il n'y a pas de hors-texte

There is nothing outside of the text.  And that is neither becasue Jean-Jacques' life, or the existence of Mamma or Therese themselves, is not of prime interest to us, nor because we have access to their so-called "real" existence only in the text and we have neither any means of altering this, nor any right to neglect this limitation.  All reasons of this type would already be sufficient, to be sure, but there are more radical reasons.  What we have tried to show by following the guiding line of the "dangerous supplement," is that in what one calls the real life of these existences "of flesh and bone," beyond and behind what one believes can be circumscribed as Rousseau's text, there have never been anything but writing; there have never been anything but supplements, substitutive significations which could only come forth in a chain of differential references, the "real" supervening, and being added only while taking on meaning from a trace and from an invocation of the supplement. (Of Grammatology Pgs. 158-159)

I thought of this notorious passage as I have been reading the recent discussion regarding Theory.  I am not qualified, (nor am I all that interested in) getting into the thicket of that debate.  But I think it worth looking at Derrida's idiosyncratic use of the notion of text, particularly now when discussions of T(t)heory are taking place within a larger cultural context that is anti-intellectual.

Of course the phrase lends itself to misunderstanding.  It sounds as if Derrida is advocating a position of "linguistic Berkeleyianism" which reduces reality to words and books.  Or, perhaps more plausibly, it seems as if the "play of signifiers" leaves us in a position of meaningless confusion, where "anything goes," and context becomes subjective.  Both versions of this interpretation share the misunderstanding that Derrida has completely abandoned the concept of reference.  Derrida's response is emphatic:

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...'  Certainly, deconstruction tries to show that the questionof reference is much more 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, to challenge or complicate our common assumptions about it, does not amount to saying that there is nothing beyond language.  (Sited in The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, Pgs. 16-17)

Clearly Derrida does not want to do away with the notion of reference, but rather problematize it, and find its hidden assumptions and exclusions.

But we still are left wondering what Derrida actually means by the term "text."  One of his clearest and most political statements on this issue occurs in his polemical exchange on apartheid, "Racism's Last Word."  He tells us that "text" as he uses the term is not to be confused with the graphisms of a book:

It is precisely for strategic reasons... that I found it necessary to recast the concept of text by generalizing it almost without any limit that is.  That's why there is nothing "beyond the text." That's why South Africa and apartheid are, like you and me, part of this general text, which is not to say that it can be read the way one reads a book.  That's why the text is always a field of forces: heterogenous, differential, open... That's why deconstructive readings and writings are concerned not only with library books, with discourses, with conceptual and semantic contents.  They are not simply analyses of discourse...  They are also effective or active (as one says) interventions that transform contexts without limiting themselves to theoretical or constative utterances even though they must produce such utterances. (Cited in An Allegory of Modernity/Postmodernity Pg 211)

What is of particular interest about this exchange, is that two political scientists accuse Derrida of being ill equiped to step outside the area of his expertise.  In fact, they accuse him of reducing apartheid to a political language game, his analysis reduced to mere playing with words.  But Derrida employs textuality in his discussion for the purpose of showing that "there is no racism without language:"

The point is not that acts of racial violence are only words but rather that they have to have a word. Even though it offers the excuse of blood, color, birth - or rather, because it uses naturalist and sometimes creationist discourse - racism always betrays the perversion of a man, the 'talking animal'. It institutes, declares, writes, inscribes, prescribes. A system of marks, it outlines space in order to assign forced residence or to close off borders. It does not discern, it discriminates.

Perhaps we can discern here the possibility of an alternative to the "Messianic" direction of the later Derrida? I am not sure. It always seemed odd to me that the radicality of his early works evolved in a post-secular direction, more rabbinical and less poetic. But of course, he would always refuse the blackmail of having to choose between the two figures: he was always operating between the two, never willing to settle on either.

Comments

[Christoph]

Alain, another stimulating post, thanks.

Dear Derrideans,

being quite ignorant of his work, I have a perhaps naive question to ask: what is the difference between text and language for Derrida here?

It seems to me that if text is synonymous with language, the conflation is an unnecessary obfuscation (and wrong btw), and if it's not synonymous, well, then why the seeming interchangeability, which of course is neither very, erm, felicitous? ("Nothing 'outside language'", "nothing 'beyond text'")

Not to be rude, as I said, I just don't get it *cough*again*cough*.

[bat020]

Text is most definitely not synonymous with language for Derrida. His basic argument in Of Grammatology is that philosophical notions of language are modelled on speech as opposed to writing, and that this assumption conceals a good deal of dubious idealism (what D calls "logocentrism").

Consequently he deploys "text" as an alternative to these traditional notions of language. The term has a deliberate and distinct materialist charge for Derrida - think text, textile, texture...

I'd also add that I think Spivak's alternative translation for "il n'y a pas d'hors-texte" is far superior - "there is no outside-the-text". Derrida isn't claiming that there's a location outside of text that happens to be empty, he is claiming that no such location exists, that the very notion of text having an exterior is incoherent.

[Malcs]

Spivak's alternative translation continues to miss something vital which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else either - would be grateful for any references to places where it's been discussed - namely, that _hors-texte_ does actually have a literal meaning of its own in French. It refers to the unnumbered pages at the beginning of a book where plates are displayed. To say there is no 'hors-texte' is thus also to refuse _not to count_ unnumbered pages. The implications of this for a discussion of "the dangerous supplement" will be obvious.

[YH]

So long since I read JD but I seem to remember somewhere he paraphrases 'text' as something like 'meaning-systems', thus there is no way of getting away from ('outside of') referentiality, and the problematic relation of sign to signified. On one level of course it's a quasi-Hegelian point about no immediacy without mediation, but here applied to meaning.

[Alain]

Christoph

The only thing I would add to bat020's precise response is that all the quotes I used (with the exception of the first one from Of Grammatology) were either from interviews or informal responses to criticism. This is not an excuse but an explanation for the imprecision in the way language and text were used.

I posted these quotes, in part, to begin an evaluation of deconstruction's significance for a politics. The fact that textuality, the differential play of forces, is always understood as experienced through language, has often been taken to mean everything is reducible to language. Perhaps most pernicious, is the view that Derrida is expressing some sort of mystical insight that can only be revealed to initiates.

What I hae always found interesting is Derrida's effort to find a language for philosophy's "other" - understood as an experience of what resists the tradional categories of metaphysics.

[bat020]

Incidentally Alain, Slavoj Zizek made similar comments regarding the radical political potential of the early Derrida in his recent memorial lecture here in London. And yours truly scribbled down some similar thoughts here:

http://bat.blogspot.com/2004/10/jacques-derrida.html

[Alain]

bat020

Thanks for the link. I will check it out. I am intrigued because I am personally dissatisfied with the "messianic without messianism" stuff but I am not sure why. Perhaps because it strikes me as too formalistic and not concrete enough, but I am not sure.

[Matt]

{So much more interesting over here...}

Alain, with regard to your final paragraph, I'm not at all convinced the so-called "messianic turn" (also Zizek's phrase) is really a useful way to look at JD, saying "he was always operating between the two, never willing to settle on either."

If pressed I would argue that this is a reductive way to view his body of work, that there are certain shifts as well as consistencies, yes, but they deserve to be understood in a more nuanced manner. Short of a detailed response right now on my part, you may be interested in Adam's related comments here:

http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/there_be_monsters_or_rosa_parks_not_psychotic/#3113

here:

http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/there_be_monsters_or_rosa_parks_not_psychotic/#3119

and here:

http://www.adamkotsko.com/weblog/2005/08/derrida-debates.html

[alphonsevanworden]

The text is Derrida's term for his expanded idea of the Marxist concept of the social. The textuality of everything refers to the organization and relations of everything, bodies, language, writing, electricity grids, etc.

[Alain]

Matt

Thanks for the references. I have read Adam's remarks and I am in general agreement with his approach. My only caution is that I think Derrida's work is very much an example of what he is describing: it is polysemic, plural, and open to a "double reading." It would seem to be in the spirit of deconstruction to read Derrida against Derrida, to find the lacuna within his text, those spaces where he cannot account for his own assumptions (not that I am the person to do it). The one place where I think he is most susceptible is in his idea of "a democracy to come." I love the spirit in which this is written, and it is at times inspiring. But given the very sparse quality of the "messianic," why is prophetic justice necessarily tied to democracy? Why not something else? I do not have an answer to these questions but I think it worth pondering as we think about the political.

[Matt]

I agree Alain, and I look forward to continuing to pick up threads from places such as here:

http://pasaudela.blogspot.com/2005/05/tolerance-is-not-end.html

(I see the comments haven't been erased by Haloscan quite yet)

and moving on.

[Alain]

matt

Thanks for linking to that excellent exchange. I think it is a good place to referrence as we keep the discussion going.

[bat020]

Alain: I agree that "messiancity without messianism" is formal, but in defence of Derrida he does concretise it: in one of his final interview he explicitly invokes the altermondialiste movement as a concrete political example of what he's getting at.

Matt: One of the things Derrida taught me was to be wary of pat distinctions between the reception history of a thinker and What That Thinker Really Thunk.

Of course the Derrida's alleged "messianic turn" is primarily an academic classification that is "problematised" the moment you look at what Derrida actually wrote as opposed by the academic recuperation thereof.

But there is nevertheless a tangible difference between the political charge of the "early Derrida" and the "late Derrida". Given that it's constantly stated that late D is "more political" than early D, I side with Alain's suggestion that this difference, insofar as it exists, is in fact a political retreat.

(nb not read the exchanges you linked to yet)

[Alain]

bat020

Thanks again for the thoughtful response. I am in general agreement and I am familiar with the interview you reference. But while his sympathies seem clear, I wonder if this really addresses the tension between such pronouncements and the content of his more "philosophic" work. (And I realize Derrida always consistently problematized this very distinction.)

I am reminded of the urban legend of Derrida at a conference in Kansas, where someone supposedly asks him if he is familiar with the Wizard of Oz. They explicitly point to the scene where Toto pulls the curtain back and reveals the Wizard to be a fraud - he further asks Derrida if he sees himself in this movie. He answers back "you mean the dog?"

[Christoph]

Thanks Bat, Alain, Matt, YH, Alphonse.

I will not talk about Derrida without having closely read anything (except a few pages back in undergrad days and the links provided), but I suspect the reduction of complexity to the question of truth seems one way to arrive at a useful (ok, felicitous:)) reading of Derrida's texts and their textuality, particularly with a view to the socio-political aspects that keep popping up here and elsewhere and that are more pressing than even back in the 60s, I would argue.

Anywho. 200 years ago, Novalis wrote: "We are past the time of generally applicable forms". I am yet to learn that deconstruction achieves more than pointing this out, but I look forward to it. And I probably will once I start reading D (which won't happen for a while, sadly).

[Matt]

"you mean the dog..." ha!

[Matt]

It's a particularly touching story/legend for those knowing how genuinely humble, and able to make light of himself, he was.

[Alain]

Christoph

I appreciate the comment. Ultimately you (and Novalis) might be right. Years ago, as a graduate student, I came to the same conclusion regarding Derrida's work - that it had limited applicability to the political. But, like Husserl said, philosophy is often about starting over.

[alphonsevanworden]

Perhaps the real political importance of Derrida is not - as he often admitted - to do with guiding, nourishing, nurturing, or joining the agents of change - he is limited here - but with attempting to disable the agents of reaction - his colleagues, his class - of some of their tools of self-justification and persuade them, if he could, to be less ruthless.

[Alain]

Alphonse

That makes alot of sense to me. Deconstruction does a brilliant job of robbing the establishment of its usual justifications. Perhaps once these trappings of good society have been disabled, one must look elsewhere for what is to be done?

[alphonsevanworden]

I believe Derrida was and remained to the end a real Marxist, in thought, and that he believed it would be for us to follow, or at least not to obstruct, but not to lead.

Looking at Latin America today, the place with the clearest signs of hope for the breaks to be put on the return to barbarism, I think he was right. The sense I always got from Derrida was kind of: not to let the forces of reaction - our own circles - feel good about themselves, and to listen to the forces of change, accept what is asked for and needed from us and render it without strings, advice or attempts at control.

[alphonsevanworden]

I know Matt thinks I attribute too much marxist orthodoxy to Derrida, but I can't help it, it's what I see in those texts.

[bat020]

The text made me do it! Spoken like a true Derridean, Alphonse.

Generally agree that JD's political "usefulness" lies in disabling/displacing bourgeois ideological formations rather than leading the way forwards, so to speak. In fact if memory serves me right JD pretty much says this is what his project involves in the first chapter of Of Grammatology.

Without getting too "stagist" about all this, one could argue that this "negative" displacement exercise is a necessary precondition to a "postive" refoundation of radical philosophy. On this note it's interesting that Badiou explicitly acknowledges his debt to Derrida's critique of Heidegger in the footnotes to Being and Event.

Also - given the fact that academic presentations of the "politics of deconstruction" invariably position him in contrast to Marxism, I'd say there's a fair case for "bending the stick" and insisting, no matter how unreasonably, that yes, Derrida is a committed Marxist and has to be read as such...

[alphonsevanworden]

"Without getting too "stagist" about all this, one could argue that this "negative" displacement exercise is a necessary precondition to a "postive" refoundation of radical philosophy."

I am a little skeptical about the need for this. I am doubtful that the current conditions and the strength of capital is owing to humanity's lack of radical enough philosophy. It may be there is no new philosophy required. It may be the theory we have is adequate and has been for some time, and only the practise is left to be performed.

[Alain]

Alphonse

I am in completel agreement, with an asterisk. We may yet attain a theory that is able to point to its own effective praxis, one that also provides for its implementation. Perhaps wishful thinking, but I am but a dreamer.