Derrida,
Authorial Intention and the Hermeneutics of Charity (drafted 8/6/05)
What follows is a purely wannabee
amateur philosopher’s attempt to explain the work of Jacques Derrida, motivated
by the sheer enjoyment of reading about his work. A secondary motive is to make
it at least partially clear that Derrida cannot and should not be summarily
dismissed, ignored, left unread or ascribed whatever meaning one chooses, as a
result of his alleged denial of authorial intention (see here for an example of such a
treatment of Derrida). This essay is broken into three sections:
·
Derrida’s Views of Texts, Authors, Truth, etc.
·
Denying Authorial Intent :
Does It Entail Self-Referential Absurdity?
·
The Hermeneutics of Charity &
Deconstruction’s Value to Christian Faith and Thought
A)
Derrida’s
Views of Texts, Authors, Truth etc.
I don’t pretend to have fully understood Derrida (not
sure anyone can) but I hope this brief sampling below will give a good working
definition/grasp of what the man ‘intended’ to convey through his writings
(smile).
1. Derrida’s View of Texts
The following quotes illustrate the transitory,
quasi-real moment-by-moment nature of texts. They appear only to fade away
because of its inherent and inseparable
connection with another signifier, an infinite chain of condemned symbols
which cannot live without each other but dies the moment the other appears.
Derrida has glimpsed into the abyss of textual signifiers and has concluded
that there’s ‘no way out’ i.e. we cannot get from the signifiers to the
signified (see Grenz’s quote below, “There is no
signified apart from the signifier”). Textual
reference, therefore, becomes
complicated. Not impossible[!],
just complicated (see the quotes below about an ‘other’ beyond language):
“A text is no
longer a finished corpus of writing, some context enclosed in a book or its
margins, but a differential network, a fabric of traces referring endlessly to
something other than itself, to other differential traces.” (Derrida, Of Grammatology, quoted in Anthony Thiselton, New
Horizons in Hermeneutics, p.104).
Note this implies that a piece of work, A, always
‘leads on’ to another piece of work, B, and so on.
“For Derrida…texts are an endless series of ‘traces’ or
‘tracks’; they are traces in the sense of being products of previous
traces, and tracks in the sense of moving ‘on the way to’ other traces. If
language is like a chessboard, Derrida uses the metaphor of the ‘bottomless
chessboard’: there is no underlying ground to support it, and play has no
meaning beyond itself…Because the sign is a trace
or a mark, it needs to be left
intact. But because the sign is a trace in the sense of a track that encourages onward movement, the mark also needs to be
erased. It stands both as a fleeting presence, and as that which must be ‘under
erasure’. Thus Derrida will write a word, cross it out because it is not
accurate, and print both the word and its deletion because, in his judgment,
both are necessary.” (Thiselton, p.108)
A sign will always lead to another sign. Thus, a language is a chain of signifiers referring to other
signifiers, in which each signifier in turn becomes what is signified by
another signifier. And because the textual location (the immediate context in
which they appear) in which a signifier is embedded constantly changes, its meaning can never be fully determined…meaning is never static, never given
once-for-all. Instead, meaning
changes over time and with changing contexts. For this reason, we must
continually ‘defer’ or postpone our tendency to attribute meaning.”
(Stanley Grenz, A
Primer on Postmodernism, p.144)
“There is no
signified that exists apart from the signifier – no mental concept that exists
apart from the word that we attach to that thought…The meaning of writing
arises from an inter-play between presence and absence. Meaning occurs because of the presence of a ‘trace’ of a now-absent
reality or a trace of its former connections to other elements.” (Grenz, p.145).
This encourages readers to look for hidden or ‘absent’
meanings in texts as part of the exercise of deconstruction whereby one resists/undermines dominant (or
‘totalitarian’) voices, seeking to discover and expose repressed themes. Presumably,
this ought to reveal the ‘true’ meaning of whatever it is we’re deconstructing.
The paradox is, when/if this ‘true’ meaning can be
discovered it is itself vulnerable to
deconstruction ad infinitum! (Note:
There’s nothing here about attributing nonsense to whomever we please.)
2. Derrida’s View of Authors
Derrida’s view of authors reflect his influence by Nietzche and Freud, both of whom, “exercised hermeneutical
suspicious of all conscious articulation, on the ground that this may reflect
disguises thrown by unconscious forces” (Thilselton,
p.111). Although Grenz felt that Derrida contains the
metaphysical implication that there is no authorial self ‘behind’ a text (see
below), further reading suggests that Derrida did not deny the presence of an author. He merely denied the permanency or all-domineering strength of
that author’s influence on the text.
“Both meaning and
consciousness are dependent on language. There is no signified that exists
apart from the signifier – no mental concept that exists apart from the word
that we attach to that thought. The concept implies that there is no self standing beneath or preceding linguistic activity.”
(Grenz, p.145)
“Deconstruction
wants to trouble the expression ‘reference’ as an excessively subjectivistic term which overestimates the ego cogito
of the speaking subject while underestimating
the power of the systems within which the speaker operates…Every claim to
the ‘things themselves’ is a claim made within and by means of the resources of
certain semi-systems, linguistic and otherwise, situated within the framework
of a complex set of contextual presupposition which can never be saturated. (John Caputo, Prayers &
Tears of Jacques Derrida, p.17).
“(The) belief that Derrida has no concern
with authorial intentions is itself a
misreading of his typical concern to
play off such intentions against structural constraints that both limit and
subvert authorial meaning. This is very clear in his early readings of Husserl, Saussure and Rousseau,
and continues throughout his negotiations with Heidegger.” (David Wood,
Introduction to Derrida: A Critical Reader, p.2) (emphasis
mine)
“The effects or
structure of a text are not reducible to its ‘truth’, to the intended meaning
of its presumed author.” (Derrida, Otobiographies, quoted in Thiselton,
New Horizons, p.111)
Again, notice that Derrida doesn’t deny that an author intended something.
He says that whatever was intended cannot be the ‘fixed’ meaning of said
author. He held that we tend to put too much weight on our subjective
intentions, our autonomy, our power as authors. We
fail to perceive that we’re in our society’s clutches, unknowingly perpetuating
its preferences, discriminations, power-plays, etc.
Derrida seems to me to be saying that as authors,
whilst we continue to write with full intention and meaning, the moment our
words leave us they virtually cease to become ‘ours’, they join the play of
semiotics and signifiers and their reference become a function of what society decides they will mean. In this
way, the meaning of texts transcends their originating author, ricocheting back
onto him, ‘writing’ him in the ultimate paradox of inversion.
A quick example of how texts may transcend the author
could be the writings of the Old Testament Prophets whose precise/complete
connotations may have eluded even them (e.g. Isaiah’s prophecy of the birth of
Christ, the Suffering Servant, etc.), whose meaning, significance and
application have grown far beyond what they imagined. Another way to illustrate
this would be to see how modern authors are always explaining what they really meant by a particular phrase or
quote, or how they’re always ‘adding on’ explanations after explanations about
what they wrote, what their motives were and how they were misunderstood, how they
‘saw’ certain pieces evidence, how these influenced their thought-patterns and
why they shouldn’t be blamed for drawing a certain conclusion and so on. It
appears that not only is meaning at least hardly
ever static, hardly given once-for-all, it seems that authors have far less autonomy than we
may initially feel they do.
3. Derrida’s View of Truth
Does Derrida deny truth? Well, on one hand in 1979, he
wrote:
“There is no such
thing either as the truth of Nietzsche, or of Nietzsche’s text…Indeed there is no such thing as a truth in
itself. But only a surfeit of it. Even if it should be for me, about me, truth is
plural.” (Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche’s
Styles, p.103)
On the other, a few years later:
“(It) goes
without saying that in no case is it a question of a discourse against truth or
against science. (This is impossible and absurd, as is every heated accusation
on this subject)…I repeat…we must have
truth.” (Derrida, Positions, p.105)
“Those who
venture along this path (of deconstruction), it seems to me, need not set
themselves up in opposition to the principle of reason, nor need they give way
to ‘irrationalism’” (Derrida, The
Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of its Pupils)
David Couzens Hoy, one of
Derrida’s more balanced interpreters, provides some clarity here:
“(Derrida’s
nuanced view suggests that) truth is a
trivial notion, in that there are many statements that are true (e.g. “the
grass is green”, “the sky is blue”, etc.). The question is why some statements
are taken to be not only true, but more significant than others. Truths only
ever appear in a context of interpretation, and interpretations select subsets
of truths.” (David Couzens Hoy, Splitting the Difference in Working
Through Derrida, p.242)
Derrida, on this view, seems to be saying that there
are more important areas to think about than ‘whether or not truth exists’. He
seems to want to take the philosophical game to a higher level, at the risk of
being misunderstood to deny rationality and reason. He probably feels that
truth is over-rated, given the glut of truth-claims available to justify the
equal glut of oppression in society.
I’m reminded here of the scene in the Gospel of John
when Jesus was questioned by Pilate, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus
answered with another question, “Is that your own idea or did others talk to
you about me?” (John 18:33-34) Jesus sought to probe not merely Pilate’s
intellectual grasp of reality, but his heart’s response to it. In other words,
intent was more important than content. How we respond to truth, what we do
with it, how we show it, how we embody or live it, is what catches God’s eye.
Not our mere understanding of it.
Likewise, perhaps Derrida sought to undermine and
cause havoc to rationality, reason, systematization of thought and truth in order that we may be shaken out of
our complacency and forced to reconsider ideas we have suppressed, to rethink
the possibilities of contradictions, inappropriate domineering tendencies and
outright prejudices in our positions.
“Even Derrida does not wish to destroy systematic thought, but only its
claims to finality and totality at the expense and repression of other ideas
(thus, I believe that Gadamer’s reference to the inexhaustibility of meaning is
preferable to undecidability,
which tends to be misunderstood).” (Patrick Franklin, Deconstruction: Prophetic Theology?)
“The critique of
logo-centrism is above all else the
search for the ‘other’ and the ‘other of language’”(Derrida, quoted in
“I totally refuse
the label of nihilism…Deconstruction is
not an enclosure in nothingness, but an openness towards the other.”
(Derrida, Moscou)
4. Summary
In a word/trace(?), we ‘wake up’ amidst a pre-given
system of thought/language/textuality outside of
which ‘reference’ cannot penetrate, behind which ‘authors’ are
minimized/irrelevant at best and lost at worst, within which (or as a result of
which) ‘meaning’ is in never-ending flux. We, readers and writers alike, cannot
escape this Matrix-like condition (hence his infamous “There is nothing beyond
the text.”) All that is spoken/written/read within this system of existence is
influenced by the system’s prejudices, the culture’s ideologies and
biases.
Deconstruction may be seen as a tool for revolt, the search for meaning, the pounding away at
‘presenting’ realities, a catalyst to encourage alterity
or contrary perspectives, challenging the status quo and any notion that we can
‘represent Reality’ accurately, a notion also known as logo-centrism (“The critique of logo-centrism is above all
else the search for the ‘other’ and the ‘other of language’”).
Yet, deconstruction was always an instrument birthed,
and therefore tragically constrained, within
the system itself. And, till his death, Derrida always believed in an Other ‘beyond’ the system (see his obituary by Caputo) but an Other inaccessible apart
from, and therefore forever elusive as a result of, the system.
B) Denying Authorial Intent : Does It Entail
Self-Referential Absurdity?
Any “denial of authorial intent” can take at least
three forms:
1.
There is no author
2.
An author exists, but he has no intentions whatsoever for his text
i.e. he refuses to ascribe any meaning to his work.
3.
An author exists and he has an
intention for the text but this meaning is rendered inexhaustible (or ‘undescribable’) given the place of the author and text
within a symbolic system with more influence than both, causing the text to
take on a life of its own.
I hope it’s been shown in the previous section that
Derrida’s view best approximates no.3 which simply does not justify EITHER a)
ignoring what an author originally meant in his writing, OR b) putting
nonsensical words in an author’s mouth.
Assume that Bernard wrote/said, “The pigeons have
flown” and somehow the passage, via the intricacies and methods of the social
system vis-à-vis deconstruction, finally ‘obtains’ the meaning, “The
politicians have cheated the country.” If this was the case, it still wouldn’t
justify ignoring what Bernard originally
wrote. Neither would it make sense to say that Bernard wrote, “The pigs have
faked their death.” The best one could do was to say that what Bernard wrote could end up meaning something like,
“The pigs have faked their death”, yet even
then one cannot nonchalantly put words in Bernard’s mouth.
Also, note that had Derrida adopted position 1 and/or
2, this still wouldn’t justify
fancifully ascribing gibberish to Derrida! In the first case, there is no author, so saying “The author
said/meant XYZ” is false. In the second case, the author denies intentions altogether, so the phrase, “The author
said/meant/intended XYZ” is also false and inapplicable.
Am I therefore saying that Derrida is immune to the
charge of self-stultification? No. In fact, as any philosophy enthusiast can
easily show, Derrida’s view - that the meaning of texts continually fluctuate –
can be applied back on itself,
thereby rendering it self-contradictory and incoherent as a statement of
reality. Unsurprisingly, Derrida accepts this reduction ad absurdum; he goes against totalitarianism of all kinds
and one can imagine he wouldn’t want his theories to be exempt either.
Deconstruction is not immune to deconstruction. Still, he would most likely
urge his readers and de-constructors to move on, to not stop with his
philosophy but carry on the task of finding the ‘absent meanings’ in the
‘presence’ of logo-centric texts wherever they are found.
C) The Hermeneutics of
Charity & Deconstruction’s Value to Christian Faith and Thought
On a final - and more serious note, IMO - it’s
troubling that my friend didn’t bother checking up on what Derrida actually
said before virtually dismissing him. My friend felt he didn’t need to because,
in his words, “Derrida wasn’t big on clear communication.” I find this to be
true as well. Still, the issues raised above notwithstanding, I think we should
be reminded that as Christians we ought to care about what authors meant regardless of what they write. My friend
should’ve proceeded with verifying Derrida’s actual works and some of his
apologists AS PART OF his Christian responsibility to be fair and respectful to
others, even/especially opponents (not to mention with a huge influence on
society). Because by the same logic, it would seem that
Christians are justified in killing anyone who denied the sanctity of life,
even his own (since the guy isn’t “big on life”?).
Jesus’ dictum was to “love our enemies”, not “sin like they do”. We are
not to stoop to our enemies’ level, but to demonstrate that we care about being clear and truthful
even if they don’t.
If God is essentially relational, then I believe our
discourse has to reflect this concern for relationships as well. A hermeneutics
of charity (something I’ve been ‘pushing’ and am glad/inspired that the
Emergent Church Network embodies this spirit most effectively) involves:
If even half of the above are applied, it’s more
likely to we will gain a more credible place in their minds of seekers,
pre-Christians and even anti-Christians alike. Needless to say, triumphalism, pride, sarcasm and rhetoric should have no
place in Christian discourse, especially towards those for whom you, the
Christian thinker/writer, may be the only conduit of Christ’s warmth and
presence they know.
Finally, I’d like to highlight examples of
deconstruction’s value for Christian faith and thought. This is an area I’m
only beginning, yet eager, to explore. Reading recommendations would include
Patrick Franklin’s article (also a very good introduction to Derrida’s thought)
and John Caputo’s Prayers & Tears of
Jacques Derrida (complicated, like Derrida himself, no doubt).
Deconstruction helps question the ‘finality’ of any
particular interpretation of Biblical texts. Thilselton
cites positively the deconstructive work of John Dominic Crossan
(in particularly his writings on parable, aphrisms
and inter-textual traditions) and David Clines whose study of Job revealed
otherwise unnoticed features in the text.
“Mere
interpretations of texts can themselves take on the status of controlling
paradigms in our lives, which, when they become both all-powerfully directive
and unchallengeably ‘for-ever fixed’ begin to assume
a quasi-idolatrous role, as securities in which we place absolute trust. Illusions need to be dispelled…The metaphor of the
text as movement or as growing texture, rather than a fixed and static entity,
calls attention to the capacity of biblical texts to lead us ever further on; not to let us rest in the illusion that by
once reading them we have completed a finished journey, as if we had ‘mastered’
them.” (Thilselton, p.124)
“Deconstruction
gives old texts new readings, old traditions new twists… Deconstruction exposes
them to the trauma of something unexpected, something to come, of the tout autre
(‘the other’) which remains ever on the margins of texts and traditions, which
eludes and elicits our discourse, which shakes and solicits our institutions. Deconstruction warns against letting a
discursive tradition close over or shut down, silence or exclude.” (Caputo,
p.18)
“We do not in some deep way know who we are or what
the world is. That is not nihilism but a quasi-religious confession, the
beginning of wisdom, the onset of faith and compassion. Derrida
exposes
the doubt that
does not merely insinuate itself into faith but that in fact constitutes faith,
for faith is faith precisely in the face of doubt and uncertainty, the passion
of non-knowing. Violence on the other hand arises from having a low
tolerance for uncertainty so that Derrida shows us why religious violence is
bad faith.” (Caputo, Jacques Derrida: An
Obituary)
Deconstruction humbles us in our quest to know and
talk about God. It reminds us that our knowledge of God remains provisional,
even as it grows in truth, clarity and consistency (
“By inscribing
theology within the trace, by describing faith as always and already marked by
the trace, by différance
and undecidability, deconstruction demonstrates that
faith is always faith, and this in
virtue of one of the best descriptions of faith we possess, which is that faith
is always ‘through a glas
darkly’.” (Caputo, Prayers & Tears,
p.6)
In closing, perhaps
“Now we see but a
poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know
fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope
and love. But the greatest of these is
love.” (1Cor 13:12-13)
Alwyn Lau,
8th June 2005