same instant the condition of its impossibility. In short, as Derrida says concerning the “explicit” principle of principles of phenomenology,

It should now be possible to understand more fully Derrida’s principle of principles for deconstruction: that “no practice is ever totally faithful to its principles.” It is precisely this difference that will in turn reveal the “play of différance” for the work/play, or perhaps we might now call it practice of deconstruction. It is now time to situate the limits of this “more general economy” itself, at least as outlined by Derrida initially and, in turn, as they necessarily “usurp” and perhaps invert that same “declared” outline or demarcation.

(iii) The Context of a General Economy

If we consider the most general telos of deconstruction at this juncture, it should lead us to the revelation of the limits and range of that which Derrida has called différance. The system implied here, therefore, will be that of the threefold economy of deconstruction-metaphysics-différance such that the former and the latter relate to each other as origin and telos in a twofold manner. The origin of deconstruction is différance, yet the reverse is also true, as we have shown. The difference, however, is that according to Derrida, différance can no longer be considered an origin, pure and simple; and beyond Derrida, we suggest, the structure of deconstruction as the origin of différance and as the telos of deconstruction (with metaphysics playing the role of mediator, in the Hegelian sense, here) entails a “subjective” process of discovery or revelation. The reversal of this relation whereby différance is considered the “origin,” etc. entails a certain “objective” state of affairs or reality. We shall not pursue this pre-Heideggerian formulation of things at this point, but wish only to suggest: (i) a certain reversibility of the relation here; (ii) a certain threefold economy; and (iii) a certain duplicity in that same reversibility which cannot be accounted for within the system of the economy of différance itself. This problem will resurge within our analysis of différance as such and must be suspended therefore at this point. We wish instead to consider the specific claims made for deconstruction’s telos, by Derrida, in its practices within his analyses of Husserl and Saussure.

Concerning Saussure, deconstruction aims toward the “deconstruction of the greatest totality—the concept of the epistème and logocentric metaphysics—within which are produced, without ever posing the radical question of writing, all the Western methods of analysis, explication, reading or interpretation.”⁸³ Such is the range (and hence limit) of the telos of deconstruction, as declared by Derrida. Its extension, its object is none other than “all the Western methods of analysis ...,” etc., which conveniently enough all hinge upon “the concept of the epistème and logocentric metaphysics.” The unity of the latter concept shall be addressed in detail in the following chapter but here we wish to illustrate simply the unifying structure that deconstruction seems to impose in the process of the formation of its “object” of analysis or attack. In short, the demarcation of its limits entails, as Derrida himself has shown, a certain gesture of inclusion and exclusion so as to establish an “object” of inquiry to begin with. The limits here are thus claimed to be the “Western world” and its “methods of analysis, interpretation, etc.” It might be significant for a deconstruction of deconstruction to consider precisely that which is excluded thereby and thus, if Derrida is correct concerning the “logic of the supplement” and the role of the “excluded” in the constitution of the “included,” how this exclusion determines its “object” as such. The presupposition for such an analysis, of course, would be the very scientificity and epistemological value, indeed the adherence to a logocentric metaphysics, of deconstruction itself. We have already shown that this would not exceed the demarcation of the project of deconstruction itself, according to Derrida. But for the moment, let us return to the explicit limits to which deconstruction is said to adhere.

The demarcation of limits, as we know, entails a certain closure as well as a certain measure or range of extension. With this latter aspect in mind let us consider Derrida’s demarcation of these limits in relation to his analysis of Saussure:

One should notice initially that there is an explicit contradiction involved here which in turn will demarcate the “object” of writing. We should no longer be troubled by such a paradox since, as we know, writing will never become an “object.” The second aspect of this claim worthy of notice here is the usage of “more” to extend that which Saussure has already outlined. The paradox here is that it was deconstruction itself which aimed to limit Saussure’s project, therein: (i) showing its range of proper relevance; and (ii) showing the “more general economy” in which the project is necessarily situated. Yet now we find the results of deconstruction concerned to extend the range of precisely that which Saussure discovered. The difference is that this extension bridges the gap between linguistics and grammatology so as to reveal the “usurpation” we announced earlier as being the necessary result of the revelation of différance by deconstruction. Indeed this usurpation is described by Derrida again, with respect to Saussure, in its very relation to the “deconstruction of this tradition”:

We might well ask which usurpation is at stake here, since we could suggest at least three which “have always already begun.” These include: (i) the usurpation of différance by metaphysics itself, since this is the condition of the latter’s possibility; (ii) the usurpation of the sign by the metaphysics of presence; and (iii) the usurpation of metaphysics by différance in the work of deconstruction. The unique historical emergence of deconstruction as such remains strictly a Derridaean idea, we insist, despite the fact that the attempt to dismantle the “tradition of metaphysics” has indeed perhaps always already begun necessarily with the very constitution of that same tradition. But this is another story and another history, which we shall leave aside for the moment here. Our present concern is with the structure of the telos of deconstruction so as to reveal (or attempt to reveal) that which has “always already begun.” In short, does this formulation itself not neeessarily essentialize différance itself? The “always” in this formulation certainly removes the phenomenon of différance from the historico-factual-reality which Derrida earlier, in agreement with Husserl, opposed (in a relation of différance certainly) to the level of principles, ideality, and, in short, to the level of the concept in general, and metaphysics in particular. We have thus almost returned, at this point, to differance as an Idea in the Kantian sense as well, except that we know différance is considered, for Derrida at least, to be the structure of the relation which allows for the Idea in the Kantian sense to be constituted as a telos and, a fortiori, we might add, as an origin. It is clear that we must address in detail the concept of metaphysics for Derrida in order to further clarify these relations, and we shall do precisely that in the following chapter. For the moment we wish to add a final remark concerning the telos of deconstruction with respect to the analysis of Husserl.

We began by considering deconstruction’s aim as an attempt to reduce the reduction itself so as to show its “conditions of possibility.” It is now time to reveal the findings of this double reduction which seems to invert the first and therein the legitimacy of the process itself. Far from being the result of a transcendental ego, Derrida insists, this movement of différance provides the very condition of its possibility. As he says:

No less than the transcendental subject, différance produces the empirical subject as well, as we have shown. In addition it produces the conditions of the possibility of their relation, which in turn is the ground of phenomenology as such for Husserl. We thus have the movement of usurpation by différance and for différance revealed at this stage. By being the context in which Husserl’s system functions, it thereby usurps the role of the “control which implicitly governs” that system. Analogous indeed to the implicit but controlling role of metaphysics within phenomenology that Derrida claims to reveal.

The meaning of this parallel and indeed the others we have revealed in this analysis must be suspended from any definite closure at this juncture. It is not yet possible to say, we suggest, that the difference between metaphysics and différance is one that is governed by or organized by either metaphysics or différance. If we could, we would be within a neat Hegelian system with its third term usurping the other two—sustaining their “apparent contradiction,” but overwhelming their limits and situating them in a larger system. The problem instead in this (our) context seems to be that both différance and metaphysics seem to equally govern this economy that unites and differentiates them. The role of deconstruction in this system seems to a certain degree to be self-sacrificial yet paradoxically also the origin and telos of différance itself. It is thus necessary to explore in greater detail the apparent contradictions between différance and metaphysics in order to reveal more clearly this perhaps not so general “economy of différance” as such.