way dasenbrock. reading derrida's responses

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Taking It Personally: Reading Derrida's ResponsesAuthor(s): Reed Way DasenbrockSource: College English, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Mar., 1994), pp. 261-279Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/378514Accessed: 22-12-2015 10:09 UTC

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2/20

261

TAKING

IT PERSONALLY:

READING

DERRIDA'S

RESPONSES

Reed

Way

Dasenbrock

wenty-five

years

ago,

Roland Barthes announced the

death of the

author.

Of

course,

even

in

the

revolutionary

year

1968 authors were

not

being

plucked

out of their studies and

being

shot.

What

Barthes was

really announcing

through

this

hyperbole

was

a

new

mode of

interpretation:

"Once the author

is

removed,

the

claim to

decipher

a text becomes

quite

futile. To

give

a text an

Author

is

to

impose

a

limit on that

text,

to furnish it with a final

signified,

to

close

the

writing"

(147).

Conversely,

to remove

writing

from the

authority

of the

author is to declare it

open.

And

given

that

it

was

1968,

this

openness

was

assigned

by

Barthes

a

precise political

value:

"to

refuse

to

fix

meaning

is,

in

the

end,

to

refuse God and his

hypostases-reason,

science,

law"

(147).

Barthes's brief essay, "The Death of the Author,"is a crucial compendium of

the

themes

of what

later came

to

be called

poststructuralism.

At

times,

Barthes

sounds

like

Jacques

Derrida:

"writing

is

the destruction of

every

voice,

of

every

point

of

origin"

(142).

At

times,

a bit

more like Louis

Althusser:

"Language

knows

a

'subject,'

not a

person"

(145).

At other

times,

like Michel Foucault:

"Writing

is

that

neutral,

composite, oblique space

where our

subject slips

away,

the

negative

where

all

identity

is

lost,

starting

with

the

very

identity

of the

body

writing"

(142).

The

reason

for

these resemblances is that all

of these influential

poststructuralists

join

Barthes

in

wishing

to

displace

authority

over

the text and its

meaning

from

the author. Other names might be cited here, of course: the Martin Heidegger

who

wrote

"Die

Spracht

spricht"

and

the Paul de Man who

changed

this to "Die

Spracht

verspricht."

In

each

case,

though

there are

important

differences

among

these

writers

in

other

respects, they

agree

that

textual

meaning escapes

the control

of

the individ-

Reed

Way

Dasenbrock

is

Professor

of

English

at

New Mexico

State

University.

His

previous

contributions to

College

English

nclude

"Do

We

Write the Text We

Read?"

(January

1991)

and "What

Is

English

Anyway?"

(September

1993).

He is

currently working

on

a

book

to be

entitled From

Conventions

o Intentions.

COLLEGE

ENGLISH,

VOLUME

56,

NUMBER

3,

MARCH

1994

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/20

2

62

COLLEGE

ENGLISH

ual

author because

of the nature of

language

and

writing.

More

metaphorically,

the author dies

in

the

act

of

writing

as "texts"

created

by

writers

escape

their

control in the drift inherent in

textuality.

The

argument

is not

simply

that readers

can and do

interpret

texts

differently

from how

authors

may

have

intended them

to be

interpreted

or

that

such authorial intentions

may

be difficult to

ascertain

or

recover. These are

empirical

facts about which

there is

broad

agreement.

Nor

is

it

the anti-intentionalism characteristic of New

Criticism,

which would

argue

that

even an

ascertainable

authorial intention would

have no

ontological

or

methodo-

logical

priority

in

the

adjudication

of

competing interpretations.

The

poststruc-

turalist

position

would

argue

that

the New Critical

position

described in the

previous

sentence

depends upon

a

humanist notion of the human

subject

as in

control of his or her language, meaning, and stance, which poststructuralism

regards

as

naive

and

in

some

versions

quite

sinister. Given this

(ultimately

Heideggerean)

critique

of

humanism,

poststructuralist

theories of

interpretation

are

impersonalist

as

well as

anti-intentionalist,

grounded

in

a

widely

shared

theory

of the

self or rather the

"subject"

which

denies

substantial

autonomy

or

self-determination

to

human

agents

whether

they

be

authors

or

not.

Foucault

does allow in

"What Is an Author?" for the existence

of the

"author-function,"

but this for him is

an

effect

of

discursive

practices

and

cultural

institutions,

not

the creation

of an individual

"originating

subject":

"it is a matter of

depriving

the

subject (or

its

substitute)

of its role as

originator,

and of

analyzing

the

subject

as

a variable and

complex

function

of discourse"

(118).

At the end of

The Order

of

Things,

he

went

well

beyond

this

and

beyond

Barthes to

proclaim

the

"disappear-

ance of

man"

(386),

and the "death

of the author"

in

literary theory

is

part

of

this

larger

"dissolution

of the humanist

subject"

(Ruthrof 207).

Everyone

mentioned above

as

contributing

to the formation of

this

view

was

still

alive when Barthes

announced

the death of the

author.

Now

that all of

them

except

Jacques

Derrida are

dead,

it

seems

worthwhile

to

stop

for a moment and

see

how the doctrines

they espoused

have survived their own actual

deaths. What

is remarkable

is

that

more attention

than ever is now

being

paid

to

these authors

and the attention that is

being

paid

is

precisely

to their lives, to what

they

did as

people.

Great

controversy

has

arisen,

of

course,

over

Heidegger's

and

de

Man's

involvement

with

Nazism;

the

revelations about Foucault's

involvement with

drugs

and

extreme

forms of

gay

sexuality

found

in

James

Miller's new

biography

have

received

a

great

deal of

attention;

and Louis

Althusser

may

now be

best

known

for

having

strangled

his

wife,

having

himself

called attention

to his

crime

in a

posthumously

published autobiography.

Ironically,

the lives

of

these

writers

now

seem,

in defiance of their

theories,

to overshadow the texts

they

produced.

What the recent

wave of tabloid-like

publicity

about these advocates of

imper-

sonalism reveals is that our interest in authors-even authors who denounce the

concept-is

as

strong

as

ever.



4/20

READING

DERRIDA'S

RESPONSES

263

But

what does this

tell

us about the

practical

consequences

of

the

anti-

intentionalist

impersonalism

of

poststructuralism?

This view

is one readers

can

easily

live

by,

for reasons well outlined

by

Barthes.

Ruling

the

author out

of

court

gives

any

reader

greater

freedom

to

interpret,

a freedom

many

readers find

liberating

and

exciting.

But

can authors live

by

this

belief?

We

can look at

the

text

of another and

find

the author

to be irrelevant to

the

meaning

we

construe,

but

can

authors

look at texts

they

have written in a

way

consistent

with anti-

intentionalist

impersonalism?

Can

poststructuralists practice

what

they

preach

and

apply

their

own

theories

to their

own

texts?

There is

only

one

place

to look

for

an answer to

this

question,

since

there is

only

one

poststructuralist

of

any

note who has

kept

leaving

a detailed

record

of

his reaction to others' reading of his work-Jacques Derrida. (Derrida would

probably

object

to the term

poststructuralist being applied

to

his

work,

but

I

use

it here as

the

received

term

in

English

for what

Ferry

and

Renaut

have

called "La

pensde

68,"

and

these thinkers

including

Derrida

broadly

share

in

the

critique

of

humanism

and

rethinking

of

the

place

of the author

I

describe

here.)

In

contrast

to

Foucault

who came to

prefer

avoiding controversy,

Derrida has

reveled

in

it,

from

the

time

of his

1977

exchange

with

John

Searle over the work

ofJ.

L.

Austin

in

Glyph,

through

the

encounter

with

Hans-Georg

Gadamer

in

Paris

in

1981,

to

his

more

recent

responses

to

criticism in Critical

Inquiry

first of his

writing

on

apartheid

and

then

of

his

commentary

on

the

de

Man

controversy.

As

I

write,

a

new,

rather

more

legalistic

exchange

is

unfolding

in The New

YorkReview

of

Books

over

an

interview Derrida

gave

on

the

subject

of

Heidegger.

Moreover,

these are

not

isolated,

unimportant

incidents

in

Derrida's

body

of

work.

Derrida's

exchange

with Searle has attracted an

enormous

body

of

secondary

commentary,

and

expositors

of Derrida's

thought

have

found

both the

original

essay,

"Signature

Event

Context,"

and Derrida's

response

to

Searle,

"Limited

Inc,"

to be

key

texts

in

the

unfolding

of

Derrida's

thought.

These two

essays

have

recently

been

reprinted

in

book

form

as Limited

Inc,

with additional

commentary

by

Derrida a

dozen

years

after the

exchange,

a

book

re-presented

in

French.

The

exchange

with Gadamer was

published

in German in the collection Text und

Interpretation,

and was

subsequently published

in

English

with

extensive additional

commentary

as

Dialogue

and

Deconstruction: he

Gadamer-Derrida

Encounter Derrida's

reading

of

de

Man's

wartime

journalism,

"Like

the Sound

of

the

Sea:

Paul

de

Man's

War,"

was

immediately

republished

in the

volume

Responses.

inally,

even

though

Der-

rida

has

objected

to

the

reprinting

of

"Heidegger,

l'enfer

des

philosophes"

in

Richard Wolin's The

Heidegger

Controversy,

e

reprinted

the

interview

himself

in

the recent

collection Points de

suspension.

I

cite these

publication

details to

demonstrate that it is not

just

that Derrida has

been

willing

to

address

and contest

others' reading of his work; he has also been willing to keep those exchanges in

print

and therefore

keep

them in the

public

eye.



5/20

2 64

COLLEGE

ENGLISH

What I want

to do in

this

essay

is look

at

these

exchanges

in

conjunction,

something

which

has not been

done,

to

see what notions of

authorial

intentions

and authorial

presence

Derrida

actually employs.

(I

do not discuss his

exchange

with McClintock

and

Nixon over

apartheid

in

detail since the substance

of

this

exchange

is

at

some remove

from

the

more

technical debates

over

meaning

and

interpretation

on

which the others

focus.)

We shall

see that

though

Derrida's

tactics

remain

fairly

constant,

the

substantive

positions

they

support

change

dramatically

between the

earlier

exchanges

with

Searle

and Gadamer and the

more recent

exchanges concerning

de

Man and

Heidegger.

Derrida

sounds

very

much

the

same,

but what he

actually says

is

radically

different. The

inconsistency

involved

in

this

unacknowledged

reversal is

important; through

studying

these

exchanges, we learn how Derrida actually reads, and that in turn reveals a good

deal about the

theoretical

implications

and

practical

consequences

of

his work.

In

1977,

when

Derrida's

1971

essay

"Signature

6vinement

contexte"

was

publish-

ed

in

translation,

the editors

of

Glyph

asked

John

Searle

to

respond

to Derrida's

essay, presumably

because

"Signature

6vinement

contexte"

contains

a

discussion

of

the

work

of

J.

L. Austin. Searle's

response, "Reiterating

the Differences: A

Reply

to

Derrida"

was

published

together

in the first

issue

of

Glyph

with

"Signa-

ture

Event Context."

This is a

dense and

far-ranging

essay,

but one

of its

central

concerns is that the model of writing as communicating an author's intended

meaning

is

inadequate

because

it

ignores

the

"essential drift"

by

virtue of which

writing

breaks

with

its

originating

context.

The

meaning

of

any

text

in

Derrida's

analysis

is

given

it

by

context,

but

writing

is

continually

being

de-

and

re-contex-

tualized

in

ways

that make

any specificity

of textual

meaning

local and

provisional.

The

position

advanced

bears

a close resemblance

to Barthes's

"The Death of the

Author,"

except

that Barthes's

revolutionary

call

to overthrow

the

author and

heroically

refuse

to fix

meaning

is

replaced by

a much more measured

and

matter-of-fact

tone that

suggests

the author

has

never

been

in a

position

to fix

meaning.

If

there was

a

revolution, according

to

Derrida,

it

did not occur

in

1968

but

with the

invention

of

writing.

Austin

comes

into the second

half of the

essay

as someone

who in his

analysis

of

speech

acts

has made

a commendable

effort

to move

away

from

intentionalist

models

of

meaning

toward

contextualist

and conventionalist

models: the effect

of

a

speech

act is

not

what its author

intends

it to achieve but

what

in context

and

according

to

the relevant

conventions

its

auditors

understand

it to mean.

But

Derrida

argues

that Austin's

project

still relies

at some

level

on the

notion

of

intention.

Furthermore,

its notions

of convention and context

are flawed. Austin's

analysis depends

upon

the

standard

example,

which means the successful

example,

ignoring the risk of failure inherent in all language use. The existence of what

Derrida calls

"citationality"

means that

conventions can

always

be violated

just

as



6/20

READING

DERRIDA'S

RESPONSES 265

contexts

can

always

be

replaced;

writing,

thus,

breaks with contexts and

conven-

tions of the kind

Austin relies

on to

specify

the

meaning

of

speech

acts,

to

give

him the standardized

examples

his

analysis

needs.

Searle

begins

"Reiterating

the Differences"

by

saying

that Derrida has

mis-

understood

Austin,

and he ends

by

saying

that Derrida is

wrong

in

arguing against

the

idea that

"intention is at

the

heart

of

meaning

and communication"

(207).

The

juxtaposition

of these two

claims

gives

Derrida all the

leverage

he needs

to

respond

to

Searle's

critique,

for if authorial intention is at the heart

of

communi-

cation,

how is

it that Derrida has failed

to

understand Austin? Searle's model of

writing

is

a

speech-based

or conversational

model in

which

the

reader

tries to

understand

what

the author

says.

Derrida

rejects

this model and

dramatizes

his

rejection throughout "Limited Inc," above all by the way in which he (non)re-

sponds

to the

person

of

the

author,

John

Searle.

Searle's

"Reply"

is

copyrighted

by

the

author,

a not

uncommon

though

not

absolutely

routine

practice

of aca-

demic

writing,

and

the first

note,

following

a

well-established academic conven-

tion,

thanks "H.

Dreyfus

and D. Searle

for

discussion of these

matters"

(208).

Derrida

begins

his massive

response

to Searle's

essay

by

focusing

on

these two

seemingly

irrelevant

aspects

of

Searle's

reply.

But

of

course

they

are not

irrele-

vant,

for

these

are

the

very

places

where

a

real

person,

John

Searle,

is

laying

claim

to

being

the

author of

"Reiterating

the Differences." Derrida

wonders

why

the

copyright

is

necessary.

Is

Searle concerned about his

rights

as

author?

And

this

leads

Derrida

into the

following

speculations:

how

can I

be

absolutely

ure that

John

R. Searle

himself

(who

is

it?)

is

in

fact

the

author?

Perhaps

t is a memberof

his

family,

his

secretary,

is

lawyer,

his financial

advisor,

he

"managing

ditor"of the

journal,

a

joker

or a

namesake?

Or even

D.

Searle

(who

is

it?),

to

whom

John

R.

Searle

acknowledges

his

indebtedness:

I

am

indebted o H.

Dreyfus

and

D.

Searle

or

discussion

of

these

matters."

. .

IfJohn

R. Searleowes a

debt

to

D. Searle

concerning

his

discussion,

then the

"true"

copyright ought

to

belong

(...)

to

a

Searle who is

divided,

multiplied,

conjugated,

hared.

What

a

complicated

ignature

And one

that be-

comes even more

complex

when

the debt

includes

my

old

friend,

H.

Dreyfus,

with

whom I

myself

have

worked,

discussed,

exchanged

deas,

so that if it is indeed

through

him

that the

Searles

have

"read"

me,

"understood"

me,

and

"replied"

o

me,

then

I, too,

can claim a

stake

n

the

"action" r

"obligation,"

he stocks

and

bonds,

of

this

holding company,

he

Copyright

Trust.

(31)

For

the

subsequent

seventy-five pages

of

"Limited

Inc,"

Derrida

never

refers to

the author of

"Reiterating

the

Differences"

as

Searle.

John

R.

Searle

is

indeed

referred

to,

as

the

author of other

texts,

but

not of this one.

First,

Derrida refers

for several

pages

to the "authors

(three

+

n)" (32)

and

then,

returning

to his

idea

of a

holding company,

he

writes:

I decidehere and fromthismomenton to givethepresumed nd collectiveauthor

of

the

Reply

he

Frenchname

"Soci&tC

responsabilitd

imit&e-literally,

"Society



7/20

266

COLLEGE ENGLISH

with Limited

Responsibility"

or

Limited

Liability)-which

is

normally

abbrevi-

ated to Sarl.

(36)

And

it

is this

acting

of

naming

that

gives

"Limited

Inc"

its

title,

for

"Limited"

or

"Incorporated"

are-as

Derrida

goes

on

to

say-the equivalent

terms in

English

for

"Sarl."

For the rest of "Limited

Inc,"

Derrida

exclusively

uses

the term Sarl

to

refer

to

the author

of

"Reiterating

the

Differences."

Argumentative

tactics and

substance

neatly

coincide here

in a

way

that

does

not

require

extended comment. Derrida is

using

Searle's

acknowledgment

of

other influences

on his

text

to

call attention to

the

social

nature of all

authorship,

to

the

fact that

Searle

is

not

the

sole

authority

in

his

text and

cannot

claim

sole

intellectual

ownership

of whatever truth is

in

his

text.

All

writing,

inasmuch

as it

depends

upon

what has come

before,

is authorized

by something

larger

than an

individual

author,

as

Searle

acknowledged by

choosing

in

his

reply

to

speak

in

a

sense

for Austin and his work. Derrida is not

replying

to

a

person

named

John

Searle,

he

is

responding

to a text

signed by

John

Searle,

and he

denies

that this

situation is reducible

to that of a

conversation between

two

people.

He dramatizes

this

refusal

by

a refusal to

call

the author

Searle.

Derrida has

cleverly

boxed Searle

in

here.

Any

claims

by

Searle that Derrida

has

misunderstood

him will

be further

support

for

Derrida's claim that Searle's

model of

communication

depends

upon

idealized models

of

full

understanding

which will not apply to real communicative situations. Moreover, Derrida would

insist that he has

not

misunderstood him

but has

simply

read

"Reiterating

the

Differences"

differently

from

Searle.

In

such an

interpretive

dispute,

we tend to

accept

the

author's

word because

we think the

text

is his. But for Derrida this text

does

not

belong

to Searle

any

more,

since Searle can control neither

the

use

to

which

his

writing

is

put

nor the context

in which it

is

placed.

This

of

course

brings

us

back

to

Derrida's

starting point,

Searle's act of

copyrighting

his

text,

an act

which

involves

a

literal,

not

just

a

metaphorical, application

of

notions of

property

to

the

realm

of texts. Derrida

frustrates this

by quoting every

word

of

"Reiterating

the Differences"

in "Limited

Inc."

In

so

doing

Derrida

is

dramatizing

his

thesis

that

writing

is

capable

of

being

reappropriated

and

recontextualized

in

ways

no

author

can control.

Writing

does

not

belong

to the

author,

according

to

Derrida,

either

metaphorically

or

literally.

So we can see

a

good

fit

between

Derrida's ideas about

the relation between

authors

and their

texts and his

actual

way

of

reading

in

"Limited

Inc":

Searle

is

denied

control

over

"Reiterating

the

Differences,"

denied even

his

identity

as the

author

of

his

text,

in an

aggressive

depersonalization

of the

author.

But,

of

course,

this is

Derrida

reading

the

writing

of

another,

not his

own;

so the

question

remains whether

Derrida

is

prepared

to have his

writing

taken

away

from

his

control in the way he takes Searle'saway from him. Derrida suggests he is, in a



8/20


9/20

268

COLLEGE

ENGLISH

lying

principle

of

linguistic

interaction.

(Literary

texts work rather

differently

for

Gadamer,

of

course,

but Derrida is not

very responsive

to the

complexities

of

Gadamer's

position,

preferring

to

cast

him

as a defender of authorial

presence.)

But this

assumption

is what Derrida seeks to

disrupt

and

in

a

sense

already

has

disrupted by

posing

his

questions

so

elliptically.

If

Gadamer

finds

him

difficult

to

understand,

then

perhaps "good

will"

does not

suffice;

if

Derrida is

writing

in

a

way

to frustrate Gadamer's

understanding,

then

perhaps good

will

does

not

govern

this encounter

in

particular

or

linguistic

interaction

in

general

to the

degree

Gadamer

posits.

What can take

its

place

is

suggested by

the

original

title

to Derrida's

questions:

"Bonnes volontes de

puissance"

or,

in

German,

"Guter

Wille zur

Macht."

Will,

as Derrida's

first

question

reminds

us,

has a

complex

resonance: it can be part of the phrase "good will" but it also forms part of the

rather

different

phrase

"will to

power."

If will

is an "ultimate determinant"

of

communication

and

understanding,

not all of communication seems

governed by

good

will;

instead,

the

will to

power

is

present

as

well.

This

leads

to

the

final two

questions.

If I

need

to

try

to understand an

other,

it

means

I am

proceeding

from

a

position

of less

than

perfect

and less than immediate

understanding.

It therefore

cannot

simply

be

assumed that

my

desire

is to understand the other

as

he

or she

would

be understood.

I

may

be

expressing

a

will

to

power

over the other

rather

than

good

will

toward

him

or

her,

and

the

mention of

psychology

here

should

serve

to remind us that

this

may

be the case even when

I

am

not conscious

of

any

such

thing.

Scholarly

interactions

of the kind Gadamer and Derrida

were

engaged

in

are

a

particularly

apt

example

of how a

will

to

power may

co-exist

in a

complex

way

with

good

will.

Did Derrida

in

addressing

these

questions

to

Gadamer

wish

only

consensus and

harmonious

interaction?

Or

did

he also

wish

to

win a contest?

Gadamer's

hermeneutics

cannot

admit

to the second

motive,

but Derrida's

can.

Kenneth

Burke

has made

a distinction

between two

kinds of

argumentative

strategies,

which he calls

"Courtship"

and the

"Kill."

Gadamerian

hermeneutics

is a

perfect

example

of Burkean

courtship

in

which one

seeks consensus

and

identification with the other. But we cannot

ignore

the fact that this is not

always

our

aim,

that

sometimes

we seek

the

"Kill,"

a

victory

over

the other.

Gadamer

may

be an

exception

here,

and

surely

one

difference between

this

exchange

and

that

with Searle is

that

here

a

courtship strategy

is

matched

against

a kill

strategy,

whereas

Searle was

as

prepared

for

argumentative

war

as

Derrida.

Thus

the

"quite

different

way

of

thinking

about

texts" adumbrated

in Derrida's

response

is

also

exemplified

by

it:

it

is a

view

of the scene

of

interpretation

as

not

always governed

by good

will,

but

sometimes

governed

by

a will to

power

in which

interpretive

authority

is contested

rather than

granted.

Who wins or who kills is not the

point

here as much as that this way of thinking about argumentation and interpretation

reveals that Gadamer's

assumption

of a different

way

of

thinking

is

just

that,

an



10/20

READING

DERRIDA'S RESPONSES

269

assumption.

Moreover,

Derrida's vision seems more

responsive

to the

actualities

of

the Gadamer-Derrida

exchange,

not

just

because Derrida

obviously

has a

will

to

power

but also because the

understanding

that follows

from

good

will

is not

readily

apparent

here.

Derrida

thus

has boxed Gadamer

in

much

as

he did

Searle,

for

if

Gadamer

insists that

Derrida

has misunderstood or not wanted

to

understand

him,

then

Gadamer's

presupposition

of

"good

will"

is revealed to be a

presupposition

which

does not

govern

all interactions.

But

Gadamer,

true

to his own

principle

of

sustaining dialogue, replies

to

Derrida's

critique,

unlike

Searle,

and

his

response

describes Derrida's

attempt

to

box

him

in:

Is

he

reallydisappointed

hat

we

cannotunderstand ach other?Indeed

not,

for

in

his view this would be a

relapse

nto

metaphysics.

He

will,

in

fact,

be

pleased,

because

he

takes this

private

experience

of

disillusionment

o

confirm

his own

metaphysics.

"Reply

o

Jacques

Derrida"

6)

But Gadamer

does not

leave

it

there,

for

he

goes

on to

suggest

that the

willingness

of

Derrida

to

contest Gadamer's views

presupposes

a view of

communication

surprisingly

close to

Gadamer's own:

But

I

cannot see

here

how he can

be

right only

with

respect

to

himself,

be in

agreement

only

with himself. Of course I

understand

ery

well

why

he

invokes

Nietzsche

here. It

is

precisely

because both of

them

are

mistakenabout them-

selves.Actuallybothspeakandwrite n order o be understood."ReplyoJacques

Derrida"

57)

What Gadamer

suggests

here is that

though

Derrida

may

in

exchanges

such

as

these demonstrate

a

non-agreement

and a

non-understanding

between

himself

and his

interlocutor,

this

demonstration is

directed toward

another

audience

Derrida

hopes

to

communicate with

and

persuade.

In

Burke's

terms,

the "Kill"

only

has a

point

if

there is an

audience to

respond

to the

victor,

an

audience that

is

being

courted,

and

that audience

has

to

understand Derrida's

argument

and

understand it the

way

he

intends them

to

understand

it

if

he is

to

succeed

in

his

courtship,

if

they

are to understand that he has won and

identify

with him. The

will

to

power

thus

may

co-exist

uneasily

with

good

will,

as

Derrida

insists,

but it

co-exists

just

as

uneasily

with

textual

openness

or

plural

understandings

of

texts

since

Derrida wants

these

polemical

interventions to

have a

meaning

and an

effect

he controls.

This is not

a

knock-down

argument refuting

Derrida,

but

Gadamer is not in

search

of

one;

instead,

he

is

trying

to show

that Derrida's need for

the knock-

down

argument

reveals that

Derrida is not

prepared

to

lose his

identity

as

an

author in

a

play

of

textuality.

Derrida's

very

insistence

on

not

being

understood

by Gadamer means that he is paradoxically still playing the traditional role of the

author who "owns" his

texts.

Indeed,

there

seems no

way

an activist

author such



11/20

270

COLLEGE

ENGLISH

as Derrida can abandon

this

role,

for

even when

Derrida declares the

meaning

of

his text to be

open, by

virtue of that

declaration,

he is still

occupying

the

position

of

the author.

To insist

that

one's

writing

is not

closed

in

meaning

is to

close

it in

one

direction,

to close off the

possibility

of

closure,

which

means

to

impose

a

limit

of the kind authors

traditionally

were said to do.

The author

may

be

dead,

but

nonetheless

he is around to

disagree

with

you

if

you

insist that he is

alive.

The

tangle

of

cross-purposes

Gadamer

diagnosed

is

fully exposed

in

"Biodegrad-

ables: Seven

Diary Fragments,"

Derrida's

long response

to six

critiques

of his

reading

of de

Man's wartime

journalism,

"Like the Sound of the Sea

Deep

within

the

Shell." Derrida had earlier been able to

demonstrate both his

non-coopera-

tion with Gadamer'sprinciple of good will and his commitment to the openness

of textual

meaning

because of

his

particular position

in

the

exchanges

with

Searle

and Gadamer.

Since he is

arguing against

their

views

of

interpretation

and

communication,

which he views as too committed to

agreement

and

closure,

Derrida

"wins" each of these

exchanges

if

the end result is

disagreement;

a failure

of

Gadamer's

good

will or

Searle's

regulative

conventions to create

understanding

is

simply

more

grist

for his mill. But

Derrida does not have the same interest

in

disagreement

in

the de Man

controversy;

far from

declaring

the

meaning

of de

Man's wartime

writings

to be

open,

he

wants

his

readers

to

agree

with his

declaration that Paul de Man "nevercollaborated or called for collaboration with

a Nazism"

("Like

the Sound

of the

Sea"

638).

Few

people

have,

and of the

six

responses

to

"Like the

Sound of the Sea" to

which he

responds

in

"Biodegradables,"

only

one

respondent-Jonathan

Culler-

at

all

agrees

with his

interpretation.

Anyone

fresh from a

reading

of "Limited

Inc"

would

not

expect

to

find this

range

of

interpretation

at all

surprising

or discon-

certing

to

Derrida,

as it seems fresh

proof

that Derrida was

right

in

insisting

on

the

fragility

of

interpretive

conventions and

the

necessary openness

of textual

meaning.

Derrida

is not

surprised,

since he

spent

a

good

deal of "Like the

Sound

of

the Sea"

in

an

anticipatory

refutation

of

divergent interpretations

of de Man's

wartime

writings,

but he

surely

is disconcerted.

In

essence,

he accuses

those

who criticize him and de

Man

of bad faith.

Near the

beginning

of his

response,

he

says

that he did not

always

agree

with

de

Man:

"This has not

escaped

the notice

of

those

who

have been

willing

to read

each of

us,

with

any

lucidity

and

good

faith,

for more than

twenty years"

(818).

But these

disagreements

co-existed

with

respect,

as Derrida

testifies

to the "rich-

ness,

the

rigor,

and the

fertility

of Paul de Man's

work"

(818).

Thus,

de

Man

and

Derrida were

engaged

in the kind of

positive, consensus-seeking

conversation

Gadamer

presupposes

as the

necessary

condition of

understanding.

Derrida de-

scribes himself as open to the same kind of good-faith dialogue over the de Man

affair:



12/20

READING

DERRIDA'S

RESPONSES

271

Those

who have read

me,

in

particular

hose

who

haveread"Paulde Man's

War,"

know

very

well that

I would have

quite

easily accepted

a

genuine critique....

Providedthis was done so as to demonstrateand not to intimidateor inflict

wounds,

o

help

the

analysis

progress

and

not

to score

points,

to

readand

to

reason

and not to

pronounce

massive,

magical,

and

immediately xecutory

verdicts.

Five

of

the

six

"responses"

hat

I

reread

ast

night

are

written,

as one used to

say,

with

a

pen

dipped

n

venom.

(819-820)

The sixth

response

is

Jonathan

Culler's,

and Derrida

reads his

response

rather

differently:

he does

not

seek

to

manipulate,

nflict

wounds,

or

denigrate.

His

procedure

s

honest.

First of all

because

t is addressed o me. Not

only

to

me,

of

course,

but

also

to

me,

that

is,

to

someone,

with

whom

one does

not

agree,

to

be

sure,

but

with

whom one

discusses,

ndwhom one is not

trying

rom

he outsetto

insult-in

his

intentions,

his

person,

and

his work.

(822)

If

Gadamer

has

read

this

essay

of

Derrida's,

he

must

have smiled

reading passages

such as

these,

for

in

accordance

with

his

own

model some sort

of fusion

of

horizons

between Gadamer and Derrida

has

taken

place

here. What is

the

lucidity, good

faith,

and

openness

to

dialogue

Derrida

ascribes

to

certain

unspeci-

fied

readers,

to

himself,

and to Culler

but

the

good

will

toward the

other Gada-

mer celebrates?

But

there are a number

of

paradoxes

that

result

from

Derrida's

adopting

this

Gadamerian stance.

According

to

Derrida,

Culler is

writing

in

good

faith because

he

is

treating

Derrida as a

person

and

is

in

dialogue

with

him,

and

anyone

who

has read

Derrida

should

know

that

he would have

accepted

a

good-faith critique;

thus,

if

you

read me

correctly

and

write to

me

personally, you

know me and know

how

I will

respond.

We have moved

very

far here from the

assumptions

about

collective

authorship

and divided

authorial

authority

which

governed

"Limited

Inc,"

for what is this

if

it is not

precisely

the classical model of

presence

which

"Signature

Event

Context"

was

trying

to

displace?

In

contrast to

the

good

faith

and

lucidity

that

he

sketches

as his

ideal,

Derrida

complains

that the

other

respondents ignored

lines

[in

Derrida's

ssay]

hat,

along

with

so

many

others

n a

similar

vein,

the five

other

"respondents"

eem not

to have even

read,

that

they

cannotnot have

read,

and thus

they pretend

dishonestly

nd

in

bad

aith

(I

am

weighing

my

words

carefully)

o

know

nothing

about.It

would

be

necessary

o invent a

new

category

here. "Bad

aith"

or

"denegration"

re nsufficient.We're

talking

about

something

that falls

betweenthe "I-cannot-read"nd

"I-do-not-want-to

ead."

822-823)

This

ascription

of

bad faith to his

opponents depends just

as

emphatically

on the

classical model of

authorship:

Derrida infers

intentions from the words he

has

read, and he quite confidently ascribes the meaning he finds in these critiques to

these

inferred intentions.

These authors seem

fully

in control of

the texts

they



13/20

272

COLLEGE

ENGLISH

produce,

and Derrida

is able to

speculate

about their

motives, education,

knowl-

edge

of

French,

and

depth

of

acquaintance

with

deconstruction.

What is

troubling

about

this-beyond

Derrida's inconsistent reliance on

concepts

of the author he had

earlier

criticized-is his

assumption

that

everyone

responding

to

him

critically

is

dishonest,

incapable

of

reading,

and mediocre.

This is

palpably

not a

good-faith reading

of

these

critics,

whose

responses

strike

me as

honest,

penetrating,

and indicative of

very

careful

reading.

But the

tension

here

is not

just

between his bad-faith

reading

of

others and his demand to be read

in

good

faith

in

turn. What

happened

to Derrida's

arguments

about

the

inevita-

bility

of an

interpretive

will

to

power?

How

can he demand to be read with

lucidity

and

good

faith

if

the

possibility

of

reading

in

bad faith exists? What

metalanguage can he rely on to insist that good faith has priority over bad faith

as an

interpretive protocol?

I

do not have

any

difficulty coming

up

with an

answer

to this

question.

Since

authorial intentions

in

no

way actually

limit

the

interpretive

freedom of a

reader,

as

Derrida has

helped

to

show,

it

is

in

the reader's

power

to do with

any

text what

he

or she

wishes,

to

read as

he or she wishes. We can therefore insist on

good

faith

having priority

over bad

faith,

good

will

over

a

will to

power, only

if

we insist

on an ethics

of

interpretation

in

which because authors are

persons, they

need

to

be

respected

in

the

way persons

in

general

need to be

respected.

Derrida seems

to be

relying

on some

such

notion,

as he refers

to

how the

respondents

with whom

he

disagrees

show "a lack

of

probity"

(871),

neglect

"rules"

(851),

"fail

to

respect

certain

elementary

rules"

(837),

and

this is

in

keeping

with the title

of his

contemporaneous

afterword

in

Limited

Inc:

"Toward an Ethic of Discussion." But

I

hope

I

am not

being

too

obtuse

if I

ask where

it

is

in

Derrida's

corpus

that we

find a

description

of

these

rules

which

he and Culler

are

obeying

and

those who

disagree

with them are

not. Derrida's

most extensive discussion

of rules is to be

found

in

"Signature

Event Context"

and "Limited

Inc,"

and the burden

of his

discussion

there

is to

argue

that no set

of

rules, conventions,

or

received

under-

standings

can ever

govern

discourse

because someone outside

the

community

that

established the rules will come

along

and subvert them. Derrida himself

played

the role

of the

subverter

of

interpretive

conventions

in

"Limited

Inc"

with

some

abandon,

for

certainly

one

elementary

rule

of

scholarly

interaction

would be

to

refer

to

John

R. Searle

as Searle

and not Sarl. What

prevents

Derrida

from

being

read

in

turn

in

the

way

he

has read others?

What has

changed

that

requires

others

now to

obey

the

very

rules

Derrida himself

broke

freely?

One

answer

might

simply

be

that Derrida

changed

his mind about

the

conventions

of discourse between

1977 and

1989,

the more

youthful

Nietzscheanism

of

"Limited

Inc"

being replaced by

a more

sober defense

of

tradition and property.This would be a familiarenough story, casting Derrida as

a

latter-day

Wordsworth,

and there

is some evidence for this

in Derrida's case.



14/20

READING

DERRIDA'S RESPONSES

273

For

example,

Derrida's "Afterword"

to Limited

Inc is

copyrighted

in 1988

to

Jacques

Derrida,

despite

the fact that the same

book contains

his 1977

declaration

of

why

he was

not

copyrighting

the

original essay

"Limited Inc."

But there

are

at

least two

problems

with this

(either

comforting

or

distressing)

story

of

Derrida

as a

recanting revolutionary.

First,

there

has been no

recantation,

no evidence

that

Derrida considers

any

of his

positions expressed

in

earlier

periods

to

need

revi-

sion

or

modification.

(The

afterword

to Limited

Inc is

particularly

good

evidence

of

this.)

Second,

Derrida has not

changed

his

argumentative

tactics to

make

them

more

in

keeping

with

the

Gadamerian

model

of

discussion he

suggests

his

oppo-

nents

should follow in

"Biodegradables."

The

tactics

of

"Limited

Inc"

are

every-

where on

display

even

if

their

theoretical

justification

has been

quietly dropped.

Reading in good faith involves treating the other as a person, and this is what

Derrida

requests

of

us. But

the

very

set of

rules he

suggests

should be

followed

in

a

discussion are

not

rules he

follows. The

only

one of

the seven

respondents

to

"Like the Sound of

the Sea" who is

named is

Jonathan

Culler;

the

others-Jean-

Marie

Apostolides,

Marjorie

Perloff,

W.

Wolfgang

Holdheim,

Jon

Weiner,

John

Brenkman,

and

Jules

David

Law-are never

named

by

Derrida. He

makes

a

great

deal of how

many people

are

arrayed against

him-"half a dozen of

them,

what

a

disproportion "

(817)-but

he refuses

to

name "these

people."

Moreover,

the

tone

of

these

references are

marked

by

nothing

resembling

the

respect

Derrida

asks to

be treated

with,

but instead

are

uniformly

sarcastic and

dismissive. The

larger

frame

sustaining

this dismissal

is

given by

the title

"Biodegradables,"

and

the

essay

is

punctuated

by

Derrida's reflections

on how

things

"biodegrade"

and

lose

their

identity.

It is

clear

enough

that what

Derrida

hopes

will

biodegrade

and

be

forgotten

are

all

of

the

criticisms of

de Man and of

his own

work,

in

essence

the entire

controversy.

Derrida is

assisting

the

process

of

forgetting

he

desires

by

refusing

to

name the

other

people

involved;

in

essence,

he

refuses to

treat them

as

people

but

treats them

instead as

garbage.

This

tactic is

essentially

continuous with

that on

display

in

"Limited

Inc,"

and it

is this

continuity

that has

obscured

the

theoretical

discontinuities

involved.

It is not

just

that Derrida has introduced a

variety

of

special

pleading

for his own

texts

and

those of his

friends-"we" insist on

being

treated with

good

will

and

respect

and as

relevant

to the

meaning

of

the

texts we

write

despite

our

theoretical

writing

to the

contrary.

That

special

pleading

is

involved is

made

clear

by

Der-

rida's

failure to

treat others with

the

respect

he

wishes to

be

paid

to

him.

Equally

important

is

that

Derrida

is

incapable

of

treating

either

his own

response

or

those

he

is

criticizing

as

"unauthored" texts.

Every

text in

this

controversy

is

authored

in his

reading,

informed

by

either

good

or

bad

faith,

and

Derrida

perceives

anger

and

aggression

to

be

directed

toward him as a

person

and he

in

turn

palpably

directs anger and aggression toward the others he refuses to name. None of these

authors

is

dead,

in

which case he

might

read these texts

less

personally;

since

they



15/20

274

COLLEGE ENGLISH

are

alive,

he is

trying-at

least

metaphorically-to

kill them

off.

But

since

Derrida

himself wants to

stay

alive

as the

author of

his

texts,

there can be

no theoretical

justification

for

this;

there

is

only

a

rhetorical

exigency

to

silence the

interpretive

disagreement

Derrida had once

seen as

both

inevitable and valuable. That desire

to

silence

or

"kill" his

opponents

is-as

Derrida once

had been able

to

see-the

product

of

a

will

to

power, though

this will to

power

now

cloaks

itself

in

a

demand

to be treated

with

good

will.

It

is

not

clear

to me that

any

grounds

exist that allow

Derrida to make

this demand

in

good

faith.

The current

dispute

in

the

correspondence

section

of The New

York

Review

of

Books

over

the

reprinting

in

Richard Wolin's

The

Heidegger

Controversy

of

an

interview with Derrida on the subject of Heidegger, "Heidegger, I'enfer des

philosophes,"

brings

us back

full circle

to

"Limited

Inc." One issue there was

copyright,

and one

issue here

is

copyright,

but

just

as Derrida on

"good

faith"

in

1989 sounds

like

Gadamer

in

1981,

now

it is Derrida

who

is

insisting

on

his

copyright,

on

his

legal

right

as

an

author to own

his

work

and

control

the uses to

which it is

put.

Derrida

suggested

in

1977

that for Searle's

regulative

rules to

work,

there had to

be

police

"waiting

in the

wings."

Now,

Derrida himself has

threatened

legal proceedings

to

seize Wolin's book.

That the

text under

dispute

is an

interview

with

Derrida conducted

by

Didier

Eribon

merely compounds

the

irony:

if Derrida

invented

a

compound

author

"Sarl"

for

the

piece indisputably

authored

by

John

R.

Searle as

part

of

his

strategy

for

depriving

Searle of control

over his

writing,

here he

writes as

if

he were the

sole author

of what is

indisput-

ably

a

plurally-authored

piece

as

part

of his

strategy

for

regaining

control over

it.

In

his

letters to

The New

York

Review,

Derrida

refers

to

the interview

repeatedly

as

"my

text" or

"a

long

text of

mine,"

never

referring

to

Eribon's

role,

nor-as

should

seem

quite

familiar

by

now-so

much

as

mentioning

his

name.

According

to the Derrida

of

1977,

writing

was

constituted

by

its

capacity

to

escape

its

originating

context

and

escape

the control of

its

author,

and

indeed the

fate

of

this

interview,

translated

into

English

in

a version

Derrida does

not

like,

with

permission

to

reprint granted

by

its

original

publisher,

Le nouvelobservateur,

but not

by

the author

who

was not

consulted,

included

in a

collection

at the

last

minute

by

the editor

"in

response

to an

external

reader's

report

urging

that

more

French

materials

be

incorporated"

(Wolin,

Letter),

and famous

now not

because

of

its content

but

because of

the

dispute

over

its inclusion in Wolin's

anthology,

seems

almost

too

good

a demonstration

of

Derrida's

theories

to

be true. But

now

that

it

is

Derrida's

text,

his

property,

which is

subject

to the

reappropriative

drift

of

textuality,

he cannot

accept

the

logical

consequences

of his

own

theory.

All

of

his actions

in this

controversy

have been

attempts

to

recapture

"his text"

and

claim control of the uses to which it is put. Unfortunately, as Derrida'searlier self

might

have reminded

him,

the

only

vehicles he

has to reframe

his errant text

are



16/20

READING

DERRIDA'S RESPONSES

275

new

texts,

letters

to

Richard

Wolin,

Columbia

University

Press,

and

finally

to The

New York

Review,

texts which can be

reappropriated

and

reframed

in turn

by

others.

They

can,

for

instance,

be examined

by people

like me to assess their

consistency

with

the

other

texts written

by

the

author

Jacques

Derrida,

even

though

such an assessment

must

surely

have been the last

thing

on his mind when

he wrote

these letters.

Paradoxically,

the failure of Derrida's

current

efforts to

control

his

own

texts seems to

me to

provide

some of

the best evidence we have

for

the

cogency

of

his

own earlier

views about the

impossibility

of

authorial

control

ever

being

absolute.

There

is no

crisp

conclusion to

the

story

of Derrida's

responses,

since we end

in

mediasres,but the volte-face in Derrida's attitudes about the connection between

authors

and the

texts

they

produce helps

us reach-so

I

would

argue-conclu-

sions about

important

theoretical

questions.

What

"l'affaire

Derrida" shows

is

that no author

can

regard

his or her own

writing

as unauthored

in

the

way

poststructuralist

theory

suggests

we should view texts.

This does

not constitute a

definitive refutation of

poststructuralist

impersonalism,

for it

easily

could

be

argued

that

the

general theory

is

right

even

if its

proponents

cannot live

by

it.

We

would

thus have to save

poststructuralism

from

the

poststructuralists,

abandon

the

persons

who articulated

impersonalism

to

save the

theory,

and

I am sure this

will

be an

option

that

attracts some

as the theoretical

apostasy

of

Jacques

Derrida

becomes

clearly

evident.

I

would

go

another

way,

which is

to

suggest

that

there must be

something

wrong

with

a

theory

if

even its inventors

cannot

live

by

it. And here I

want to ask

anyone

who has followed the

extraordinary

career

ofJacques

Derrida to look

past

the

sheer

nastiness of tone found

in

"Biodegradables"

and

his

recent letters to The

New YorkReview and listen to the note

of

pathos

that lies beneath the

stridency.

(That

is,

of

course,

easier for

me

to hear since

I

am not

one

of

the voices he

is

trying

to

silence,

though

Thomas Sheehan finds

"pathos"

here as well

[Reply

67].)

In

his letter

of

25 March

1993,

Derrida recounts how

many

people

Richard

Wolin

must have contacted to obtain

permission

to

reprint

the contested interview. The

point

of Derrida's narrative is that Wolin

failed

to

contact one

key

person

whom

he

might

have

contacted,

Jacques

Derrida. Derrida asks

plaintively,

"Did he think

I

was dead?" Derrida's

plaintive

cry

not to be considered dead

can be read in his

terms

in

two

sharply

different

ways,

first

as

a

bad-faith

plea

not to be

read

according

to

his

own

theories,

not to be read

in

the

way

he

reads

others such

as

Searle

and

Gadamer,

or as a

good-faith plea

to

rejoin

the

authorial

community.

One's

impulse

to

comment,

"Don't take it

personally,

Jacques,"

is

immediately

counteracted

by

the

realization

that

we

cannot

take

it

any

other

way.

Authorship

is something we inevitably take personally, and the time has come to build this

fact into our theories

about it. Both

"Biodegradables"

and the recent

correspon-



17/20

276

COLLEGE

ENGLISH

dence

in The New YorkReview

suggest

that

Derrida wants to be treated

as

a

living

person

but

does

not feel constrained

to treat others

in

the same

way.

I

would like

to

suggest

that

if

we let one author back

in,

we

have to let them all in.

We should

welcome

Derrida's

apostasy

if

(and

only

if)

it is

a consistent one.

But it does not have to be a

complete

one.

Let us

grant

that the

younger

Derrida was

right:

authors

clearly

do not control the

fate of

their

texts,

for all the

reasons

he was so

perceptive

about.

Writing inevitably

involves a

loss of authorial

control,

a

symbolic

death of

the

author. But the

actions of

the

older Derrida

remind

us that

being

an author

means

to

fight against

that loss of

control,

to

fight

to

stay

alive.

A

theory

of

writing

that

brackets the intentional

states of

the

author-leaving

aside

the

intentions,

hopes,

desires,

fears,

and anxieties of

authors simply because intentions have no perfect theft-proof lock on textual

meaning-leads

to an

extraordinarily

impoverished

because

depersonalized

view

of the scene of

writing.

It

is

precisely

because authors must

struggle

to assert

control over

the

meaning

of their texts that theories of

writing

must leave an

important

role

for authors and

their

intentional attitudes toward their texts. We

as

readers

always

have the ethical choice to

try

or not to

try

to listen to the

person

(living

or

dead)

who authored

the text we are

reading,

but there exists no

ground

on

which the

impersonalist

mode of

reading

can be claimed to have

ontological

or

methodological priority

over a

"personalist" reading.

If

there are

huge practi-

cal

problems

with

"personalist"

modes of

reading,

as we have

long known,

we also

now know

that

huge practical

problems

exist with textualist or

impersonalist

ones,

above

all the

problem

that authors

cannot

regard

their own texts with

the re-

quired

impersonality.

Reading

thus involves a

choice,

and

this choice is

not

one

that

can

be

resolved

once

and for all on

a theoretical

plane.

But such

a

theoretical

impasse

between

impersonalist

and

personalist

modes of

reading

does not

and cannot

result

in

a

practical

impasse,

in

an

aporia

of the kind deconstructive

critics are so fond of.

Instead,

we resolve

it in

our

own

way every

time we read. We make

the choices

we make

ultimately

on

pragmatic,

not

theoretical,

grounds.

The choices we make

as we read about how we read have

consequences,

and it is those

consequences

we should

become

more

reflective about.

What

I would

like

to

suggest

by way

of conclusion

is that there are some

strong pragmatic

grounds

for

the

community

I

am

addressing

here to choose

personalist

over

impersonalist

modes

of

reading

and

theorizing

about

authorship.

One

major

reason

is that

English

departments

are

places

where we teach

writing

as well as

reading:

in

composition

(and

creative

writing),

what we teach

is

pre-

cisely

how to

become an author.

The fields of

composition

and rhetoric have

been

slower than

literary theory

to

be influenced

by poststructuralist

theories of textu-

ality, despite all the talk about "writing"in those theories, and surely one reason

why

is that

writing

instruction seems

utterly impossible

unless one

assumes that



18/20

READING

DERRIDA'S RESPONSES

277

student texts are

authored and

thus that students are authors in control of

(or

capable

of

being

taught

to take control

of)

the texts

they produce.

This

suggests

that a

practical

consequence

of

moving

toward

"personalist"

modes of

reading

and

interpretation

would

be

a

greater

alignment

between

our

ways

of

teaching

writing

and

reading.

Ironically,

those

ways

have

already begun

to move into

greater alignment,

in

a rather

different

way,

as

composition theory

has

begun

over

the

past

decade to

be

strongly

influenced

by

the ideas of

poststructuralism.

(Althusser

and Foucault

have

been

generally

more

important

here than

Derrida,

though

work

by

Sharon

Crowley, Jasper

Neel,

and

myself

has asserted

the rele-

vance

of

Derrida's

work to

issues

in

composition.)

Composition theory

has been

"catching

up"

with

literary

theory

in

a

development

some

have

applauded

and

some have deplored.

In such a

context,

my

argument

that

literary theory

needs to move toward a

greater acceptance

of

persons

of

the kind still

broadly

characteristic of

composi-

tion

and

rhetoric

might

seem

retrograde, providing

ammunition for those who

would like to

shut down the

burgeoning dialogue

between

literary theory

and

composition theory.

But the thrust of

my argument

is

instead

that this

dialogue

needs to become

genuinely

two-way,

not

a

monologue

dominated

by

the side that

is

seen as

"cutting edge."

What

I

would

want us to move toward

is a

theoretical

perspective

where

we

can

embrace the

genuine insights

of

poststructuralism

while

rejecting

its

hostility

to the

ontological category

of

persons.

Some

people

are

important

to

each of

us,

and it seems neither

retrograde

nor

moralistic

to

ask

our

theories of

reading, writing,

and

teaching

to

acknowledge

this

essential human

reality.

WORKS

CITED

Althusser,

Louis.

L'Avenir

dure

longtemps.

Ed. Olivier

Corpet

and Yann Moulier

Boutang.

Paris:

Stock/IMEC,

1992.

-

.

"Ideology

and State

Ideological Apparatuses

(Notes

toward an

Investiga-

tion)."

In Lenin

and

Philosophy

nd Other

Essays.

Trans. Ben Brewster.

New

York:

Monthly

Review

P,

1971. 127-186.

Apostolides,

Jean-Marie.

"On Paul de

Man's War." Critical

Inquiry

15

(Summer

1989):

765-766.

Barthes,

Roland. "The Death of the Author." In

Image

Music Text.

Trans.

Stephen

Heath. New York: Hill

and

Wang,

1977. 142-149.

Brenkman,

John,

and

Jules

David

Law.

"Resetting

the

Agenda."

Critical

Inquiry

15

(Summer 1989):

804-811.

Burke,

Kenneth. A

Rhetoric

of

Motives. New York:

Prentice-Hall,

1950.

Crowley,

Sharon. Deconstruction:

Teacher's

ntroduction.

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Culler,

Jonathan.

"'Paul

de

Man's War' and

the Aesthetic

Ideology."

Critical

Inquiry

15

(Summer

1989):

777-783.

Dasenbrock,

Reed

Way.

"Becoming

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the

Myth

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Journal of

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De

Man,

Paul.

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n

Rousseau,Nietzsche,

Rilke,

and Proust. New

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Jacques.

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