Derrida: Speech Act Theory

In this 2004 interview — translated into English and published in its entirety for the first time — Jacques Derrida reflects upon his practices of writing and teaching, about the community of his readers, and explores questions related to corporeity and textuality, sexual difference, desire, politics, Marxism, violence, truth, interpretation, and translation. In the course of the interview, Derrida discusses the work of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maurice Blanchot, Hélène Cixous, Jean Genet, Paul Celan, and many others.

I argue that Derrida's critique of speech act theory is largely unsustainable because of its reliance on a questionable and insufficiently explicatedconception of philosophy as negative metaphysics8 and its attendant misconception of scientific theory construction in general and speech act theory in particular.

According to Jacques Derrida, the tradition of metaphysics is dominated by a basic distinction between presence and absence that plays a fundamental role in Husserl’s theory of meaning and contaminates the core of his phenomenological project. If Husserl’s distinction between indication and expression in the 1st Logical Investigation is credited for opening a ‘phenomenological breakthrough’, his account of the entwinement between the indicative and expressive functions of linguistic signs is accused of restoring and maintaining the metaphysical primacy of presence. In (...) the last chapters of Voice and Phenomenon, Derrida focuses especially on the cases of indexical or ‘essentially occasional’ expressions, whose concrete meaning is a function of the occasion of their use and which rely on the indicative function of meaning. According to Derrida’s reading, Husserl holds that such indexical meanings like ‘I’, ‘here’ or ‘now’, are necessarily always fulfilled and cannot lack of intuitive fulfilment. Consequently Derrida takes Husserl’s account of the meaning of ‘I’ as an obvious symptom of his inability to move away from the myth of pure expressivity, bringing phenomenology back into the history of metaphysics. Husserl would have failed to acknowledge that indexical meanings, like ideal or objective meanings, can remain unfulfilled and deprived of intuition. This article demonstrates that Derrida’s critique misses the most important point in Husserl’s analysis of the meaning of ‘I’, and argues that indexical or subjective expressions are somehow insensitive to the prospect of intuitive presencing and fulfilment. (shrink)

Throughout much of the twentieth century, the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy has been one of disinterest, caution or hostility. Recent debates in philosophy have highlighted some of the similarities between the two approaches and even envisaged a post-continental and post-analytic philosophy. Opening with a history of key encounters between philosophers of opposing camps since the late nineteenth century - from Frege and Husserl to Derrida and Searle - the book goes on to explore in detail the main methodological (...) differences between the two approaches. This covers a very wide range of topics, from issues of style and clarity of exposition to formal methods arising from logic and probability theory. The final section of this book presents a balanced critique of the two schools' approaches to key issues such as time, truth, subjectivity, mind and body, language and meaning, and ethics. "Analytic versus Continental" is the first sustained analysis of both approaches to philosophy, examining the limits and possibilities of each. It provides a clear overview of a much-disputed history and, in highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of both traditions, also offers future directions for both continental and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In Memoires for Paul de Man Derrida acknowledges the urgency, for any rigorous deconstruction, of closely confronting Austin's notion of the performative. This study aims to countersign Derrida' s acknowledgement by elaborating a certain deconstructive tradition of thinking the performativity of the performative and, thus, of retracing the performative back to the modem philosophical tradition of positing. In particular, it focuses on Derrida's thought of the iterability of the performative, as the speech act of self-positing. The chapters investigate Derrida's elaboration (...) of the notion of positing by bringing to light his engagement with a certain French and continental tradition of the Hegelian concepts of recognition and mastery, as they are exposed in the Phenomenology's chapter on self-consciousness. My argument is that Derrida understands positing as always caught up in a struggle for recognition, what he calls war in the infinite and among finite ipseities, as the self's positing itself as such or imposing itself and, thus, as making itself recognized, mastery, ipseity, etc. This positing always admits iterability to the extent that it calls for repetition. It originally allows the movement that replaces and supplements it by granting to it the possibility of repetition. This movement is understood by Derrida as the text of the recognition that the self posits or gives to itself and, therefore, as the text that the self writes or posts to itself. In fact, this text accounts for the slave or the representative of self-positing, for those who have given up the desire for recognition, but also for the other to come, for the absolutely other, for the unconditioned risk of death or non-sense. As I will attempt to demonstrate by following Derrida's reading of the master/slave dialectic and of its tradition, he understands the relation between the master and the slave as the structural relation between positing and iterability. It is from this perspective that I propose looking at Derrida's elaboration of the performative as the speech act of positing, mastery and ipseity. It can be described as the engagement that the self takes with itself, as the act of faith toward the representative, as the appeal for credit and preservation addressed to others. Therefore, as Derrida suggests, it is always threatening or making itself fear by necessarily admitting its enforceability. (shrink)

This paper revisits the Derrida-Searle debate, an exchange that, unfortunately, did not lead to much, if any, mutual understanding. I will suggest that this failure can be traced back to key features of their respective theories. In that Searle and Derrida use their own theories of speech as resources in trying to understand each other, their unsuccessful communication can be used to reveal a great deal about the limitations of both their theories. My paper tries to draw out these limitations (...) by analyzing specific moments in the debate. I also suggest concrete proposals for overcoming defects in each of the theories, proposals that, arguably, would make some mutual understanding more possible. (shrink)

Le but de cet article est de présenter et de discuter le débat qui opposa Searle à Derrida sur les questions du langage et de l'intentionnalité. L'auteur montre que les enjeux de ce débat dépassent largement la réappropriation de la philosophie du langage d'Austin, et qu'il nous fait pénétrer au cœur même de la problématique du langage. Derrida stigmatise dans la théorie du langage de Searle un avatar de la pensée de la présence, qu'il faut déconstruire. En adoptant une stratégie (...) visant à exclure de l'analyse les formes "parasitaires" (par exemple fictionnelles) du discours, mais aussi en optant pour une téléologie du remplissement intuitif et de la parfaite adéquation expressive, Searle aurait sous-estimé le discours parasitaire et l'aurait subordonné à tort au discours "normal". (shrink)

In this paper I return to one of the central points of contention in the renowned debate between John Searle and Jacques Derrida with the aim of rethinking the role of success and the place of failure in communication. What is the philosophical significance of Austin's decision to exclude from his investigation (in How to Do Things with Words) certain utterances that cannot qualify as successful? Examining the conflicting ways in which Searle and Derrida understand and respond to Austin, I (...) try to flesh out Derrida's call to grant failure (or the negative) the important place it deserves in our understanding of speech. Yet, whereas for Derrida, the call to recognize failure as an internal and positive condition ultimately leads to a structural – albeit a deconstructive – critique of language's conditions of possibility, I focus instead on the implications which this insight may have for our understanding of the actuality of language. Consequently, I argue that while Derrida's critique subverts the hegemony of success, it ironically remains, like Searle, distant from and external to the actual reverberation of spoken language. (shrink)

In spite of the widespread belief that there is (or at least there was) a clearcut and deep opposition between two forms of philosophizing vaguely characterized as 'continental' and 'analytic', it is not easy to find actual examples of debates between philosophers that clearly belong to the opposed camps. Perhaps the reason is that, on the assumption that the alleged 'divide' is so deep, each side feels that there is no point in arguing against the other, for argumentation would quickly (...) be replaced by invective. In this paper I analyse one of the few recent examples of an across-divide debate -the Searle -Derrida polemic. Using a threefold typology of debates, I try to show that, in spite of the violent and sarcastic tone employed by both contenders, there is enough common ground, questioning of not-argued-for assumptions, and serious argumentation (on both sides) to consider this debate more than just an irrational dispute. (shrink)

This paper is about the uses of language which the Oxford philosopher of language, J.L. Austin excluded from theoretical consideration in his William James Lectures delivered in 1955 and posthumously published as How to Do Things with Words. Uses of language, such as dramatic, poetic or comedic, are said by Austin to be non-serious, deviant and parasitic upon the everyday normal ordinary language. This leaves literature out of consideration as an etiolation. Derrida, who is not merely a trained philosopher but (...) also one of the finest literary critics of our day, fails to agree with Austin. In his “Signature, Event, Context”, and Limited Inc, he criticizes Austin of “totalization” and “idealization” of the norm or the standard; his inability to see that the parasitic is necessarily inbuilt in the standard. This paper is an attempt at seeing how far Derrida is justified in his critique as there is much that is common between his and Austin’s approaches towards language. (shrink)

This paper offers a comparative analysis of the uses and formulations of speech-act theory in Derrida's and Deleuze/Guattari's work. It begins by juxtaposing Derrida's concept/nonconcept of 'iterability' to Deleuze and Guattari's conception of the 'order-word' and then examines these theories of the speech act in terms of their implications and consequences for a politics of resistance. Whereas Deleuze and Guattari generate a detailed material stratum — an order-word plateau — for exploring the performative in socio-political contexts, Derrida attends to the (...) singular, wholly unique acts that occur when a repeatable formula such as a political declaration is uttered or otherwise takes place.The paper then concludes by drawing a tentative link between iterability and Deleuze and Guattari's notion of 'deterritorialisation' via the order-word plateau. (shrink)

This article tries to bring out the implication of Cavell’s critical comments on Derrida, clustered around Cavell’s charge that deconstruction entails a flight from the ordinary. Cavell’s and Derrida’s different readings of Austin’s ordinary language philosophy provide a common ground for elaborating their respective positions. Their writings are at once the closest but also the most divergent when addressing the moral implication of speech, or more precisely, when addressing their understanding of responsibility and voice. Employing Derrida’s so-called ‘double reading’ as (...) a leitmotif will not only shed light on the moral dimension of deconstruction, but also bring the central target of Cavell’s critique into the open. (shrink)

This brings together five pieces written by Jacques Derrida as extended lectures. The most important theme is Derrida's redefinition of speech acts and the 'event' as a particular kind of performative. The effects of globalization and mechanization, along with arising issues, provide a second constellation of themes. The first four essays involve a specific act of speech: the lie, the excuse, perjury and profession. The last two essays continue Derrida's powerful series of meditations on professional and institutional questions. The final (...) essay, 'Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul', confronts the task facing psychoanalysis today: coming to terms in new ways with worldwide cruelty and accommodating itself to the modern juridical concepts of crime against humanity. The phrase 'without alibi' (alibi, of course, being another speech act) is used throughout the essay as a leitmotif indicating that the responsibility psychoanalysis has to respond to globalization cannot be evaded. (shrink)

Introduction Cavell's Voices and Derrida's Grammatology The stature of Stanley Cavell is increasingly considered unique among living American philosophers ...