I managed to miss the philosopher's carnival until today. One post in it that caught my eye was from the blog Philosophy and Literature on Heidegger, Speech Acts and language. While perhaps I'm just reading things wrong it seems to me that the the main discussion is wrong. At least in terms of how I understand Derrida and Heidegger.
In his post Nathan writes,
Following a tradition of deconstruction, speech acts are subject to close examination illustrating the endless conflicting meaning, showing that any proposed meaning can be undermined by careful attention to the role of subsidiary themes within a speech act (Gutting 830-31). Although not a deconstructionist, John Searle seemingly illustrates the same propensity toward the task of deconstruction.
Certainly deconstruction involves close and careful readings. However I'd argue that decontruction is always engaged in a kind of phenomenology. That is a quest to the things themselves as they give themselves to me. So it's less an issue of "subsidiary themes" undermining meaning. (Although Nathan doesn't put it that way) Rather it is the idea that any finite complete meaning given in totality is always incomplete due to meaning's relationship to things. Now the traditional Analytic philosophy way out of this is to put a large chasm between meaning and reference. Thus they'd suggest the deconstructionist is violating this divide. The things themselves are never part of meaning. So there is a divide here.
(I'd also suggest that Searle, who tends to be doing logical analysis and not phenomenology, might see himself differently than the above - although he does engage in close readings that often show meaning to be more complex than it first appears)
Now nothing I've said conflicts with what Nathan writes. He's careful to qualify meaning as "proposed meaning." That is what we assert as meaning. I just wanted to set the groundwork by that focus on the things themselves.
...words chosen (constituting a speech act) by authors have the ability, if deconstructed, to draw the reader’s attention away from the intention of the speech act.
This is where I think Nathan's wrong. If meaning and intention are wrapped up not just in the representations in the head of the author or hearer but in the things themselves then deconstruction isn't drawing the reader's attention away from intention but towards an aspect of intention. That is what happens is that one notices something that was always part of an intention.
Once again this issue of representation is where many will reject decontruction and I don't want to get into an argument over this issue.
Moving on, Nathan equates Dasein and language in a fashion that I'm not sure I can buy. There's an element of truth in it. And certainly there is a sense in which we do not have language but language has us. Language is the house of being, as Heidegger puts it. Certainly language functions as a context and certainly words are a part of this. And most certainly language is involved in primordial understanding (in Being and Time) Nathan suggests though,
This is to suggest that we understand the meaning of a speech act in contextual relation to prior or preceding speech acts.
But not just speech acts, of course. But he is right that this sets up a regress that defers the meaning of a speech act to a prior speech act characterized by a difference to the current speech act. That is speech acts have within them both a deferral and a difference. More significantly (and unmentioned by Nathan) is how what we do with the speech act is set up by earlier forces. Thus to promise as part of a speech act presupposes not just earlier speech acts but a call (force) that leads me to the act of promising. Any illocutionary force within a speech act requires not just the conditions of prior speech acts (content) but also outside forces which deliver me to this act. That is the force of the speech act is itself the result of other hidden forces. The most significant of which are veiled in a kind of darkness. (That is they can't be reduced to what is brought to light in a logical analysis of speech acts)
Deconstructively, this sentence inherently means different things and looses the intention of the speech act (not to be interpreted as conjunctive to authorial intention). Instead, one ought to interpret this speech act contextually.
I'd instead say that context (what Derrida calls "the Text") is not what deconstruction is all about. Yes there is nothing outside of the text, but it is this nothing and the force of this nothing that is what deconstruction is most concerned with. The "other" of the speech act.
As with Heidegger's notion of desctruction the idea is to go back to an originary encounter with the forces that brought about the intention as we see it. Put simply the issue is that the intention as representation is no primordial. We must see the intention phenomenologically as a "thing" to which we are concerned. (Husserl's cry, never abandoned by Heidegger of "to the things themselves") Depending upon the forces we ourselves are caught up in (that is, ourselves as Dasein being the caretaker of the opening or clearing of Being) what is brought to light may well be an other aspect of the thing itself. In this case the intention of the speech act.
Often this is cast into the metaphor of psycho-analysis and the unconsciousness. This isn't because anyone really buys into the pseudo-science of Freud. (Or at least they shouldn't) And of course Freud isn't the first to suggest an unconsciousness. Leibniz got there long before and Plotinus before him. It is the idea that that there are forces "that are us" that we don't notice in our intents.
So an outsider watching how someone speaks to a woman may notice subtle put downs and language demeaning to the woman. The speaker may say, "I'm not a mysoginist, I didn't intend that aspect of my speech." Yet, I think we are justified in saying that this is a part of the intent of the speech. It is just a kind of hidden intent. Or, put more accurately, a manifestation of primordial forces not immediately recognized. These needn't even be under the control of the speaker. Doesn't our language reflect a community relationship and therefore an intent of our community which may have elements of mysogyny? A person living in Alabama in 1840 may well not be a conscious racist. That doesn't mean that his language and thereby the intentionality inherent within it avoids reflecting racism. These aspects of language are so common and obvious that we sometimes forget them.
In the context of this argument, ‘deconstruction’ misses the point. If we understand language as a contextual phenomenon, then we can understand language’s ontological premise, that is, it illustrates the current condition of being.
It may well miss the point, if the point is taken as something present and complete rather than as a gesture that goes beyond what is present. A representation rather than an index. When I gesture towards a tree I point to something beyond myself. To analyze my gesture in terms of my understanding of the tree is to miss the point. It is this relationship to indexes as partially constitutive of meaning and not purely referential that I see deconstruction as being about. My pointing can not purely be seen as a reference with no meaning. All meaning involves both symbolism and indexicality.
It has been the purpose of this argument to illustrate that the deconstruction of speech acts loses all linguistic intention, and in this regard speech acts invariably retain all linguistic intention when the ontological status on language is understood. Lastly, speech acts also retain linguistic intention if the contextual functionality of language is understood.
I'd argue that deconstruction does not loose linguistic intention but discovers a repressed part of linguistic intention. To return to Heidegger let us take up his distinction between authenticity and inauthentic modes of being. I think Nathan's analysis is a correct one if we are talking about inauthentic modes of Dasein. However once we recognize that this is incomplete as an analytic of Dasein we see that as authentic language lets things be the kind of things they are. This "letting be" is what Heidegger gets at in his latter work on language. But this "letting be" would then be to bring to light an aspect of intention not found in the fallen mode of Dasein. Context, in the sense of present speech acts, is to focus on forces in the very fashion Heidegger rejects as incomplete and misleading. It is the idea that meaning can be seen in a purity of light that is complete. The very error Heidegger sees among the Greeks.
And yeah, the pixelated picture of Derrida was intentional - it's to highlight that something is always excluded and something else put in its place. Low resolution images are but one example of this. We always recognize something is missing. To search for the missing "parts" is not to loose the image but to better see it.
Firstly, I must thank you for taking the time to critique my post. It is the very reason why I post my thoughts.
In any case, I'm not here to justify or defend what I have written, instead I want to agree with your response - impart.
You write, "It may well miss the point, if the point is taken as something present and complete rather than as a gesture that goes beyond what is present." If language cannot illustrate a current condition of being as something present and complete at a specific temporal location, then seemingly I would not be able to write this post. I'm not suggesting that what I utter is finite, on the contrary, an utterance is a gesture that is also able to transcend the present condition and open itself to possibilities as does dasein.
The value of deconstruction is unlimiting. As language is an opening of being, deconstruction of language ables to see what is missing, and as you suggest, enables us to see better. Something perhaps Foucault, Hegel and Aristotle would agree with.
As I've argued, language does have a completeness with in a specific temporal location, it ought to be understood that language, as Nietzsche argues, is rhetoric. Language desires to convey only an opinion, not knowledge.
Cheers, Nathan
The problem of there being some kind of presence makes sense, unless of course any presence depends upon something absent in order to make the present truly present. This is why I think Derrida talks of traces.
Representation is ultimately the idea that there is something present in the fashion you describe and that absence is ultimately determined in opposition to this presence. The alternative is to somewhat invert this. That is to think in terms of processes or something similar where there analysis is not in terms of presence at all.
I think that ultimately this applies to language as well.
Certainly deconstruction entails an unlimiting. But to see unlimiting as just what is missing is to miss what unlimiting is, I think. That is to speak of the missing in that fashion is to still be caught up in the idea of a fixed limit, even if only at a moment. Derrida's whole point, as I take it anyway, is to deal with the transgressions of limits. To show that the inside/outside taxonomy breaks down. To speak of present and missing is to still be trapped in that taxonomy.
As you rightly point out, just seeing what is missing from the unlimiting of deconstruction does miss the point, however, I think that is implied.
I agree with Derrida that deconstruction deals with the transgression of limits, however, the 'convention' of language still allows the 'Other' in to the being of dasein. Likewise, the taxonomological (?) form of genre establish limits through convention as Derrida would argue. The effect of these limits confines the reader to expectations: that which creates artificial meaning. However, genre still allows the reader a way into the text. It is up to the reader to create meaning.
I think we both agree with Derrida, though, perhaps, we just view his works differently. Perhaps Derrida would approve?
Nathan.
I think the Other of language enters into the clearing of Dasein with Dasein is in an authentic mode. I think in inauthentic mode this isn't the case. (Or at least one could argue this) That is inauthentic language which is fallen and caught up in everydayness is certainly language in terms of the social conventions of the various worlds one finds oneself in. In that case one could argue it is like an Otherness. However I think this Otherness is much more the Otherness that Husserl discusses in his phenomenology. (Not exactly, of course, but it's an otherness defined in terms of a kind of violence)
Now of course one can follow Husserl over Derrida or Heidegger and many people ultimately do. One can even adopt an externalist perspective yet still do so in a mode of presence. (Some argue that this is what Sartre and others do - I'm not enough of a Sartre reader to be able to say much there)
Anyway, I'm not sure it's convention proper that allows the Other in. In one sense the Other is always there. It's just that in authentic mode of Being we notice the Other as Other. The rest of the time it's there we just do violence to it and deny it as truly Other.
As to it being up to the reader to create meaning. I don't think Derrida would agree. Indeed in interviews he's explicitly rejected this. (I have a post with some excerpts from interviews on this point.) "I am not a pluralist and I would never say that every interpretation is equal but I do not select. The interpretations select themselves." "Meaning is determined by a system of forces which is not personal. It does not depend on the subjective identity but on the field of different forces, the conflict of forces, which produce interpretations."
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