Deconstructive vs Pragmatic: A Critique of the Derrida–Searle Debate

ABSTRACT

This article presents a critical account of the debate between Derrida and Searle in which I defend Austin’s and Searle’s pragmatic analysis of speech against Derrida’s complex deconstructionist approach. I first formalize Derrida’s argument, reducing it to its main tenets that can be positively identified and critically reviewed. On the basis of this formalization I argue that the apparent incompatibility between Derrida’s and Searle’s approach to language becomes clear once we formalize, according to their type and content, the three concepts of “intention” that are confusedly referred to under one and the same label in the debate. This formalization reduces and clarifies the obscurity associated with the Derrida–Searle debate, and helps demonstrating the shortcomings of Derrida’s position.

KEYWORDS:

• Derrida
• Austin
• Searle
• Deconstruction
• Pragmatism
• Speech-Act theory
• Intention

Notes

1. Moati, Derrida/Searle, 2–3.

2. Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” in Limited Inc., 1–25.

3. This analysis is similar to Habermas’s in “What is Universal Pragmatics?” See also McCarthy, Critical Theory of Jügen Habermas, chap. 4.

4. Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” 15 (my emphases).

5. I describe these common irrational moments in discourse as “unconscious” and the intentionality they espouse as “unconscious intentionality” (UI). In his writings Derrida uses “structural unconscious” and sometimes “textual unconscious,” to emphasize that discourses express intentional moments that are undermined by some other kinds of intentions, if not “unconscious” in a Freudian sense, then at least non-consciously appearing on the discursive surface. The subject is therefore never in absolute control of his or her discourse. Derrida thus does not fully condone the Freudian unconscious—he does not talk about childhood memories, repressions, traumas, and the like, as much as about aporia, inconsistencies, paradoxes, performative self-contradictions, etc. He is more interested in the textual manifestation of unconscious material, than in a theory of the unconscious. He is clearly not referring to the concepts of the unconscious found in the nineteenth-century psychophysiology developed by Fechner, von Helmholtz, Nietzsche, Wundt, and indeed, the young Freud. These theories are not relevant to his project, while the metaphysical project of deconstructing the rational self is. We see this prioritization in his attempt in “Freud and the Scene of Writing” to engage with the neuropsychological discussions in Freud’s “Project,” where he symptomatically reinscribes Freud’s observations into his grammatological difference thinking, as if neuropsychology has a deeper transcendental-logical foundation. I elsewhere question Derrida’s conviction that science has this transcendental-(grammato)logical foundation, which Grammatology so urgently seeks to determine.

6. This is the same example Derrida and Searle use throughout their debate.

7. Cf. Kenaan, “Language, Philosophy,” 123: “Failure is understood as a possibility into which the communicative act may eventually fall or deteriorate. This means that failure is not constitutive of what a speech-act is but, rather, only functions as a ‘trap into which language may fall or lose itself as in an abyss situated outside of or in front of itself.’ In other words, although failure is taken to be a condition that constantly haunts the communicative act, a condition into which specific communicative acts regularly fall, it is nevertheless not understood as intrinsic but as always exterior to the essence of the phenomenon.”

8. Derrida, Limited Inc., 48 (original emphasis).

9. In “Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation,” Ricoeur also emphasizes how writing detaches itself from its moment of inscription, defined by the author’s intention: “Writing renders the text autonomous with respect to the intention of the author. What the text signifies no longer coincides with what the author meant” (139). In Ricoeur too, this detachment—Ricoeur prefers the term distanciation—has as its immediate consequence that the text becomes infinitely readable. Within its new hermeneutical horizon, the text achieves a different meaning: “It transcends its own psycho-sociological conditions of production and thereby opens itself to an unlimited series of readings, themselves situated in different social-cultural conditions. In short, the text must be able, from the sociological as well as the psychological point of view, to ‘decontextualise’ itself in such a way that it can be ‘recontextualized’ in a new situation—as accomplished, precisely, by the act of reading” (ibid.). Ricoeur’s definition of the text is almost identical to Derrida’s by also emphasizing detachment and absence (of author-intention), readability, reiterability, and context-sensitivity as general qualifications of writing.

10. This is tantamount to saying that a text has no functionality in-itself, i.e., that there is no “transcendental logic” (such as absence, iterability, differance) that in-itself secures a text’s functionality. The important question regarding Derrida’s status as “transcendental philosopher” was introduced by Rodolphe Gasché in Tain of the Mirror and is also discussed by Geoffrey Bennington, in “Derridabase.” The discussion is important and seems inevitable if I were to address more abstract issues such as Grammatological epistemology or metaphysics. I agree with Gasché and Bennington that Derrida indeed is a transcendentalist, and simultaneously disagree with Rorty that he is not (see Rorty’s riposte to Gasché in “Is Derrida a Transcendental Philosopher?”; see also Critchley, Derrida, Laclau, and Rorty, Deconstruction and Pragmatism. However, my agreement comes with a caveat, as I happen to see this transcendentalism as a severe shortcoming of Derrida, which is why I do not share Rorty’s view that he is another pragmatist.

11. Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” 15, 17 (original emphasis).

12. See also Moati: “Austin never ceased to submit intention to a world of conventions that precedes and conditions the deployment of speech acts: meaning in Austin is no longer conditioned by intention, but by the adequacy of words used to the circumstances required by conventions. … The force of the illocutionary act is conventional, that is, the act indicates a certain number of effects defined by convention. … Austin remains an author whose approach distances itself radically from the subjectivism that Derrida projects onto him. In the end, Derrida wants to lead Austin back to a subjectivist thesis.” Moati, Derrida/Searle, 43, 61, and 67.

13. Cf. Alfino: “Does speech act theory continue the traditional and unwarranted association of meaning with the immediate and infallible presence to the speaker of his intentions? Does the requirement that the successful performance of a speech act include sincerity represent an extra-linguistic stipulation, needed to reinforce presence, but not essential to language?” Alfino, “Another Look at the Derrida-Searle Debate,” 146.

14. Cf. Dahl: “[One must] accept the other’s behavior as expressive of his or her mind … even though [we] cannot redeem the absolute metaphysical foundation of our knowledge of it. But to acknowledge also means to respond responsibly to the claim made upon me, from the world or the other. Such responses are not theoretical, but practical in nature. The question of sincerity and insincerity of a particular utterance cannot be settled by theoretical speculations of private intentions, but it will have practical consequences for how we relate to each other, both now and in the future.” Dahl, “On Morality of Speech,” 91 (my emphasis).

15. This is also Dahl’s objection: “Derrida simply attacks what he takes to be the metaphysical understanding of intentions and fails to see how ordinary language has already challenged this. … An intention is definitely not a hidden psychological presence to itself prior to expression, as Derrida seems to presuppose. … In Derrida’s reading, Austin places the intention at the conscious ‘determining center of context’” (ibid., 88).

16. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 9.

17. Cavell, Pitch of Philosophy, 62. We notice that Habermas too rejected the ‘ego cogito’ as constitutive in communicative interaction. In Habermas, we encounter a duality of Ego and Alter in their attempts to attain intersubjectively valid knowledge; communicative rationality is expressed in the unifying force of speech oriented toward reaching understanding, which secures for the participating speakers an intersubjectively shared life world, thereby securing at the same time the horizon within which everyone can refer to the one and same objective world. (Cf. Habermas, Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 315).

18. Moati, Derrida/Searle, 89, 35.

19. Several commentators have voiced this criticism, including Moati: “Derrida sees in communication the expression of an intended meaning at work, which Husserl had always denied. … Derrida plays Husserl against himself on this point” (ibid., 37). For other commentaries critical of Derrida’s reading of Husserl, see Evans, Strategies of Deconstruction, which is still the most thorough. See also Mulligan, “How Not to Read,” and “Searle, Derrida and the Ends of Phenomenology”; and Schwab, “Fate of Phenomenology in Deconstruction.”

20. It is doubtful whether this commonplace characterization of the “Cartesian subject” is fair to Descartes. I suspect it describes a pseudo-Descartes, launched more as a strawman for criticizing Rationalism in the historical context of the 1960s where a more anarchistic playful personality structure was celebrated.

21. Derrida’s essay “Signature Event Context,” followed by Searle’s response, “Reiterating the Differences,” was published in Glyph, vol. 1 (1977): 172–97; in Glyph vol. 2 (1977): 162–254, Derrida added a long essay responding to Searle, “Limited Inc … a b c.” When parts of the debate (without Searle’s participation) were later published as a book, Limited Inc. (1988), Derrida added a second long essay, “Afterword: Toward an Ethic of Discussion,” composed as an interview with a polite but skeptical Gerald Graff.

22. Searle, “Reiterating the Differences,” 204, 202. (my emphasis).

23. Derrida, Limited Inc., 66.

24. Derrida’s “Sarl” refers to a whole set of philosophers of which Searle is only a single representative. The French SARL abbreviation stands for Société Anonyme à Responsabilité Limitée, the English equivalent of which is Limited Liability Company (or Limited Incorporated), indicating a “business or company organized in such a manner that its owners and shareholders are not personally liable for debts or other business liabilities (such as damages from lawsuits)” (cf. Babylon English Dictionary). Searle is in other words a ‘shareholder’ in a greater company that has declared itself immune to prosecution. In the follow-up essay in Limited Inc., whose title we now understand as a synonymous label for SARL and therefore directly referring to Searle (cf., Searle ~ Sarl ~ Limited Inc.), Derrida looks back on the debate and seems to be sure that ‘violence’ had been committed against him and deconstruction. He therefore calls for an ‘Ethics for Discussion’ that would stop the dubious Sarl enterprise and its shareholders from inflicting further damage.

25. According to Norris, Derrida demonstrated “quite easily that Searle has missed the point, here as elsewhere; that he has failed to grasp what is essentially at stake in this questioning of ideas like ‘context’ and ‘intention’.” Norris, Derrida, 179. In his later work, Norris emphasized Derrida and deconstruction’s philosophical rigor while simultaneously developing a resolute critique of postmodernism (see, e.g., Norris, What’s Wrong with Postmodernism). For Norris and other commentators, like Rorty, Derrida’s apparent inconsistencies were seen as deliberate playfulness that, since deliberate, could redeem Derrida. Thus for Norris, Derrida was “shrewdly” quoting Searle’s argument “out of context” and “rigorously” reinforcing his point by an “elaborate textual play designed to trap Searle in the typecast role of literal-minded innocent dupe.” Norris, Derrida, 178. Rorty was aware of the inadequacy of Derrida’s reasoning, but he too adopted a benevolent interpretation of his flaws as “playfulness.” Cf. Rorty, “Philosophy as a Kind of Writing.” It was as if agreed by members of the deconstructionist community that Derrida did not commit errors, even when something looked like an error, which was interpreted as a polemical strategy designed to outmaneuver the opponent.

26. Derrida has attempted a number of readings of “unconscious intentionality” in “auto- biographical” moments of a text. Best known is perhaps his “To Speculate – On Freud” (in The Post Card, where he attempts an analysis of Freud’s unconscious (not to be confused with the Freudian unconscious) in Freud’s writing in and around his 1920 seminal essay “Jenseits des Lustprincips” (“Beyond the Pleasure Principle”). Derrida here endeavors to establish a connection between Freud’s notion of a “death-drive” and the personal tragedy befalling him in the aftermath of World War I, by reading Freud’s unconscious concerns as textually manifesting themselves in his letters. On Derrida’s reading, Freud’s speech-acts (his SAI) are exactly reconstructed as “unconscious intentionality” (UI), insofar as Freud writes things that he does not fully “intend” and which we consequently are justified in calling “non- or unconscious.” To talk about “unconscious intentionality” is on the one hand not dramatically misleading, but on the other, it fulfills an exigency pressing itself upon us—the economic necessity of inventing concepts; writing pragmatically must imply that we without further ado accept taking decisions regarding creating conceptual distinctions in order to express theory.

27. For Habermas in Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, the discussion between Searle and Derrida was “impenetrable” and “complex,” since Derrida did not “belong to those philosophers who like to argue” (193–94).

28. Moati too observes in Searle/Derrida that Derrida always understands intentionality restrictively as intentional presence: “This means that the pragmatic or intentional value of an utterance resides for Derrida entirely in the presence with which the author is able to infuse a sequence of signifiers, whereas for Searle the intentional value of an utterance resides entirely in the usage of conventions that a proposition translates: no need in such a case to trace intentionality back to the presence of a living subjectivity preserved in written sentences. Searle thus disarticulates two notions that Derrida assimilates, namely, intentionality and presence, since for the former, the intentions of a speaker can only be grasped in terms of conventions” (121). Precisely because we cannot access “intentional presence” (SI), we can grasp intention only in terms of conventionality; pragmatically speaking, we ought to expect no more.

29. Derrida, Limited Inc., 69 (my emphasis).

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid. The sentence seems to paraphrase Kant, Metaphysics of Morals: “even if there has never existed a sincere friend, sincerity in friendship is an idea that is still required of every man”; and “Even if an unselfish act has never been performed, unselfishness is still the ideal for moral action” (19).

32. See, e.g., Bornedal, “Derrida’s Paralogism of Writing”; and Evans, Strategies of Deconstruction.

33. Derrida, Limited Inc., 69.

34. Ibid., 72.

35. Ibid., 73.

36. Cf. Cavell, Philosophical Passages: “Any conventional utterance, such as a speech-act, is able to be iterated in the absence of a fixed sender and receiver. With iterability comes the unavoidable fact that the meaning is altered in each instance it is actualized, according to the shifting situations and horizons in which it is interpreted” (85). See also Bearn, “Sounding Serious: Derrida and Cavell.”

37. This play between self-identity and self-difference, between ideality and alterity, in a sign’s fundamental iterability, has been emphasized not only by Derrida (in Limited Inc., 190), but also by Bennington, and Gaschè in Tain of the Mirror, where Gaschè writes: “As a result of the difference inscribed in each ideal unit as the possibility of its iteration, that unit is always already something other than it purports to be. … The time and the place of an other time must from the outset affect the first time if the latter is to be susceptible to repetition” (215). See also Bennington, “Derridabase” in Jacques Derrida: “A statement that could be quoted in another context would not be a statement, for a statement exists only through the possibility of repetition in alterity” (86).

38. This notion is most likely borrowed from Ricoeur, “Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation,” where he uses “de-contextualization” and “re-contextualization” for the double-movement of the reiteration of a word, sentence, or text on being detached from one context and reattached to another when passing from sender to receiver.

39. See, for example, Rorty “Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism,” in Critchley, Derrida, Laclau, and Rorty, Deconstruction and Pragmatism, 13–18.

40. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals II, 58. Rorty was inspired by the American tradition of naturalism and pragmatism, represented by William James and John Dewey, while I am influenced by the central European tradition of naturalism and pragmatism of Lange, Nietzsche, Avenarius, and Mach, which I tend to see epistemologically in contrast to Derrida.

41. Cf. Cavell, Pitch of Philosophy, 62.

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Peter Bornedal

Peter Bornedal is professor at the American University of Beirut where he teaches Philosophy and Cultural Studies. He holds doctoral degrees from The University of Copenhagen and The University of Chicago. He has published several articles and books, notably Nietzsche’s Naturalist Deconstruction of Truth (2019), The Surface and the Abyss (2010), and Speech and System (1997). He is currently working on a book critically discussing the implied epistemology of Derrida’s Grammatology and Deconstruction.