LIMITED INC – THE AFTERWORD
Bridge between Derrida as a language constructor and Derrida as an ethical and political work
❖ Page 115. The status of play. Not ideal language vs free play but play is important bc it
frustrates ideality.
➢ Derrida endorses the acknowledgement of play as that which resists meaning in
the moment of the decision.
➢ “the third (meaning of play) remains heterogeneous [...] and ought to be at the
bottom an ethical-political one”
➢ “Derrida distinguishes between calculation (the order of meaning) and a decision
[...] You have to take a jump in the dark.”
➢ Calculation requires no individual agency. Decision is a risk. For important
decisions, Derrida is correct. Some small decisions have no real risk. Can't just
decide, requires some form of calculation but you will eventually reach the limits
of calculation, and you must exercise choice. Choice = realm of homogeneity,
beyond meaning).
➢ Grappling with undecidability – only when we don't know what to do must we
decide.
❖ Idealisation in language (and its limits) - bottom of 116 to 118
➢ All conceptual language appeals to a certain idealisation since concepts subscribe
to the logic of “all-or-nothing"
➢ “every concept that lays claim [...] accept the logic of all or nothing”
➢ Cannot claim x and y, x excludes y.
➢ Conceptual language cannot exhaust meaning.
➢ Differance does not allow for a subject to close in on itself and be complete
➢ Derrida is interested in “a supplementary complication” which frustrates any
attempt at formally systematizing a complete theory of language
➢ His deconstructive concepts are aconceptual. On the one hand, they must
subscribe to the character of ‘all or nothing” that marks all conceptual language
but on the other hand, their work is to point to the limitations of conceptual
language.
➢ “but, [iterability] has a strange status [...]
➢ Nothing to do with logical positivism, it's just the way things are.
➢ Differance and iterability are always at play.
➢ Aconceptual concepts. Either you are employing the term differance or you’re
not. Either you are employing the term iterability or you’re not.
❖ Searle’s idealization. Page 118
➢ Successful speech acts and non-serious speech acts (parasitical cases that Searle
says he’s going to dismiss by only focusing on true promises)
❖ Accommodating marginal and parasitical speech acts.
, ➢ These form part of the structure of language use. By discarding these language
acts, they limit their theory. You need to draw in those parasitic cases.
➢ Serious speech acts conform to the principle of idealizsation. Non serious speech
acts do not conform (jokes, parodies, citations, language in plays). Searle and
Austen ignore these cases, Derrida states you need to account for both cases.
➢ If we have a general theory of language, it must be inclusive of both sides.
➢ Idealization practice itself becomes defective because it has not taken into account
all possible cases of speech.
❖ Iterability and idealization
➢ Derrida argues that language is premised on iterability. Iterability is the ability of
concepts to be repeated in different contexts, but always with a difference because
no two contexts are the same.
➢ The success of a speech act is due to intention and context. Context overrides
intentions because of altering iterability. This is what Searle and Austen are
unable to account for. They dismiss all failed speech acts and therefore ignore
altering iterability.
➢ Context always introduces a difference. Cannot master the context. Our intentions
do not master the context.
➢ Eg. If the bride's father is standing with a gun behind the groom's back, this
context holds the same intention as a normal wedding despite it being a very
different context.
➢ Searle is Austen’s student. Must read them together.
➢ Derrida further argues that once we take altering iterability into account, we see
how iterability of both the conditions for idealization (the repeatability of a
concept) but also destroys idealization (with the introduction of difference/
alterability in every new contextual use of a concept)
➢ Recognizing altering iterability and therefore the limits of idealization is ethically
important because it keeps dogmatism at bay.
➢ We shouldn't draw the line here to keep things simple. By doing this we forget
about altering iterability.
➢ All-or-nothing is implied by every concept. It was not created by Derrida.
Conceptual language sits inside idealization. We should not stop there; we should
also take it further.
➢ Ideal purity as a goal of language. The choice between ideal language and play
was created by Searle, not Derrida.
❖ Intentionality and metaphysical plentitude.
➢ For Austen – intention overrides context (because I intend an outcome, it's a type
of teleology aimed at the realization of that goal. A serious speech act is one that
fulfills intentionality)
, ➢ For Derrida – context overrides intention (intention does not account for the role
context plays in determining meaning. Intentionalist teleology determines what is
considered correct language)
➢ ETHICS 1: ideological, simplify at all costs. (context)
➢ ETHICS 2: If we presume to know what the normal and correct case for serious
speech actions is, we presume what language ought to be. (intention)
➢ Searle and Austen only focus on ethics 2
➢ 122 and 128 Derrida summarizes his argument (don't really need to look at those
pages because we have covered everything essential.
PART 2:
❖ Recap:
➢ Why can't language be ideal? Because of altering iterability
➢ Derrida equates play with non-serious speech acts, but more specifically –
decision. Juxtaposes calculation with decision.
❖ Rules and the police are not necessarily politically suspect, but rules are never neutral.
❖ Derrida moves away from the question of idealization in language and focuses instead on
the status of rules and the police, including the rules and policing structures of academia
– which formed the context of the debate between him and Searle. It is important to
recognize that no universal ethics (whether deontological or consequential can be
defended within the post-structural context, nevertheless, the existence of rules and
principles is unavoidable. However, every moral agent needs to take responsibility for
how she uses them.
Literalism: rule - all-or-nothing (law)
- Relationship between the two is known as aporia (conundrum)
Subjectivism: decision (justice)
Derrida is urging us to always look at all sides together.
❖ Ethics cannot exist in the following of regulations but is created in the attempt to accept
responsibility for the unpredictable consequences that one’s actions might have on the
future, while still remembering the past (the rule and the context)
❖ Derrida makes the following points:
➢ He makes it clear that the police (seen as any enforcers of rules) should not
automatically be associated with repressive politics.
▪ He is interested in the police not because he thinks they are repressive but
because of the structure of rules and the structural relation between rules
and the police.
▪ In fixing a context, we frame it in a particular way – that frame is an
outcome of my reading of it
Bridge between Derrida as a language constructor and Derrida as an ethical and political work
❖ Page 115. The status of play. Not ideal language vs free play but play is important bc it
frustrates ideality.
➢ Derrida endorses the acknowledgement of play as that which resists meaning in
the moment of the decision.
➢ “the third (meaning of play) remains heterogeneous [...] and ought to be at the
bottom an ethical-political one”
➢ “Derrida distinguishes between calculation (the order of meaning) and a decision
[...] You have to take a jump in the dark.”
➢ Calculation requires no individual agency. Decision is a risk. For important
decisions, Derrida is correct. Some small decisions have no real risk. Can't just
decide, requires some form of calculation but you will eventually reach the limits
of calculation, and you must exercise choice. Choice = realm of homogeneity,
beyond meaning).
➢ Grappling with undecidability – only when we don't know what to do must we
decide.
❖ Idealisation in language (and its limits) - bottom of 116 to 118
➢ All conceptual language appeals to a certain idealisation since concepts subscribe
to the logic of “all-or-nothing"
➢ “every concept that lays claim [...] accept the logic of all or nothing”
➢ Cannot claim x and y, x excludes y.
➢ Conceptual language cannot exhaust meaning.
➢ Differance does not allow for a subject to close in on itself and be complete
➢ Derrida is interested in “a supplementary complication” which frustrates any
attempt at formally systematizing a complete theory of language
➢ His deconstructive concepts are aconceptual. On the one hand, they must
subscribe to the character of ‘all or nothing” that marks all conceptual language
but on the other hand, their work is to point to the limitations of conceptual
language.
➢ “but, [iterability] has a strange status [...]
➢ Nothing to do with logical positivism, it's just the way things are.
➢ Differance and iterability are always at play.
➢ Aconceptual concepts. Either you are employing the term differance or you’re
not. Either you are employing the term iterability or you’re not.
❖ Searle’s idealization. Page 118
➢ Successful speech acts and non-serious speech acts (parasitical cases that Searle
says he’s going to dismiss by only focusing on true promises)
❖ Accommodating marginal and parasitical speech acts.
, ➢ These form part of the structure of language use. By discarding these language
acts, they limit their theory. You need to draw in those parasitic cases.
➢ Serious speech acts conform to the principle of idealizsation. Non serious speech
acts do not conform (jokes, parodies, citations, language in plays). Searle and
Austen ignore these cases, Derrida states you need to account for both cases.
➢ If we have a general theory of language, it must be inclusive of both sides.
➢ Idealization practice itself becomes defective because it has not taken into account
all possible cases of speech.
❖ Iterability and idealization
➢ Derrida argues that language is premised on iterability. Iterability is the ability of
concepts to be repeated in different contexts, but always with a difference because
no two contexts are the same.
➢ The success of a speech act is due to intention and context. Context overrides
intentions because of altering iterability. This is what Searle and Austen are
unable to account for. They dismiss all failed speech acts and therefore ignore
altering iterability.
➢ Context always introduces a difference. Cannot master the context. Our intentions
do not master the context.
➢ Eg. If the bride's father is standing with a gun behind the groom's back, this
context holds the same intention as a normal wedding despite it being a very
different context.
➢ Searle is Austen’s student. Must read them together.
➢ Derrida further argues that once we take altering iterability into account, we see
how iterability of both the conditions for idealization (the repeatability of a
concept) but also destroys idealization (with the introduction of difference/
alterability in every new contextual use of a concept)
➢ Recognizing altering iterability and therefore the limits of idealization is ethically
important because it keeps dogmatism at bay.
➢ We shouldn't draw the line here to keep things simple. By doing this we forget
about altering iterability.
➢ All-or-nothing is implied by every concept. It was not created by Derrida.
Conceptual language sits inside idealization. We should not stop there; we should
also take it further.
➢ Ideal purity as a goal of language. The choice between ideal language and play
was created by Searle, not Derrida.
❖ Intentionality and metaphysical plentitude.
➢ For Austen – intention overrides context (because I intend an outcome, it's a type
of teleology aimed at the realization of that goal. A serious speech act is one that
fulfills intentionality)
, ➢ For Derrida – context overrides intention (intention does not account for the role
context plays in determining meaning. Intentionalist teleology determines what is
considered correct language)
➢ ETHICS 1: ideological, simplify at all costs. (context)
➢ ETHICS 2: If we presume to know what the normal and correct case for serious
speech actions is, we presume what language ought to be. (intention)
➢ Searle and Austen only focus on ethics 2
➢ 122 and 128 Derrida summarizes his argument (don't really need to look at those
pages because we have covered everything essential.
PART 2:
❖ Recap:
➢ Why can't language be ideal? Because of altering iterability
➢ Derrida equates play with non-serious speech acts, but more specifically –
decision. Juxtaposes calculation with decision.
❖ Rules and the police are not necessarily politically suspect, but rules are never neutral.
❖ Derrida moves away from the question of idealization in language and focuses instead on
the status of rules and the police, including the rules and policing structures of academia
– which formed the context of the debate between him and Searle. It is important to
recognize that no universal ethics (whether deontological or consequential can be
defended within the post-structural context, nevertheless, the existence of rules and
principles is unavoidable. However, every moral agent needs to take responsibility for
how she uses them.
Literalism: rule - all-or-nothing (law)
- Relationship between the two is known as aporia (conundrum)
Subjectivism: decision (justice)
Derrida is urging us to always look at all sides together.
❖ Ethics cannot exist in the following of regulations but is created in the attempt to accept
responsibility for the unpredictable consequences that one’s actions might have on the
future, while still remembering the past (the rule and the context)
❖ Derrida makes the following points:
➢ He makes it clear that the police (seen as any enforcers of rules) should not
automatically be associated with repressive politics.
▪ He is interested in the police not because he thinks they are repressive but
because of the structure of rules and the structural relation between rules
and the police.
▪ In fixing a context, we frame it in a particular way – that frame is an
outcome of my reading of it
