40237454

8/13/2019 40237454

1/21

Hegel, Dialectic, and DeconstructionAuthor(s): William DesmondSource: Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 18, No. 4 (1985), pp. 244-263Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40237454.

Accessed: 29/01/2014 07:38

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Penn State University Pressis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy

&Rhetoric.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 160.45.152.64 on Wed, 29 Jan 2014 07:38:48 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=psuphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/40237454?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/40237454?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=psup

8/13/2019 40237454

2/21

8/13/2019 40237454

3/21

HEGEL, DIALECTIC,AND DECONSTRUCTION 245tion of these presuppositions will effect any fruitful encounterwith it, and perhaps too the countering of some of its subtledeficiencies. This I propose to do here.We might approach the issue in the following stages. First, weneed to indicate some of the historical antcdents of decon-struction. Many critics are not sufficiently familir with thephilosophical influences on, say, Derrida, the high priest of de-construction. I propose first to look at what I will cali the Nietz-schean-Heideggerian hritage. Many deconstructionists work inthe shadow of Nietzsche and Heidegger, but we also need tonotice a great, let us cali it, "antishadow," namely, Hegel. He-gel is the great ancestor and the great antagonist. Much of con-temporary European philosophy has reacted to Hegel, but alsolived off th supposedly disjecta membra of his System. Thehistorical rpudiation of Hegel will provide, I claim, a crucialfocus for defining the character of deconstruction. Second, weneed to indicate something of th precise character of decon-struction which links it to Hegel and separates it from him.Third, we need to prsent Hegel's own view, particularly hisnotion of dialectic as a fruitful foil to deconstruction. My pur-pose will be to argue that there are profound affinities betweendialectic and deconstruction, though there is a decisive partingof perspectives on this central issue. This central issue, let uscali it the problem of the wholeness of the art work, will occupyour final reflections. Here, I intend to argue that Hegel's dialec-tic not only helps to do justice to the complexity of the literarywork, as rightly emphasized by deconstruction; it also prservesits character of wholeness. The suspicion that this essentialwholeness dissolves at the hands of the deconstructionists is oneof the chief sources of the sens of unease with deconstruction.The notion of dialectic, I will argue, points to the literary workas an inherently complex whole, a whole which entails no dniaiof its dynamic dimension. Dialectic, to anticipate, facilittes ajoint or double affirmation of the wholeness and dynamism ofthe art work. Deconstruction, by contrast, tends to accentuatedynamism in a manner which risks dissolving wholeness. Let usnow see in more dtail what this might mean.II

Thinkers who determine the discourse of the deconstructionistsare many, ranging from Marx to Lacan, from Freud to Saussure.

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

8/13/2019 40237454

4/21

246 WILLIAMDESMOND

Since our focus hre is on th conjunction of philosophy andliterary theory, two important figures stand out: Nietzsche andHeidegger. Both of thse in turn define an important attitude toHegel and to the entire tradition of western metaphysics.Let us first look at Nietzsche. As is well known, Nietzscheexploits the Dionysian and Apollonian principles to understandGreek tragedy, and indeed the whole of art and life. The Apollo-nian principle defines that dimension of harmonious beautywhere form, perfection, and wholeness predominate. The Diony-sian principle refers us to the promiscuous energy of life itself ,the Bacchanalian formless intoxication which destroys the limitsof form, surpassing every stabilized perfection or fixed unity.Initially, Nietzsche conceived of art as the balance of thse twoprinciples, roughly corresponding to Schiller's Formtrieb andStofftrieb, or what above I called art's wholeness and art's dyna-mism. In time, however, the Dionysian, it seems, cornes to pr-dominance. Dynamism, Dionysus, or more abstractly, the Will toPower, is not just one principle alongside another equally funda-mental principle. Dionysus, the Will to Power, becomes th basiccharacter of ail being, as Heidegger points out.2 The Will toPower becomes the Whole.

Why should this be important? Its importance hre lies in theimplication for the notion of form generally, and artistic formparticularly. How so? Artistic form can never be ultimate, andbecomes a provisionai stabilization of th basic energy of being,the Will to Power. Nevertheless, we are always tempted to treatprovisionai forms or structures as if they were ultimate and insur-passable. We tend to fix the form. But this is to forget what cannotbe completely encompassed or concretized in any form or struc-ture, the Dionysian Will to Power. Form, therefore, may serve tohide as much as it discloses. Or stronger, it represses what it can-not directly, consciously embrace. Form, looked at this way, inevi-tably contains a drift towards a dniai, towards a falsification. Tocounter this drift, we need to "break the form," in Harold Bloom'sphrase.3 We need to let the repressed return and reassert itself.(The connection with Freud is strong hre.) We need to let theenergy of Dionysus dissolve the excessively congealed structuresof Apollo. Applying thse philosophical ideas to the literarywork,we need to engage in a deconstruction of its seemingly obviousmeaning, and expose the lacunae, the repressed, unspoken l-ments that a more simple reading glosses over.


8/13/2019 40237454

5/21

HEGEL, DIALECTIC,AND DECONSTRUCTION 247

Mention of the "obvious meaning" brings us to a second l-ment in the Nietzschean legacy, namely, its antagonism to tradi-tional metaphysics, said to be epitomized in th person of Piato.4Piato versus Homer: this is life's basic antagonism, Nietzscheexclaimed, and sides with Homer.5 The viewpoint here is that theartist is closer to the Dionysian truth of things, while the meta-physician, Piato, exaggerates the Apollonian to the point of poi-soning it. How so? Nietzsche holds that Plato's resort to the idealentails a flight from, an vasion of the real. The eide, the ideas,the forms, then become an attempi to substitute an eternai worldof pure Being for the visible world of Becoming. What character-izes eternai Being is pure stasis: the Forms are dead. Conse-quently, the Piatonic transcendence dvalues Becoming, the veryground out of which grows art, for Nietzsche the chief affirmeroflife's will to power. Platonism is nihilism,6for in substituting thefixed unity of eternai form for the pulsing multiplicity of the hereand now, it reduces, negates the wealth of this given world. Onceagain, the forms must be dismantled, deformed, deconstructed,or in Nietzsche's phrase, the "Innocence of Becoming" must berestored once again. Becoming is without structure, a diversifica-tion without any absolute unity, a play of nergies that neverfinally rests in any one definitive form. The dualisms of Piatonicmetaphysics, the oppositions it crtes between body and soul,matter and form, time and eternity, art and philosophy, must beunmasked for their cowardice before purposeless becoming. Theforms are not just there eternally; man, as will to power, puts thestructure, the purpose into sheer becoming.7 Acknowledging thishis own authorship of fixed structure, he must also be courageousenough to undo his work, to deconstruct what he has constructedand so undermine the illusion of an eternai permanence. As Nietz-sche repeatedly asserts: creating and destroying are always foundtogether. We have it in an immortal phrase in which dynamism isexalted over definite form, and its explosive, that is, destructivepower disclosed, when Nietzsche proclaims in Ecce Homo: I amnot a man; I am dynamiteThe obsession with fixed form, or the "obvious meaning" leadsto this further consquence. Put succinctly, in the hands of thePlatonists, it replaces art with logic. Discursive logos cornes toprdominance over poeisis and mythos. Logic particularly,Nietzsche implies, lends itself to a certain kind of illusion ofunity, or unitary meaning.8 That is, the ideal of logic tends to be


8/13/2019 40237454

6/21

8/13/2019 40237454

7/21

HEGEL, DIALECTIC,AND DECONSTRUCTION 249Heideggerian "destruction," of course, has been th focus ofintense debate, and its def enders have denied that it is an essen-tially negative enterprise. The tradition of metaphysics, they in-sist, must be dismantled, to allow what is "unsaid," "unthought,"and "unspoken" in it to show itself.10The tradition of metaphys-ics thus becomes a vast text for deconstruction, as is made piainin Heidegger's own dialogue with so many thinkers from thattradition. The hidden tensions in the tradition must be brought tolight, and particularly the dualisms and complimentary opposi-tions of soul and body and so on that mark the western traditionsince Piato. In the tension of thse oppositions, a forgetfulness ofBeing may be detected. Hence the interrogation of thse meta-physical oppositions may help us to renew the question of Being,and so alleviate and perhaps surpass the result of this forgetful-ness, namely, nihilism.I will turn to Hegel's dialectic later, but hre we must notethat Hegel functions as a kind of antipodes to some of theNietzschean and Heideggerian emphases. What is the receivedpicture of Hegel relevant here? Hegel develops, it is said, to thehighest degree possible, the thmes of western metaphysics, andby so developing them rounds off this tradition in an insurpassa-ble way.11 Hegel himself seems to concur with this assessment.First, Hegel seems to be the logocentric philosopher par excel-lence. The real is the rational, the rational is the real, he asserts.Is not this to carry western logos further than Piato or anyother? Indeed, Hegel's link with and transformation of the ra-tionalist-idealist tradition is revealed in its extremity in that thehighest category in his Logic, or Being in its liehest dtermina-tion, is the Absolute Idea. Moreover, Hegel holds to the neces-sity of grasping truth in the highest form, that is, in the form ofSystem. Between System and Dionysus stands an absolutizationof the Apollonian imperative, it would seem. Again, the Hege-lian System seems to throw its order over things in a totalizingmanner. No rgion of being seems to be exempt from its imperi-ous sway. The ambition of the System seems only exhaustedbefore the totality. Does not Hegel attempi to encompass theentirety of history as essential stages of a dialectical progress?More pointedly for prsent purposes, does he not subordinateart to philosophy? All thse points are interpreted as showingforth the will to power in its most exalted and extremist form.The suspicion seems to be confirmed when Hegel implies that


8/13/2019 40237454

8/21

250 WILLIAMDESMONDwith him philosophy cornes to a completion or an unsurpassableclosure. I will indicate later that a more "open" reading ofHegel is possible. Nevertheless, the above account is perhapsthe received, I almost said, frozen picture of Hegel. Given this,and given Hegel's purported propensity to snare himself inevery trap that the Nietzschean hritage Claims to expose, whatgreat thinker seems more ripe for deconstruction?

IHBefore touching further on this question, we need to state assuccinctly as possible what is involved in deconstruction itself,given the guidelines of our historical remarks. We can summarizewhat is at stake hre by confining ourselves to four main points:first, concerning the nature of language; second, concerning thecharacter of criticai analysis; third, concerning the limitations ofth univocal ideai; fourth, concerning the inescapability of theequivocai.First, deconstruction is a criticai strategy consonant with a par-ticular interprtation of language. On this interprtation languagefunctions as an autonomous power. Thus, following Heidegger,deconstructionists are often fond of saying that man does notthink with language, rather language thinks with and throughman. Through this autonomous power more is meant than anyparticular speaker intends. Likewise, more is contained in lan-guage than any particular interprtation can comprehend. Everyeffort to pin down the strict meaning of language runs against alimit of failure. As Derrida puts it: the field of language lacks acenter; rather language is defined by a free play of substitutions.12Language is an endless "dissmination" of itself, a diversificationwithout absolute integration, a plurality of elusive signs that can-not be encapsulated within an encompassing totality. Conse-quently, in the interprtation of literary texts, there is no onedefinitive meaning which one definitive interprtation can ex-haustively articulate. Indeed the inexhaustibility of language,should we be attentive to it, invariably prsents us with a recalci-trance, an impasse, an aporia, a breakdown we cannot transcend.Any reading of a text which intends to be an absolute reading isnot only a misinterpretation of language in its free play. Anyabsolute reading is an impossibility.This is related to our second point: deconstruction as a strategy


8/13/2019 40237454

9/21


of criticai analysis. For th naive temptation of the reader isprecisely to think that his reading of language has, in fact, genu-inely succeeded in its grasp of meaning. Deconstruction, by con-trast, is a technique for disillusioning the reader with regard tothis naive faith. The "naive" reader, trusting the surface of lan-guage, erects his partial interprtation into a total interprtation.Deconstruction exposes or attempted to expose the partiality ofthe partial, not by itself giving an absolute reading, but by at-tempting to show that no absolute reading at all is possible. Onthe positive side, the intention is to return the interpreting readerto the text, open to it, as it were, more humbly in his disillusion.It is important to reiterate that deconstruction is a strategy ofanalysis, albeit a form of subversive analysis. What "analysis"does is to confront an initially complex phenomenon which wetend to think we have mastered. In setting out more explicitly thelments of its complexity, this faith in our mastery is questionedand undermined. By "taking apart," "breaking down," the spon-taneous and naive response, we open up this complexity in itsinhrent richness. The poetic work especially lends itself to thervlation of this inhrent richness of language.This inhrent richness might be granted by many who do notpractise deconstructive stratgies, and so might seem innocuous.However, it is in relation to the limits of the univocal ideal, ourthird point, that the deconstructionist attempts to specify the pe-culiarities of this richness. For it the univocal ideal of language,said to be intimately lodged in the logocentrism of western meta-physics, is what primarily bars the interpreting consciousnessfrom freely entering th Aladdin's cave of language. Logocen-trism, univocity is engrained so deeply in the texture of westernconsciousness, that it is all but impossible to acknowledge itsprsence. The univocal sense, logocentrism, works through us,ferments in the western mind, like a Heideggerian destiny. Ourinterpreting powers are determined in that direction, and only bya kind of hermeneutical wrench the violent interprtation ofdeconstruction itself- can we free ourselves, or if not free our-selves at least become self-conscious, of this pervasive orienta-tion. Even the deconstructionist himself does not claim completeliberty from this dtermination of the mind. As himself a productof the history of a western metaphysics, the logocentric idealnests also in his own involvements with language.The bewitching speli of univocal logocentrism, nevertheless, can


8/13/2019 40237454

10/21

252 WILLIAMDESMONDbe partly dispelled through deconstructive analysis. Univocal lan-guage, if subjected to dose scrutiny, will invariablyshow its limita-tions, and moreover let this limitation emerge from within languageitself. This brings me to my fourth point: th inescapability of thequivocai.13For, if treated with deconstructive analysis, univocallanguage shows itself to contain an entire world of ambiguities andambivalences. The univocal word seems to have one meaning andone only . But it often hides a pluralityof meanings, some of whichare antagonistic and contradictory. The univocal word, th decon-structionist indicates, is a word divided against itself, and againstother words. The Apollonian surface of cairn, unitary significanceyields to a Dionysian tumult of warringwords. Again, also reminis-cent of the Nietzschean-Heideggerian critique of metaphysics, thedeconstructive critic is a virtuoso of discovering in language hiddenpolarities and oppositions, inversions and reversais, doublings andmirrorings. Indeed, the impression is often created that the poem,say, becomes a disconcerting hall of distorting mirrors: we havenothing but a plurality of images without a fixed or stable original.There is no original no author, or fixed subject that can be solidlyrepresented, no final, finalizing reprsentation that will restore allto stability. We have th scattering of images, related and unre-lated, one image developing into another image, another distortingand subverting the first, an incessant flux of metaphors in ceaselesstransformation and reversai.14Diffrence, sheer diffrence, or mul-tiplicity without an enjoining unity, is the keynote of this world. Inthis case sheer diffrence means the rduction of univocity to theequivocai. Univocity reduces the diffrences of multiple meaningsto one central, determinate sense. Equivocity scattersagain this onecentral meaning into a multiplicitywithout center or unity. Since, asDerrida says, the field of discourse lacks any center, deconstructionmust aim to bring home to us this lack. It does so, one is tempted tosay, by satiating us with an excess of equivocations. This may seemperverse to those supped on the more sparseeconomy of univocity.But this is the deconstructionists' whole point: it is the inhrent in-tricacy of language itself that throws up this equivocai fare.

IVWe now turn to HegePs dialectic, again confining ourselves tothose points relevant to the issue of deconstruction. The sugges-tion here is that many of the thmes implicit in the strategy of


8/13/2019 40237454

11/21

HEGEL, DIALECTIC,AND DECONSTRUCTION 253deconstruction are articulated in Hegel's view of dialectic. Indeedthey display close affinities, even if, in the final analysis, as weshall see, they diverge in response to the crucial question of thewholeness of the art work. This divergence we will take up in theconcluding section.What then is dialectic? Dialectic is a major and wide-rangingconcept, meaning a number of things to diffrent thinkers. How-ever, one thme seems fairly constant: namely, that dialectic hassomething to do with conflict. This we find, to name just someinstances, in the conflict of opinions in Socratic dialectic, in thedisputations of th medieval schools concerning controversialquestions, in Kant's antinomies of Verstand, in Marx's class war.This thme of "conflict," "antithesis," "opposition" we also dis-cover in deconstruction's emphasis on the equivocai. The thmeis central also to Hegel, with the additional qualification that forHegel dialectic has to do with the principle of articulation itself .In Hegel, the process of articulation involves rfrence both tothe character of the real and man's own linguistic acts. Dialecticis something both in th order of thinking, or "logic," and in theorder of Being, or "ontological."15What flows from this? Imme-diately dialectic situtes us in a world of process or Becoming.And, at least on this preliminary count, the Hegelian world is notunrelated to th universe of Nietzsche. We cannot fix the realinto the frozen form, or congeal it into lifeless substance. We aregreeted by a world in development in which dynamism, to recaliprevious terms, is a dominating dimension. The diffrence, how-ever, with Nietzschean becoming is that this dynamism for Hegelcannot be characterized in terms of formless flux. It rather re-veals itself essentially as an active process of forming, formation,rather than formless flux or frozen form. In Nietzsche becomingtends to be devoid of inhrent structure, as when he speaks of theworld as a monster of energy16;structure tends to be a comfort-ing, necessary grid that we humans throw over chaos. With Hegelbecoming is inherently a process of structuring, a self-structuring,again in a fully active sens. Dialectic is the principle of thearticulation of this structuring. Hence dialectic from the outsetimplicates the notion of dynamic structuring, as if the energy ofDionysus were ultimately indistinguishable from the process ofApollonian formation, the first driving the process, the secondgiving this process shape, but the process itself being neither onenor the other but always both.


8/13/2019 40237454

12/21

254 WILLIAMDESMONDIn addition, dialectic is related to th principle of articulationinhrent in language itself . This is perhaps where Hegel's affinitywith th deconstructionist most cornes out. For Hegel, languageat its richest is dialectical, but to hold this view entails somesubordination of th normal logic of univocal propositions. Informai logic, a proposition ought to articulate a state of affairs ina manner which clearly separates it from its opposite state. A andnot- A are mutually exclusive. As a linguistic unit, a propositionought to have one definite meaning. And should we affirm this

one meaning, we exclude th possible affirmation of th oppo-site. Hegel's dissatisfaction with this exclusionary logic followsfrom his view of th nature of being as Becoming. If th real is inprocess, its articulation cannot be fixed to one frozen form. Whatwe find instead is a process in which a thing in time becomesother to its former shape, while yet in this process of differentia-tion remaining itself. Butler, canonizing th metaphysics of com-mon sense, held: Everything is itself and not another. For Hegel,everything is itself and also other. Put somewhat differently:everything has some determinate identity- here Hegel wouldagree with Butler. But this identity is complex and defined by aninhrent process of differentiation. This process of differentiationmakes it to differ from itself as a simple identity, to become otherthan such (a similarity with Derrida's diffrance strikes one onthis point). Reality in becoming is both itself and not fully itself,and th process of articulation moves towards th fllest dtermi-nation of what th thing can become but is not yet. To do ade-quate justice in articulate language to these developments andtransformation inhrent in becoming, language must itself be-come more fluid.17The notion of univocal propositions fixes lan-guage into an excessively rigid norm, fostering th exclusionarymentality of th "either/or" rather than th inclusionary perspec-tive of "both/and." To comprehend, to embrace th structuringprocess of becoming, th articulation of language must approachthis latter possibility or itself become dialectical.We can develop th point further if we remind ourselves thatdialectic implies that an excessive reliance on univocity, if left toits own devices, tends to break down. We can put th point interms of Hegel's understanding of Verstand. Verstand, th ana-lytical understanding, tends to abstract from th flux of immedi-ate sense exprience, with th aim of stabilizing and differentiat-ing this flux. Its aim is to differentiate, discriminate this flow, but


8/13/2019 40237454

13/21

HEGEL,DIALECTIC,AND DECONSTRUCTION 255it does so by asserting definite and fast distinctions. It abstractsbut also separates, and so introduces some degree of structure,form, into the initial promiscuous tangle of exprience. We mightthink that this analytical sparation exhausts the work of reason,but this is not so for Hegel. The clarity and discrimination bornof abstraction and analysis is a gain but it is also incomplete. Infact, what the analytical understanding fixes into hard and rigidSeparation, dialectic, or the continuing flow of articulation, tendsto break down again. One of the chief advances of Kant's phi-losophy, Hegel thought, was to show just this: Verstandmarchesitself towards a sries of fundamental antinomies or contradic-tions that it cannot rsolve on its own resources. Put in the termsof the prsent discussion, fixed univocity deconstructs its ownrigidity, and ends in a situation of antithesis and ambiguity whichVerstand mistakenly believed it had completely overcome. Theequivocai returns. For through univocity the analytical under-standing tries to conquer a given equivocation; but its conqueringcatgories are themselves conquered by equivocation on the otherside of the established univocity. Dialectic, for Hegel, simplyfollows the flow of this development by which an initial unity,seemingly simple and hard set, breaks itself up into polarities,contradictions, antithses, oppositions.18The comparison with deconstruction is striking. Thinkingmakes war upon itself.19 It gnrtes itself and drives itself for-ward by contradicting itself, creating itself anew out of thedestruction of its own previous, partial forms. Indeed, Hegel in-sistently uses the language of "negativity" to bring forth thisdismantling side of dialectic. In fact, it is for such reasons thatHegel incorportes the sceptical principle as an essential ingrdi-ent in all genuine philosophical thought. The sceptical principle,particularly as found in ancient, "noble" scepticism, we mightsay, confronts the exprience of "nothingness."20Everything wetry to affirm with absolute fixity falls in time. Its fixity dissolvesand comes to nothing. Thus Hegel's Phenomenology ofSpirit canbe seen as an extraordinarily complex, all but epic working-out ofthis sceptical negativity of the dialectic. Hre Hegel wams us thatwe must stare the negative in th face.21And in the Phenomenol-ogy we discover consciousness trying to assert itself with com-plete certainty in a plurality of diffrent forms, each of which ittries to fix as absolute. None proves absolute, each form breaksup out of its own inhrent tension or strain. Each configuration


8/13/2019 40237454

14/21

256 WILLIAMDESMOND(Gestalt) of consciousness disfigures itself, each form deformsitself, every construction deconstructs itself under th relentlesspower of th "negative."Opposition, antithesis, then, is unavoidable in every effort toposit or fix a unity. War is the father of all things, Heraclitussays. The negativity of dialectic, for Hegel, is generative of theprocess which constructs th forms of reality, or of consciousness,or of language, but it is also what deconstructs such forms in theirpartiality or limitation. For such reasons, perhaps, Hegel in hisLogic22 explicitly praises the German language for containingwords capable of directly contrary meanings. This is no index ofthe German language as a seat of confusion. It is rather a mea-sure of its positive, embracing power. It articultes itself dialecti-cally. As Hegel implies in his famous discussion of th SpeculativeSatz in the Phenomenology,23 the normal propositional form isnot completely adequate to articulate philosophical truth in thefllest measure. Richer language, language which contains awhole world within itself, a world inclusive of opposites, is re-quired. The dialectical language of Hegel's own philosophicaldiscourse is his effort to live up to this requirement.Granting these comparisons with deconstruction, we now cometo the further point with dialectic. Put most briefly, th power ofnegativity does not completely exhaust the process of articula-tion, but rather is itself completed by its balancing positive. Atthe heart of the "negative" we must affirm a positive. For Hegelreason in its negative dialectic flows into reason as speculative, orreason in its liehest positive power.24 The process of dissolving,of negating, is itself only possible on the condition of somethingthat must be described in positive terms. The confrontation withthe negative releases a positive power itself not capable of beingcharacterized in negative terms alone. For Hegel, after decon-struction, dialectic opens up to a moment of reconstitution. Thisis perhaps most explicit in Hegel's notion of Aufhebung: some-thing or some position is negated or cancelled; we transcend thatsomething or position in this act of cancelling; but in that act ofsurpassing, what is cancelled is also preserved, contained as anecessary condition of the transcending move. Aufhebung entailsthe three dimensions of ngation, transcendence and prserva-tion. The limitation from which dialectic frees us, also binds us toit, as a necessary condition without which the fuller release wouldbe impossible, and so as something which must newly affirm from


8/13/2019 40237454

15/21


th Standpoint of th libration. In more populr terms, termswhich Hegel did not frequently employ, th breakdown of ththesis and its simplicity by its antithesis point further again to thsynthesis of these two previous antagonists.This emphasis upon a dialectical Aufhebung or more embracingsynthesis distinguishes Hegel's dialectic from deconstruction. Bothconcede th breakdown of th simple unities of univocity; forunivocity yields a simple identity without inhrent differentiationor complexity. Both trace th process of antithesis emerging fromsuch simple unities. But th deconstructionist interprets such an-tithesis as sheer diffrence or equivocation- opposition withoutunifying meaning. Diffrence dissolves identity. Hegel, by con-trast, interprets th diffrence dialectically, not equivocally- thisinvolves th claim that th many opposites are in fact capable ofbeing held together, not indeed in any univocal unity, for that isimpossible, but in a complex unity immanently differentiated, adialectical unity. Equivocai diffrence dissolves univocal unity, butfor this "dialectical identity" there is a reintegration of these dif-frences beyond sheer equivocation. We are capable of thinking ofth "togetherness" of thse diffrences, of embracing a unity ofopposites. Equivocai diffrences may dissolve univocal identity,but a dialectical unity seeks to embrace equivocation and go posi-tively beyond its negating, dissolving power. Hence Hegel gives asa dfinition of th Absolute: th identity of identity and diffr-ence. That is, there is a complex unity, a dialectical identity whichembraces both univocal unity and equivocai diffrences. This unityis absolute because it is absolving, freeing, not just dissolving. Itabsolves us, as it were, from th sens of diffrence as sheer hostileopposition, th animosity of th mutually negating dualisms said tobeset th western tradition.To summarize, then: th process of articulation for Hegel doesnot just form and deform, construct and deconstruct. It reformsand reconstructs. It rintgrtes into its fuller developments thpartial articulations it has previously surpassed. Indeed, it is thisreintegration which gives discourse its inhrent density, its imma-nent intricacy, its rieh and compacted fullness. Like th decon-structionist, th dialectician may point to this "overdetermined"wealth of discourse, but to interpret this wealth in terms of thequivocai is to fall radically short. It must be interpreted in amanner transcending th univocal, but also on th other side ofequivocalness. A dialectical interprtation is one such interpreta-


8/13/2019 40237454

16/21

258 WILLIAMDESMONDtion which tries to do justice to th rieh ambiguity of languagewithout allowing this ambiguity to fall away into th sheerlyequivocai. Reverting to Nietzschean images, dynamism and form,Dionysus and Apollo, need not be mutually exlusive opposites,but rather form merges dialectically from dynamism, harnessingits power but not necessarily stifling it, shaping its discordantstrains into a new whole.25 Form need not be superimposed byth violence of an extraneous force. It cornes to articulation im-manently out of th originally undeveloped dynamism; genuineform is th articulation of th originai dynamism. Without thisth originai energy would be dissipated without outeome.Through th process of dialectical formation th originai dyna-mism is shaped and set forth into its diffrent stages and gatheredtogether into a rieh whole.

VI now come to th upshot of th prior philosophical discussionin its hearing on th art work, and particularly th literary workof art. My suggestion is that th dialectical way represents anapproach to th art work which prserves what I have called thprinciple of wholeness, while not necessitating th discard of thdeep complexities and polarities disclosed by deconstruetion. Asshould be clear, dialectic points further than its own negativity toa reconstitution within a whole of th separated and sometimesopposed parts. While deconstruetion does awaken us often to thlatter, thus disturbing our easy sense of th familir simple unityof th art work, dialectic represents a fuller effort to do justice toa more complex sense of unity. Undoubtedly th deconstruetion-ist rpudites such a unity, and so also rpudites what they claimis th Hegelian effort to bring th work to closure. The matter isnot so simple, however. First we have to ask: does a great artwork communicate to th reader something of th exprience ofcomplex wholeness? In answer it must be said that frequentlywhat draws us to th work is th anticipation that this will be so.Exprience of th art work does confimi this expectation, inopening consciousness to th exprience of a dense and com-pacted fullness. Second, we need to ask: granted its occurrence,how are we to make intelligible th exprience of this neh whole-ness? The dialectical approach is one such way. The deconstruc-tionist way, while feeding on th compacted fullness of th work,


8/13/2019 40237454

17/21

HEGEL, DIALECTIC,AND DECONSTRUCTION 259risks finishing with a plurality of equivocations without connec-tions. The suspicion arises that the art work in its integrity hasdisintegrated or even vanished in the process. Instead of the fll,compacted prsence we are left with the trace of an absence.26One grows uneasy precisely because this outcome, while itwrenches us out of a too-dulled f amiliari y, is also at odds withour exprience of encountering the art work.Put differently, the deconstructionist begins with, say, a poem,having, it seems, a certain unity, presenting itself as somethingmarked by a significant synthesis of exprience. Deconstructionanalyses this unity or synthesis, and disco vers it riddled with con-traries, oppositions, and so on. Dialectic does exactly the same.But where deconstruction seems to give us analysis without syn-thesis, dialectic insists that we return again to the original synthe-sis, now with the enrichment of having passed through the analy-sis. As a principle of criticism, deconstruction has difficulty inmaking intelligible the possibility of this original synthesis. As acriticai practice, it rouses the suspicion that this original synthesisis simply dissolved. Dialectic, by contrast, allows the strain to-ward dissolution in every synthesis, but the given exprience ofthe synthesis indicates that contraries are already containedwithin this original unity. The art work itself is already a dialecti-cal whole, already a unity of opposites within itself,27regardlessof how we subsequently analyze and take apart its constituentlments. Our subsquent interprtation of it must do justice toboth the inhrence of opposites within it and its wholeness. Hav-ing analyzed the original unity into its inhrent oppositions, thedeconstructionist then goes on in practice to deny the possibilityof bringing together thse oppositions. But such an analysismerely dnies its own starting point. Opposition within the artwork is not an absolute exclusion; the art work is already a sig-nificant relation of polarities in tension, a coupling of oppositeswhich are now no longer merely dualized. The art work is origi-nal aesthetic testimony to the significant togetherness of thseples in tension. Deconstruction sounds extraordinarily like Ver-stand, or th analytical understanding, gone to equivocation: thepolarities are frozen into hard and fixed opposites, and, ofcourse, as such they cannot be brought together. But the dynamicfact of the art work already dnies this fixation into irreconcilableopposition. The art work as an original unity is already such amovement towards reconciliation, however partial, The dialecti-


8/13/2019 40237454

18/21

260 WILLIAMDESMONDcal approach, granting the original synthesis and the inhrentdifferentiation of the art work, simply traces the process of thismovement.What is at issue here is th appropriate balance between analy-sis and synthesis. Without proper synthesis, analysis is unbal-anced toward sheerly decomposing thought. The original wholedissolves into a deconstruction of the parts of the parts. But toanalyze something so intricate and dense, we must first recognizeor identify that something as a whole. Such an act of rcognitionor identification is not itself an instance of analysis. Somethingabout the art work remains rcalcitrantto deconstruction as criti-cai analysis. It is an old platitude that the whole is greater thanthe sum of the parts. Analysis or deconstruction alone cannot teilus what this "more" is, though they can illumine the complexityof the parts for us. Inevitably the feeling surfaces that somethingessential has been missed, that deconstruction itself represses ourexprience of this "more," our exprience of concrete prsentwholeness. Obviously we need not entirely jettison deconstruc-tive analysis. What we do require, however, is its balance with asynthetic thinking, not merely deconstructive. Dialectical think-ing, I have claimed, represents an attempt to provide such abalance.One of the fears of the deconstructionist, however, is that theHegelian insistence on synthesis closes off our exprience of theart work. Fear of closure is pervasive in their writings. My ac-count of dialectic need not turn it into such a prison. Dialecticitself is perhaps capable of a double interprtation, one tendingto closure, th other more openended. For dialectical thinkingcan be seen as either grasping or encapsulating the structure of aprocess of becoming, or cration. Or it might be seen as partici-pating itself in the active structuring of such a process. Theformer side tends to lend itself to closure, the latter need not.And it is the latter, I believe, which reveals more about the linksbetween dialectic and dynamism, as spoken of above. On thisinterprtation, dialectic moves with the dynamic process of struc-turing itself, in both its deconstructing and constructing moments.We might venture that Hegel, like dialectic itself, contains a"double" within his thought, reveals himslf as open to a doublereading. Indeed, the prsent essay might be seen as contributingto a positive "deconstruction" of a too closed and fixed view ofHegel. Hegel, on this double reading, turns out to reveal an


8/13/2019 40237454

19/21

HEGEL, DIALECnC, AND DECONSTRUCTION 261inhrent complexity more challenging than th picture of stocklogician who tries to devour everything in the empty unity ofabstract concepts. The "open" Hegel demands that even Hegel'sabsolute be not seen as this empty conceptual unity of totalitarianthought. As above implied, the Absolute might be seen as absolving, as releasing rather than dissolving or enclosing.When Hegel places art in Absolute Spirit, it is to this ultimatelyreleasing wholeness that I think he points. Wholeness need notbe closure but may be "open."28An "open" wholeness may seemlike a contradiction in terms, a violent yoking together of abso-lutely heterogenous catgories: an impossibility in formal logic.But aesthetic exprience brings home to us the possibility of sucha seemingly absurd concidence of opposites. The inexhaustibilityof the art work reveals just one expression of such "open" whole-ness. Hegel's dialectical thinking simply reprsente an effort toacknowledge this and render it intelligible. The deconstructionistsometimes strikes one as uneasily juxtaposing the sensitivity ofth aesthete with th virtuosity of a kind of formal, logicai ana-lyst. We are reminded of SchlegeFs characterization of RomanticIrony as mingling clear consciousness with a sens of infinitelyrieh chaos.29 The deconstructionist plays with this infinite chaosin Nietzschean fashion with a clarity of consciousness almost Car-tesian. Not surprisingly we sometimes find the deconstructionistspeaking about oscillating betweem nihilism and logocentrism.30Hegel, however, is neither a Piatonist or Cartesian (logocen-trism) nor yet a Nietzschean (nihilism), neither freezing the formnor dissolving all form. Form is in motion, fluid and dynamic: notjust static fonp, nor sheer process, but the formation processitself. There is, I believe, a world of a diffrence between aninfinitely rieh chaos and an infinite richness. This rfrence toromantic irony is not by the way, since Hegel drides the ultimateemptiness of its negativity, while relentlessly exeoriating Schle-gel.31 To return to the "open" wholeness of the art work, itsinexhaustibility, its infinite richness rather than infinitely riehchaos, we must take a step beyond negativity, and in Hegel'sphrase, reminiscent of the critic's effort to "deconstruet decon-struetion,"32we must "negate the ngation."Department of PhilosophyLoyola UniversityBaltimore


8/13/2019 40237454

20/21

262 WILLIAMDESMOND

Notes1. This is th impression createci by some of th contributors to th sympo-sium "Professing Literature" in The Times Literary Supplement, December 10,1982: 1355-63. See also th remark of Geoffrey Hartman in Deconstruction andCriticism (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), ix: "The sparation of philosophyfrom literary study has not worked to th beneft of either."2. See Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume I: The Will to Power as Art,trans. David F. Krell (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).3. See Harold Bloom's article "The Breaking of Form'*m Deconstruction andCriticism, eh. I.4. Here there is a curious agreement with Whitehead when he says that aliphilosophy is but a footnote to Piato. Whitehead meant this is a compliment toPiato. When th Nietzscheans, Heidggerians, and deconstruetionists see meta-physics as th historical working out of Platonism, they imply some rebuke. Lestsome traditional literary critice be surprised at th introduction of metaphysics,see, for instance, J. Hillis Miler's "The Critic as Host" in Deconstruction andCriticism, where metaphysics and "obvius meaning" come under fire.5. Fnednch Nietzsche, On th Genealogy ofMorals, trans. W. Kaufmann andR.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintag Books, 1969), III, 25.6. On Platonism and mhilism, see Heidegger s Nietzsche, vol. I. esp. 151-61.7. On purposeless becoming, see, for example, The Will to Power, trans. W.Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 377-78; onform as fiction, ibid., 282. This emphasis on purposeless becoming, the innocenceof becoming leads, of course, to a strong insistence on the importance of play. Seemy "The Child in Nietzsche's Menagerie," Seminar V (1981): 40-44.

8. For just one reprsentative Statement, see The Will to Power, 277: "Logicis bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases."9. Thus Heidegger in Einfhrung in die Metaphysik (Tubingen: M. Niemeyer,1953), 28, speaks of his own task as attempting to bring "Nietzsche's accomplish-ment to a fll unfolding." On Nietzsche's influence on Heidegger, see Krell'sremarks in his analysis of the Nietzsche volume, 245ff.10. This notion of the "unthought" is to be found, for instance, in Heidegger'sdiscussion of Hegel in Identity and Diffrence, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York:Harper and Row, 1974). In this volume we also have Heidegger's discussion ofthe principle of identity.11. On this and its rverbrations throughout the nineteenth Century,see KarlLowith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-CenturyThought,trans. D. E. Green (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1967).12. Jacques Derrida, L'criture et la diffrence (Paris: Editions de Seuil,1967), 426-28. Also Paul de Man's remarks on figuration in Deconstruction andCriticism, 61.13. For a very clear statement of the issues of deconstruction in terms of theintertwining of th univocal and th equivocai, see Miller's contribution to Decon-struction and Criticism.14. See de Man's reading of Shelley's The Triumph of Life in terms of a "chaiftof metaphorical transformations," Deconstruction and Criticism, 58. If one wereto judge by this volume, The Triumph of Life would appear to be the text, it getsso much attention. Miller speaks about the "prisonhouse of language" from whichwe can effect "no escape" by means of a "simple referential grammar" (229ff).15. The question whether dialectic can be understood ontologically is contro-versial among Hegel's commentators. Hegel himself does speak of dialectic as aprinciple exemplified in the actual itself. See, for instance, Enzyklopdie derphilosophischen Wissenschaften in Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969-1971), Bd. 10, #48.16. See Will to Power, 550. In this passage Nietzsche's description of the worldas eternally moving between contradiction and concord has an extraordinarily


8/13/2019 40237454

21/21

HEGEL, DIALECTIC, AND DECONSTRUCTION 263

Hegelian ring to it. The diffrence cornes out elsewhere (e.g., 379) whenNietzsche says: "the world is not an organism at all, but chaos."17. Unlike Hegel, Nietzsche implies that language cannot do justice to Becom-ing (Will to Power, 380). Hegel implies that justice can be done if language itselfbecomes dialectical.18. For some discussion of Verstand in relation to exprience and Vernunft,see my "Hegel, Philosophy and Worship," Cithara 19 (1979): 11-17.19. On the "internai Opposition of thought to itself," see Enzyklopdie, #26;on dialectic generally see John Findlay, Hegel: A Reexamination (New York:Humanities Press, 1958), eh. III.20. Enzyklopdie, #24, zus.21. G.W.F. Hegel, Phnomenologie des Geistes, ed. J. Hoffmeister (Ham-burg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1952), 29-30; Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V.Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 19.22. Hegels Science f Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (New York: Humanities Press,1969), 32.23. See Phnonenologie, 48ff; Phenomenology, 35ff.24. Enzyklopdie, #82.Z5. In a very "Nietzschean passage in the fhenomenoiogy (Z/-Z8J, Hegelspeaks of truth as a peculiar Bacchanalian revel which combines drunken intoxica-tion with complete cairn, that is, as a kind of unity of Dionysus and Apollo.26. "Trace of an absence" is the kind of language Dernda employs. SeeBloom's remark about modern poetry and what he calls "an achieved dearth ofmeaning," Deconstruction and Criticism, 12. I realize, of course, that the categoryof "prsence" raises many hares for Heideggerians and post-Heideggerians. "Meta-physics of prsence" tends to be a somewhat pejorative, tainted term. One istempted to reply: "prsence" is extraordinarily complex, indeed in some cases itmay be inexhaustible. "Absence" falls prey to all the criticisms that Stillingfleetand Berkeley broght against Locke's material substrate as an "I know notwhat"; or to Hegel's criticisms of Kant's unknowable Ding an sich.27. I have discussed some of these dialectical features elsewhere: "Hegel, Artand Imitation," Clio 7 (1978): 303-13; also in "Hegel, Art and History," paperread to the Hegel Society of America, Clemson University, October, 1982; toappear in the Proceedings.28. On this possibility of an "open" wholeness, see "Hegel, Art and History,"cited above, n. 27.29. See Eric Heller, The Artist' Journey into the Interior (New York: RandomHouse, (1959), 82. Harold Bloom notes a connection between Paul de Man andromantic irony, indeed cites Schlegel as de Man's "truest precursor";Deconstruc-tion and Criticism, 16.30. We have already noted the Nietzschean hritage, but one might also noteDerrida's own concern with Husserl's projeet, and then in turn the connectionbetween Husserl and Descartes. Miller (see n. 13, above) speaks about oscillatingbetween logocentrism and nihilism. The dizziness of Miller's oscillation is enliv-ened by a cheerful nihilism la Nietzsche. The nihilism of some deconstruetion-ists, however, may veer from thoughtful cheerfulness to a kind of thoughtlesscomplacency. See, for instance, the remark of the editors of The Question ofTextuality: Stratgies of Reading in ContemporaryAmerican Criticism,William V.Spanos, Paul A. Bove, and Daniel O'Hara (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 1982), 8: "We can connect nothing with nothing, one might say." Theyspeak of having to pass through Nietzsche, but such remarks make one wonderwhether instead they are passing out into vacancy.31. See G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen ber die sthetik, I, in Werke, Bd. 13,92ff.32. Denis Donoghue, "Deconstructing Deconstruction," New York Review ofBooks, vol. 27, n. 10 (June 12, 1980): 37-41.

40237454

Documents