Editing Jacques Derrida (section)

===Phenomenology vs structuralism debate (1959)===
In the early 1960s, Derrida began speaking and writing publicly, addressing the most topical debates at the time. One of these was the new and increasingly fashionable movement of [[structuralism]], which was being widely favoured as the successor to the [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]] approach, the latter having been started by Husserl sixty years earlier. Derrida's countercurrent take on the issue, at a prominent international conference, was so influential that it reframed the discussion from a celebration of the triumph of structuralism to a "phenomenology vs structuralism debate".

Phenomenology, as envisioned by Husserl, is a method of philosophical inquiry that rejects the rationalist bias that has dominated Western thought since [[Plato]] in favor of a method of reflective attentiveness that discloses the individual's "lived experience"; for those with a more phenomenological bent, the goal was to understand experience by comprehending and describing its genesis, the process of its emergence from an origin or event.<ref>{{Citation |last=Smith |first=David Woodruff |title=Phenomenology |date=2018 |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/phenomenology/ |encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |edition=Summer 2018 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=20 June 2021}}</ref> For the structuralists, this was a false problem, and the "depth" of experience could in fact only be an effect of structures which are not themselves experiential.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Poythress |first=Vern S. |date=31 May 2012 |title=Philosophical Roots of Phenomenological and Structuralist Literary Criticism |url=https://frame-poythress.org/philosophical-roots-of-phenomenological-and-structuralist-literary-criticism/ |access-date=20 June 2021 |website=The Works of John Frame & Vern Poythress}}</ref>

In that context, in 1959, Derrida asked the question: Must not structure have a genesis, and must not the origin, the point of genesis, be ''already'' structured, in order to be the genesis ''of'' something?<ref>Jacques Derrida, "'Genesis' and 'Structure' and Phenomenology," in ''Writing and Difference'' (London: Routledge, 1978), paper originally delivered in 1959 at Cerisy-la-Salle, and originally published in Gandillac, Goldmann & Piaget (eds.), ''Genèse et structure'' (The Hague: Morton, 1964), p. 167:

{{blockquote|All these formulations have been possible thanks to the initial distinction between different irreducible types of genesis and structure: worldly genesis and transcendental genesis, empirical structure, eidetic structure, and transcendental structure. To ask oneself the following historico-semantic question: "What does the notion of genesis ''in general'', on whose basis the Husserlian diffraction could come forth and be understood, mean, and what has it always meant? What does the notion of structure ''in general'', on whose basis Husserl ''operates'' and operates distinctions between empirical, eidetic, and transcendental dimensions mean, and what has it always meant throughout its displacements? And what is the historico-semantic relationship between Genesis and structure ''in general''?" is not only simply to ask a prior linguistic question. It is to ask the question about the unity of the historical ground on whose basis a transcendental reduction is possible and is motivated by itself. It is to ask the question about the unity of the world from which transcendental freedom releases itself, in order to make the origin of this unity appear.}}</ref> In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history, and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis.<ref>If in 1959 Derrida was addressing this question of genesis and structure to Husserl, that is, to phenomenology, then in "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (also in ''Writing and Difference''; see [[#1967–1972|below]]), he addresses these same questions to Lévi-Strauss and the structuralists. This is clear from the very first line of the paper (p. 278):

{{blockquote|Perhaps something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an "event," if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function of structural—or structuralist—thought to reduce or to suspect.}}

Between these two papers is staked Derrida's philosophical ground, if not indeed his step beyond or outside philosophy.</ref> At the same time, in order that there be movement or potential, the origin cannot be some pure unity or simplicity, but must already be articulated—complex—such that from it a "diachronic" process can emerge. This original complexity must not be understood as an original ''positing'', but more like a default of origin, which Derrida refers to as iterability, inscription, or textuality.<ref name="DerridaScarpetta71">Derrida (1971), Scarpetta interview, quote from pp. 77–8:

{{blockquote|If the alterity of the other is ''posed'', that is, ''only'' posed, does it not amount to ''the same'', for example in the form of the "constituted object" or of the "informed product" invested with meaning, etc.? From this point of view, I would even say that the alterity of the other ''inscribes'' in this relationship that which in no case can be "posed." Inscription, as I would define it in this respect, is not a simple position: it is rather that by means of which every position is ''of itself confounded'' ({{lang|fr|[[différance]]}}): inscription, mark, text and not only ''thesis or theme''-inscription of the ''thesis''.}}

</ref><ref>On the phrase "default of origin" as applied to Derrida's work, cf. [[Bernard Stiegler]], "Derrida and Technology: Fidelity at the Limits of Deconstruction and the Prosthesis of Faith," in Tom Cohen (ed.) ''Jacques Derrida and the Humanities'' (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Stiegler understands Derrida's thinking of textuality and inscription in terms of a thinking of originary technicity, and in this context speaks of "the originary default of origin that arche-writing constitutes" (p. 239). See also Stiegler, ''[[Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus]]'' (Stanford: [[Stanford University Press]], 1998).</ref> It is this thought of originary complexity that sets Derrida's work in motion, and from which all of its terms are derived, including "deconstruction".<ref>It is opposed to the concept of original purity, which destabilises the thought of both "genesis" and "structure", cf. [[Rodolphe Gasché]], ''The Tain of the Mirror'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 146:

{{blockquote|It is an opening that is structural or the structurality of an opening. Yet each of these concepts excludes the other. It is thus as little a structure as it is an opening; it is as little static as it is genetic, as little structural as it is historical. It can be understood neither from a genetic nor from a structuralist and taxonomic point of view, nor from a combination of both points of view.}}

And note that this complexity of the origin is thus not only spatial but temporal, which is why différance is a matter not only of difference, but of delay or deferral. One way in which this question is raised in relation to Husserl is thus the question of the possibility of a phenomenology of history, which Derrida raises in ''Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction'' (1962).</ref>

Derrida's method consisted in demonstrating the forms and varieties of this originary complexity, and their multiple consequences in many fields. He achieved this by conducting thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of philosophical and literary texts, to determine what aspects of those texts run counter to their apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). By demonstrating the [[aporia]]s and ellipses of thought, Derrida hoped to show the infinitely subtle ways in which this originary complexity, which by definition cannot ever be completely known, works its structuring and destructuring effects.<ref>Cf. Rodolphe Gasché, "Infrastructures and Systematicity," in [[John Sallis]] (ed.), ''Deconstruction and Philosophy'' (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 3–4:

{{blockquote|One of the more persistent misunderstandings that have thus far forestalled a productive debate with Derrida's philosophical thought is the assumption, shared by many philosophers as well as literary critics, that within that thought just anything is possible. Derrida's philosophy is more often than not construed as a license for arbitrary free play in flagrant disregard of all established rules of argumentation, traditional requirements of thought, and ethical standards binding upon the interpretative community. Undoubtedly, some of the works of Derrida may not have been entirely innocent in this respect and may have contributed, however obliquely, to fostering to some extent that very misconception. But deconstruction which for many has come to designate the content and style of Derrida's thinking, reveals to even a superficial examination, a well-ordered procedure, a step-by-step type of argumentation based on an acute awareness of level-distinctions, a marked thoroughness and regularity... Deconstruction must be understood, we contend, as the attempt to "account," in a certain manner, for a heterogeneous variety or manifold of nonlogical contradictions and discursive equalities of all sorts that continues to haunt and fissure even the ''successful'' development of philosophical arguments and their systematic exposition.}}</ref>