Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 11:00:40 -0400
From: "D. Diane Davis" <dddavis-AT-metronet.com>
Subject: Re: de(con)struction


Hi, Rita. 

Yes, Derrida gets de/construction from Heidegger's "Destuktion."  But 
both seem to me affirmative. I read the notion of the clearing in 
Heidegger's work as affirmatively as I read it in Derrida's. (That is, I 
would say both "negative deconstruction" and "affirmative 
deconstruction" are, in their own ways, affirmative.  The former makes a 
space for the latter.) 

Heidegger sets out in Being and Time to "destroy" a Tradition that had 
forgotten its historicality. Descartes's cogito ergo sum and Kant's 
stable *I* pretend to be eternal, beyond history.  And Heidegger's ready 
clear away this garbage...in fact, he goes after western metaphysics in 
general...by introducing temporality as a decisive element in the way we 
understand the world.   

Heidegger argues that kant's mistake was to ignore the subjectivity of 
the subject, to dismiss again the problem Descartes had dismissed before 
him: the undeniable connection between Tradition and thought--or, more 
specifically, the connection between Tradition and what it is possible 
to think. Tradition subjects the subject and disrupts the 
average-everyday preconception of the unproblematic subject/object split 
necessary for "pure reason." Dasein, H says, should never be thought 
separate from it's "world" (history, tradition, etc.)--Dasein is always 
in-the-world, and can, therefore, only "reason" from a position of 
always already being-in-the-world. There can be no abstract reasoning.

When Heidegger strives for the "clearing," he's not striving for an 
archemedian point--no such thing. He takes this idea of "clearing away" 
>from Nietzsche ('shedding')...it's about collapsing our linguistic 
guardrails, one by one...a collective PURGING.  Cixous calls for much 
the same thing--a disgorging, a metaphorical throwing up of "the basic 
structures of property relations" ("Castration" 54). This purging is 
still tied to the negative, but it's a negative that makes it possible, 
by shaking loose the encrusted site of  privilege (even if only to 
engage so far in privilege-flipping) to negate negation itself. When 
Heidegger speaks of "the clearing" and "turning toward the open 
unshielded" (in What Are Poets For?) hes already nodding to what 
Derrida will call affirmative deconstruction.  "Shielding" is equivalent 
to all of the category restrictions that provide us with a safe haven of 
meaning, all of thinkings border zones, which we tend to forget are 
linguistic constructions.

I think Heidegger does slip into the negative; he holds on to a 
metaphysical longing for authentic being that is separate from "the 
they"--he refuses to put THAT categorical boundary out for destruktions 
bulldozer--which leads him to make some nasty assumptions and to walk 
into a trap with the nazis. But this idea, destruktion, seems as 
affirmatively destructive as deconstruction. Derrida, tacking a second 
phase onto Heidegger's destruktion, makes deconstruction a two-part 
process (he calls it ecriture double): first, it disrupts the stability 
of "Tradition" or, more precisely, the apparent stability of the 
logocentric system of binaries that orders the text; and second, it 
searches for third terms (but this has nothing to do with Hegelian 
synthesis) outside of those binaries, disruptive terms like hymen, for 
instance, that cannot locate themselves neatly on one side or the other. 
It searches for the remainder, the excess that can't be accounted for in 
binary structure--and inasmuch as we can experience that moment of 
unshieldedness, we have turned (for an instant) toward the "open."

Deconstruction and Death? Yes. But only inasmuch as death makes life 
possible--shedding one's old skin cells is life-affirming, no? Shitting. 
Sweating. etc. Death is intricately tied up with life. Devastation is 
not. I understand your reservations about deconstruction and feminism. 
B/c you're obviously right--even feminist politics (in its multiplicity 
of forms) will not be safe with it.  Deconstruction is no respecter of 
poly-tics. Everything is vulnerable to it. But, then, french feminists 
like Cixous and an early Irigaray were ok with that. And in the states, 
Haraway, Ronell, and, as you say, Butler. They just plop what is called 
"feminism" right up there on the chopping block with everytyhing else. 
And here's why I like that: feminisim has itself grown out of the stuff 
deconstruction is busily hacking up. Feminism is inscribed within 
phallocracy in the sense that it's an reaction against it and so depends 
upon it. If we would like feminism to become more than an answering 
machine for an already reactionary phallogocentric mindset, that is, if 
we want it to become more than a reaction to a reaction, I think we'll 
have to let it take deconstruction's hits and morph itself, shed it's 
old bark, accordingly.

This is WAY TOO LONG. Sorry about that. I'll stop.

ddd
-- 

	DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
	D							D
	D	D. Diane Davis					D
	D	Rhetoric and Composition			D
	D	Old Dominion University				D
	D	dddavis-AT-metronet.com				D
	D	http://www.odu.edu/gnusers/davis/ddd.htm	D
	D							D
	DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD