Grammatology

I’m working through Of Grammatology these days, for the first time in quite awhile, because I was asked to write something that touches on it peripherally.

And I’m afraid that, now more than ever, I think it’s simply madness to call Derrida a realist. His entire argument makes sense only by identifying realism with onto-theology and hence with parousia/presence. He reads the concept of substance as the foot soldier of onto-theology. His critique of the proper is a very frank critique of realism. His theory of the trace is another anti-realist maneuver, not a realist one since that would open the door, in his view, to the “transcendental signified.” I also don’t agree with LEVI’S RECENT IDENTIFICATION of objects with différance. Quite the contrary. The object is precisely that which is deeper than any differing from anything else, precisely because it is non-relational through and through.

My verdict remains, at least for now, that the “Derrida is a realist” battle cry is simply another way of saying “Derrida cannot be criticized from where you stand, because he has already incorporated your critique in advance.” And this is a very familiar move in philosophical debate, and is something done by Derrida himself all too frequently. He’s generally a bit shifty in trying to avoid any frontal combat with anyone. He always hints that there’s so much more to what he is saying than he can currently state, and that it would take a nearly interminable discourse to deal with the matter as it deserves. That’s why I’ve never much cared for his style, and why I thought Badiou and Žižek were a very nice change of pace for continental philosophy, since they simply come out and flatly assert things (Deleuze is still too stylistically evasive for my tastes). I like how they stick their necks out: I like Badiou’s talk of “wagers,” and Žižek’s talk of how you have to realize there’s no escape for you when you take a stand on something.

Anyway, now that I’ve had to do the work of going back through Derrida, I ought to write a bit more about this. The piece I was asked to write is about literary theory in general, not specifically about Derrida.

But Derrida is no realist. You can’t possibly say that unless you’re twisting the word “realism” beyond all recognition. Anti-realism is the very heart of his position. That’s one of many things that Lee Braver got right in his big book.

I’ve already written about Derrida’s habit of conflating onto-theology with realism, in the sections of Guerrilla Metaphysics where I talk about metaphor. There I’m dealing with Derrida’s very popular “white mythology” essay. In that piece Derrida also makes some absolutely outrageous charges against Aristotle, not only for being philosophically wrong, but also as being responsible for certain political crimes.

The root of all these problems is conflation of realism with onto-theology, when in fact they are polar opposites.