spivak - touched by deconstruction

8/12/2019 Spivak - Touched by Deconstruction

1/11

Grey Room, Inc.

Touched by DeconstructionAuthor(s): Gayatri Chakravorty SpivakReviewed work(s):Source: Grey Room, No. 20 (Summer, 2005), pp. 95-104Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20442692 .Accessed: 29/11/2012 03:11

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

.

The MIT Press and Grey Room, Inc. are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toGrey Room.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded by the authorized use r from 192.168.72.221 on Thu , 29 Nov 2012 03:11:48 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpresshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/20442692?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/20442692?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress


2/11

GAYATRI HAKRAVORTY PIVAK

These remarks were offered o JacquesDerrida on the ccasion of his

seventieth irthday. he reader hould addfive years to ll time ountsgiven. want to record here three weet responses he gave me. Where Igavemy thirteen-point ist of deconstructive ractices, he said, onlyhalf in est, "You should have published this " When I said I hadn'tread his criticism fme regarding arx for fear of being hurt, he said,"Gayatri, what to do with you? I publish a critique and you don't readit. When Icalledmyself "forme achee" n the ield f deconstructionhe said, gently, 'tache' has another meaning. You are the task n thefield f deconstruction. haven'tfigured utwhat he meant. Imention

my mother at the end. She died two years ago.

Asked for title, he first hing hat amewas "touched by deconstruction." And now, Ihave to live up to it. I cannot "aventurer ici jusqu'acette necessite perilleuse"-as I learnt to say from e la grammatologie-of opening up that ord.1 Letwhat follows tand in the placeof that ask.

How can Idescribe that irst ncounter, hemoment when I felt hatsomething hat ad been called "deconstruction" had touched me? Ihave described the facts any times, ut the fact s Idon't remember hedetails at all.

Where was Iwhen I studied the Minuit catalogue? I know it had tobe late 1967, since Iwas planning my first ublic lecture.What mademe order De la grammatologie? As I've recounted many times, I didnot know Jacques errida's name. Did I really read that ntire difficultbook?And understand twell enough tohavewritten words that illmewith shame now: "Derrida, ven as he questions the otion f correction,'corrects he ommon ssumption of the twomutually opposed Frenchcritical tendencies-phenomenology nd structuralism.... This role ofexposing the ommon assumption shared by combatants n a controversy raises errida's importance bovemerely the rench scene."

And yet all this must have happened. In a few months Ihad a contract to translate the book. I slogged away. Iwrote the introduction. Ididn't touch Hegel because Iwas too afraid. And Iwas forever touchedby something that I call deconstruction, with no guarantees that I amever right on the mark. No one has taught me deconstruction. Iwas onlyever a visitor at Yale, at Hopkins, at Irvine. ritish deconstruction

Gre Room 20, Su~mmer 2005 pp. 95~104. G;2005 G ey Room, ln. and Massachust ts ns tut af TechnolgY 95

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


3/11

Simon Critchley, eoff Bennington, rnesto Laclau-does ethics andpolitics; Mark Taylor, John aputo, and Gil Anidjar do religion. ToGeoffrey ennington nd David Wills goes the redit f making Algeriaresonate or ou.Rodolphe Gasche andHent de Vries restore ou tophilosophy. I think Imake mistakes in deconstruction right nd left,although I try not to, of course. But what is it to be correct about deconstruction? am reminded f the game you played in "Circumfessions,"

unraveling eoff's mpeccable ccount ofdeconstruction ike Ulyssesplaying atPenelope.I think hat e lagrammatologie eserved abetter ranslator nd cer

tainly more knowledgeable introducer. ut what would my life avebeen if Ihadn't gone through that terrific drill? I sit in the library cafeteria, trying to think of all the ways that my life has been touched by

what carries that lusive name. Istill believe that-but beliefwill undowhat comes next-it isnot possible todeconstruct, ll the vidence tothe ontrary. ecessary impossibilities ecomemy explanatory ormulasand they fit. ne runs from hem, eeping the future nterior nview;something will have happened as a result of what I do, and yet Imust

plan; accountability s the disclosure of the gift, f here s any.I resemble child reciting lesson.And a childwho falters, nowing

she is failing.

I teach eading emembering hat, operant ecessairement e l'interieure,empruntant a a structure ncienne toutes es resources trategiques teconomiques de la subversion, les lui empruntant tructurellement,c'est-'a-dire ans pouvoir en isoler des elements et des atomes, l'entreprise de deconstruction st toujours 'une certaine maniere emporterpar son propre travail," as I read so many years ago in the pages of De lagrammatologie. tbrings ack the xcitement f those ays-"the birthof the reader" (Barthes)-the assignable subject-position s a "placedeterminee ide" (determined mpty place) (Foucault). Iwas not intothe nternal olitics of the rench academic scene and so enjoyed thissyncretism, a habit Ihave not altogether lost.

In 1982 Iwas invited for the first time by the school of Theory andCriticism, hen ocated t Northwestern niversity. had givenmy titleas "Varieties of Deconstructive Practice." Paul de Man was going to bein the audience. I was Paul de Man's student from 1961 to 1965, beforehe had met Derrida. Icame to his graduate seminar at nineteen, straightout of ndia.As an English honors student t Calcutta University n the1950s, I had certainly learnt to read in a style that could segue into deMan,but I had never heard of Merleau-Ponty, never heard of Levi-Strauss,

9 6 sg565e>\.6 )f>6. es



4/11

never heard of Heidegger, ever heard of Georges Poulet,never heard ofH61derlin. Ihad heard of Rousseau as part of the trio Hobbes, Locke,andRousseau" inmy undergraduate istory lass inCalcutta and couldassociate him with the noble savage. Ihad heard of Kant and Hegelbecause Iwas a young ommunist. Ihad heard ofRilke, Sartre, amus,and Simone de Beauvoir because they ere in fashion t the BritishCouncil Debating Circle. Ihad read someCamus in translation. ith

thismaterial in hand, and beforemulticulturalism or academic feminism, de Man recognized, ightly rwrongly, hat was smart; was inawe of his teaching.

He certainly new that knew no French. Yet, in 1967, when I toldhim on the telephone, ltogether y theway (Ihad phoned him to askaboutmy first ublic lecture), hat was going to translate his ook bythis uthor, misspelling his name, he toldme he knew the name, corrected the pelling, ut did not dissuade me. He had confidence n methat would come through omehow, nd Iguess Idid,with the reservations I have already expressed. De Man's approval meant a great dealtome.

Iwas beside myself with anxiety that day in 1982. All day I drovearoundChicago, returning othe mpersonal partment he ociety hadprovided.As the vening rogressed, made no progress t all.At a certain oint, terrified nd desperate, said tomyself,make a list f all the

models of deconstructive ractice that you have given your studentsover the years. I did so, and I had my talk. I arrived the next morning

with my green notebook and a hangover. De Man commended me. Twodays later I flew to Britain. I never saw him again.

Iwant to embed here that list of thirteen ways to practice deconstruction, une 9, 1982. Inever published thepiece. Please rememberthat I am just quoting the initial sentences of the paragraphs compris

ing fifty-minute alk:1.Attending to the uestion of the onstitution f the bject in

a text-the type case being the question of the constitution of objective deality n aphilosophical text.

2.Attending othe uestion of the onstitution f the ubject na text-the type case being, on the one hand, the transcendentalego of philosophy as such and, on the other, the collective "we" ofthe isciplinary radition fphilosophy nd themechanics of theircomplicity ith the nvestigating ubject.

3. Attending to the necessary articulation of a preoriginary

moment before thedifferentiation etween subject nd object.4.Generalizing these projects so that one attends to the necessaryarticulation f a preoriginary oment before the differentiation

9ejxPememerKxg Iaqe 9er8gsTva ?uched byDeconstucdior 97



5/11

between the twopoles of ny binary pposition used to constitutemoments f ynthesis n the ext. he first essionofdifferance. hisiswhere the o-called deconstructive ormula merges: everse hebinary pposition and then isplace it.

5.Another formula: otice the trategy f exclusion of n otherby the text so that itmay conserve its synthesis. Then undo thebinary pposition etween the ext's elf-its constitution f subject,object, predication-and its excluded other;meaning becomesundecidable, dialectic economy.

6. Location of thehidden ethicopolitical genda in the xclusionof n other, ixing our glancenot upon the utative dentity f thetext's elf nd its ther ut on the gesture f their ifferentiation.

7. Insertion of the question of the proper into fundamentalontology nd desire andmourning into ranscendental henomenology.

8. Deconstitution of the history of the founding oncepts ofmetaphysics.

9.Attending to the econd session of differance, hemovementof difference nd deferment idden as the dentity f oppositionin the performance of a text, radically discontinuous with thearticulation-effacement f the name of the pace ormoment beforethe text.

10.Acting out the mpossible cenario that econstructive ractice cannot be its own example.

11.Understanding the peculiar autobiographical egending fdeconstructive ractice through sychoanalysis by substitutingthe cene ofwriting for he rimal scene.

12.Reading philosophical texts o see their etaphoricity ndliterary exts s thematizing econstruction, ith appropriate autions gainst theword theme.

13.Preserving nd elaborating the analogy between capital'smanagement of its nbuilt risis and the xhaustive taxonomy flanguage s speech acts.

In five ears the pparent confidence f this ist ut together n desperate anxiety had come undone. In 1987 a change came over my life,and the stakes ofwhat I call, in shorthand, econstruction, became

more compelling. try oremainmindful of thewarning in "Passions":

[o]negivesammunition o the fficials f nti-deconstruction, ut

all in all isn't that preferable to the constitution of a consensualeuphoria, or,worse, a community f complacent deconstructionists, reassured nd reconciled with the world in ethical certainty,

98 Grey Room 2



6/11

good conscience, satisfaction f service rendered, nd the consciousness of duty accomplished (or,more heroically still, yet tobe accomplished)?3

But still, f ne is touched, he takes re precisely hat: hat he perhaps"ismere euphoria. Isunwanted solitude inone'swork, imposed n spiteof efforts o the ontrary, guarantee? I cannot know, but I cannot dootherwise. Iam touched by an obsession for omething hat mistakenly keep calling "deconstruction."

Here too Iwill make no more than a short list, for Ihave no talent forfictionalizing stereotype fmyself. There's "Responsibility"-whereI spoke of an intervention n themeeting on the lood Action Plan in

Bangladesh at the uropean Parliament n Strasbourg s an "unauthorized formalization f the ilent dramaturgy fOf Spirit ... an instantiation of what I have learned from the text of responsibility: theanimal-machine of fully rogrammed nformation, nd a 'European'combinatory hose power remains byssal, so that he two sides seemto engage in an interminable onversation, while a specter does the

rest."4 here's Imaginary aps, which showsmy broken nderstandingof the "secret," omething wewant to reveal and revel, onceal[ing]nothing. et on both sides there s always the ense that omething asnot got across."5

There's teleiopoesis, cette generation ar greffe onjointe et simultanee, ans corps propre, u performatif t du constatif"-a welcome tocompanions of the future hat eems almostmore than n obsessioncan bear, so plangent are its limits.6 In a recent piece, Iwrote aboutteleiopoesis flippantly: ight and day, s a trained uropeanist, am onthe track f the teleiopoetic imagination, ffecting hedistant otherunknowingly, ith no guarantees, omuch less demeaning than elib

erately learned diversity. I am grateful toDerrida for the word. I wasmaking dowith Aristotle nd poesis,when wham Derrida brought heword into eing, inPolitics ofFriendship.

Ihave been training teachers inManbhum for the last thirteen years. Mymethod is simple: to see how the students are learning and not learning,and, on the basis of this, to give simple practical instructions to theteacher. he work is finished ymidmorning, hen most of the tudentstroop off to the local primary school where they are made to sit apartfrom he other students because they re aboriginals and generallyignored. he very fewwho enter high school are quickly demoralizedbecause of the prevailing neglect, because they annot competewithnative Bengali speakers and because the teachers at my school haveforgotten most of what they learned after primary school.

For the first fewyears, talk about thiswork in progress seemed

Re DS emeberngJacq&es Derrlda TopVR uched by Des:onstrucior 99



7/11

forbidden ecause itwas too fragile. ow it eemsnot only possible butcalled for; et the risk f ridicule r,worse, unexamined congratulationslooms.Somewhat againstmy better udgment, hen, will add a wordspecifically bout the work. In the field f subaltern ducation, the esttalk tatistics, oney, school buildings, teachers, extbooks, nd supplies. These are fine hings. am focused lsewhere. n the field f training there re, first, ome cases of altogether enevolent urocentric yet

culturalist training.Ihesitate to name names because these are, after all,goodpeople. The training rovided by the tate s generally nferior nd

formulaic and usually does not trickle down to the level of which I amspeaking. he training rovided by activists s generally rom bove andemphasizes consciousness raising: ights, esistance, ationalism, dentity spliced on to literacy and numeracy. My method is to learn frombelow how to fashion, together, away of teaching that will put in placereflexes r habits ofmind for hich the hortcut ame is "democracy."Since this s the argest ector f the future lectorate, y belief is thatwithout the habit of democracy, o reform ill last.

InPolitics ofFriendship Derrida makes an always inadequate pleafor slow reading, even at a time of political urgency.7 As so often, I echohim on another register and make a plea for the patient work of learningto learn from below-a species of "reading," perhaps-how tomend thetorn abric f subaltern thics with the hread f the ubjectwhose traceis in the madness of a universal declaration of human rights-necessarily ending courbure nto roiture-straightness, ights, prightness.If this nterests ou, Ihave not altogether isread Derrida.

Ihave offered ou all this mbarrassing tuff osay that hese toriesare not just stories. Indeed, this ismy understanding of the final wordsofA Critique f PostcolonialReason: "the etting owork of deconstruction utside the formalizing alculus specific o the cademic nstitution."8

With one rider. he two nds of the pectrum ave moved imperceptibly;those schools are on the way to a different academy, perhaps.This is a foreshortened list, not the least because I am beset by the

fear f thematizing, ellingmy life hort. n the ther hand, isn't l'entreprise e deconstruction .. toujours 'une certaine maniere emportepar son propre travail," to its own discourse, as De la grammatologieclaimed so long ago? Isn't that what Derrida is doing in texts such as

Monolingualism of the Other, miming the double bind in away altogethermore vulnerable than heforbidding las, playing to losewherelosing is not possible and perhaps that's the point?9 Ifyou lose you win,or you win. Such a text gives me a certain permission.

InMonolingualism Derrida tells us that is philosophical interestscould not not proceed from "la seule culture . .. dans laquelle j'ai etejete at anaissance."'10 e goes on to say that je ne saurais en rendre

100o PcrnyROm



8/11

compte 'apartir de la situation individuelle qu jeviens de decrire sischematiquement.... Une genealogie udeo-franco-maghrebine 'eclairepas tout.... Mais pourrai-je ien xpliquer sans elle, jamais?Non, rien.... "11f esser ntellects ried o follow his y finding ther chemaslet us say the peculiar situation ofBengaliMarxism within international ommunism-that would schematically mis)account for therphilosophico-political interests, hey ould be halted/enabled y thestructure f the rench pas at the nd of the ook: "si un jour llem'estrendu, 'ai le sentiment ue jeverrai lors, pour la premiere ois n realite, omme apres lamort un prisonnier e la caverne [the eader has to

know this is a reference to Plato], la verite de ce que j'ai v.cu.... La ofutendu vers ce qui se donne 'avenir, je sais enfin ne plus devoir discernerentre la promesse et la terreur." 2 Do not be taken in by my extrapolations, I say to the reader. Read the whole slim book. But read chapter 7as an attempt at miming the double bind. Do not excuse itwith yourown "lexiques de ladeconstruction";13 ou'1lmiss thepermanence ofthe laboration then.

Iknow you have chastisedme in print for isreading you on Marx.

Ihaven't read those pages for fear of being hurt. But I must insist on thedifference etween industrial apital, predicated upon the differencebetweenmaking and needing; commercial capital, the ppearance ofmoney begettingmoney; and finance apital, competitive markets innegotiable instruments, here capital moves mit Gedankenschnelle(with the peed of thought); nd themovement of data, telecommunication, s indistinguishable rom he ircuit f capital. Surplus value isnot interest, se value is not usefulness. Irepeat this itany ot becauseI'm right, ut because I am obstinate.

Iwould like to close this listwith deconstruction's reatest ift, fthere is any: differance-not a thing but, let us say for the moment,

something like a move that disengages the event-eine differenteBeziehung (a different elation). could citemany elusive instances, utIwill pick one that will not stay to be an instance.

For the better part of ten years, I have been centering attention uponit. I refer to it and am always careful to say that I do not know how totalk about it. I surmise an originary queerness in tribals. Imean originary, not original; not archaic, not even uncanny. (Freud archives theoriginary s themetapsychological psychologized in that onderfulessay.)14 ust omething hat ngages as sexual difference lays,marking time, efining nd activating pace.

Today Iglimpse that an originary queerness may be that from which

sexual difference differs. Itwill not be disclosed in a subject elaboration. But today I feel able tomeditate upon it because I am hauntedby the thought hat t is that from hich sexual difference iffers. he

IL? ToebrlgSCuS ere Sla uhed bsy eccnsL?uc:tion 101



9/11

distinction between subjectship and agency, upon which my earliertakedepended, isdifferent rom hat riginary ueerness.

Thus Iwould say toMichel Foucault: If sking the uestion of one'sactuality nphilosophical or literary ork, as did Kant and Baudelaire,qualifies the uestioner as amodern European, and thus the uestionofEnlightenment tself an be historicized, then t s the ratures thatcanmake visible that elf-elaboration s such is not necessarily a his

torical uestion in the ense inwhich we understand history.nd the

originary ueerness that llows itself obe supposed upon such terrainis no secret rigin that ooms historiography. elf-elaboration n thisspace is no doubt a historical question insofar as it allows you to temporize a life as a person among persons. And Idon't mean "individual."But the fact that oratures do not do so in locatable archives does notmake them without istory."

The inability o imagine rality is one of the scandals of so-calledliterate isciplines. ore then hirty ears go, errida took good try: Larelation enealogique t la classification ociale sont e point de suture el'arche-ecriture, condition de la langue (dite orale) et de l'ecriture au sens

commun."915 I honor the impulse, but even this sufficed forme only as apoint of departure, n important oint of departure, hirty ears ago.Iwould tell oucault, then, hat elf-elaboration snot only a charac

teristic of modernity. But I also say that to think of an originary difference is not to think ontinuity. et us call this originary ueernesssomething ikeHeidegger's forgotten hing, hequestion ofBeing indrag.We have forgotten t, othink exual difference.

But why call it queer at all? Being in Hegel was not forgotten butmight aswell have been. Ifyou remember, here as no distinguishingbetween Being andNothingness in that first xergue of the cience ofLogic. It is in that spirit that one might say, in that sup-posed originary,

sexual sameness sexual difference, exual sameness (is)sexual difference. Same difference, ame (is)difference.Why suppose it at all?To think exual difference s derived and contained, of course.But,

forme, also because the women of the tribes constrain me to do so.

Imust add a sentence here, errida's extraordinary ewriting f diff6rance nVoyous: "le 'a e a-venirinflechissant n injonction ussi bienqu'en attentemessianique le a d'une diffrrance n disjonction."'16

I had givenmy title, TouchedbyDeconstruction," uite a fewmonthsbefore the vent nd had forgotten t. n themean time, had of course

1 2 Gre Rct 20



10/11


11/11

I read him the first page of this essay on the phone a couple of nights ago. He e-mailedme the question Is originary queerness the uncanny?

15. Derrida, De la grammatologie, 182: "The genealogical relation and social classi

fication are the stitched seam of arche-writing, condition of the (so-called oral)

language, and of writing in the colloquial sense." Of Grammatology, 125.

16. Jacques Derrida, Voyous: Deux essays sur la raison (Paris: Galil?e, 2003), 154:

"The ? of the ?-venir, the to of the to-come, inflecting or turning into an injunction as

well as into amessianic waiting the a of the difference in disjunction." From Rogues,

trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Nass (Stanford: Stanford University Press,2005), 108.

17. Jacques Derrida, Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy (Paris: Galil?e, 1999).

104 Gre Room 20

spivak - touched by deconstruction

Documents