Deconstruction • Derrida

Transitions

General Editor: julian Wolfreys

Published Titles

NEW HISTORICISM AND CULTURAL MATERIALISM John Brannigan

POSTMODERN NARRATIVE THEORY Mark Currie

DECONSTRUCTION • DERRIDA Julian Wolfreys

Forthcoming Titles

MARXIST LITERARY AND CULTURAL THEORY Moyra Haslett

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY Claire Jones

LITERARY FEMINISMS Ruth Robbins

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND LITERATURE Andrew Roberts

Transitions

Deconstruction • Derrida

Julian Wolfreys

Macmillan Education

ISBN 978-0-333-68777-2 ISBN 978-1-349-26618-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-26618-0

DECONSTRUCTION- DERRIDA

Copyright © 1998 by Julian Wolfreys

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address:

St. Martin's Press, Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

First published in the United States of America in 1998

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.

ISBN 978-0-312-21392-3 clothbound ISBN 978-0-312-21393-0 paperback

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wolfreys, Julian, 1958-Deconstruction, Derrida I Julian Wolfreys. p. em.- (Transitions) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-21392-3 (cloth). -ISBN 978-0-312-21393-0 (paper) I. Derrida, Jacques-Contributions to criticism. 2. Criticism. 3. Deconstruction. 4. Literature-Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series: Transitions (St. Martin's Press) PN75.D45W65 1998 80 1'.95'092--dc21 97-52613

CIP

For

PeggyKamuf

Contents

General Editor's Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations

Introduction: 'Deconstruction, if such a thing exists ... ' • Responses • Programmed· excuses • Good reading as such

Part I The Make-Believe of a Beginning

1. Another Introduction I En tamer. In Medias Res or, Is There Some ThingCalled 'Deconstruction'? • First bite • Second bite • Third bite • Fourth bite • Fifth bite • Sixth bite

2. Preparatory to Anything Else: Derrida's Interests

ix xi

xiii

1 1 3 9

21 21 25 29 31 47 49

60 • The writing of identities • identities of writing 60 • ... writing... 64 • ... narration and text . . . 75 • ... the gift... 81 • ... the proper name . . . 85 • ... strategic justification (an internal passe-partout, of sorts) ... 89 • ... the title (and the question of literature) . . . 93 • ... dating... 103 • ... hymenography: the example of the diary... 107

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Part II Preparatory to Anything Else: Singular Examples or, Identity, Spectrality, Undecidability

3. Writing (of) Identities: Facing up to Derrida or, the Example of Paul Valery 119 • Looking/writing: for example, Valery? 121

4. The Hauntological Example: The City as the Haunt of Writing in the Texts of lain Sinclair 138 • First apparition 138 • Second apparition 140 • Third apparition 153 • Fourth apparition 157

5. Heart? of Darkness? Reading in the Dark with J. Hillis Miller and Joseph Conrad 159 • A question of reading 159 • Impossible topographies 161 • 'Through a glass, darkly' 164 • Tracing the interminable 172 • Trauma and reiteration 178

Part III Some Supplementary Afterword(s)

Afterword(s): Contrary to the 'Logic of the Heading'

Notes Annotated Bibliography Bibliography Index of Proper Names and Titles

185

193 206 221 236

General Editor's Preface

Transitions: transition-em, n. of action. 1. A passing or passage from one condition, action or (rarely) place, to another. 2. Passage in thought, speech, or writing, from one subject to another. 3. a. The passing from one note to another b. The passing from one key to another, modulation. 4. The passage from an earlier to a later stage of development or formation ... change from an earlier style to a later; a style of intermediate or mixed character ... the historical passage of language from one well-defined stage to another.

The aim of Transitions is to explore passages and movements in criti­cal thought, and in the development of literary and cultural interpre­tation. This series also seeks to examine the possibilities for reading, analysis and other critical engagements which the very idea of transi­tion makes possible. The writers in this series unfold the movements and modulations of critical thinking over the last generation, from the first emergences of what is now recognized as literary theory. They examine as well how the transitional nature of theoretical and critical thinking is still very much in operation, guaranteed by the hybridity and heterogeneity of the field of literary studies. The authors in the series share the common understanding that, now more than ever, critical thought is both in a state of transition and can best be defined by developing for the student reader an understanding of this protean quality.

This series desires, then, to enable the reader to transform her/his own reading and writing transactions by comprehending past devel­opments. Each book in the series offers a guide to the poetics and politics of interpretative paradigms, schools and bodies of thought, while transforming these, if not into tools or methodologies, then into conduits for directing and channelling thought. As well as transform­ing the critical past by interpreting it from the perspective of the present day, each study enacts transitional readings of a number of well-known literary texts, all of which are themselves conceivable as

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having been transitional texts at the moments of their first appear­ance. The readings offered in these books seek, through close critical reading and theoretical engagement, to demonstrate certain possibili­ties in critical thinking to the student reader.

It is hoped that the student will find this series liberating because rigid methodologies are not being put into place. As all the dictionary definitions of the idea of transition above suggest, what is important is the action, the passage: of thought, of analysis, of critical response. Rather than seeking to help you locate yourself in relation to any particular school or discipline, this series aims to put you into action, as readers and writers, travellers between positions, where the move­ment between poles comes to be seen as of more importance than the locations themselves.

Julian Wolfreys

Acknowledgements

It is a thankless task thanking people, because the formula, whatever it may be, is inevitably never quite right. Too much effusion, too little gratitude and, all too often and unfortunately, just the right amount of apparent protocol which ends up coming off as insincerity. But despite all these worries, in the words of Jane Austen's Miss Bates, 'It's such a happiness when good friends get together, and they always do' -at least on acknowledgements pages such as this.

First and always, Jim Kincaid, who is always there somewhere, ready to throw a pie in the faces of those who deserve it. Peggy Kamuf helped me begin to come to terms with Derrida, generously, patiently, without hesitation, and I thank her. John Brannigan, Claire Jones, Ruth Robbins, Moyra Haslett, Jane Goldman, Mark Currie, John Abercrombie, Marion Wynne-Davies, Geoff Ward, Jane Stabler, Andrew Roberts, Alison Chapman: all have directly or indirectly influ­enced whatever is good about this book, as have the rest of my colleagues at Dundee; all have contributed in some manner. Ruth particularly gave me a number of the ideas which helped shaped the chapter on Paul Valery, as well as inviting me to a conference on the short story at the University of Luton, where I rehearsed some of the material. Also having made contributions - more than I can tell them - are the undergraduates who took part in my Literary Theory tutorials in 1995-96, and students who attended Gender, Sexuality and Feminism and James Joyce seminars and tutorials (1996-97), as well as David Hearn, Malcolm Mann, Brian Niro, Meike Prescher and Leah Wain.

I would also like to thank Nicholas Royle and Martin McQuillan for inviting me to give papers to their Literary Theory graduate seminars, at the Universities of Stirling and Glasgow respectively, where versions of chapters were first tried out. Vassiliki Kolokotroni really knew which questions to ask, and I thank her for that. On another occasion, Stella Swain asked equally pertinent questions concerning a

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version of the chapter on lain Sinclair, while Roger Ebbatson also contributed in a most positive and kindly fashion: thank you.

I would finally like to thank Margaret Bartley at Macmillan for having faith in the idea of a series in the first place, and whose untir­ing efforts and good humour are without equal.

julian Wolfreys July 1997

Abbreviations

Full bibliographical details are provided in the Bibliography

Works by Jacques Derrida

A 'Afterw.rds or, At Least, Less Than a Letter About a Letter Less'

A Aporias Acts 'Acts' AD 'As ifl Were Dead: An Interview with Jacques Derrida' AF Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression AL Acts of Literature AM 'The Art of Memo ires' ATVM 'At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am' BSDF 'Biodegradables: Seven Diary Fragments' C 'Circumfession' D DO DR EO G GD Gl GT I:D l'ac LI LJF LOBL MP OH

Dissemination 'Deconstruction and the Other' A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds The Ear of the Other Of Grammatology The Gift of Death Glas Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money 'Introduction: Desistance' l'autrecap Limited Inc. 'Letter to a Japanese Friend' 'Living On • Borderlines' Margins of Philosophy The Other Heading

xi i i

xiv

ON OS P ... p

PC RDP RM s SA SM SP

SQ&R TOJ TP TT:P

TWJ WD

Abbreviations

On the Name Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question Points ... : Interviews 1974-1994 'Psyche: Inventions ofthe Other' The Post Card 'Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism' 'The Retrait of Metaphor' 'Spectrographies' 'The Spatial Arts: An Interview with Jacques Derrida' Specters of Marx Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husser/'s Theory

of Signs 'Some Questions and Responses' 'The Time is Out of Joint' The Truth in Painting 'The Time of a Thesis: Punctuations' 'Two Words for Joyce' Writing and Difference

Other Works

Db 'Derridabase', Geoffrey Bennington FE Flesh Eggs and Scalp Metal, lain Sinclair GE 'The Griffin's Egg', lain Sinclair and Dave McKean HD Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad JH The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis

Stevenson LH Lud Heat, lain Sinclair LT Lights out for the Territory, lain Sinclair RD Radon Daughters, lain Sinclair SB Suicide Bridge, lain Sinclair WCST White Chappell Scarlet Tracings, lain Sinclair YW The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman