The Messianic: Waiting for the Future

This chapter evaluates the messianic tone that deconstruction has recently adopted, which is the turn it takes toward the future. The messianic future which deconstruction dreams is the unforeseeable future to come, absolutely to come, the justice, the democracy, the gift, and the hospitality to come. Jacques Derrida at first avoided the notion of the messianic on the grounds that it entailed the idea of a “horizon of possibility” for the future and, hence, of some sort of anticipatory encircling of what is to come. But after this initial hesitation, Derrida adopted the term “messianic.” Deconstruction is not the destruction of religion but its reinvention. It helps religion examine its conscience, counseling and chastening religion about its tendency to confuse its faith with knowledge, which results in the dangerous and absolutizing triumphalism of religion. Derrida also distinguishes the “messianic” as a universal structure from the various “messianisms,” which are a little too strong.

Justice, If Such a Thing Exists

This chapter addresses the question of “deconstruction and the possibility of justice.” According to Jacques Derrida, not only does deconstruction have some sort of relation to the possibility of justice, some right to speak of justice, he asserts that deconstruction is justice. Deconstruction is a discourse on, indeed a discourse of justice. That startling claim turns to the distinction Derrida makes between justice and the law. By the “law” Derrida means the positive structures that make up judicial systems of one sort or another, that in virtue of which actions are said to be legal, legitimate, or properly authorized. The law, he says, is deconstructible and this is because the law is constructed in the first place. Deconstructibility is the condition of legal process, a self-revising and self-correcting ensemble of norms that distils the knowledge of the generations.

A Concluding Amen

This chapter claims that deconstruction is hanging on by a prayer. Deconstruction is a way of hanging on by a prayer, a way of hanging on to a prayer. Amen is not the end of deconstruction's prayer but its beginning and sustaining middle, something that precedes and follows and constantly accompanies all its works and days. The chapter then describes how Jacques Derrida has said that one can be flexible on the point of putting deconstruction in a nutshell and occasionally interrupt or transgress the absolute prohibition against nutshells. As Derrida says in the “Roundtable,” “sometimes it is not a bad thing.”

Re-Joyce, Say Yes

This chapter details how the “Roundtable” concludes with a question about Jacques Derrida's work on James Joyce, about the back-and-forth movement between Derrida and Joyce. If Derrida has made a dent in Joycean scholarship, if he has influenced how people read Joyce, that is only because Joyce has flowed deeply into Derrida's pen and been at work on Derrida almost from the beginning of his studies. Joyce is a writer who practiced, who enacted the “dissemination” of which Derrida dreamed and wrote. Joyce is one of an eminent line of “modernists” who have attracted Derrida's attention, who raise the very question of literature, writers whose texts call attention to themselves as texts, who compel one to ask what a literary text is. Derrida's particular interest in Joyce provides a lovely way to conclude the “Roundtable.” For it brings Derrida back to the beginning, to the question of beginnings and of inaugurations.

The Right to Philosophy

This chapter examines how philosophy for Jacques Derrida is one of the most fundamental rights. However, rights come after responsibility. The work of deconstruction is set in motion, engaged only by a pledge of responsibility. This sense of responsibility being well understood, one may say that deconstruction reserves the right to ask any questions, to think any thought, to wonder aloud about any improbability, and to impugn the veracity of any of the most venerable verities. That seemingly self-righteous, even legalistic characterization does not mean that deconstruction takes itself to be the master and judge of all it surveys. Whenever deconstruction seems to cause or get itself into trouble — or even to look a little negative and destructive — one must remember that deconstruction is being very responsible and affirmative, indeed that deconstruction is affirmation, responsibility, and engagement, which are the touchstones of a new Enlightenment.

Khôrai Being Serious with Plato

This chapter describes the seriousness of Jacques Derrida's approach to deconstruction. It begins by setting forth what he called early on his “exorbitant method.” The chapter then takes up the “example” he proposes of a deconstructive analysis: his treatment of Plato's khôra. It offers an opinion about why it is that Derrida's interest is drawn to the khôra, before showing how Plato's treatment of the khôra serves Derrida as a “sur-name” for différance, that is, a kind of “allegory” of différance. For khôra exposes a certain “impurity” and intractability at the very core of philosophical concepts, a certain retreat and recession from philosophy's grasp, right there in Plato, who is the very paradigm of what we mean by philosophy, thus leading to the very limits of philosophy — and to the heart of deconstruction.

Deconstruction in a Nutshell: The Very Idea (!)

This chapter discusses the idea of deconstruction in a nutshell. The very meaning and mission of deconstruction is to show that things do not have definable meanings and determinable missions, that they are always more than any mission would impose, and that they exceed the boundaries they currently occupy. A “meaning” or a “mission” is a way to contain and compact things, like a nutshell, gathering them into a unity, whereas deconstruction bends all its efforts to stretch beyond these boundaries, to transgress confines, to interrupt and disjoin all such gathering. Whenever deconstruction finds a nutshell, the very idea is to crack it open and disturb this tranquility. The thrust of each of the questions put to Jacques Derrida in the “Roundtable” was to press him about the relevance of deconstruction to the most traditional values of institution, tradition, community, justice, and religion. Ultimately, Derrida was eloquent about the place of deconstruction at the heart of the most time-honored institutions.

Community Without Community

This chapter investigates how postmodern difference, the difference that interests Jacques Derrida, is deeply multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and multi-racial. It represents what can be called a highly miscegenated “polymorphism.” Derrida does not dismiss the idea of unity and identity out of hand, for “pure” diversity would spell death no less surely than would a “pure” totalitarian unity. But he advocates highly heterogenous, porous, self-differentiating quasi-identities, unstable identities that are not identical with themselves, that do not close over and form a seamless web of the selfsame. What Derrida advocates, in a nutshell, is “democracy.” That is why he is troubled by the word “community.” What he does not like about the word “community” is its connotations of “fusion” and “identification.” The self-protective closure of “community” would be just about the opposite of what deconstruction is.