Jacques Derrida: Deconstruction and

the Other
Richard Kearney

rk: The most characteristic feature of your work has been its
determination to “deconstruct” the Western philosophy of presence. I
think it would be helpful if you could situate your program of
deconstruction in relation to the two major intellectual traditions of
Western European culture—the Hebraic and the Hellenic. You conclude
your seminal essay on the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas with
the following quotation from James Joyce's Ulysses: “GreekJew is
JewGreek.” Do you agree with Levinas that Judaism offers an
alternative to the Greek metaphysics of presence? Or do you believe
with Joyce that the Jewish and Greek cultures are fundamentally
intertwined
jd: While I consider it essential to think through this copulative synthesis
of Greek and Jew, I consider my own thought, paradoxically, as neither
Greek nor Jewish. I often feel that the questions I attempt to formulate
on the outskirts of the Greek philosophical tradition have as their other
the model of the Jew, that is, the Jew-as-other. And yet the paradox is
that I have never actually invoked the Jewish tradition in any “rooted” or
direct manner. Though I was born a Jew, I do not work or think within a
living Jewish tradition. So if there is a Judaic dimension to my thinking
which may from time to time have spoken in or through me, this has
never assumed the form of an explicit delity or debt to that culture. For
short, the ultimate site (lieu) of my questioning discourse would be
neither Hellenic nor Hebraic, if such were possible. It would be a nonsite
beyond both the Jewish in uence of my youth and the Greek
philosophical heritage which I received during my academic education in
the French universities
rk: And yet you share a singular discourse with Levinas—including
notions of the other, the trace and writing as difference, etc. —which
might suggest a common Judaic heritage
jd: Undoubtedly, I was fascinated and attracted by the intellectual
journey of Levinas, but that was not because he was Jewish. It so
happens that for Levinas there is a discrete continuity between his
philosophical discourse qua phenomenologist and his religious language
qua exegete of the Talmud. But this continuity is not immediately
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 evident. The Levinas who most interested me at the outset was the
philosopher working in phenomenology and posing the question of the
other to phenomenology; the Judaic dimension remained at that stage a
discrete rather than a decisive reference. You ask if Judaism offers an
alternative to the Greek philosophy of “presence.” First we must
ascertain what exactly we mean by “presence.” The French or English
words are, of course, neither Greek nor Jewish. So that when we use
the word, we presuppose a vast history of translation, which leads from
the Greek terms ousia and on to the Latin substantia, actus, etc., and
culminates in our modern term “presence.” I have no knowledge of what
this term means in Judaism
rk: So you would count yourself a philosopher above all else
jd: I'm not happy with the term philosopher
rk: Surely you are a philosopher in that your deconstruction is directed
primarily to philosophical ideas and texts
jd: It is true that “deconstruction” has focused on philosophical texts.
And I am of course a philosopher in the institutional sense that I assume
the responsibilities of a teacher of philosophy in an of cial philosophical
institution—l'Ecole Normale Supérieure. But I am not sure that the site of
my work, reading philosophical texts and posing philosophical
questions, is itself properly philosophical. Indeed, I have attempted more
and more systematically to nd a nonsite, or a nonphilosophical site,
from which to question philosophy. But the search for a nonphilosophical
site does not bespeak an antiphilosophical attitude. My central question
is: From what site or nonsite (non-lieu) can philosophy as such appear
to itself as other than itself, so that it can interrogate and re ect upon
itself in an original manner? Such a nonsite or alterity would be radically
irreducible to philosophy But the problem is that such a non-site cannot
be de ned or situated by means of philosophical language
rk: The philosophy of deconstruction would seem, therefore, to be a
deconstruction of philosophy. Is your interest in painting,
psychoanalysis, and literature—particularly the literary texts of [Edmond]
Jabès, [Georges] Bataille, [Maurice] Blanchot, [Antonin] Artaud, [Paul]
Celan, and Mallarmé—not an attempt to establish this non-philosophical
site of which you speak
jd: Certainly, but one must remember that even though these sites are
nonphilosophical, they still belong to our Western culture and so are
never totally free from the marks of philosophical language. In literature,
for example, philosophical language is still present in some sense, but it
produces and presents itself as alienated from itself, at a remove, at a
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 distance. This distance provides the necessary free space from which to
interrogate philosophy anew, and it was my preoccupation with literary
texts which enabled me to discern the problematic of writing as one of
the key factors in the deconstruction of metaphysics
rk: Accepting the fact that you are seeking a nonphilosophical site, you
would, I presume, still acknowledge important philosophical in uences
on your thought. How, for example, would you situate your strategy of
deconstruction in respect to the phenomenological movement
jd: My philosophical formation owes much to the thought of Hegel,
Husserl, and Heidegger. Heidegger is probably the most constant
in uence, and particularly his project of “overcoming” Greek
metaphysics. Husserl, whom I studied in a more studious and
painstaking fashion, taught me a certain methodical prudence and
reserve, a rigorous technique of unraveling and formulating questions.
But I never shared Husser's pathos for, and commitment to, a
phenomenology of presence. In fact, it was Husserl’s method that
helped me to suspect the very notion of presence and the fundamental
role it has played in all philosophies. My relationship with Heidegger is
much more enigmatic and extensive: here my interest was not just
methodological but existential. The themes of Heidegger's questioning
always struck me as necessary—especially the “ontological difference,”
the reading of Platonism, and the relationship between language and
Being. My discovery of the genealogical and genetic critique of
Nietzsche and Freud also helped me to take the step beyond
phenomenology towards a more radical, nonphilosophical questioning,
while never renouncing the discipline and methodological rigor of
phenomenology
rk: Although you share Heidegger's task of “overcoming” or
“deconstructing” Western metaphysics, you could not, presumably,
share his hope to rediscover the “original names” by means of which
Being could be thought and said
jd: I think that there is still in Heidegger, linked up with other things, a
nostalgic desire to recover the proper name, the unique name of Being.
To be fair, however, one can nd several passages in which Heidegger
is self-critical and renounces his nostalgia: his practice of canceling and
erasing the term in his later texts is an example of such a critique.
Heidegger's texts are still before us; they harbor a future of meaning
which will ensure that they are read and reread for centuries. But while I
owe a considerable debt to Heidegger's “path of thought” (chemin de
pensée), we differ in our employment of language, in our understanding
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of language. I write in another language—and I do not simply mean in
French rather than in German—even though this otherness cannot be
explained in terms of philosophy itself. The difference resides outside of
philosophy, in the nonphilosophical site of language; it is what makes the
poets and writers that interest me (Mallarmé, [Maurice] Blanchot, etc.)
totally different from those that interest Heidegger ([Friedrich] Hölderlin
and [Rainer Maria] Rilke). In this sense, my profound rapport with
Heidegger is also and at the same time a nonrapport
rk: Yes, I can see that your understanding of language as “difference”
and “dissemination” is quite removed from Heidegger's notion of
language as the “house of Being,” that which “recalls and recollects” and
“names the Holy.” In addition, while Heidegger is still prepared to use
such philosophical concepts as Being and existence to express his
thought, you have made it clear that the operative terms in your
language—for example, deconstruction, différence, dissemination, trace,
and so on—are basically “nonconcepts,” “undecidables.” What exactly
do you mean by “nonconcepts,” and what role do they play in your
attempt to deconstruct metaphysics
jd: I will try to reconstitute the argument by means of which I advanced
the notion of a nonconcept. First, it doesn't have the logical generality
which a philosophical concept claims to have in its supposed
independence from ordinary or literary language. The notion of
différance, for example, is a nonconcept in that it cannot be de ned in
terms of oppositional predicates; it is neither this nor that, but rather this
and that (for example, the act of differing and of deferring), without being
reducible to a dialectical logic either. And yet the term différanee
emerges and develops as a determination of language from which it is
inseparable. Hence the dif culty of translating the term. There is no
conceptual realm beyond language which would allow the term to have
a univocal semantic content over and above its inscription in language.
Because it remains a trace of language, it remains nonconceptual; and
because it has no oppositional or predicative generality, which would
identify it as this rather than that, the term différance cannot be de ned
within a system of logic—Aristotelian or dialectical—that is, within the
logocentric system of philosophy
rk: But can we go beyond the logocentric system of metaphysics without
employing the terminology of metaphysics? Is it not only from the inside
that we can undo metaphysics by means of stratagems and strategies
which expose the ambiguities and contradictions of the logocentric
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 system of presence? Does that not mean that we are condemned to
metaphysics even while attempting to deconstruct its pretensions
jd: In a certain sense it is true to say that deconstruction is still in
metaphysics. But we must remember that if we are indeed inside
metaphysics, we are not inside it as we might be inside a box or a
milieu. We are still in metaphysics in the special sense that we are in a
determinate language. Consequently, the idea that we might be able to
get outside of metaphysics has always struck me as naive. So that when
I refer to the closure (clôture) of metaphysics, I insist that it is not a
question of considering metaphysics as a circle with a limit or simple
boundary. The notion of the limit and boundary (bord) of metaphysics is
itself highly problematic. My re ections on this problematic have always
attempted to show that the limit or end of metaphysics is not linear or
circular in any indivisible sense. And as soon as we acknowledge that
the limit-boundary of metaphysics is divisible, the logical rapport
between inside and outside is no longer simple. Accordingly, we cannot
really say that we are “locked into” or “condemned to” metaphysics, for
we are, strictly speaking, neither inside nor outside. In brief, the whole
rapport between the inside and the outside of metaphysics is
inseparable from the question of the nitude and reserve of metaphysics
as language. But the idea of the nitude and exhaustion (épuisement) of
metaphysics does not mean that we are incarcerated in it as prisoners
or victims of some unhappy fatality. It is simply that our belonging to, and
inherence in, the language of metaphysics is something that can only be
rigorously and adequately thought about from another topos or space
where our problematic rapport with the boundary of metaphysics can be
seen in a more radical light. Hence my attempt, to discover the nonplace
or non-lieu which would be the other of philosophy. This is the task of
deconstruction
rk: Can literary and poetic language provide this non-lieu or u-topos
jd: I think so, but when I speak of literature it is not with a capital L; it is
rather an allusion to certain movements which have worked around the
limits of our logical concepts, certain texts which make the limits of our
language tremble, exposing them as divisible and questionable. This is
what the works of Blanchot, Bataille, or Beckett are particularly sensitive
to
rk: What does this whole problematic of the closure of Western
logocentric philosophy and of the limits of our language tell us about the
modern age in which we live? Is there a rapport between deconstruction
and modernity insofar as the latter bespeaks a crisis of scienti c
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 foundations and of values in general, a crisis occasioned by the

discovery that the absolute origin that the Western tradition claimed to
have identi ed in the “logos” is merely the trace of an absence, a
nothingness
jd: I have never been very happy with the term modernity. Of course, I
feel that what is happening in the world today is something unique and
singular. As soon, however, as we give it the label of “modernity,” we
inscribe it in a certain historical system of evolution or progress (a notion
derived from Enlightenment rationalism), which tends to blind us to the
fact that what confronts us today is also something ancient and hidden
in history. I believe that what “happens” in our contemporary world and
strikes us as particularly new has in fact an essential connection with
something extremely old which has been covered over (archi-dissimulé).
So that the new is not so much that which occurs for the rst time but
that “very ancient” dimension which recurs in the “very modern,” and
which indeed has been signi ed repetitively throughout our historical
tradition, in Greece and in Rome, in Plato and in Descartes and in Kant,
etc. No matter how novel or unprecedented a modern meaning may
appear, it is never exclusively modernist but is also and at the same time
a phenomenon of repetition. And yet the relationship between the
ancient and the modern is not simply that of the implicit and the explicit.
We must avoid the temptation of supposing that what occurs today
somehow preexisted in a latent form, merely waiting to be unfolded or
explicated. Such thinking also conceives history as an evolutionary
development and excludes the crucial notions of rupture and mutation in
history. My own conviction is that we must maintain two contradictory
af rmations at the same time. On the one hand, we af rm the existence
of ruptures in history, and on the other, we af rm that these ruptures
produce gaps or faults (failles) in which the most hidden and forgotten
archives can emerge and constantly recur and work through history.
One must surmount the categorical oppositions of philosophical logic out
of delity to these con icting positions of historical discontinuity (rupture)
and continuity (repetition), which are neither a pure break with the past
nor a pure unfolding or explication of it
rk: How do you explain the way in which philosophy has altered and
changed from one historical epoch to the next? How do you explain, for
example, the difference between Plato's thought and your own
jd: The difference between our modes of thought does not mean that I
or other “modern” thinkers have gone beyond Plato, in the sense of
having succeeded in exhausting all that is contained in his texts. Here I
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return to what I was describing as the “future” of a Heideggerian text. I

believe that all of the great philosophical texts —of Plato, Parmenides,
Hegel, or Heidegger, for example—are still before us. The future of the
great philosophies remains obscure and enigmatic, still to be disclosed.
Up to now, we have merely scratched the surface. This opaque and
inexhaustible residue of philosophical texts, which I call their “future,” is
more predominant in Greek and German philosophy than in French. I
have a profound respect for the great French thinkers, but I have always
had the impression that a certain kind of rigorous analysis could render
their texts accessible and exhaustible. Before a Platonic or
Heideggerian text, by contrast, I feel that I am confronting an abyss, a
bottomless pit in which I could lose myself. No matter how rigorous an
analysis I bring to bear on such texts, I am always left with the
impression that there is something more to be thought
rk: What exactly is the inexhaustible richness which these great texts
possess and which continues to fascinate us throughout the centuries
jd: The temptation here is to offer a quick and simple response. But
having taught philosophy for over twenty years, I must honestly say that
now, less than ever, do I know what philosophy is. My knowledge of
what it is that constitutes the essence of philosophy is at zero degree. All
I know is that a Platonic or Heideggerian text always returns us to the
beginning, enables us to begin to ask philosophical questions, including
the question: What is philosophy
rk: But surely it must be possible to say what philosophy is by way of
distinguishing it from other scienti c disciplines such as economics,
sociology, the natural sciences, or even literature? Why learn philosophy
at all, in schools, universities, or in the privacy of one's study, if it is
impossible to say what it is or what function it serves? If deconstruction
prevents us from asserting or stating or identifying anything, then surely
one ends up, not with difference, but with indifference, where nothing is
anything, and everything is everything else
jd: It is as impossible to say what philosophy isnot as it is to say what it
is. In all the other disciplines you mention, there is philosophy. To say to
oneself that one is going to study something that is not philosophy is to
deceive oneself. It is not dif cult to show that in political economy, for
example, there is a philosophical discourse in operation. And the same
applies to mathematics and the other sciences
Philosophy, as logocentrism, is present in every scienti c discipline, and
the only justi cation for transforming philosophy into a specialized
discipline is the necessity to render explicit and thematic the
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 philosophical subtext in every discourse. The principal function which

the teaching of philosophy serves is to enable people to become
“conscious,” to become aware of what exactly they are saying, what kind
of discourse they are engaged in when they do mathematics, physics,
political economy, and so on. There is no system of teaching or
transmitting knowledge which can retain its coherence or integrity
without, at one moment or another, interrogating itself philosophically,
that is, without acknowledging its subtextual premises, and this may
even include an interrogation of unspoken political interests or traditional
values. From such an interrogation, each society draws its own
conclusions about the worth of philosophy
rk: How, for example, can political economy interrogate itself
philosophically
jd: First, all of the major concepts which constitute the discourse of
economics are philosophical, and particularly such concepts as
“property,” “work” or “value.” These are all “philosophemes,” concepts
inaugurated by a philosophical discourse, which usually go back to
Greece or Rome, and kept in operation by means of this discourse,
which refers back at rst, as does philosophy itself, to the “natural
languages” of Greece and Rome. Consequently, the economic
discourse is founded on a logocentric philosophical discourse and
remains inseparable from it. The autonomy which economists might
subsequently like to confer on their discipline can never succeed in
masking its philosophical derivation. Science is never purely objective,
nor is it merely reducible to an instrumental and utilitarian model of
explanation. Philosophy can teach science that it is ultimately an
element of language, that the limits of its formalization reveal its
belonging to a language in which it continues to operate despite its
attempts to justify itself as an exclusively objective or instrumental
discourse
rk: Is the logocentric character of science a singularly European
phenomenon
jd: Logocentrism, in its developed philosophical sense, is inextricably
linked to the Greek and European tradition. As I have attempted to
demonstrate elsewhere in some detail, logocentric philosophy is a
speci cally Western response to a much larger necessity which also
occurs in the Far East and other cultures, that is, the phonocentric
necessity: the privilege of the voice over writing. The priority of spoken
language over written or silent language stems from the fact that when
words are spoken, the speaker and the listener are supposed to be
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simultaneously present to one another; they are supposed to be the

same, pure unmediated presence. This ideal of perfect self-presence, of
the immediate possession of meaning, is what is expressed by the
phonocentric necessity. Writing, on the other hand, is considered
subversive insofar as it creates a spatial and temporal distance between
the author and audience; writing presupposes the absence of the author,
and so we can never be sure exactly what is meant by a written text; it
can have many different meanings, as opposed to a single unifying one.
But this phonocentric necessity did not develop into a systematic
logocentric metaphysics in any non-European culture. Logocentrism is a
uniquely European phenomenon
rk: Does this mean that other cultures do not require deconstruction
jd: Every culture and society requires an internal critique or
deconstruction as an essential part of its development. A priori, we can
presume that non-European cultures operate some sort of auto-critique
of their own linguistic concepts and foundational institutions. Every
culture needs an element of self-interrogation and of distance from itself,
if it is to transform itself. No culture is closed in on itself, especially in our
own times, when the impact of European civilization is so all-pervasive.
Similarly, what we call the deconstruction of our own Western culture is
aided and abetted by the fact that Europe has always registered the
impact of heterogeneous, non-European in uences. Because it has
always been thus exposed to, and shadowed by, its other, it has been
compelled to question itself. Every culture is haunted by its other
rk: Did the arrival of Judeo-Christianity represent such a radicalizing
“alterity” for the Greco-Roman civilization? Did it challenge the
heterogeneity of the Western metaphysics of presence
jd: I'd be wary of talking about Judeo-Christianity with a capital J and C.
Judeo-Christianity is an extremely complex entity which, in large part,
only constituted itself qua Judeo-Christianity by its assimilation into the
schemas of Greek philosophy. Hence what we know as Christian and
Jewish theology today is a cultural ensemble which has already been
largely Hellenized
rk: But did not Judaism and Christianity represent a heterogeneity, an
otherness, before they were assimilated into Greek culture
jd: Of course. And one can argue that these original, heterogeneous
elements of Judaism and Christianity were never completely eradicated
by Western metaphysics. They perdure throughout the centuries,
threatening and unsettling the assured identities of Western philosophy.
So that the surreptitious deconstruction of the Greek Logos is at work
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 from the very origin of our Western culture. Already, the translation of
Greek concepts into other languages —Latin, Arabic, German, French,
English, etc. —or indeed the translation of Hebraic or Arabic ideas and
structures into metaphysical terms, produces “ ssures” in the presumed
solidity of Greek philosophy by introducing alien and con icting
elements
rk: The logocentrism of Greek metaphysics will always be haunted,
therefore, by the absolutely Other to the extent that the Logos can never
englobe everything. There is always something which escapes,
something different, other, and opaque which refuses to be totalized into
a homogeneous identity
jd: Just so —and this otherness is not necessarily something which
comes to Greek philosophy from the “outside,” that is, from the non-
Hellenic world. From the very beginnings of Greek philosophy the self-
identity of the Logos is already ssured and divided. I think one can
discern signs of such ssures of différance in every great philosopher:
the “Good beyond Being” (epekeina tes ousias) of Plato's Republic, for
example, or the confrontation with the “Stranger” in The Sophist, are
already traces of an alterity which refuses to be totally domesticated.
Moreover, the rapport of self-identity is itself always a rapport of violence
with the other, so that the notions of property, appropriation, and self-
presence, so central to logocentric metaphysics, are essentially
dependent on an oppositional relation with otherness. In this sense,
identity presupposes alterity
rk: If deconstruction is a way of challenging the logocentric pretensions
of Western European philosophy, and by implication of the sciences it
has founded, can it ever surmount its role of iconoclastic negation and
become a form of af rmation? Can your search for a non-site or u-topos,
other than the topos of Western metaphysics, also be construed as a
prophetic utopianism
jd: I will take the terms af rmation and prophetic utopianism separately.
Deconstruction certainly entails a moment of af rmation. Indeed, I
cannot conceive of a radical critique which would not be ultimately
motivated by some sort of af rmation, acknowledged or not.
Deconstruction always presupposes af rmation, as I have frequently
attempted to point out, sometimes employing a Nietzschean
terminology. I do not mean that the deconstructing subject or self
af rms. I mean that deconstruction is, in itself, a positive response to an
alterity which necessarily calls, summons, or motivates it.
Deconstruction is therefore vocation—a response to a call. The other, as
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the other than self, the other that opposes self-identity, is not something
that can be detected and disclosed within a philosophical space and
with the aid of a philosophical lamp. The other precedes philosophy and
necessarily invokes and provokes the subject before any genuine
questioning can begin. It is in this rapport with the other that af rmation
expresses itself. As to the question of prophecy, this is a much more
obscure area for me. There are certainly prophetic effects (effets), but
the language of prophecy alters continually. Today the prophets no
longer speak with the same accents or scenography as the prophets in
the Bible
rk: Levinas has suggested that the contemporary deconstruction of
philosophy and the sciences is symptomatic of a fundamental crisis of
Western culture, which he chooses to interpret as a prophetic and
ethical cry
Would you agree
jd: Certainly prophets always ourish in times of socio-historical or
philosophical crisis. Bad times for philosophy are good times for
prophecy. Accordingly, when deconstructive themes begin to dominate
the scene, as they do today, one is sure to nd a proliferation of
prophecies. And this proliferation is precisely a reason why we should
be all the more wary and prudent, all the more discriminating
rk: But here we have the whole problem of a criterion of evaluation.
According to what criterion does one discriminate between prophecies?
Is this not a problem for you, since you reject the idea of a
transcendental telos or eschaton which could provide the critical subject
with an objective or absolute yardstick of value
jd: It is true that I interrogate the idea of an eschaton or telos in the
absolute formulations of classical philosophy. But that does not mean I
dismiss all forms of Messianic or prophetic eschatology. I think that all
genuine questioning is summoned by a certain type of eschatology,
though it is impossible to de ne this eschatology in philosophical terms.
The search for objective or absolute criteria is, to be sure, an essentially
philosophical gesture. Prophecy differs from philosophy insofar as it
dispenses with such criteria. The prophetic word is its own criterion and
refuses to submit to an external tribunal which would judge or evaluate it
in an objective and neutral fashion. The prophetic word reveals its own
eschatology and nds its index of truthfulness in its own inspiration and
not in some transcendental or philosophical criteriology
rk: Do you feel that your own work is prophetic in its attempt to
deconstruct philosophy and philosophical criteria
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 jd: Unfortunately, I do not feel inspired by any sort of hope which would
permit me to presume that my work of deconstruction has a prophetic
function. But I concede that the style of my questioning as an exodus
and dissemination in the desert might produce certain prophetic
resonances. It is possible to see deconstruction as being produced in a
space where the prophets are not far away. But the prophetic
resonances of my questioning reside at the level of a certain rhetorical
discourse which is also shared by several other contemporary thinkers.
The fact that I declare it “unfortunate” that I do not personally feel
inspired may be a signal that deep down I still hope. It means that I am
in fact still looking for something. So perhaps it is no mere accident of
rhetoric that the search itself, the search without hope for hope,
assumes a certain prophetic allure. Perhaps my search is a twentieth-
century brand of prophecy? But it is dif cult for me to believe it
rk: Can the theoretical radicality of deconstruction be translated into a
radical political praxis
jd: This is a particularly dif cult question. I must confess that I have
never succeeded in directly relating deconstruction to existing political
codes and programs. I have of course had occasion to take a speci c
political stand in certain codable situations, for example, in relation to
the French university institution. But the available codes for taking such
a political stance are not at all adequate to the radicality of
deconstruction. And the absence of an adequate political code to
translate or incorporate the radical implications of deconstruction has
given many the impression that deconstruction is opposed to politics, or
is at best apolitical. But this impression only prevails because all of our
political codes and terminologies still remain fundamentally
metaphysical, regardless of whether they originate from the right or the
left
rk: In The Revolution of the Word, Colin MacCabe employed your
notions of deconstruction and dissemination to show how James Joyce
recognized and revealed the inner workings of language as a refusal of
identity, as a process of différance irreducible to all of our logocentic
concepts and codes. In Ulysses, this process of différance is epitomized
by Bloom, for instance, the vagrant or nomad who subverts the available
codes of identity —religious, political, or national. And yet, MacCabe
argues, the Joycean refutation of all dogmatic or totalizing forms of
identity is itself a political stance—an anti-totalitarian or anarchic stance
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 jd: This is the politics of exodus, of the émigré. As such, it can of course
serve as a political ferment or anxiety, a subversion of xed assumptions
and a privileging of disorder
rk: But does the politics of the émigré necessarily imply inaction and
noncommitment
jd: Not at all. But the dif culty is to gesture in opposite directions at the
same time; on the one hand, to preserve a distance and suspicion with
regard to the of cial political codes governing reality, and on the other, to
intervene here and now in a practical and engagé manner whenever the
necessity arises. This position of dual allegiance, in which I personally
nd myself, is one of perpetual uneasiness. I try where I can to act
politically while recognizing that such action remains incommensurate
with my intellectual project of deconstruction
rk: Could one describe the political equivalent of deconstruction as a
disposition, as opposed to a position, of responsible anarchy
jd: If I had to describe my political disposition I would probably employ a
formula of that kind while stressing, of course, the interminable
obligation to work out and to deconstruct these two terms —
“responsible” and “anarchy” If taken as assured certainties in
themselves, such terms can also become rei ed and unthinking
dogmas. But I also try to reevaluate the indispensable notion of
“responsibility.
rk: I would now like to turn to another theme in your work: the
deconstructive role of the feminine. If the logocentric domination of
Western culture also expresses itself as a phallogocentrism, is there a
sense in which the modern movement to liberate women represents a
deconstructive gesture? Is this something which Nietzsche curiously
recognized when he spoke of “truth becoming woman,” or Joyce when
he celebrated the “woman's reason” of Molly Bloom in Ulysses and Anna
Livia Plurabelle in Finnegans Wake? Is the contemporary liberation of
woman's reason and truth not an unveiling of the hitherto repressed
resources of a nonlogocentric topos
jd: While I would hesitate to use such terms as “liberation” or “unveiling,”
I think there can be little doubt that we are presently witnessing a radical
mutation of our understanding of sexual difference. The discourses of
Nietzsche, Joyce, and the women's movement which you have identi ed
epitomize a profound and unprecedented transformation of the man-
woman relationship. The deconstruction of phallogocentrism is carried
by this transformation, as are also the rise of psychoanalysis and the
modernist movement in literature. But we cannot objectify or thematize
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 this mutation, even though it is bringing about such a radical change in
our understanding of the world that a return to the former logocentric
philosophies of mastery, possession, totalization, or certitude may soon
be unthinkable. The philosophical and literary discoveries of the
feminine which you mention—and even the political and legal
recognition of the status of women—are all symptoms of a deeper
mutation in our search for meaning which deconstruction attempts to
register
rk: Do you think then that this mutation can be seen and evaluated in
terms of a historical progress towards the “good,” towards a “better
society”
jd: This mutation is certainly experienced as better, insofar as it is what
is desired by those who practically dispose of the greatest force in
society. One could describe the transformation effected by the feminine
as “good” without positing it as an a priori goal or telos. I hesitate to
speak of “liberation” in this context, because I don't believe that women
are liberated, any more than men are. They are, of course, no longer
enslaved in many of the old socio-political respects, but even in the new
situation woman will not ultimately be any freer than man. One needs
another language, besides that of political liberation, to characterize the
enormous deconstructive import of the feminine as an uprooting of our
phallogocentric culture. I prefer to speak of this mutation of the feminine
as a “movement” rather than as an historical or political “progress.” I
always hesitate to talk of historical progress
rk: What is the relationship between deconstruction and your use of
poetic language, particularly in Glas? Do you consider Glas to be a work
of philosophy or of poetry
jd: It is neither philosophy nor poetry. It is in fact a reciprocal
contamination of the one by the other, from which neither can emerge
intact. This notion of contamination is, however, inadequate, for it is not
simply a question of rendering both philosophy and poetry impure. One
is trying to reach an additional or alternative dimension beyond
philosophy and literature. In my project, philosophy and literature are
two poles of an opposition and one cannot isolate one from the other or
privilege one over the other. I consider that the limits of philosophy are
also those of literature. In Glas, consequently, I try to compose a writing
which would traverse, as rigorously as possible, both the philosophical
and literary elements without being de nable as either. Hence in Glas
one nds classical philosophical analysis being juxtaposed with quasi-
literary passages, each challenging, perverting, and exposing the
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impurities and contradictions in their neighbor; and at some point the

philosophical and literary trajectories cross each other and give rise to
something else, some other site
rk: Is there not a sense in which philosophy for you is a form of
literature? You have, for example, described metaphysics as a “white
mythology,” that is, a sort of palimpsest of metaphors (eidos, telos,
ousia) and myths (of return, homecoming, transcendence towards the
light, etc.), which are covered over and forgotten as soon as
philosophical “concepts” are construed as pure and univocal
abstractions, as totalizing universals devoid of myth and metaphor
jd: I have always tried to expose the way in which philosophy is literary,
not so much because it is metaphor but because it is catachresis. The
term metaphor generally implies a relation to an original “property” of
meaning, a “proper” sense to which it indirectly or equivocally refers,
whereas catachresis is a violent production of meaning, an abuse which
refers to no anterior or proper norm. The founding concepts of
metaphysics—logos, eidos, theoria, etc. —are instances of catachresis
rather than metaphors, as I attempted to demonstrate in “White
Mythology” (Margesde la philosophic [Margins of Philosophy]). In a work
such as Glas, or other recent ones like it, I am trying to produce new
forms of catachresis, another kind of writing, a violent writing which
stakes out the faults (failles) and deviations of language, so that the text
produces a language of its own, in itself, which, while continuing to work
through tradition, emerges at a given moment as a monster, a
monstrous mutation without tradition or normative precedent
rk: What then of the question of language as reference? Can language
as mutation or violence or monstrosity refer to anything other than itself
jd: There have been several misinterpretations of what I and other
deconstructionists are trying to do. It is totally false to suggest that
deconstruction is a suspension of reference. Deconstruction is always
deeply concerned with the other of language. I never cease to be
surprised by critics who see my work as a declaration that there is
nothing beyond language, that we are imprisoned in language; it is, in
fact, saying the exact opposite. The critique of logocentrism is above all
else the search for the other and the other of language. Every week I
receive critical commentaries and studies on deconstruction which
operate on the assumption that what they call “poststructuralism”
amounts to saying that there is nothing beyond language, that we are
submerged in words —and other stupidities of that sort. Certainly,
deconstruction tries to show that the question of reference is much more
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 complex and problematic than traditional theories supposed. It even

asks whether our term reference is entirely adequate for designating the
other. The other, which is beyond language and which summons
language, is perhaps not a “referent” in the normal sense which linguists
have attached to this term. But to distance oneself thus from the habitual
structure of reference, to challenge or complicate our common
assumptions about it, does not amount to saying that there is nothing
beyond language
rk: This could also be seem as a reply to those critics who maintain that
deconstruction is a strategy of nihilism, an orgy of non-sense, a relapse
into the free play of the arbitrary
jd: I regret that I have been misinterpreted in this way, particularly in the
United States, but also in France. People who wish to avoid questioning
and discussion present deconstruction as a sort of gratuitous chess
game with a combination of signs (combinatoire de signi ants), closed
up in language as in a cave. This misinterpretation is not just a
simpli cation; it is symptomatic of certain political and institutional
interests—interests which must also be deconstructed in their turn. I
totally refuse the label of nihilism which has been ascribed to me and my
American colleagues. Deconstruction is not an enclosure in
nothingness, but an openness towards the other
rk: Can deconstruction serve as a method of literary criticism which
might contribute something positive to our appreciation of literature
jd: I am not sure that deconstruction can function as a literary method
as such. I am wary of the idea of methods of reading. The laws of
reading are determined by the particular text that is being read. This
does not mean that we should simply abandon ourselves to the text, or
represent and repeat it in a purely passive manner. It means that we
must remain faithful, even if it implies a certain violence, to the
injunctions of the text. These injunctions will differ from one text to the
next so that one cannot prescribe one general method of reading. In this
sense, deconstruction is not a method. Nor do I feel that the principal
function of deconstruction is to contribute something to literature. It
does, of course, contribute to our epistemological appreciation of texts
by exposing the philosophical and theoretical presuppositions that are at
work in every critical methodology, be it formalism, New Criticism,
socialist realism, or a historical critique
Deconstruction asks why we read a literary text in this particular manner
rather than another. It shows, for example, that New Criticism is not the
way of reading texts, however enshrined it may be in certain university
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institutions, but only one way among others. Thus deconstruction can
also serve to question the presumption of certain university and cultural
institutions to act as the sole or privileged guardians and transmitters of
meaning. In short, deconstruction not only teaches us to read literature
more thoroughly by attending to it as language, as the production of
meaning through différance and dissemination, through a complex play
of signifying traces; it also enables us to interrogate the covert
philosophical and political presuppositions of institutionalized critical
methods which generally govern our reading of a text. There is in
deconstruction something which challenges every teaching institution. It
is not a question of calling for the destruction of such institutions, but
rather of making us aware of what we are in fact doing when we
subscribe to this or that institutional way of reading literature. Nor must
we forget that deconstruction is itself a form of literature, a literary text to
be read like other texts, an interpretation open to several other
interpretations. Accordingly, one can say that deconstruction is at once
extremely modest and extremely ambitious. It is ambitious in that it puts
itself on a par with literary texts, and modest in that it admits that it is
only one textual interpretation among others, written in a language
which has no centralizing power of mastery or domination, no privileged
metalanguage over and above the language of literature
rk: And what would you say to those critics who accuse you of
annihilating the very idea of the human subject in your determination to
dispense with all centralizing agencies of meaning, all “centrisms”
jd: They need not worry. I have never said that the subject should be
dispensed with. Only that it should be deconstructed. To deconstruct the
subject does not mean to deny its existence. There are subjects,
“operations” or “effects” (effets) of subjectivity. This is an incontrovertible
fact. To acknowledge this does not mean, however, that the subject is
what it says it is. The subject is not some metalinguistic substance or
identity, some pure cogito of self-presence; it is always inscribed in
language. My work does not, therefore, destroy the subject; it simply
tries to resituate it
rk: But can deconstruction, as the disclosure of language as différance,
contribute to the pleasure of reading, to our appreciation of the living
texture of a literary text? Or is it only an intellectual strategy of detection,
of exposing our presuppositions and disabusing us of our habitual
illusions about reading
jd: Deconstruction gives pleasure in that it gives desire. To deconstruct
a text is to disclose how it functions as desire, as a search for presence
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 and ful llment which is interminably deferred. One cannot read without
opening oneself to the desire of language, to the search for that which
remains absent and other than oneself. Without a certain love of the
text, no reading would be possible. In every reading there is a corps-à-
corps between reader and text, an incorporation of the reader's desire
into the desire of the text. Here is pleasure, the very opposite of that arid
intellectualism of which deconstruction has so often been accused
Paris, 198
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