(In)finite responsibility: How to avoid the contrary effects of Derrida's ethics

Philosophy and Social Criticism

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 467-481

  Evink, Eddo ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

Aporia; Deconstruction; Emmanuel Levinas; Finitude; Forgiveness; Gift; Infinity; Jacques Derrida; Responsibility

Indexed keywords

EID: 71549148376     PISSN: 01914537     EISSN: 1461734X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0191453708102096     Document Type: Article

References (117)

1. Jacques Derrida, Force de loi: Le 'Fondement mystique de l'autorité' (Paris: Galilée, 1994), p. 21.
2. Trans. M. Quaintance as 'Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority', Cardozo Law Review 11 (1990): 920-1045: (929).
3. cf. Jacques Derrida, Papier Machine: Le ruban de machine à écrire et autres réponses (Paris: Galilée, 2001), p. 306.
4. It is not the purpose of this article to exactly trace the timetable or the decisive moments in this development. One might think here of the 'de Man' and 'Heidegger affair' in the late 1980s that may have provoked a more explicit elaboration of political and ethical themes.
5. cf. Geoffrey Bennington, 'Derrida and the Political', in G. Bennington, Interrupting Derrida (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 19. The change of emphasis can be found already in Derrida's texts in the early 1980s.
6. one of the first texts in which it occurs is D'un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie (Paris: Galilée, 1983).
7. trans. J. P. Leavy Jr, as 'Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy', Semeia 23 (1982): 63-96.
8. Although Derrida refuses to speak of 'the deconstruction' or 'Deconstruc- tion' as a method, he gives a quite exact description of 'a sort of general strategy of deconstruction', which gives at least the impression of a method. He describes deconstruction as a double gesture: the hierarchical opposi- tions are turned around, and then their relation becomes indecidable, i.e. both poles of the opposition cannot any more be distinguished exactly. The oppositions appear to be constructions that are constantly being deranged and undermined by differential tensions in the textile of the text in which they are constructed.
9. See Jacques Derrida, 'Positions: Entretien avec Jean- Louis Houdebine et Guy Scarpetta', in Jacques Derrida, Positions (Paris: Minuit, 1972), pp. 51-133 (56).
10. trans. A. Bass as 'Positions: Interview with Jean-Louis Houdebine and Guy Scarpetta', in Jacques Derrida, Positions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 1981).
11. Jacques Derrida, 'Signature événement contexte', in his Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Minuit, 1972), pp. 367-393 (393).
12. trans. A. Bass as 'Signature Event Context', in Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
13. cf. Rodolphe Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 163-76.
14. See, for example, the deconstruction of the sign in de Saussure, in De la gram- matologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967), pp. 15-108.
15. trans. G. Chakravorty Spivak as Of Grammatology (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).
16. the deconstruction of the sign and of the 'living presence' in Husserl, in La voix et le phénomène (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967).
17. trans. D. B. Allison as Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
18. and of Plato's pharmakon in 'La pharmacie de Platon', in La dis- sémination (Paris: Seuil, 1972), pp. 69-198.
19. trans. B. Johnson as 'Plato's Pharmacy', in Dissemination (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
20. Another description of the quasi-transcendental is that a condition of possi- bility is always also a condition of impossibility. i.e. it makes the appear- ance of something possible, but in the same moment its completeness and purity are made impossible. Cf. Derrida, Marges, p. 391.
21. Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc (Paris: Galilée, 1990), pp. 49, 106, 116, 234.
22. trans. S. Weber as Limited Inc (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), pp. 20, 54, 59, 129.
23. Jacques Derrida and Pierre-Jean Labarrière, Altérités (Paris: Osiris, 1986), p. 92.
24. Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror, pp. 86+185, 100, 105, 146-7, 161, ff.
25. Geoffrey Bennington, 'Derridabase', in Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Paris: Seuil, 1991), pp. 216+278, 232, 256, 258.
26. trans. G. Bennington as 'Derridabase', in Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 232-3, 251-2, 276-7, 301.
27. Jacques Derrida, 'Comment ne pas parler. Dénégations', in Jacques Derrida, Psyché: Inventions de l'autre (Paris: Galilée, 1987), p. 535-9
28. trans. K. Frieden as 'How to Avoid Speaking: Denials', in Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser (eds), Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativity in Literature and Literary Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
29. Jacques Derrida, Sauf le nom (Paris: Galilée, 1993).
30. trans. J. P. Leavy Jr as 'Sauf le nom (Post-Scriptum)', in Jacques Derrida, On the Name, ed. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 35-85.
31. cf. John D. Caputo, 'A Commentary: Deconstruction in a Nutshell', in John Caputo (ed.) Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), pp. 29-208 (156-80).
32. John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 135-8.
33. Derrida also calls this the affirmative side of deconstruc- tion, the other side of the more outstanding feature of disruption. see, for example, Derrida, 'Psyche ́: Invention de l'autre', in Psyché, pp. 11-61.
34. trans. C. Porter as 'Psyché: Inventions of the Other', in Lindsay Waters and Wlad Godzich (eds) Reading de Man Reading (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), pp. 25-65.
35. Jacques Derrida, 'Lettre à un ami japonais', in ibid., pp. 387-93.
36. The fact that this turn is only a shift of emphasis, shows the great contin- uity in Derrida's oeuvre. Simon Critchley is right when he remarks: 'In my experience of reading Derrida, the closer one looks, the harder it is to find any substantial difference between earlier and later work.
37. I am always astonished by the extraordinary thematic continuity of Derrida's work and the persistence of his central concerns.' Simon Critchley, 'Deconstruction and Pragmatism - Is Derrida a Private Ironist or a Public Liberal?', in Chantal Mouffe (ed.) Deconstruction and Pragmatism (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 19-40 (31).
38. Jacques Derrida, 'Violence et métaphysique', in Jacques Derrida, L'écriture et la différence (Paris: Seuil, 1967), pp. 117-228.
39. trans. A. Bass as 'Violence and Metaphysics', in Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 79-153.
40. Jacques Derrida, 'En ce moment même dans cet ouvrage me voici', in Psyché, pp. 159-202.
41. trans. R. Berezdivin as 'At This Very Moment in this Work Here I Am', in Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley, Re-Reading Levinas (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 11-48.
42. Jacques Derrida, Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas (Paris: Galilée, 1997). In some respects Derrida seems to be moving further away from Levinas, e.g. with regard to his opinions on messianic politics and the state of Israel; see pp. 121-6, 131-54, 195-6 n., 202-3.
43. In several publications Robert Bernasconi has given a sort of defense of Levinas, by pointing out that Derrida's deconstruction of Levinas' ethics is not a critique but fits into Levinas' own reflections on the status of his work.
44. See Robert Bernasconi, 'The Trace of Levinas in Derrida', in David Wood and Robert Bernasconi (eds) Derrida and Difference (Coventry, Warks: Parousia Press, 1985), pp. 13-29.
45. Robert Bernasconi, 'Levinas and Derrida: The Question of the Closure of Metaphysics', in R. A. Cohen (ed.) Face to Face with Levinas (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1986), pp. 181-202.
46. Robert Bernasconi, 'Deconstruction and the Possibility of Ethics', in John Sallis, Deconstruction and Philosophy. The Texts of Jacques Derrida (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 122-39.
47. Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley, 'Editors' Introduction', in Bernasconi and Critchley (eds) Re-Reading Levinas, pp. xi-xviii (xii-xv).
48. cf. Edith Wyschogrod, 'Derrida, Levinas, and Violence', in Hugh J. Silverman (ed.) Derrida and Deconstruction (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 182-200.
49. Derrida, Limited Inc (Paris: Galilée, 1990), p. 221.
50. Derrida, 'Violence et métaphysique', pp. 117-228 (164).
51. Derrida, Adieu, p. 94.
52. Jacques Derrida, Passions (Paris: Galilée, 1993), p. 40.
53. Derrida and Labarrière, Altérités, pp. 70-7.
54. Derrida's 'ethicity' also shows parallels with the thought of Heidegger, whose Letter on Humanism reduces ethics as a part of a platonic and metaphysical classification of philosophy to a more profound 'thinking of Being' that precedes ethics and ontology. According to Heidegger the 'thinking of Being' is also an 'original ethics' that asks for the 'ethos' of humankind, for its place of residence in Being. In a comparable way Derrida discusses in his quasi-transcendental ethicity what makes ethics possible and impossible.
55. cf. Martin Heidegger, 'Brief über den Humanismus', in Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: Gesamtausgabe 9, Vittorio Klostermann, 1978[1967]), pp. 313-64 (353-8).
56. Bernasconi, 'Deconstruction and the Possibility of Ethics', pp. 122-4.
57. Geoffrey Bennington, Interrupting Derrida (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 34-6.
58. Jacques Derrida, L'autre cap (Paris: Minuit, 1991), p. 116.
59. Jacques Derrida, Apories (Paris: Galilée, 1996), p. 37.
60. Derrida, Force de loi, pp. 26+52
61. Derrida, Passions, p. 9.
62. cf. Richard Beardsworth, Derrida & the Political (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 25-45.
63. According to Derrida, an 'all-or-nothing-logics' is inherent in all scientific or philosophical conceptualization. In this conceptualization Derrida brings binary logics to a head in order to demonstrate how every concept bears in itself an insolvable contradiction, a difference that by no Aufhebung can be raised and removed.
64. See Derrida, Limited Inc, pp. 210-32.
65. Derrida, Apories, pp. 37-8.
66. Derrida, Passions, pp. 21-3.
67. Derrida, L'autre cap, pp. 43-7+70-1.
68. Derrida, Force de loi, pp. 50-63.
69. Jacques Derrida, Du droit à la philosophie (Paris: Galilée, 1990), pp. 35-6.
70. Jacques Derrida, De quoi demain... Dialogue (Paris: Fayard, Galilée, 2001), p. 213.
71. Jacques Derrida, De l'hospitalité - Anne Dufourmantelle invite Jacques Derrida à répondre (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1997), p. 77.
72. Jacques Derrida, 'Artefactual- ités', in Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, Échographies de la télévision: Entretiens filmés (Paris: Galilée, INA, 1996), pp. 11-35.
73. Jacques Derrida, 'Il faut bien manger ou le calcul du sujet', in Jacques Derrida, Points de suspension: Entretiens (Paris: Galilée, 1992), pp. 269-301 (287).
74. trans. P. Connor and A. Ronell as 'Eating Well, or the Calculation of the Subject', in Jacques Derrida, Points..., Interviews, 1974-1994, ed. Elisabeth Weber (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 255-87 (272-3).
75. Derrida, Adieu, pp. 60-9, 205.
76. cf. Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l'extériorité (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), pp. 187-90.
77. Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1974), pp. 195-210.
78. Jacques Derrida, Donner la mort (Paris: Galilée, 1999), p. 101.
79. trans. D. Wills as The Gift of Death (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 71.
80. It is surprising to see how Derrida's philosophy of difference leads to a paradoxical identity instead of difference. Nevertheless, this idea of absolute alterity that makes all alterities equal, can be found in several texts: Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx: L'État de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale (Paris: Galilée, 1993), p. 273.
81. trans. P. Kamuf as Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New Inter- national (New York: Routledge, 1994).
82. Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié (Paris: Galilée, 1994), pp. 40+259.
83. trans. G. Collins as Politics of Friendship (London: Verso, 1997).
84. Derrida, Sauf le nom, pp. 92+95-6.
85. An explanation of the several meanings of tout autre est tout autre can be found in Derrida, Donner la mort, pp. 114-22+82-8.
86. An explanation of the several meanings of tout autre est tout autre can be found in Derrida, Donner la mort, pp. 97-104,
87. An explanation of the several meanings of tout autre est tout autre can be found in Derrida, Donner la mort, pp. 168
88. An explanation of the several meanings of tout autre est tout autre can be found in Derrida, Donner la mort pp. 176+67-73.
89. 'Remarks on Deconstruction and Prag- matism', in Mouffe, Deconstruction and Pragmatism, pp. 77-88 (86).
90. Derrida, Force de loi, pp. 56-60+965-973.
91. Derrida, Spectres de Marx, pp. 56+100-2, 111-12, 124-7, 265-8.
92. Jacques Derrida, Donner le temps, La fausse monnaie (Paris: Galilée, 1991), pp. 18-32.
93. cf. Caputo, 'A Commentary: Deconstruction in a Nut- shell', in Caputo (ed.) Deconstruction in a Nutshell, pp. 29-208 (141).
94. Caputo, Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, p. 163.
95. Jacques Derrida, 'De l'économie restreinte à l'économie générale', in Derrida, L'écriture et la différence, pp. 369-409.
96. Jacques Derrida, 'La différance', in Derrida, Marges de la philosophie, pp. 3-29.
97. Cf. Maria Margaroni, 'The Time of a Gift', Philosophy Today 48(1) (Spring 2004): 49-62.
98. Derrida, De quoi demain..., pp. 259-60+263-5.
99. Derrida, Donner la mort, pp. 187-205.
100. Jacques Derrida, 'Le siècle et le pardon: Entretien avec Michel Wieviorka', in Foi et Savoir, following Le Siècle et le Pardon (Paris: Seuil, 2000), pp. 101-33 (110, 119).
101. Jacques Derrida, Sur parole. Instan- tanées philosophiques (Paris: l'Aube, 1999), pp. 137-8.
102. Derrida, Donner la mort, pp. 170+192.
103. Derrida, 'Le siècle et le pardon', pp. 119-20+125.
104. Derrida, Sur parole, p. 138.
105. Derrida, Papier Machine, pp. 394-7.
106. Derrida, 'Une hospitalité à l'infini', in Mohammed Seffahi (ed.) Manifeste pour l'hospitalité. Autour de Jacques Derrida (Grigny: l'Aube, 1999), pp. 97-106 (97-101).
107. Jacques Derrida, 'Responsabilité et hospitalité', in ibid., pp. 111-24 (113-17, 122-4).
108. Jacques Derrida, 'Débat: une hospitalité sans condition', in ibid., pp. 133-42 (137-8).
109. Jacques Derrida, 'Accueil, éthique, droit et politique', in ibid., pp. 143-54 + (143-6).
110. Derrida, Adieu, passim.
111. Derrida, De quoi demain..., pp. 101-4.
112. Jacques Derrida, 'Arte- factualités', in Derrida and Stiegler, Échographies de la télévision, pp. 11-35+(24-8).
113. Jacques Derrida, Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort (Paris: Galilée, 1997).
114. A comparable critique on Derrida's own elaboration of the ethical dimension of deconstruction in his work can be found in Nancy Fraser, 'The Force of Law. Metaphysical or Political?', in Nancy Holland (ed.) Feminist Interpret- ations of Jacques Derrida (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), pp. 157-63.
115. Other interpretations of Derrida's texts can be given as well, of course, in which these contrary effects are avoided, by emphasizing the singular outcome of a singular deconstructive strategy. This article, however, focuses on the quasi-transcendental logic that can be found within Derrida's decon- structions and on an elaboration of this logic in his later texts that does not necessarily lead to contrary effects, but at least runs the risk of in- effectiveness - a risk that Derrida has not always been able to avoid.
116. Cf. David Wood: 'There may be no absolute justification, but whoever thought justification required absolutes?', in his 'Responsibility Reinscribed (and How)', in Jonathan Dronsfield and Nick Midgley, Responsibilities of Deconstruction: PLI Warwick Journal of Philosophy 6 (Summer 1997): 103-13+(109).
117. Derrida, 'Le siècle et le pardon', p. 114.