Derrida's Deconstruction: Wholeness and Différance

Author(s): A. T. NUYEN
Source: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, New Series, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1989), pp. 26-38
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25669901
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 AT. NUYEN

Derrick's Deconstruction:
Wholeness and Differance

Is deconstruction a movement in philosophy or in literary theory (or

neither, as a deconstructionist would likely insist) ? In this paper I assume
that it is both. However, I shall concentrate on the philosophical claims of
deconstruction, hoping that an assessment of those claims will shed some
light on its role in literary theory. I shall begin by examining the philosoph
ical pedigree of deconstruction. It is clear enough that a line can be drawn
linking deconstruction with Nietzsche, connecting along the way Heideg
ger and Husserl. Some commentators have extended the line back to Hegel
where I begin my investigation, ignoring the question of how far back the
line goes. I believe that it is illuminating to compare the central claims of
deconstruction with Hegel's concept of wholeness, or unity, embodied in
his "Absolute Idea." This task has been undertaken by William Desmond
in his recent paper, "Hegel, Dialectic, and Deconstruction."1 In Section I,
I discuss Desmond's comparison of Hegel's dialectic and deconstruction.
This discussion reveals a common complaint against deconstruction. In
order to show that this complaint represents a misconstrual of deconstruc
tion, I examine in some detail the philosophical stance of deconstruction
in Sections II and III, and return to the complaint in Section IV. In the
final Section I show that, in turn, the deconstructionist critique of "West
ern metaphysics" and a fortiori of modern analytical philosophy is mis
placed. For simplicity, I shall refer exclusively to the writings of Jacques
Derrida. The reader is entitled to substitute "Derrida's deconstruction" for
every occurrence of "deconstruction" in this paper.

THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY, Vol. Ill, No. 1, 1989.

Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park and London.

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 DERRIDA'S DECONSTRUCTION 27

I
According to Desmond, in the paper cited above, "many of the themes
implicit in the strategy of deconstruction are articulated in Hegel's view of
dialectic" (pp. 252-253). I think he is right about this. Despite the fact
that both Nietzsche and Heidegger regard Hegel as a representative of the
"traditional metaphysics" they wish to attack, many of the Hegelian
themes come very close to the Nietzsche-Heidegger metaphysics and
transitively to deconstruction. One such theme is the process of becoming in
which dialectic situates us. Dialectic emphasizes the conflict, or opposi
tion, between thesis and antithesis in a way not unlike the way deconstruc
tion emphasizes the conflict between possible meanings or between certain
predicates or concepts. With regard to language and literary theory, this
similarity becomes more striking when we note with Desmond that for
Hegel, "language at its richest is dialectical" (p. 254). The second theme in
Hegelian dialectic, which is closely related to the first, is the process of
differentiation. Indeed, becoming depends on differentiation: to become is
to differ from oneself. As Desmond has remarked, "a similarity with
Derrida's differance strikes one on this point" (ibid.). Putting together the
two themes or processes, we derive many Hegelian claims that deconstruc
tionists will be happy to endorse. In Desmond's words, "Everything we try
to affirm with absolute fixity falls in time. Its fixity dissolves and comes to
nothing" (p. 255). Further,

Hegel warns us that we must stare the negative in the face. And in
the Phenomenology we discover consciousness trying to assert itself
with complete certainty in a plurality of different forms, each of
which it tries to fix as absolute. None proves absolute, each form
breaks up out of its own inherent tension or strain. Each configura
tion (Gestalt) of consciousness disfigures itself, each form deforms
itself, every construction deconstructs itself under the relentless
power of "negative" (pp. 255-256).

Despite the above similarities, Desmond insists that the path of Hegel's
dialectic soon diverges from that of deconstruction. He claims that the
dialectical path enables us in the end to preserve the character of wholeness
of an art work. By contrast, there is a suspicion that "this essential
wholeness dissolves at the hands of deconstructionists" (p. 245). Desmond
argues, quite correctly I think, that Hegel's Aufhebung is a process of
articulation which "does not just form and deform, construct and de

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 28 A.T. NUYEN

construct. It reforms and reconstructs" (p. 257). As such, the dialectical

approach is one way of making "intelligible the experience of (the) rich
wholeness" that ua great art work communicate(s) to the reader" (p. 258).
Deconstruction goes along with dialectic in drawing our attention to the
complexity and richness of an art work by pointing out the contraries and
oppositions, but fails to take us back to the original synthesis and thus "has
difficulty in making intelligible the possibility of this original synthesis"
(p. 259), giving rise to the suspicion that "the art work in its integrity has
disintegrated or even vanished in the process" (ibid.).
Desmond's complaint against deconstruction is a common one which,
indeed, the word "deconstruction" itself invites. However, while I take
Desmond's account of Hegel to be largely correct, I believe he has, as many
others have, misconstrued the philosophical stance of deconstruction.
Before showing this, let us take a closer look at this common complaint.
Desmond claims that having "analyzed the original unity into its inherent
oppositions, the deconstructionist then goes on in practice to deny the
possibility of bringing together these oppositions" (ibid.). Since decon
struction destroys wholeness, so goes the complaint, and since "the whole
is greater than the sum of its parts,. . ., deconstruction alone cannot tell us
what this 'more' is, though (it) can illumine the complexity of the parts for
us" (p. 260). Desmond goes on to say: "Inevitably the feeling surfaces that
something essential has been missed, that deconstruction itself represses
our experience of this 'more', our experience of concrete present whole
ness" (ibid.). Finally: "The deconstructionist plays with this infinite chaos
in Nietzschean fashion with a clarity of consciousness almost Cartesian.
Not surprisingly we sometimes find the deconstructionist speaking about
oscillating between nihilism and logocentrism" (p. 261). The most com
mon words in the vocabulary of critics of deconstruction seem to be "chaos"
and "nihilism." To avoid falling into chaos and nihilism, Desmond and
other critics claim that we must "deconstruct deconstruction," we must
"negate the negation."
To put the matter bluntly, critics complain that the deconstructionist
breaks up the whole and leaves it at that, or leaves it to others to pick up the
pieces. This makes deconstruction essentially a destructive process. How
ever, this is a serious misconstrual of deconstruction. It is arguable that the
deconstructionist tries to do precisely the opposite. In showing that break
ing up the whole into parts will lead to conflict, opposition, or even
contradiction among the parts, the deconstructionist tries to show that the
breaking up the whole into parts in the first place is a mistake. The

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 DERRIDA'S DECONSTRUCTION 29

deconstructionist aims to show that the "analytical" approach?consisting

of dissecting the whole into component parts, classifying, distinguishing,
categorizing, etc.?leads soon enough to an untenable position. There will
also be a risk of a much more serious error committed when one adheres to
one of the parts or either of the pair of oppositions. This is a serious error
because, as the deconstructionist sees it, none of the parts can stand on its
own, and to lean on any one of them risks pulling down the whole
structure, or dissolving the whole. Thus, the deconstructionist is likely to
argue that it is not deconstruction that breaks up the parts, leaving it to
others to pick up the pieces, and that the truth is the other way around: it is
those in "traditional" philosophy who destroy wholeness by imagining that
it has well-defined parts and then abandoning the whole for one of the
imagined parts.
I shall try to illustrate my point in two stages. I shall argue first that for at
least one deconstructionist, Derrida, wholeness is in some sense inviolable,
and that the parts are what they are only by virtue of the dynamic processes
of differing and deferring, or by differance, inherent in the whole itself. I
shall next illustrate the point with reference to some specific cases of
Derrida's deconstruction.

II
In Speech and Phenomena,2 Derrida refers to the totality of being as the
"text." This is the unity, or wholeness, out of which particularity emerges,
though not at all in the same way as particulars emerging from Platonic
forms. For Derrida, the particulars arise from what he calls the "play of
differences." The text itself contains a system of differentiation which can
divide and cut up the same whole into different parts. Thus, each part owes
its existence to other parts which it is not. It is what it is by virtue of being
different from what it is not, by virtue of the "play of differences." The idea
of differentiation is borrowed from Ferdinand de Saussure, who claims that
there are distinctions and differences within language that can generate
linguistic concepts not corresponding to any extra-linguistic entities.3 For
Saussure, a thing, anything, can be defined within language by being
contrasted with other terms within the system. However, Derrida goes
much further than Saussure (who restricts his claims to linguistic entities),
and claims that the play of differences also has a temporal dimension. Thus,
a thing can also be denned in terms of being different from what it has been
and what it is yet to be. It is always a deferred something, and there is always
a something else which is deferred with respect to it. One might say, to

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 30 A.T. NUYEN

illustrate Derrick's point, that an acorn is in part a deferred oak tree and
relates to some other thing in such a way that to that thing it is a deferred
acorn. Thus, Derrida supplements Saussure's process of differentiation with
the temporal process of deferral, and combines the two elements, difference
and deferral in his notion of udifferance." Derrida goes on to say that
differance is responsible for everything in our experience. It is a force that
operates on the whole, the text, which has an ontological priority over
everything. Thus, "differance could be said to designate the productive and
primordial constituting causality, the process of scission and division whose
differings and differences would be the constituted products or effects"
(Speech and Phenomena, p. 137). For Derrida, it is differance that "intro
duces into self-presence from the beginning all the impurity putatively
excluded from it," allowing the living present to spring forth "out of its
non-identity with itself (p. 85). One is here reminded of the Hegelian
processes of differentiation and becoming mentioned in Section I.
On my interpretation, Derrida's view is that the whole is prior to its
parts. Derrida could be said to have inverted the usual intuition that the
whole cannot exist without its parts, saying instead that the parts cannot
exist without the whole. The whole itself, the text, is just what it is, no
matter what parts we see in it, or how we actually experience the parts. It
follows that fixation on the parts amounts to an inversion of priority, to a
metaphysical neglect of wholeness as the ontological foundation. Further
more, to restrict oneself in any way whatsoever to any one part to the
exclusion of others is to fail to realize that the very existence of the chosen
part depends on those that have been excluded. Let me illustrate this point
with the following, familiar drawing:

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 DERRIDA'S DECONSTRUCTION 31

Whether we see (i.e. experience) this drawing as a vase (the white part) or
as two faces (the black part) depends very much on what we do not see (or
more accurately, what we exclude from our seeing). One part cannot exist,
hence cannot be experienced, without the other. One may add that if the
differences between the white and the black are "played out" differently?
and by that I mean both spatially and temporally, or played out dif
ferently?we will experience different things.

Ill
It is all too easy to misconstrue deconstruction if we lose sight of the
metaphysical stance outlined above. I wish to show now that this stance is
the thread that connects Derrida's various deconstructive readings. I begin
with his overall critique of what he calls the "metaphysics of presence."
Derrida believes that this metaphysics is implicit in the traditional ap
proach to language according to which the word, or sign, is linked to a
"signified," be it a thought or an idea (a "referent," generally), in the sense
that some specific referent is taken to be fully present to a sign. But, in line
with the metaphysical stance, it must be said that the present cannot be
experienced independently of the absent, i.e., the past and the future. In
Speech and Phenomena, Derrida embraces HusserPs account of the con
sciousness of the present as structurally linked to the retention of the past and
the protention of the future.4 Thus, the "metaphysics of presence" is
nothing more than an improper fixation on one part of a whole, which
cannot exist without other parts. If I am right, then, Derrida in his critique
of the "metaphysics of presence" urges us to return to the inviolable
wholeness of time, which is itself only a part of the wholeness of text.
In Of Grammatology,5 Derrida provides a deconstructive reading of
Rousseau, focusing on Rousseau's opposition of nature to culture. For
Rousseau, culture improves on nature and eventually takes over. Culture is
said to supplement nature by adding to it. But as Derrida sees it, this account
displays Rousseau's fixation on nature and culture as separate elements, as
well as his bias in favour of culture. The fixation and bias prevent Rousseau
from seeing that nature and culture both belong to the wholeness of men
and women, that there is no such thing as unsupplemented nature, that
there are no unsupplemented men and women. The process of supplemen
tation, argues Derrida, does not divide nature from culture in the way
Rousseau envisages. Rousseau's "supplement" is an "undecidable" which
disallows any reconstitution or synthesis of the opposing terms.

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 32 A.T. NUYEN

In a paper entitled "Signature Event Context,"5 Derrida argues that the

nature of a sign is such that it cannot be pinned down to any single
experience such as one might have in writing, reading, uttering, or hearing
it, i.e., it cannot be pinned down to any single context. Derrida claims that
"a written sign carries with it a force that breaks with its context, that is,
with the collectivity of presences organizing the moment of its inscrip
tion . . . No context can entirely enclose it" (p. 182). Any single context
of experience is merely a part of, or an episode in, the whole life of the sign.
To fixate on any such part, or episode?e.g., on the occasion of my writing
these words, or on my authorship of them?is to ignore the fact that it is
such an episode?e.g., my writing these words?only by virtue of the
infinite possibilities of other episodes?e.g., other writings. For Derrida,
something is a sign only if it is iterable, or repeatable in numerous possible
episodes or linguistic experiences. Thus, iterability belongs to the structure
of the sign. The sign itself is a whole, a unity, having an iterability which
functions as a differentiating or rather differantiating force, creating in
finite possibilities of different employments of a sign, or different experi
ences. That is why it is improper to tie the sign to any single person's
thought or idea as the meaning or referent of that sign. Given my inter
pretation here, when Derrida and some other deconstructionists talk about
severing the link between the signifier (the sign) and the signified, they can
be said to be urging us to respect the inviolable wholeness of the sign.
With this in mind, Derrida goes on to criticize Austin's account of
"performatives" in How To Do Things With Words. According to Derrida,
the trouble with Austin's analyses is that they "at all times require a value of
context, and even of a context exhaustively determined, in theory or
teleologically" (p. 187). We are reminded that Austin restricts his discus
sion o{performatives to certain contexts described as "serious," "felicitous,"
or "normal" and thus excludes "non-serious" contexts which he calls
"infelicities" (such as the context of a theatre or a work of fiction).
Furthermore, Austin regards the "non-serious" as "parasitic upon its nor
mal use." By now Derrida's objection should be obvious. He asks rhetori
cally: "For ultimately, isn't it true that what Austin excludes as anomaly,
exception, 'non-serious,' citation (on stage, in a poem, or a soliloquy) is the
determined modification of a general citationality?or rather, a general
iterability?without which there would not even be a 'successful' perfor
mative?" (p. 191). Once again, we have seen that Derrida draws attention
to an improper fixation on a part (the "serious") of the whole (which in this
case is the "graphematic structure"). This whole possesses a differantiating

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 DERRIDA'S DECONSTRUCTION 33

force which produces the different contexts discussed by Austin. All these
contexts stand and fall together, and none can be excluded. "Differance,
the irreducible absence of intention or attendance to the performative
utterance, . . . , is what authorizes me, . . . , to posit the general graph
ematic structure of every 'communication'" (pp. 192-193).

IV
We can now return to the common complaint against deconstruction
discussed in Section I, in particular, to Desmond's suspicion that "whole
ness dissolves at the hands of the deconstructionists." Given my interpreta
tion above, this clearly represents a misconstrual of deconstruction. In fact,
if I am right, the deconstructionist's concern is quite the opposite: he is
concerned to preserve wholeness, and argue that while the force of dif
ferance cuts up and divides the whole, the text enables us to experience
different aspects, parts, or episodes of the whole. Bearing in mind that no
single part can exist without other parts, or without the whole. As a result,
deconstruction, or Derrida's deconstruction, is much closer to Hegel's
dialectic than Desmond has suggested. Hegel's description of the Absolute
as the "identity of identity and difference" is something that Derrida would
certainly endorse. Indeed, we may say that Derrida has taken this "iden
tity" further and given it a force?differance?that can generate the differ
ences. Thus, the dynamism of deconstruction is no less than that of
dialectic. At lower levels, Desmond acknowledges that there is an agree
ment between deconstruction and dialectic, but the agreement might be
much closer than Desmond believes. For instance, Hegel's advice that "we
must stare the negative in the face" could well have come from Derrida.
(Consider, for instance, my example of the vase-faces drawing.) Thus,
Desmond's claim that we must "deconstruct deconstruction," or "negate
the negation" (p. 261), is somewhat misplaced: the negation negates itself,
and deconstruction deconstructs itself, as does everything else, in the
wholeness of the text.
There are of course differences between dialectic and deconstruction,
but they do not lie in their respective attitudes towards wholeness. It is not
true, as we have seen, that Hegel's dialectic respects wholeness and de
construction does not. The differences lie, rather, in the starting point and
the direction of analysis. Hegel's dialectic is a struggle upwards towards the
Absolute Idea. Its starting point is the particularity of a certain thesis,
leading to the recognition of an antithesis, and then to a synthesis, in an

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 34 A.T. NUYEN

endless process of Aufhebung. The dialectical process leads to the Absolute

as the destination. For deconstruction, the starting point is the whole itself,
moving downwards towards the opposing and contrasting elements by
virtue of the force of differance. The text, the whole, is the base from which
differance operates?it is not a dialectical destination. For Derrida, the
opposing elements cannot be synthesized dialectically (i.e., in an upward
fashion), but should rather be seen as coming down from a whole which
must always be presupposed. Thus, he writes in "Signature Event Context"
(a title which designates a "whole" that cannot be separated even by
commas):

(The) spacing which separates (the sign) from other elements of the
internal contextual chain ... is not the simple negativity of a
lacuna but rather the emergence of the mark. It does not re
main ... as the labor of the negative in the service of meaning, of
the living concept, of the telos, supersedable and reducible in the
Aufhebung of a dialectic (p. 182).

Given the differences between the two approaches as I have outlined,

one may argue that deconstruction has a definite advantage over dialectic
as an approach in literary theory. Thus, deconstruction enables us to see an
art work in many different ways, depending on how the differences are
"played out." There could well be different kinds of opposition and con
trast. There is no reason why the force of differance should determine a
unique set of possibilities. Using the text as the home base, we may venture
out in different directions and acquire different experiences. In this way,
the same work of art can be experienced anew, time and again. This
possibility not only does not dissolve wholeness, but is presupposed by it.
Furthermore, this would not be possible in a dialectical approach which
requires that we move away from our experiences towards some fixed
destination. So while the dynamism in deconstruction is at least equal to
that in Hegel's dialectic, the former is certainly much more creative. The
deconstructionist's wholeness is "open" to richness and complexity, whilst
there is a sense in which Hegel's dialectic is "closed." Desmond seems to
have an awareness of this point, which forces him to defend Hegel by
claiming that Hegel's wholeness "need not be closure but may be 'open'"
(p. 261). Whether this defense is successful or not, we have seen that
deconstruction does not need one as it already opens out to diverse
possibilities, experiences, and interpretations.

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 DERRIDA'S DECONSTRUCTION 35

From the philosophical stance above, Derrida has launched a

"traditional" philosophy, on the "metaphysics of presence." A
ment of this attack is now in order.
For Derrida, there is nothing wrong with descending to the lev
opposing and contrasting elements. His advice, however, is th
not stay there and become lost or unable to see the wood for
Thus, he writes: "By no means do I draw the conclusion that
relative specificity of effects of consciousness, or of effects of
that there is no performative effect, ..." ("Signature Event
p. 193). What Derrida objects to is the fixation on some "specifici
exclusion of all else, in view of the fact that the "all else" struct
up that "specificity." However, when an analytical philosophe
some one element, part, episode, or context of the whole, he or
necessarily committing the fallacy of "not seeing the woods for
(The fallacy of decomposition?) When Austin, for instance, focu
"felicitous," or ordinary contexts, he does not necessarily d
"graphematic structure" which would be the case only if Aus
meant that the performative had lost its iterability in othe
Derrida seems to have realized this about Austin's position.
reply to Searle,7 "Limited Inc abc . . .,"8 (again, a title with
tion of wholeness), he credits Austin with a recognition of
relatedness of contexts, but insists that Austin is to be cri
claiming that the "infelicitous" is parasitic upon the felicitous. T
Austin's bias towards one particular element. Structurally, all
ing contexts are equal, and the bias towards any one could pu
whole structure.
It has to be admitted that Derrida's complaint against Austin i
Inc abc . . ."is legitimate. Similar complaints of bias have bee
deconstructionists against philosophers from Plato to Descartes,
nitz to Austin. For instance, Descartes's bias against "madness"
first Meditation has not escaped the attention of deconstruct
cault in particular), who ask quite legitimately why Descarte
the possibility of dreaming and yet not the possibility of m
ever, the fact remains that, on the whole, when we choose to se
one way we do not throw away what structurally supports our c
word "choice" is important here. It indicates a desire, or a prefer
cognition. The desire for something is perfectly compatible with

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 36 A.T. NUYEN

tion that that thing is what it is by virtue of what it is not (now and other
times), by virtue of all the negativity surrounding and thus delineating it
(spatially and temporally). It is true that our cognition of something
involves the whole structure in which that something is located, thus
requiring us to have cognition of other elements in that structure. How
ever, to desire is to isolate and to select, or to show bias. In cognition, all
structural elements are equal. In a desire, they are not?they cannot be.
Will wholeness dissolve in a desire? I believe quite the opposite is the case.
A meaningful desire requires that we have a clear cognition of what it is that
we desire, which in turn requires, on Derrida's own terms, that the
structural whole be clearly before the desiring subject. For there to be a
choice one has to be conscious of what is not chosen. As the contrast fades
away, so does the choice. It makes no sense to say, for instance, that people
have chosen democracy when they have no idea what the alternatives are.
In fact, this link between choice and cognition enables us to say that to
refuse to choose, to refuse to show bias, is the same thing as to refuse to
"stare the negative in the face."
With the distinction between choice and cognition in mind, one might
defend Austin along the following lines. Austin's talk about performatives
reflects his choice of subject matter. As a choice, Austin is entitled, indeed
required, to exclude what is not chosen. His exclusion of certain contexts of
speech act (the "infelicities") thus reflects his desire to give an analytical
account of certain types of speech act. This choice does not destroy the
"graphematic structure." On the contrary, the choice requires Austin to be
at all times conscious of the contrasting and opposing contexts. Still, it
would be difficult to defend Austin's claim that some contexts are cog
nitively parasitic upon others.
The strategy with which I have defended Austin may be employed to
defend certain concerns of "traditional" philosophy. I have elsewhere9
identified one such concern as being with meaning and truth. We have
seen how Derrida's philosophical stance allows him to sever the link
between the sign and what it "stands for" which is taken to be its meaning
in "traditional" philosophy. Here again, one might say that the fixing
meaning reflects a choice which in turn presupposes our consciousness of
what is not chosen. Thus, to say that a sentence (a novel, a poem) says
(means) something is not to ignore, downgrade, or otherwise obliterate
those other things that it could well be saying. Indeed, it is to presuppose
that it could well be saying them. As these other possible meanings become
fewer and/or less obvious, the meaning that we have fixed on, or chosen,

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 DERRIDA'S DECONSTRUCTION 3 7

becomes less significant and our "taking it to mean" loses its significance. It
is arguable that the concern with meaning and truth in "traditional"
philosophy reflects the very fact that choices have to be made constantly in
life. Indeed, to live is to make choices, show bias, rise from the anonymity
of the whole, and define oneself (as existentialists would say). And to make
such choices just is to descend into "relative specificity," to determine
meanings and intentions, interpret, and rejoin the severed link between
the signifier and the signified if indeed it has been severed. Such choices are
consistent with, indeed require, the cognition of the structural whole.
It might be worth noting that some positions within the analytical
tradition could be said to be immune from the deconstructionist attack
simply because their metaphysical stance is not unlike that of deconstruc
tion. Kripke's essentialism is a prime example. Thus, for Kripke, the
essence of a thing includes what it has been and is yet to become, a view not
unlike the temporal aspect of differance or the process of becoming in Hegel
and Nietzsche. It is no wonder that Christopher Norris has given Kripke
quite a favourable deconstructionist reading.10
We must conclude that the philosophical stance of deconstruction does
not warrant a blanket attack on "traditional" philosophy. The deconstruc
tionists should not set up their position in opposition to it (which is itself an
un-deconstructionist practice). To the extent that they do, it is in the end
not a significant failing. On the positive side, we owe it to the deconstruc
tionists for having alerted us to the danger of being too well-conditioned
by our own specific choices, forgetting as a result the fact that they are
nothing more than choices and mistaking them for some reality forcing
itself upon us. In the case of a work of art, the danger is to mistake a chosen
interpretation for the unique and true interpretation. Against deconstruc
tion, it might be said that this approach could result in rampant relativism:
any choice or interpretation will do. However, if I am right, this need not
be the outcome. Rampant relativism would result only if our choices were
at variance with one another and showed no tendency to converge. But we
know that in fact life is reasonably well-ordered and stable, that communi
cation is more or less successful. Thus, while we are free to choose, we on
the whole tend to choose much the same things. There are biological as
well as other reasons for this phenomenon. The "play of differences" can
result in various performances, but we on the whole tend to watch the same
shows.

University of Queensland

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 38 A.T. NUYEN

NOTES
1. "Hegel, Dialectic, and Deconstruction," Phibsophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 18(1985),
pp. 244-263.
2. Trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
3. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally and Albert
Sechehaye, in collaboration with Albert Reidlinger, trans. Wade Baskin (New York: The
Philosophical Library, 1959).
4. Ironically, Derrida uses Husserl's own account to attack Husserl's view that a sign can
indicate something specific or particular.
5. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1976).
6. Glyph, Vol. 1(1977), pages 172-197.
7. "Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida," Glyph, Vol. 1(1977), pages 198?
208.
8. Glyph, Vol.2(1978), pages 162-254.
9. "On Deconstructing Philosophy," Metaphilosophy, forthcoming.
10. The Deconstructive Turn (London: Methuen, 1983).

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