One of the founding fathers of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, has died. Leave it to Gregg Easterbrook to write a moving eulogy:

The philosopher Jacques Derrida died Friday. Few thinkers have had more impact for such recondite ideas. Derrida was given to gibberish pronouncements such as “deconstruction, if there is such a thing, takes places as the experience of the impossible.” His followers received such words as oracular while his detractors received them as threats to Western civilization. (TMQ received them as gibberish.) Derrida believed writers never truly control what they say because limitations of language and social structure impose barriers no writer can evade; this is an important idea that should have lasting merit in literary criticism. The idea is also easy to satirize — if an author’s intent “cannot overcome the inherent contradictions of language itself, robbing texts of truthfulness, absolute meaning and permanence,” as the New York Times said in its obituary, then Derrida’s own theory may not be truthful, and if his own theory isn’t true then maybe writers can in fact control their words and convey absolute truth, and so on. At least Derrida got people excited about intellectual theory, which is more than we can say for most intellectuals.

While I agree with Easterbrook (at least the part about the gibberish), there is a fundamental truth in what Derrida had to say — the limitations of language do built barriers for the writer. If you’re at all versed in literary criticism, but don’t subscribe to deconstructivist theories, you can’t really argue with this point, otherwise, well, what’s the point of the other schools of critical thought? If what the writer meant is really there and not limited by language or social structures, then why critique it at all? Perhaps only Formalism would remain.

Posted on 12 October 2004