Speaking on the link between the work of Derrida and identity, Peggy Kamuf, a trusted translator of Derrida’s work, glossed his work thus:
In practically everything Derrida has written over the last thirty years, this figure of circular appropriation of the self to itself without difference [she means the concept of identity] is shown to submit to the implacable work of deconstruction, by which is meant a transforming historical inscription that allows us to indicate with the term of identity only a relatively stabilized and never thoroughly stable state of being.[1]
I want to focus on the words “transforming historical inscription”. Deconstruction, or “everything Derrida has written over the last thirty years” is what is being described here, and this object performs an inscription in history, or with the words of history. There is, according to Kamuf, a kind of historical revision at work, a kind of historical work that consists in a transformation, in deconstruction.
We could plumb her gloss further, but what I want to bring your attention to is the fact that, in the eyes of a trusted translator and commentator of Derrida’s work, something historical is going on. I could multiply the list for you.
However, what is interesting is that when one considers the thoughts of those who work “in history” when they address Derrida’s work, they seem adamant that there is nothing historical going on.
But perhaps this is to be expected. Historians largely are too busy sorting through archives, political, economic, social and cultural data to waste the time needed to understand Derrida’s work. Although it has softened in recent decades, the antagonism between history and theory is well known. Nothing new there.[2]
So, in search of some explanation of the “historical” element of Derrida we turn to the historiographical theory journals, like History and Theory, or any of the numerous historiography primers. And yet, the primers are disappointing, and History and Theory’s archive possesses very little; despite many offhand references and confused denunciations, only one book of Derrida’s – in a career of over forty years, and dozens of publications in translation – is reviewed within its pages. No interpretive essay outlining his view of history, or empiricism, or the archive even, is forthcoming.[3]
Ok, so this is a draft intro for my paper at the upcoming United States Intellectual History conference in New York. I wonder if I’m being a little condescending towards historians here?
[1] Kamuf, “Violence, Self-Determination and the Question of Justice: on Specters of Marx”, 1997, 271.
[2] Often characterised as an antagonism between “empiricism” and philosophy. But the reasons for the antagonism are neither obvious, nor simple. For an account of empiricism in Derrida’s work, see Hobson, “Deconstruction, Empiricism, and the Postal Services, (1982).
[3] Francois Cusset describes the discipline of history in America – and philosophy, too, incidently – as a site of “resistance” to “French Theory”. Compare the unusual example of Carolyn Steedman on Archive Fever, “Something she called a fever”, AHR 2001. Also, note Kleinberg’s recent essay for History and Theory on Derrida’s “ghostly” reception (2007).
October 23, 2009 at 4:03 am
Yes you are; it might be that we deserve it, and it could certainly spark an interesting reaction. I don’t think, though, that yours will be the first scold your audience has heard that historians should eat their theoretical spinach….
Bourdieu talks about ‘the international arms race of ideas’ as a framework for understanding how and why ideas are picked up or not, suggesting that we need to look at more than the conceptual value of ideas to understand their reception. Is Derrida essential reading? If so why, and for what? Is he the only or best way to get at what he gets at? If it’s just a matter of the historicity and instability of identity, Americans can get that from G.H. Mead and symbolic interactionism (not that they do) without wading through Derrida’s (to us) turgid prose.
I’m surprised a bit by your finding in History and Theory; when I was in grad school in the 80s Derrida was a big part of the ‘linguistic turn’ in intellectual history championed by LaCapra et. al. Of course there’s an elective affinity between European high theory like Derrida and intellectual historians of European high theory.
October 23, 2009 at 9:40 am
Thanks Carl, that’s a really very helpful comment. I appreciate it because I don’t want to scold, or heap up misreadings and click my tongue.
Much more interesting for me are, I think, essential reasons for why historians (and others) were never going to read Derrida well. I want to raise an appropriate level of tension over the issue as an historical problem, not a problem of present practice… a fine line to walk I think. I’ll post more on this as I work on my paper, but there are clearly exceptions to this tension (eg. Kerwin Lee Klein), but they are clearly exceptions and very interesting in and of themselves.
It’s a good point about whether Derrida is original on history. Once you sort through his style, sometimes his ideas do not seem all so revolutionary. But, against this, there is some interesting work of Marian Hobson’s that argues that his style cannot be divorced from his ideas so easily. So this needs to be considered.
Is Derrida essential reading? Good question. I’d probably actually say no, and what I would argue against is the way in which conventional narratives of the thing called “the linguistic turn” would suggest that he is, and that he could be easily incorporated into such a narrative.
I’ve got more to say on LaCapra, but I’ll stick this in a new post.