In the midst of the numerous comments to Eric’s post on the supposed differences of clarity between analytic and continental philosophy, Reinhard Muskens asked (#110) whether or not “deconstrucion dialectics can be formalized in some way,” to which John Protevi answered that yes, for pedagogical purposes one can discern a three step methodology consistently at work (or play?) in Derrida’s analyses of texts, but as one actually grapples with the texts the deconstructive reading produces “singular effects” (#111) whereby the “formulaic deconstructive dialectic pretty much vanishes” and where it is difficult to discern the “three step approach easily” (#121).
The distinction John is working with here between an abstract methodological rule or dialectic and a material to which this rule is applied, is precisely the distinction that Derrida’s work challenges, though John knows this and was bringing this distinction in for purposes of clarifying Derrida’s project. This is not to say that formalization is ruled out as inappropriate or irrelevant to the project of deconstruction; rather, Derrida is attempting, if you will, to employ a logic of singular effects, or what Deleuze will call, in similar fashion and for similar reasons, a logic of sense. To keep this to an appropriate length for a blog post, I’ll confine myself to two main points about what this logic of sense entails, drawing from two important attempts to formalize Derrida’s project—Graham Priest’s and Paul Livingston’s.
Recent Comments