Table Of ContentBeyond Deconstruction
Beyond Deconstruction
From Hermeneutics to Reconstruction
Edited by
Alberto Martinengo
De Gruyter
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Contents
Alberto Martinengo
Deconstruction at its End? Preliminary Remarks ............ 1
Section I
Deconstruction and/or Reconstruction:
APhilosophicalApproach
Emmanuel Cattin
Leaving Philosophy? Heidegger, Bauen, Lassen .............. 13
Jorge P(cid:2)rez de Tudela Velasco
Waiting: The Impossible ............................... 27
Jean Robelin
Does It Make Sense to Speak about Deconstructing the Subject? 39
Graziano Lingua
Beyond the Eclipse of Reason: OntheReconstructionof
Rationality .......................................... 53
Jean-Marc Ferry
Towards a Reconstructive Critique of Historical Reason ...... 69
Evelyne Grossman
Creative Delinking ................................... 85
Section II
The Limits of Deconstruction:
TheCaseof Art and Literature
Timo Kaitaro
Reality under Construction: Deconstructionand Reconstruction
in Surrealism ........................................ 97
Clive Cazeaux
Deconstructing and Reconstructing Artists with PhDs ........ 107
VI Contents
Franca Bruera
Towards a Dramaturgy of Suspicion: Theatre and Myths in
20th-centuryFrance ................................... 135
Giulia Boggio Marzet Tremoloso
A Methodological Comparison between a Mythocentric
Approach and a Deconstructive Reading in the Interpretation of
Rewritings .......................................... 149
Maria Spiridopoulou
Translation: Theory and Praxis. Deconstruction and
Reconstruction in Giacomo Leopardi ..................... 161
Antonella Emina
Deconstructing and Reconstructing Built-up Landscape in
Post-Colonial Literature: Damas’s Poetry .................. 179
Section III
The Genealogy and Legacy of Deconstruction:
The Politico-Social and Juridical Point of View
Jordi Maiso
Remembrance of Nature within the Subject: Critical Theory,
Psychoanalysis and the Limits of Subjection ................ 197
Herman W. Siemens
The Rise of Political Agonism and its Relation to
Deconstruction: The Case of Chantal Mouffe .............. 213
Flavia Monceri
‘JustTellMeWhoYouAre!’:DoWeNeedIdentityinPhilosophy
and the Social Sciences? ............................... 225
Alberto Andronico
Daydreaming: Derrida’s Contribution to the Theory of Law .. 239
J(cid:3)nos Frivaldszky
Law as Practical Knowledge: Deconstruction, Pragmatism, and
the Promise of Classical Practical Philosophy ............... 255
Bibliography ........................................ 277
Index Rerum ........................................ 295
Name Index......................................... 297
Deconstruction at its End? Preliminary Remarks
Alberto Martinengo
The cultural phenomenon that Friedrich Nietzsche characterised as a
‘malady of history’ is perhaps one of the most glaring manifestations of
his lasting actuality. It is not difficult to point out its nether presence
today, far beyond the bounds of philosophy, in the infinite variations
of one unique commonplace reference: that of the crisis or the decline
of modernity. Its pervasiveness is a matter of fact and, as is well
known, produces a crucial shift in the self-comprehension of a broad
spectrum of disciplines, which concerns the Humanities as a whole.
Thepremises connected tothisphenomenon are evident from multi-
ple points of view. As has been convincingly highlighted, they primarily
addressthepossibilityof isolatingacompactclusterofeventsqualifiedby
the category modern age, wherein the present seeks to distinguish itself
more or less definitively. This is a presupposition that accrues all the ad-
vantages (as well as the enormous disadvantages) of succinct formulae –
and 20th-century philosophy bears ample witness to such ambiguous im-
plications.Butalongwiththissortof toponomastichindrance,thejargon
of crisis poses another kind of question, one having to do with the ‘rhet-
orical power’ of such a rupture. To invoke a series of categories that have
fallen into disfavour, but which nonetheless partially retain their signifi-
cance, the fortunes of notions such as crisis and decline are marked by a
crucial oscillation between purported statements of fact and explicitly
performative valuations. In short, the claims of a discontinuity with re-
spect to the category of modernity play at double cross: on the one
side, the objective recognition of a breakdown, for example in terms of
an epochal shift with which it would by now be impossible not to go
along; and, on the other, the need to make this declaration once more
so that it can be truly realised.
If this rhetorical indecision is one of the most effective (although ul-
timately also debilitating) engines driving the jargon of crisis, it is not
hard to locate its most notable precedent. Of course, this would be the
case for Nietzsche’s claim that ‘God is dead’, in aphorism 125 of The
Gay Science. The madman’s rant provides the most striking example of
the intertwining of constative and performative utterance which has so
2 Alberto Martinengo
powerfully defined the epochal analyses in the 20th-century debates. Un-
deniably, this was a potent and portentous development, but one which,
as critics were quick to point out, also contains another element, that ex-
tendsfarbeyondNietzsche.Thisisthetendencyonthepartofsuchanal-
yses to generate a range of prophecies that, in the most extreme versions,
presenttheobjective riskof transforming philosophicalreflectionintoan
entirely self-referential discussion. Together with the jargon of crisis, this
tendency toward self-fulfilling prophecy is the other topos (or, better, the
other vexata quaestio) of the contemporary debate. But this is not all.
These two cultural features are so deeply entrenched that they have
come to produce their own overturning. We can thus say that, through
a vertiginous acceleration of the malady of history, the epitaphs of the
20th century have rapidly passed to a second-order obituary: from secu-
larisation to theories of the post-secular, from the death of the subject
to the retrieval of the self, from anti-metaphysics to a new metaphysics,
from the end of modernity to the return of the modern.
The case for deconstruction
Undoubtedly, deconstruction plays an important – perhaps crucial – role
in this context. The more this role is evident, the closer we look at the
‘essential’ characteristic of Jacques Derrida’s approach: deconstruction
issystematicallyastyleof thinkingratherthanlogicallycoordinatedprem-
ises and conclusions. A series of important consequences follows from
thisinitialdetermination.Firstandforemostistheimpossibilityofspeak-
ing of a truth of deconstruction, except in contradictory, and thus rhetor-
ical, terms. Deconstruction cannot be ‘true’ in the way that a philosoph-
ical theory might be, because its validity depends entirely on its imple-
mentation as a ‘resource’ implicit in philosophical discourse. That is, de-
construction works if, and only if, a text yields to the deconstructive ap-
proach, while at the same time one could hardlyimagine atext which re-
sistsorholdsoutagainstit.Inother words,onecouldsaythatthedecon-
structive purpose is dissatisfying, spurious, or, even more, inconclusive,
and yet it is difficult to find a way to decisively refute it. If this is the
case, it is clear why deconstruction is one of the most powerful resources
of the 20th-century debate, far beyond theboundaries of philosophy. The
insistence on aspects of style is precisely the most evident factor (though
not the only one) which has rendered deconstruction applicable over a
Deconstruction atits End? Preliminary Remarks 3
wide range of fields, rather than encompassing a collection of shared as-
sumptions.1
These two essential characteristics (i.e. an overriding emphasis on
style, combined with the impossibility of determining its truth) legiti-
mately situate deconstruction withinthe categories which we are examin-
ing here. Yet, its success as a critical instrument also provides a specific
measure of the third element that should be highlighted, that is, the ap-
parentredundancythattroublesthejargonofcrisis.Seeninthislight,the
approach seems now to consider such categories as a kind of cultural
mode that has become outdated, and as such, requires a definitive over-
haul of its methodological features. A real conflict of interpretations ap-
pears to be at stake here, which paradoxically combines two different in-
stances of self-fulfilling prophecy, with a peculiar effect of dissonance:
along with positions which basically reaffirm the central premises of de-
construction, one also finds positions which significantly modify those
premises, and other positions which reject them altogether. This highly
contentious scenario seems inescapable if one attempts to enter into
the recent discussions on Derrida’s legacy. While this approach might as-
sume different forms, it will always draw more or less explicitly on pre-
suppositions of this kind. For the particular case of deconstruction, the
difficulties become complicated after the fact because of its characteristic
inter-disciplinarity. But there is at least one point that seems perfectly
simple and straightforward. If one looks at the diverse camps involved
in those debates, it is not difficult to recognise (albeit in an approximate
manner) one of the sources common to these criticisms. Although deliv-
ered differently, the critical reference is directly or indirectly made to the
ethical and political irresponsibility of deconstruction.
1 It is not among the aims of the present volume to draw a map of Derrida’s re-
ceptioninthe20thcentury,neitherfromadisciplinarypointofview,noringeo-
graphical terms. In this regard, the classical point of reference (even if by now
somewhatoutdated)continuestobeSchultz/Fried1992.Nonetheless,itisuseful
todrawattentiontotextswhichstandoutfortheirrelevancetothespecificques-
tionsaddressedinthisbook,leavingasidethoseofstrictlyphilosophicalimport.
With regard to literary studies, it is worth mentioning, among others: Norris
1982; Arac/Godzich/Martin 1983; Culler 1985; Royle 1995; Kronick 1999;
Kates 2008. For political issues, useful references include: Beardsworth 1996;
Norris 2000; Resta 2003; Regazzoni 2006; Cheah/Guerlac 2009. Finally, for
law: Cornell/Rosenfeld/Carlson 1992; Andronico 2002; Goodrich/Hoffmann/
Rosenfeld/Vismann 2008; Legrand 2009.
4 Alberto Martinengo
At least for philosophy, we are dealing with a reprimand that proba-
blyfinds its most significant voice in Hilary Putnam. In fact, it is toPut-
nam and the reading of deconstruction in his book Renewing Philosophy
(1992) that we owe perhaps the most unequivocal formulation of the
problem. As is well known, the core of his analysis is the charge of a
strong link between the Derridean problematisation of the notion of
truth and the collapse of any objective criteria towhich we might entrust
the burden of a socio-political critique. According to Putnam, it is the
threat that deconstruction poses, and the theoretical programmes which
shareitspremises,thatis,thosewhich‘“problematize”thenotionsofrea-
son and truth themselves’, downgrading as ‘primarily repressive gestures’
the concepts of ‘“justification”, “good reason”, “warrant”, and the like’.2
This is the real core of his critique. Deconstruction is a sophisticated
re-edition of the ancient forms of scepticism – and all the suspicions ap-
plicabletothelatterareequallyapplicabletotheformer.Hencethethesis
according to which the equivalence between truth and repression is, in
short,a‘dangerousview’,becauseit‘providesaidandcomfortforextrem-
ists […] of all kinds’.3 And, for Putnam, it is only a short step from this
argument to itsconclusions, conclusions whichsound almost like aman-
ifesto: ‘The philosophical irresponsibility of one decade can become the
real-world political tragedy of a few decades later. And deconstruction
without reconstruction is irresponsibility.’4
2 Putnam 1992, 132.
3 Putnam 1992, 132.
4 Putnam 1992, 133 (my emphasis). Of course, along with Hilary Putnam, one
cannot omit mentioning J(cid:4)rgen Habermas and his Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity, especially the ‘Lecture VII, Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of
Origins: Jacques Derrida’s Critique of Phonocentrism’ (see in particular Haber-
mas 1990b, 181f.), as well as the ‘Excursus on Leveling the Genre Distinction
between Philosophy and Literature’ (Habermas 1990b, 185–210). As is well
known, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity opens an important page in
therelationshipbetweenHabermasandDerrida.Forarecapitulationof thisde-
bate,whichlastedabouttwodecades,themostusefulreferenceisstillundoubt-
edlyThomassen 2006.Nonetheless, whatfollowswillclarify whya reference to
Putnam(orbetter,thePutnamof RenewingPhilosophy)mightbemoreimmedi-
atelyfunctionalfortheargumenthere.Andthisisamajorreasonforthepartic-
ular connotation that, in fact, Putnam gives to the concept of reconstruction in
contrast to Habermas’s use of the term, which moves along a very different ho-
rizon.
