Jacques Derrida is a postmodern philosopher and writer. His beliefs about modern life, the crisis of language and the arbitrary nature of signs has led him to be categorized as a post-structuralist, along with Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes. All of these writers have been influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure (first structuralist), and caused philosophy to be reassesed as a formal type of discourse. In particular, Derrida founded the stratergy of deconstruction, revealing multiple meanings of the same word, which are unconsciously in combat with each other in the text they are found. Like Foucault, Derrida strongly believed that present “meanings” are those that are stablized and enforced by dominant cultures which take advantage of the fixed meaning.
“One pole of the binary...is usually the dominant one, the one which includes the other within its field of operations.”[1]
The single meanings that favour these political ideologies form logocentrism which postmodernism opposes. Postmodernism is also the newest form of Skepticism, (a rejection of Relativism) that began in the Western world with Cartesian Doubt.
In “The Gift of Death” (in which, “Tout autre est tout autre” is found) Derrida mentions his opposition to Kant’s conept of deontology and Sophists concept of contract theory. Using many examples, many taken from modern life experiences, Derrida writes with sophistication; if a slightly repetitive nature. Like many postmodern thinkers, in their writings they usually cover familiar ground within the first section, and then distance themselves from their influences and their contemporaries. For example: Barthes and Derrida both disagree with Saussure’s belief that linguitsics would evolve into a general science of signs, or join semiology fully; but in “The Gift of Death” Derrida finds himself facing an inevitable conclusion of dubiosity.
The motivation for certain dominant cultures to strengthen the link between some signs and the thing signified is obvious, and is therefore not really arbitrary. It is gravitated by forces of empires that fix meanings for political / monetary reasons. Barthes and Derrida conclude that as language is constantly evolving there cannot possibly be a final, strict, definitive translation. Perhaps an authoritive one, but this is doubted as being definitive due to the bias of the strongest political power.
This concept, in “The Gift of Death” separates Derrida from his colleagues. As Derrida writes about authority, he persuades the reader to accept that there actually is a final authority that can decode what that final translation is, but it is hidden from us. While his associates determined that there is no authority other than forced ideologies from strong political motivations, accordingly there can be no meaning attatched to any sign. Derrida believed that there was a definitive meaning that an authority higher even than governments knew, that may be established, but impossible to check. This authority is God.
Because many concepts rely on this untestable condition, there is a consistent mention of “as if”’s within alot of his books. “A ‘fictional’ condition, an imagined and therefore phantasmatic possibility that is not a lie, but which either has not happenned, or which, more significantly, cannot be experienced as such.”[2]
Derrida uses this unreachable jurisdiction as a type of asymptotic sublime that allows his other concepts to be aligned with. In this universe model, various concepts in “The Gift of Death” can exist unchallenged by previous ideas covered by Barthes, Saussure and Strauss. One such example can be found covered in the final chapter, “Tout autre est tout autre”, as one half of this tautological equation can be substituted by the constant of God; the infinitely other or wholly other.
Talking of equations, Roland Barthes also suggested language was neutral, not unlike mathematical symbols, and constants that could be applied to translate for things utilising signs. My personal frustration with this mode of thought is that it follows that some form of result should follow, after dutifully plugging in signfied objects, to allow a meaning to occur, (even if it is not wholly definitive). All the more reason to observe how different that meaning can vary depending on the ‘equation’.
Tom Stoppard covered a similar perspective of mine that he mentioned in his 1982 play “The Real Thing”:
“Words are innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other; so that if you look after them they can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos.”[3]
This outlook of interchanging signs like mathematical symbols may seem simplistic and nieve, but it does point toward accessing comprehension, whereas I see postmodern thinkers revelling in the hopeless unravelling of language.
Thus, while connotation and context can direct meaning to a closer approximation of its intended meaning, relying on these external factors only points out the slipperiness of its own free-floating signs. More importantly, the role of the observer is central to understanding the intended translation. This belief is taken from scientific discourses, such as Einstein’s theory of relativity and Bohr’s quantum mechanics. Yet science attempts to find definitive truth through extremely thorough precautions against prejudice, in order to find and then describe how nature operates. Can this be applied to language? Is it possible to use formulae to alleviate the crisis of knowledge / translation? Derrida believes so.
The important distinction in Derrida’s stratergy of deconstruction is that while there may well be multiple meanings for a word, some of these meanings are paradoxically opposing. Which of the two opposing sides is privilged and stablizied by politics create hierarchies of power. Derrida not only views the meanings as not fixed, but deferred; as in they are not yet decisively known, but hypothetically can be.
“Difference can never be wholly captured within any binary system. Any notion of a final meaning is always endlessly put off, deferred.”[4]
In fact, with skepticism pushed to its extreme, the only pure fact that any one person can be totally sure of is not even Descrate’s Cogito, but merely x=x.
This is exemplified by “Tout autre est tout autre”; a tautology. Tautologies seem to be one dimensional, but infact can mean anything. ‘It is raining or it is not raining’, and ‘pigs exist or they do not exist’ are tautologies. Neither sentence is wrong, and neither sentence has anything to do with pigs or rain. Propositions alone can be tautologies. Not all propositions are tautologies, but all tautologies are propositions. “A proposition is what is expressed by a declarative sentence in some language; it is either true or false.”[5]
Herbert Spencer described Darwin’s theory of evolution with “the survival of the fittest”. this has been labelled by many creationists as a tautology, and by extension, used to challenge evolution in general. Who survives? Those whom are fittest. Whom are fittest? Those who survive. The general concept of the derision of this phrase comes directly from the fact that “evolutionary theory is untestable because fitness is defined in terms of actual survivorship.”[6]
Even Derrida concedes that “Tout autre est tout autre” could be “so isolated and capable of being transmitted out of its context, too much like the coded language of a password”[7] that it can risk meaning nothing. But like Derrida’s quest for absolute meaning, there are elements of the eternal at play.
As Derrida carefully dissects, he points out the former “Tout” can only be an indefinite pronominal adjective: (someone), while the latter can only be an adverb of quantity: (absolute, radically infinite). This I agree with, making the second “tout” referring to God and the sublime.
When Derrida elaborates and states that the “autres” used must be a noun and an adjective respectfully, the fog of confusion clouds over once again. If we are to believe Derrida, then the sentence is structured like so: “[adjective] [noun] est [adverb] [adjective].”
Is there a sentence that can be substituted like Stoppard implies?
I will attempt a theoretical newspaper headline: “Frustrated Reader is Gently Frustrated”.
Does this really denote x=x? Obviously the reader is getting frustrated gently, but surely Gently Frustrated is NOT a Frustrated Reader. Or is this just a malfunction of the English language that we cannot observe that the other way does actually make sense?
Another example: “Tired Student is Very Tired.” Mirrored, the sentence only needs some extra baggage from pronouns to make it: “(He is) very tired, (this) tired student” (which French often has a remarkable way of requiring or not requiring depending on context and who the speaker is). But what of the “est” and its movement? Is it important to note where it now lies in order to make any kind of sense, or is it pointless to even worry about this? The point that Derrida is making is that there is one side of this equation that depends upon a wholly other, absolute infinite side, just as much as the whole equation has inexhaustible, infinite readings. I see this as an aspect of religious faith, accepting truth without need for evidence nor a lackm of doubt. Therefore, because it requires lack of doubt (faith) in order to utilize an equation so deeply drawn from skepticism, the equation is obsolete.
But perhaps this is the point. Which powers decide what it can mean is where Derrida takes us when he writes of complacency and the glossy functioning of societies that can overlook murders and crimes because of how it can be advantageous not to notice. Where Derrida finally applies this apparently useless formula is when he connects mass murder to singular murder; sensing a single crime in the same level of importance as many. This is done by the infinite, inexhaustible nature of the equation.
Derrida then questions the subtle differences between individuals being allowing to starve, and individuals being put to death. This is linked by the sacrifice and effort a single person may contribute, to save many people, when the safety of the single person is put in jeopardy by doing so. Derrida uses Abraham as an example of an excused murderer, (not really through complacency, but by faith). But the effect and the undeniable facts are the same, Abraham is a murderer “however, is not the spectacle of this murder, which seems untenable in the dense and rhythmic briefness of its theatrical moment, at the same time the most common event in this world?”[8]
This inexhaustible equation, when reversed, shows that perception of many people can be made “infinitely singular”, and this is certainly done by media that attempts to downplay certain statistics, such as number of people killed by war or natural disaster. It is easier to deal with a single death, emotionally and economically, and by concentrating on the plight of one individual the event seems more personal, more understandable and also more digestible. It also downplays the amount of money required to fix the entire problem and directs the viewer to see the circumstance as an event that occurred to an individual. Sympathy and rapport are obtained, and in doing so, the illusion of a singularity is achieved.
In every media driven, and media covered politically based war there are “countless victims, each of whose singularity becomes each time infinitely singular - every other (one) being every (bit) other”[9]. The “smooth functioning”[10] of highly mediated countries is what allows people to die due to its “mechanisms of external debt”[11], and in the interests of upholding their own position of power.
[1] Hall, Stuart Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices: Culture, Media and Identities, London: SAGE Publications, Ltd, 1997. p 235
[2] Wolfreys, Julian Derrida: A Guide for the Perplexed New York: Continuum Books, 2007. p12
[3] Stoppard, Tom The Real Thing, 1982
[4] Hall, p 42
[5] Sober, Elliot “Philosophy of Biology”, 2nd Ed., Boulder: Westview Press, 2000. p70
[6] ibid. p70
[7] Derrida, Jacques The Gift of Death, Chapter 4 (of 4), 2nd Ed., Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2008. p 82
[8] ibid. p 85
[9] ibid. p 82
[10] ibid. p 85
[11] ibid. p 86
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