Abstract
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.
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Notes
I believe Simon Critchley made this convincingly clear in Critchley (1999).
Whereas losing and regaining the normative context of words is at the forefront in Cavell’s earlier writings, the loss and continual struggle for a more intelligible form of life is essential to his moral perfectionism, developed later. In this latter sense, the ordinary is therefore not a well-known habitat, but a process of becoming.
Cf. Michael Fisher (1989), Roger V. Bell (2004), and Gordon C. Bearn (1998, 2000). They all differ from my aim in different respects: Fisher wrote his book prior to Cavell’s most extended treatment of Derrida, which I must take into account; Bearn’s article is an explicit defense of Derrida, whereas Bell posits himself amidst Cavell and Derrida in an attempt to assess their respective claims.
Critchley (1999, pp. 26–27).
Derrida (1997, p. 158).
Derrida (1988, p. 152).
Derrida (1988, p. 8).
Derrida (1988, p. 7). Différance is a neologism that is designed to capture both difference (in the spatial sense) as constitutive for the identity of the sign, and deferral (in the temporal sense) implying that self-identity is never fulfilled as totally present; both work to preserve a trace of the non-identical, the impure, the incomplete in order to shake the metaphysical privileging of pure identity and presence. See Derrida (1992, pp. 129–30).
Austin (1975, pp. 14–15).
Indeed, infelicities and breakdown seem to play a privileged role in Austin’s methodology, see Austin (1961, pp. 127–28).
Derrida (1988, p. 14).
Austin (1975, p. 5).
Derrida (1988, pp. 18–19). Such passages have led some to believe that Derrida wants to replace intentionality with différance, cf. Searle (1977, p. 207), Hammer (2002, p. 162). What Derrida is after, however, is a shift, where intention is no longer regarded as the constitutive factor—as such, it is “essentially absent”—but where it is displaced, inscribed into writing. Derrida (1988, pp. 18, 56, 121–22).
Derrida (1988, p. 16).
Derrida (1988, p. 20).
I have borrowed this setup from Bearn, who calls it “quantifier-shift interpretation” (Bearn 1998, p. 68).
Derrida (1988, p. 114).
Derrida (1988, pp. 115–122).
Derrida (1988, p. 17).
Cavell (1976, p. 228).
Derrida (1988, p. 18).
Austin (1975, pp. 9–10).
Cavell (2003, p. 241).
Cavell (1994, p. 111).
Cavell (1994, pp. 86, 91).
Austin (1975, p. 21).
A problem with Cavell’s reply, as Bell notes, is that those essays were not published at the time Austin wrote How to Do Things with Words. Bell (2004). However, it still highlights the fact that Derrida does not live up to his own demands for a careful and scholarly reading.
Austin (1961, p. 124).
Austin (1975, p. 21).
Cavell (1979, pp. 45–46).
Wittgenstein (2009 §47).
Cavell (1994, p. 72).
Wittgenstein (2009, § 107).
Cavell (1995, p. 74).
I am alluding to Cavell’s reading of Beckett’s “Endgame.” Cavell (1976).
Cavell (1988, p. 131).
Derrida (1988, pp. 148–149).
Cavell (1994, pp. 91–92).
Cavell (1988, p. 136).
Cavell (1988, p. 135).
Cavell (1988, p. 135).
Derrida (2002, p. 98).
Cavell (1994, pp. 118, 126).
Derrida (1988, p. 116).
Derrida (2002, pp. 252–54).
Cavell (1976, p. 52).
Derrida (1995, p. 60).
Derrida (1995, p. 78).
Cf. Paul Ricoeur’s critique of Levinas. Ricoeur (1992, pp. 337).
Cavell (1979, p. 470). Cavell has later commented on the crossing paths of his own thinking and that of Emmanuel Levinas’ on this juncture. Cavell (1995, pp. 143–44). It is interesting to note that Levinas might be taken to side with Cavell in regard to the ordinary, as he keeps insisting on the ordinariness of his philosophical point, captured in such simple gestures as holding the door for another person.
Derrida (1988, p. 152).
Cavell (1988, p. 177).
Cavell (1976, p. 179).
Cavell (1988, p. 171).
Cavell (1984, p. 48).
Derrida (1997, p. 39).
Cavell (1994, p. 83).
Cavell (1995, p. 62).
Timothy Gould has gone through the shifting meanings of the voice in Cavell’s works. Gould (1998, Chap. 2–3).
Cavell (1990, p. xxxi).
Cavell (1988, pp. 131–32).
Cavell (1994, p. 121).
Cavell (1988, p. 133).
“Authentic quotation” is Espen Hammer’s phrase. Hammer (2002, p. 157). The phrase captures the displaced sense of authenticity that is at work here.
Cavell (1976, p. 71).
Cavell (2005, p. 140).
Cavell (1988, p. 133).
Bearn argues that Wittgenstein’s view of language implies that peace is reached through violence: The scene of instruction is taken to depict initiation into language in the same manner as we learn animals do tricks. Bearn (1998, p. 85). This, however, cannot be taken seriously as Cavell’s view. Bearn himself refers to “the argument of the ordinary,” treated in an essay in which Cavell makes efforts to oppose what he takes as Saul Kripke’s violent and oppressive picture of initiation into language, and suggests the weak gesture Cavell finds portrayed in Wittgenstein’s teacher. Cavell (1990, pp. 69–78).
Bearn (1998, p. 86).
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Dahl, E. On morality of speech: Cavell’s critique of Derrida. Cont Philos Rev 44, 81–101 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-011-9169-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-011-9169-6