Derrida Quote of the Day
Context: this quote comes from the concluding essay in Questioning Derrida (2001) where Derrida replies to a number of authors which wrote the other chapters of the book on various facets of his work. This is (part of) the section where he comments on Chris Norris’ essay titled ‘Deconstruction, Ontology and Philosophy of Science: Derrida on Aristotle’.
I am not shocked, even if it makes me smile, to see myself defined by Norris, in a deliberately provocative and ironic manner, as a “transcendental realist”. Earlier I said why I didn’t believe it was necessary to reject the transcendental motive (motif). As for the deconstruction of logocentrism, of linguisticism, of economism (of the self and of the at-home [chez-soi], oikos, of the same) and so on, as for the affirmation of the impossible, these are always advanced in the name of the real, of the irreducible reality of the real — not of the real as attribute of the objective, present, perceptible or intelligible thing (res), but of the real as the coming or the event of the other, where it resists all reappropriation, even ana-onto-phenomenological appropriation. The real is this non-negative im-possible, this impossible coming or invention of the event whose thought is not an onto-phenomenology. It is a thought of the event (singularity of the other, in its unanticipable coming, hic et nunc) that resists its own reappropriation by an ontology or a phenomenology of presence as such. I’m attempting to dissociate the concept of event and the value of presence. It’s not easy, but I am trying to demonstrate this necessity, like that of thinking the event without being (it) (sans l’etre). Nothing is more “realist”, in this sense, than deconstruction. It is that (whoever) arrives ([ce] qui arrive). And there is no fatality before the fait accompli: neither empiricism nor relativism. Is it to be empiricist or relativist to take into account that which arrives, and the differences of every order, beginning with the difference of context? (113)
Let me comment on this.
Why do I keep banging on with Derrida? Am I expecting people to believe him to be a ‘realist’ now? To turn into Derrideans? No. But that he wasn’t a realist does not mean that he was an anti-realist, or some sort of perverted linguistic idealist with a fetish for written words, someone that has therefore no value whatsoever for those uninterested in ‘language’ and ‘literature’.
This passage makes very clear (and other passages in this chapter are even more explicit) that his understanding of the ‘unpredictable’, ‘unnamable’, ‘indiscernible’ advent/event of the Real is not far at all for that of Badiou. There are bits in this essay where he talks about his understanding of ‘event’ which are indistinguishable from Badiou’s own rhetoric (to this extent, Badiouians that spit on Derrida’s name should probably read before talking). The real ‘that resists any appropriation’, always eluding phenomenological taming.
Is this not materialist enough for you? Fair enough (even though a number of interpreters –and Derrida himself — have explained rather clearly how the structure of the trace presupposes a pre-conscious, pre-personal, pre-human archi-materiality which is nothing ideal or [vulgarly] ‘linguistic’ – and to this extent Derrida is much more of a ‘materialist’ than Badiou is. Plus, he named one of his cats Lucrèce).
It is also true that, in the last decades of his work, Derrida drifted into a way of philosophizing and towards a spectrum of themes (hospitality, traveling, the gift, justice, the secret, forgiveness, the promise, spectres, his cat…) that is legitimate for ‘realists’ to find less directly pertinent to their philosophical agenda. He indulged in his own personal obsessions. So what? Must a philosopher be there just to fullfill your expectations?
Fine, the constant performative obliquity of his style is often tiresome (even though this quoted passage looks pretty clear to me…), but that doesn’t mean that one can just mock it and carry on.
I don’t want everyone (in fact, anyone) to turn Derridean, that’s just stupid. I despise any form of philosophical personality cult. His work is interesting, but — like everyone else’s — limited. And at points disagreeable. I spend much less time than it might seem reading Derrida. But some forms of ignorance just irritate me beyond measure. I’d just like everyone to get the utterly banal point that ‘principled’ rejections are as idiotic as ‘fashions’ and ‘fads’ are.
Anyway, I now probably should stop with the ‘Derrida Quote of the Day’ series [1, 2, 3]: it’s getting a bit boring.
Fabio Cunctator
Mathematics is still language and by default there is no more realism implied by its use than by dreaming or articulating whatever comes to your mind in this moment. from a mathematical point of view the unpredictable of the real is precisely its lack of generality. It is never contingent, it could-not-have-been-different as if we could loosen constraints. Contingency is a relationship between a model of the real and another, possibly more general or limited or totally unrelated model and the only reason why choosing one model over the other, may be to approximate reality.
Whatever it means to name, predict or discern it requires still energy and resources and those are finite, can form black holes and are subject to influences which are themselves unpredictable or will predictably destroy them which limits the time of their use. The theoretical limits won’t be reached either by the lack of practical skill. However one could assume the existence of oracles which circumvent the limits of prediction and connect directly to the host of the real and gather information which could not possibly even exist when following the normal working of the universe. All we can say is that we believe or disbelieve in this based on evidence. Abstract arguments of the sort of cantorian diagonalisation won’t help. Their relationship to the real must be also believed.
One more question. How did Derrida know of the event or that one has happened, when it is beyond a ‘phenomenology of presence’? Could it even be discerned from a lack of an event in that case? Somehow it has to be manifest and the difference must be perceived as a difference. Isn’t this precisely where phenomenology comes into play?
“ana-onto-phenomenological appropriation” — care to gloss this?
For myself I think the future is going to be like the present, and the present is like the past. And whatever it is that is common to the present, the future, and the past, along with numbers and what’s one over many, I’d call that “real” — if I have to use that word.
What annoys me about this is that Derrida just takes some word like “truth” or “real”, says we really ought to understand it however he thinks he understands it, and then says that once you understand it that way, he turns out to believe in reality and value truth after all. He can never be gotten to admit either that he’s wrong or that he disagrees with you.
And I DO read Derrida, in FRENCH, and I still think he’s wrong, and I still think he’s annoying.