the discipline of deconstruction

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The Discipline of DeconstructionAuthor(s): Jonathan Culler, James M. Lang, Edward R. Heidt, Jonathan Hillman, Robert A.Hall, Jr. and Jeffrey T. NealonSource: PMLA, Vol. 108, No. 3 (May, 1993), pp. 533-540Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/462620 .

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PMLA invites membersof the as-sociation to submit letters, typedand double-spaced,commentingonarticles in previous issues or onmatters of general scholarly orcriticalinterest.Theeditorreservesthe right to reject or edit Forumcontributions ndoffersthe authorsdiscussedanopportunity o replytothe letters published. Thejournalomits titles beforepersons'names,discourages ootnotes, and regretsthat it cannotconsiderany letterofmore than 1,000 words. Lettersshouldbe addressedto PMLA Fo-rum, Modern Language Associa-tion, 10 Astor Place, New York,NY 10003-6981.

The Discipline of DeconstructionTo the Editor:

JeffreyT. Nealon's "The Discipline of Deconstruction" (107 [1992]: 1266-79) is a useful antidote to the widespreadidea that deconstruction assertsthe meaninglessness of all texts, but to make his argument more dramaticNealon misrepresentsmy book On Deconstruction.He has told me that hewill revise his discussion for publication in book form, but I want to set therecord straight in PMLA.A section of his article called "The Commodification of Deconstructionin America" claims that deconstruction was

simplified ndwatereddownfor use in how-tobooks thatgave(andcontinue ogive) a generationof literature tudentsan overviewof what was supposedlyDerrida'sworkwithoutpayingcorrespondingttention o his texts.Forexample,the followingquotationsaretaken fromtwo of the leadinghandbooksused torepresent econstructionn theoryseminars-the first s from JonathanCuller'sOnDeconstruction. .: "Inundoing heoppositions n which t reliesand betweenwhich t urges he readero choose, he textplaces he[deconstructive]eadern animpossible ituation hat cannotendin triumphbut only in an outcomealreadydeemednappropriate:n unwarrantedhoiceor a failure o choose" 81). ... InCuller's haracterization,econstructions essentially formalist eadingmethodthat emphasizesa predeterminedall into meaninglessnessesulting rom theself-cancellationf oppositionsn anytext. (1269;Nealon's nterpolation)Now, this quotation from my book comes not from any "charac-terization" of deconstruction, not even from my 140-page chapter entitled

"Deconstruction," but from the first chapter, "Stories of Reading." I amdiscussing one sort of "story of reading,"which refuses happy endings, andtake as example Paul de Man's account of Rousseau's Professiondefoi. Thesentence Nealon quotes is not a "characterization"of deconstruction but adescription of what de Man says this work does to every reader. Nealoninserts "deconstructive"before "reader"to make the passage look like adescription of deconstructive method.The main claim in this section of "The Discipline of Deconstruction" isthat commentators (specifically Christopher Norris and I) have distortedDerrida by failing to acknowledge the importance he gives to the displace-ment and reinscriptionof binary oppositions. But what do I say when I do

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set out to define and describe deconstruction? Mychapter "Deconstruction" begins by quoting Derridaon "une strategie generale de la deconstruction":

"Todeconstruct n opposition s aboveall, at a certainmoment, o reversehehierarchy."This san essential tep,butonlya step.Deconstructionmust, Derridacontinues,"througha doublegesture,adouble science,a double writing, put into practiceareversal f the classicaloppositionanda generaldisplace-mentof the system.It is on that conditionalone thatdeconstruction illprovidehemeansof interveningnthefieldof oppositionst criticizes nd which s also a fieldofnon-discursiveorces." (85-86)To identify the aspect of Derrida's work that com-mentators like me are supposed to have neglected,Nealon uses this same quotation (1269), which OnDeconstructionemphasizes.This corroboration wouldbe gratifying did he not immediately proceed tocriticize me and Norris for failing "to acknowledgethe importance of this displacement in Derrida'sthought" (1270). I should say, rather, that if mychapteron deconstruction does oversimplifyDerrida'swork, it is because its first ninety-five pages follow inDerrida's writings (pace Nealon, who says we com-mentators do not pay attention to Derrida's texts) hisengagement with one opposition after another-speech versus writing, serious versus nonserious, phi-losophy versus literature, inside versus outside, literalversusfigurative-attempting to show how his decon-struction of these oppositions leads not just to areversal but to a displacement of the terms and thusto an intervention in the discursive field.

There are potential points of disagreementbetweenme and Nealon, which might emerge if he were toattempt to show in detail or in particular cases howreversal and displacement work. He might, for in-stance, find my description inadequate to what Der-rida actually succeeds in doing with such oppositionsas speech versus writing, or we might disagree aboutwhether the operations of reversal and displacementare always separable, as Nealon seems to believe, orwhether, in some cases, an effective inversion is notalready a displacementand reinscription.These are, Ithink, matters of some interest, on which Nealonmight have a significantcontribution to make, but forthis sort of discussion he would have to abandon adiscourse claiming that earlier commentators havesimply ignored the operation of displacement.

Finally, to support his general claim that I conflateDerrida with de Man, Nealon quotes my observationthat deconstruction "emerges from the writings ofDerrida and de Man" (1277n5). That it does seems to

me indisputable, but this point does not imply thatDerrida and de Man are the same. In fact, my sentenceis about the diversity of deconstruction: deconstruc-tion, I write, "emergesfrom the writings of Derridaand de Man only by dint of iteration: imitation,citation, distortion, parody. It persistsnot as a univo-cal set of instructions but as a seriesof differences thatcan be chartedon various axes." Furthermore,I bringtogether Derrida and de Man far less than the mani-fest connections between their works would warrant.Derrida's works are the subjectof my centralchapter,"Deconstruction," where de Man is cited only a fewtimes. De Man's distinctive contribution is discussedin a separate chapter, "Deconstructive Criticism."These corrections are tangential to Nealon's generalargument about what Derrida says, with which Ifundamentally agree. That they should be tangentialand that Nealon's hasty caricature of OnDeconstruc-tion serves only to make his argumentmore simplisticand dramatic raisesquestions about the purposes suchdistortions fulfill in the practice of criticism. Somebooks, including On Deconstruction, have wageredthat the institution of professional critical discoursedoes not in fact make denigration of precursors acondition of success. Is that position correct, or doesthe institutional demand for controversy and novelty,even in PMLA, require young critics to distort theirprecursors to gain a hearing? According to JohnKronik, the members of PMLA's Editorial Boardchose to publish Nealon's essay because they thoughtit "would stimulate a healthy dialogue." I hope theboard was right.

JONATHANCULLERCornellUniversity

To the Editor:JeffreyT. Nealon's essay "The Discipline of Decon-struction" should initiate a welcome trend: the aban-

donment of programmatic literary "deconstructions"and a return to the thought and writings of Derrida.The reading of Derrida in this essay is sound, andNealon is certainly right to insist that no reading canbe a deconstruction without a reinscription of thehierarchical terms "within a larger field-a 'textual'field that can account for nonpresence as other thanlack of presence"(1269).I must take issue, however, with Nealon's choice ofJonathan Culler as the scapegoat for "the com-modification of deconstruction in America" (1268).Theory handbooks have indeed become a ubiquitous

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commodity, but Culler's On Deconstructionoffers asustained summary and critique of Derrida and re-lated thinkers, a critique that Nealon seriously mis-represents.Nealon suggests that this passage from Culler rep-resents deconstruction as it is taught in theory semi-nars: "In undoing the oppositions on which it reliesand between which it urges the reader to choose, thetext places the [deconstructive]reader in an impossiblesituation that cannot end in triumph but only in anoutcome already deemed inappropriate: an unwar-ranted choice or a failure to choose" (Nealon's inter-polation). Only in the endnote do we learn that Culleris writing here not about Derrida at all but about Paulde Man. Nealon proceeds to debunk this approach,rightly, as representing only the first step of a decon-struction. He then cites the following passage fromDerrida's Margins of Philosophy, a passage that de-lineates the second, and crucial, move, of displacementand reinscription:

Deconstructionannot imit tselforproceedmmediatelyto a neutralization:t must,bymeansof a doublegesture,a double cience,a doublewriting,practice noverturningof the classicaloppositionanda generaldisplacementfthesystem. t is onlyon this condition hatdeconstructionwillprovidetself he meanswithwhich o intervenenthefield of oppositionshat it criticizes,which s also a fieldof non-discursiveorces. (1269)Nealon then explicitlyfaults Culler for not acknowl-

edging "the importance of this displacement in Der-rida's thought" (1270). But in fact Culler, on the firstpage of his chapter on Derrida and deconstruction(four pages after the passage regarding de Man thatNealon quotes), writes the following:

Deconstructionmust,Derrida ontinues,"through dou-ble gesture,a doublescience,a doublewriting,put intopractice reversal f the classical pposition nda generaldisplacementf the system.It is on that conditionalonethat deconstruction illprovide he meansof interveningin the field of oppositionst criticizes ndwhich s also afield of non-discursiveorces" Marges,p. 392/SEC,p.195). (85-86)Could Nealon possibly have missed this?It might be helpful to reconsider in the light ofCuller's actual presentationDerrida'sremark,cited byNealon, chiding Habermas for "abusing citations ofJonathan Culler at points where, it being a questionof relations between a generality and its 'cases,' thelatter is occasionally obliged to rigidify my argumentsout of pedagogical considerations." Perhaps Derrida

lets Culler "escape unharmed" (1275) here becauseanyone who attempts to "explain"Derrida's thought,includingNealon, must rigidify his argumentsin someform or another. Are we to assume that Nealon'squotation from Margins, and his contextualization ofit, somehow does not rigidify Derrida, while Culler'suse of the same quotationdoes?

JAMESM. LANGSaint Louis University

To the Editor:

In the firstparagraphof "The Discipline of Decon-struction,"JeffreyT. Nealon writes, "[I]nthe summerof 1992, at the School of Criticism and Theory,Barbara Johnson spoke on 'the wake of deconstruc-tion,' exploring, among other things, its untimelypassing away" (1266). I don't know if Nealon waspresentat Barbara'sseminars,but, as a participantinthe 1992 session of the School of Criticism andTheory, I rememberthat the "other things" Barbaradid included suggesting that if our gathering was thewake of deconstruction, then we should have beenable to open the curtain in front of which she waslecturing and reveal the body. There was no bodybehind the curtain. My literary-critical-deconstructiveimagination tells me that if there is no body at a wake,then the body might well be resurrected. Deconstruc-tion may be alive and well and roaming about seekingand discovering new disciples (and disciplines), ap-pearing in new forms. Or its body may have beenstolen by the original disciples ... or the new histori-cists ... or the postcolonialists ... or the Romans ...

EDWARDR. HEIDTSaint Thomas More College

To the Editor:I would like first and foremost to thank JeffreyT.Nealon for "The Discipline of Deconstruction." Cer-

tainly many students of literatureand philosophy havesupposed the work of Derrida to be identical with thatof de Man. It is not-as de Man himself would havesaid. Nealon offers a much needed clarification as hearguesfor the uniqueness of the Derridean "interven-tion." He is also circumspect in questioning whyDerrida never deliberately distanced himself from deMan. The issue is a complicated one, which it wouldbe hasty to dismiss as mere cronyism, and only

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through careful analysis of the relevant texts couldany sort of answer be reached, as Nealon suggests byexaminingDerrida'sconfrontation with Habermas.Inparticularthe lectures gathered in Memoiresfor Paulde Man plead for further scrutiny, for it is there thatDerrida not only reads de Man but asks the question"have I distorted de Man's thought, pushing it to anextreme?"(59).Second, I would like to say that there areprecedentsfor Nealon's reading of Derrida that go undiscussedand uncited and that are, I think, as important asRodolphe Gasche's The Tainof the Mirror. In a letterone can only touch on the small but growing body ofDerrida scholarship,all of which I would oppose tothe many odes and invectives, which seem to be morepopular. Interesting in this vein are M. H. Abrams'sessays on Derrida, for, although Abrams was notparticularly fond of his "opponent's" work, true toform he was able to summarizeadeptly many aspectsof a view not his own. What Nealon calls "doublereading"Abrams calls "double dealing";the juxtapo-sition of these terms should show both Abrams's biasand his insight. It would be a shame to overlook, also,John Sallis's Delimitations. Phenomenology and theEnd of Metaphysics and a collection Sallis edited,Deconstruction and Philosophy. The Texts of JacquesDerrida (to which Gasche contributed "Infrastruc-tures and Systematicity"). And especially akin toNealon's work are Christopher Norris's most recentessays, many of which have been collected in thevolume What's Wrong with Postmodernism. ThereNorris argues that it is high time Derrida be scrupu-lously examined, and in "Limited Think" Norris givessome good hints about how such scholarship mightproceed. Moreover, Norris specifically considers oneof the key issues of Nealon's essay (to what extentDerrida might be responsible for the way in whichothers have interpretedhis work) in "Deconstructionagainst Itself: Derrida and Nietzsche," first publishedin the Winter 1986 Diacritics. But I select Norris'swork in particular because, while like Nealon's itsuggests that Derrida's writings have been widelymisconstrued, unlike Nealon's it never suggests thatthe distortion has had anything to do with the falseassumption that de Man and Derrida are somehowinterchangeable.

Finally, I would like to addressa certain misunder-standing concerning Derrida's critique of Saussure.While Derrida has written that he does not questionthe truth of what Saussure says, he is quick to attachthe qualifier "on the level on which he says it" (OfGrammatology 39). Thus, on the notion that "in a

language, in the system of language, there are onlydifferences,"he has written that "on the one hand,these differencesplay, . . . on the other hand, thesedifferences are themselves effects" (Margins of Phi-losophy 11). "Of what?" it might be asked. Of dif-ferance, which "produces" the effects of difference.Given differance,at least provisionallyone would haveto say that Derrida privilegesdifferenceno more thansameness, the signifier no more than the signified,absence no more than presence. This critique ofSaussure is not a mere afterthought; rather, it bringsus to what is truly unique and most important inDerrida's writing: the ability to articulate simultane-ously, on the one hand, conditions of possibility in thea priori (Kantian) sense and, on the other hand,conditions of impossibility in the spirit of Goedel'sproof. Unfortunately Nealon's essay does not take upthe particular ntervention of differance.This omissionis a fault only because Nealon, too, in the end seemsto place the Derridean text in complicity with therather leaky notion of "difference without positiveterms." Many of Derrida's detractors have taken uphis readingsof Saussure as a point of attack. In Myth,Truth,and Literature. Towardsa TruePostmodernism,Colin Falk reads Saussure much as Derrida does, andFalk proceeds to show how Saussure is philosophi-cally naive. J. Claude Evans, in Strategies of Decon-struction, argues that Derrida has misread Saussure.Falk and Evans are careful thinkers, and their argu-ments are convincing. But both authors seem to thinkthat they have, as it were, pulled the rug out fromunderDerrida, because both assume without questionthat Derrida's effort relies in some inextricable wayon Saussure.Again, this assumptioncannot be simplymade. What would have to be analyzed is what isentailed in Derrida's provisional appropriation ofSaussure's work. The question would be whetherDerrida does not in truth remain bound to Saussureeven after breakingwith him-whether, that is, Der-rida does not somewhere make difference into afoundation and in so doing fall short of the rigornecessitated by the demanding "sous rature."But any discussion of Derrida's writings is prelimi-nary to the furtherquestion of what bearingthey haveon the study of literature,if any at all. These writingsare relevant to the study of literature when they areread as Nealon attempts to take them rather than assome simplemachine for crankingout interpretations.Specifically,diffirance, as a conditionof (im)possibil-ity, should be of great interest to students of theoriesof figuration, including scholars who are historicallyinclined or are concerned with "imagination." But

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since, as Nealon says, the disciplineof deconstructionis dead, his essay is a much needed addition to adiscussion that is struggling to live.

JONATHANHILLMANNorthfield,MN

To the Editor:In "The Discipline of Deconstruction," Jeffrey T.Nealon discusses extensively the objections made tothe deconstructionist doctrines of Jacques Derrida,but Nealon takes exclusively the point of view of

literary theory. Aside from one passing reference toSaussure(1274), Nealon makes no mention of linguis-tics, or of the considerations based thereon thatdemonstrate the total untenability of the dogmas ofdeconstruction (Derridean or any other kind). I canonly summarize those considerations briefly here.First and most fundamental,Derrida'sinsistenceonthe primacy of writing over speech is wholly un-founded. On the contrary, the primaryimportance ofspeech is shown by four major aspects of humanlanguage: (1) the universality of speech in contrast tothe relatively narrow diffusion of writing among hu-man beings; (2) the length of time that human beingsmust have been speaking (many tens of thousands ofyears) in contrast to the few millennia (usually placedat six) since writingbegan to be used; (3) the ontogenyof language in individuals (the child learns to speakbetween one and three years of age, but never learnsto write before four); and (4) the universal, but alsoalmost universally neglected, fact that no reading orwriting goes on without at least some speech activitytaking place in the brain of the reader or writer, asdemonstrated in experimental psychology with elec-tromyograms.

The defense that Derrida and others use ecrituremetaphorically, to mean any kind of semiotic mark-ing, would be invalid. (In discussing Derrida, WalterOng uses the term "semiotic marking"to refer to anyvisible or sensibleindication, not only writingbut also,say, animals' use of excreta to indicate possession ofturf.) Metaphors always blur meaning, and there isnever any excuse for using a metaphor to describe aphenomenon when more exact terms are available.Derrida and other deconstructionists have badlymisinterpreted the Saussurian notion of "'Tarbitrairedu signe." In the "vulgate" of Saussure's Cours delinguistique generale (i.e., the editions of 1916 andlater), "the arbitrariness of the sign" does not referto

a supposed "opacity" of the signifier and resultantinaccessibility of the signified. This arbitrariness issimply the absence of any inherent,necessarycorrela-tion between the structures of the signifiant and thesignifie-as exemplified by the use of, say, Englishdog, French chien, German Hund, Russian sobaka,and so on, to refer to the same class of animal. Thisobservation has been a truism ever since Plato, in theCratylus,discussedwhethermeanings were originated"by nature"or "by convention."The binaryopposition of signifierand signifiedgoesback through Saussure and Descartes to the medievalModistae. It is, however, untenable, inasmuch as wemust recognize (with Ogden and Richards and withStephen Ullmann) not two but three aspects of mean-ing: the linguistic form, its sense, and its referent.Thisis because the essence of meaning lies in the correlativetie (C. F. Hockett's term) connecting sequences ofsounds with the phenomena of the world we live in(phenomena that include, in a minor way, languageitself). This correlation, the sense involved in a linguis-tic event, exists only in the "mind"(howeverwe definethat term) of each individual speaker and hence hasto be recognized as distinct from both linguistic formand referent.It is nonsense to say that language refersonly to itself, since virtually all normal human usethereof involves reference to relatively observable ordeducible phenomena of our experience.

Yet, even though the sense of a linguistic form orconstruction exists only in individualspeakers,it doesnot follow that any individual can "arbitrarily"decidewhat sense he or she will choose to give it, as doesHumpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland,and expectothers to accept that new sense. In ordinary humanlife, and in all but the least representativevarieties ofliterature, the range of meaning of words and theircombinations is kept within the limits of ordinary(even if inevitably approximative) comprehension byeach speaker's need to communicate and collabo-rate with other members of the speech community.What Locke, Derrida, and others have forgotten isthat language is a social, as well as an individual,phenomenon.

Sudden, unannounced use of a term in a meaningverydifferentfrom that of normal speakersis semanticwrenching,as in Derrida'suse of ecriturefor any kindof semiotic marking. (In as early a work as De lagrammatologie, for instance, Derrida uses ecriture inthis way from the beginning but informs the readerofthe word's broadened reference only on page 65.)Similar drastic and needless shifts of reference arepresent in deconstructionists' use of, say, inscrirefor

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"insert [e.g., a semiotic mark]" or reinscrirefor "re-instate." These word shanghaiings are, mutatismutandis, comparable to the paper-and-pencil ma-nipulations and formula juggling of Chomskyan "lin-guistics." They are good examples of Derrideanlogomanganeia 'word juggling' or 'verbal sleight ofhand' and logogoeteia 'intellectuallymeretricious ver-bal razzle-dazzle.'

Limitations of space have compelled me to omiteven a small amount of exemplification and justifica-tion of my assertions (for which my two articles listedbelow must be consulted) and to forgo detailed refer-ences to other discussions. When both defenders andcritics of deconstruction make any reference at all tolinguistics, it is normally only to that of Saussure inthe (not wholly reliable) Cours, usually reflecting anincreasinglywidespread Vulgarsaussureanismus.aus-sure was not (as is often asserted) "the founder ofmodern linguistics," nor is his work, as presented inthe Cours,wholly unexceptionable. Very little, if any,mention is ever made of such fundamental works asWilliam Dwight Whitney's The Life and Growth ofLanguage (1876); the three books all entitled Lan-guage of Edward Sapir (1921), Otto Jespersen(1922),and Leonard Bloomfield (1933); Kenneth L. Pike'sLanguage in Relation to a Unified Theoryof HumanBehavior (1967); Charles F. Hockett's Man's Placein Nature (1973); and Walter J. Ong's Orality andLiteracy (1982). The only two criticisms of decon-struction from a linguistic point of view that havecome to my attention are my own "DeconstructingDerridaon Language"(1985; reprinted n my Linguis-tics and Pseudo-Linguistics,Amsterdam: Benjamins,1987, 116-22) and "Misconceptions of Language inCurrent Literary Theory" (Fourteenth LACUS Fo-rum,ed. Sheila Embleton, Lake Bluff:LACUS, 1988,269-77).

ROBERTA. HALL,JR.CornellUniversity

Reply:I thank Jonathan Culler, James M. Lang, EdwardR. Heidt, Jonathan Hillman, and Robert A. Hall, Jr.,for contributing to the "healthydialogue" concerning

my essay. As Heidt points out, it seems that decon-struction is alive and well, even after its death as aliterary-criticaldominant. I especially thank Hillmanfor pointing out several important precedents for myargument (I had the good fortune to study with JohnSallis), and I can only second his recommendations.

In addition, he rightly points out that Norris's laterwork takes up a critique much like the one that Ifollow in my essay. Indeed, Norris's 1991 afterwordto the second edition of Deconstruction. TheoryandPractice criticizes "the vulgar-deconstructionistviewthat 'all concepts come down to metaphors in theend"' (143). Norris is, however, equally suspicious ofhis own earlier reading of Derrida on metaphor,admitting that it grew out of "a false-or very partial-reading of Derrida's arguments in 'White Mythol-ogy' and elsewhere. For it is preciselyhis point in thatessay that one has said nothing of interest on thetopics of metaphor, writing, and philosophy if onetakes it as read (whether on Nietzsche's or Derrida'sauthority) that all concepts are a species of disguisedmetaphor . . ." (151). The letter from Hall seeminglywould be more fruitfullyaddressedto Derrida than tome, but both he and Hillman interestingly inflectDerrida's reading of Saussure, and I thank them fortheir contributions.

The major concern over the essay seems to comefrom Culler and Lang. Certainly Culler is justifiablytaken aback by my implication that he does not paysufficient attention to Derrida's texts. The debt thatdeconstructive discourse owes to Culler is enormous,and I regret that in an attempt to emphasize ourdifferences,I occasionally adopt an unwarrantedpo-lemical tone. The debt that I owe to Culler is easilyreadable in the amount of Derrida's text that I quotefrom Culler's book, but this debt is not adequatelyacknowledged in the body of my essay. Likewise, theconcern that I do not pay sufficient attention toCuller's discussion of "displacement"or "reinscrip-tion" in On Deconstruction is a valid one. This is,however, not to agree that I have misrepresentedCuller. I too welcome the chance to "set the recordstraight in PMLA."As Cullerpoints out, On Deconstructiondoes arguefor the centrality of deconstructive "reinscription"or"displacement"and against a reading of deconstruc-tion as mere destruction;he writes, "[A]n oppositionthat is deconstructed is not destroyed or abandonedbut reinscribed"(133). Culler likewise discusses the"double, aporetic logic" of deconstruction (109),wherein the first movement levels an opposition andthe second reinscribesor displacesthe opposition. Forexample, he writes, "Affirmationsof equality will notdisrupt the hierarchy.Only if it includes an inversionor reversal does a deconstruction have the chance ofdislocating the hierarchicalstructure" 166). So at firstblush it would seem that Culler and I read Derridasimilarly-and, in some respects, we do; however,Culler'snotion of the displacementor reinscriptionof

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a deconstructed opposition can be shown to be partof what I call a first-levelmovement of neutralization.As Cullerconfirmsin his letter, for him the reversalor inversion of an opposition is its displacement. Hewrites in OnDeconstruction,"There is no program[of

deconstruction] already established, Derrida says, be-cause attempts to reverse and thus displace majorhierarchical oppositions of Western thought openpossibilities of change that are incalculable"(158; myemphasis). According to Culler, it is reversal-in andof itself-that causes Derridean displacement. As aconcrete example of the displacementcaused by such"deconstructivereversals"(161), he cites the power ofFreud'sdiscourse,a power that "is linked to the abilityof its hierarchicalreversals to transform thought andbehavior.... Indeed, Freudian theory is an excellentexample of the way in which an apparentlyspecializedor perverse investigation may transforma whole do-main by invertingand displacing the oppositions thatmade its concerns marginal" (159; my emphasis).While for Derrida it is deconstructively essential thatthere be a disruption-a reversal or an inversion-oftraditional metaphysical oppositions, such a dialecti-cal inversion is a first-level deconstructive maneuverthat, in the end, adds up to a neutralization of theopposition. In other words, for Derrida the overturn-ing of an opposition will not, in and of itself, "trans-form a whole domain" of thinking. In fact, such amovement tends to leave the field intact, rearrangingthe terms rather than examining the structure of theopposition itself. According to Derrida, there needs tobe an other reading after the inversion or reversal ofterms-a reading that can account for such chiasmicreversal as other than failure or lack of plenitude.Ironically, the quotation from Margins of Philosophythat I am twice lambasted for ignoringin Cullermakesthis point crystal clear: Derrida argues for both "anoverturningof the classical opposition and a generaldisplacementof the system." It is the crucial emphasisin Derrida's writing on this second movement, of"general displacement,"that rhetorical deconstructivecritics ignore when they conflate displacement withoverturning or inversion.If there is a second or "reinscribing"movement ofdeconstruction for Culler, it remainscharacterizedbythe first-level movement or moment of paralyzation.According to Culler, an opposition is reinscribedwhen it is "reinstat[ed]with a reversal that gives it adifferent status and impact" (150), and he metaphor-izes such a "double procedure of deconstruction" as"sawingoff the branchon which one is sitting."If thisdeed "seems foolhardy to men of common sense, it isnot so for Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida;

for they suspect that if they fall there is no 'ground'to hit and that the most clear-sighted act may be acertain reckless sawing . . ." (149). Although this isnot, to use Culler's words, a definitive "'charac-terization' of deconstruction but a description" ofdeconstructive effects, I think the metaphor chosenhere describesnicely the neutralizingupshot of decon-struction as inversion: the first movement of decon-struction walks out on a limb (risks the reversal orinversionof an opposition), and the second reinscribesthe opposition as a marker of the failure (chiasmicreversal) of such a binary economy of meaning-itsaws the limb off.

Even if one were to see Culler's double reading ashaving the same movement as Derrida's-a restrictedeconomy opening onto a generalone, writing openingonto archiwriting-Culler's thematization of thatother economy as one of constant failure wouldradically separatethe projectof rhetoricaldeconstruc-tive criticism from Derrida. As Culler writes, forDerrida "proto- or archi-writing displaces the ordi-nary distinction between speech and writing"(174)-in other words, the restricted distinction betweenspeech and writing is based on a prior general econ-omy of meaning, an economy of archiwriting ordifferance(see also 212 on Derrida's pli). This is apoint well taken (and it could, if there were time orspace, provide a point of departurefor a response toHall's comments about speech and writing in Der-rida), but Culler's understanding of this other econ-omy is, I think, differentfrom Derrida's. Cullerwritesabout Derrida'sfamous readingof speechand writingin Rousseau:

Writingcan be compensatory, supplemento speech,only becausespeechis alreadymarkedby the qualitiesgenerallypredicated f writing:absenceand misunder-standing. ... Derrida'sdiscussionof "this dangeroussupplement"n Rousseaudescribes his structure n avarietyof domains:Rousseau'svariousexternal upple-mentsare called n to supplement recisely ecause hereisalways lack n what s supplemented,noriginaryack.(103;myemphasis)

In Culler'sreading, supplementation is made possibleand necessarybecause of a generaleconomy of failureor lack that groundsall other economies: the "absenceand misunderstanding"characteristic of this generaleconomy cannot be purgedin any particularrestrictedeconomy. I argue throughout my essay that revealingthis absence or misunderstandingas a kind of onto-logical antiground is then the work of rhetoricaldeconstructive criticism. As Culler writes, "Rous-seau's texts, like many others, teach that presence is

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Forumorum

always deferred,that supplementationis possible onlybecause of an originarylack" (105; my emphasis). Ofcourse, once this lack is seen to be originary, the dooris wide open for the critic to show this differance-as-lack at work always and everywhere-in Rousseau'stexts and "many others." Criticism is here reinvestedwith a well-defined deconstructivejob to do; insteadof revealingthe meaning of texts, the critic reveals thefailure of that meaning. In the end, it is certainly truethat Culler has paid a great deal of attention to thetopic of deconstructive double reading (pace some ofmy comments), but he has not, in my opinion, dealtsufficiently with the logic of double reading in Der-rida's texts.

JEFFREY T. NEALONPenn State University,UniversityPark

Zionism and Daniel DerondaTo the Editor:

I wish to thank Phyllis Lassner, Karen Alkalay-Gut, and Chanita Goodblatt for theirperceptive etter(Forum, 107 [1992]: 1281-82) calling attention to thegratuitous anti-Zionism embedded in a parentheticalaside in Bruce Robbins's January 1992 PMLA article,"Death and Vocation: Narrativizing Narrative The-ory." Robbins claims that Daniel Deronda's Zionism"excludes and marginalizes [Gwendolen] Harlethmuch as Zionism has continued to exclude and mar-ginalize the Palestinians"(44). For political critics likeRobbins, it seems no opportunities are to be lostpromoting one's political cause. Lassner, Alkalay-Gut, and Goodblatt point out that Robbins inserts ahighly controversial polemic within an "aside" so thatthe contention operates rhetoricallyas common sense,not requiringthe ordinary rigors of argument,or evenmore sinisterly as a "subliminal message."Robbins's replyto the letter is even more disturbing.The unrepentantauthor claims that among the peoplewith whom he speaks it is common sense that Zionismis a hideous political movement; a commonsensicalaside therefore is perfectly appropriate.To defend hishatred of Israel, he uses his identity as a Jew todramatize his revulsion at the treatment of the Pales-tinians by the Zionists. So loathsome is Zionism thatRobbins can bring himself to use the word "Israel"only once!There are several issues of note here. First, Rob-bins's aside and his more extended comments indicatethe sorry depths to which political criticism can de-

always deferred,that supplementationis possible onlybecause of an originarylack" (105; my emphasis). Ofcourse, once this lack is seen to be originary, the dooris wide open for the critic to show this differance-as-lack at work always and everywhere-in Rousseau'stexts and "many others." Criticism is here reinvestedwith a well-defined deconstructivejob to do; insteadof revealingthe meaning of texts, the critic reveals thefailure of that meaning. In the end, it is certainly truethat Culler has paid a great deal of attention to thetopic of deconstructive double reading (pace some ofmy comments), but he has not, in my opinion, dealtsufficiently with the logic of double reading in Der-rida's texts.

JEFFREY T. NEALONPenn State University,UniversityPark

Zionism and Daniel DerondaTo the Editor:

I wish to thank Phyllis Lassner, Karen Alkalay-Gut, and Chanita Goodblatt for theirperceptive etter(Forum, 107 [1992]: 1281-82) calling attention to thegratuitous anti-Zionism embedded in a parentheticalaside in Bruce Robbins's January 1992 PMLA article,"Death and Vocation: Narrativizing Narrative The-ory." Robbins claims that Daniel Deronda's Zionism"excludes and marginalizes [Gwendolen] Harlethmuch as Zionism has continued to exclude and mar-ginalize the Palestinians"(44). For political critics likeRobbins, it seems no opportunities are to be lostpromoting one's political cause. Lassner, Alkalay-Gut, and Goodblatt point out that Robbins inserts ahighly controversial polemic within an "aside" so thatthe contention operates rhetoricallyas common sense,not requiringthe ordinary rigors of argument,or evenmore sinisterly as a "subliminal message."Robbins's replyto the letter is even more disturbing.The unrepentantauthor claims that among the peoplewith whom he speaks it is common sense that Zionismis a hideous political movement; a commonsensicalaside therefore is perfectly appropriate.To defend hishatred of Israel, he uses his identity as a Jew todramatize his revulsion at the treatment of the Pales-tinians by the Zionists. So loathsome is Zionism thatRobbins can bring himself to use the word "Israel"only once!There are several issues of note here. First, Rob-bins's aside and his more extended comments indicatethe sorry depths to which political criticism can de-

scend. One might hope that politically oriented criti-cism could sustain in its analysis the complexity ofinsight and subtly nuanced reflection that a literarycritic can bring to bear on a literary work. No suchluck here! Instead, one finds a simplemindedness(or,to be more generous, an ignorance) that would be outof place in most newspapers.At a time when an IsraeliLabor government is negotiating with its Arab neigh-bors and the Palestinians, Robbins can speak ofZionism as something that only mistreats-"margin-alizes and excludes"-Palestinians. Absurdly, Rob-bins concludes his Forum reply with a patronizingrecommendationto Lassner,Alkalay-Gut, and Good-blatt to "exemplify"dissent and diversity within Is-rael, which he says is in dire need of these twoqualities. Robbins has maybe missed the last fourdecades of Israeli history, not to mention the centuryor so of contentious Zionist history? Israel has longhad a vociferous and at times large peace movementfavorable to compromise with the Arabs. I wouldgladly argue the merits of Zionism and justify Israel'sright to exist and to defend itself, but the PMLAForum is not the appropriateplace. At the very least,a fair-minded, informed person cannot reduce thecomplexities of the Israeli-Arab conflict into a simplematter of the Zionists' being unfair to the Arabs. Inthe aside Robbins had to be brief, but it is clear fromhis reply that he really takes a simplistically negativeview of Israel.

Second, there is the issue of literary representationsof Jews and Judaism. According to Robbins, DanielDeronda's Zionist vocation "excludes and marginal-izes" Gwendolen Harleth; as Lassner, Alkalay-Gut,and Goodblatt accurately point out, Harlethdoes nothave to marry Deronda to fulfill her fictional destiny,which Eliot suggests is not exhausted by the marriageand romance plots. Just as many readerscomplainedto Walter Scott that Ivanhoe should have wed themore interestingheroine, Rebecca (presumablya bap-tized Rebecca), so readers have wanted to pairDeronda and Harleth-Gwendolen being more inter-esting than Mirah, or perhapsthan any other charac-ter in the novel. The reader as matchmaker! Daniel'smarrying Mirah and Rebecca's not marrying thegentile Ivanhoe evoke Jewish endogamy, which cangenerate anxiety about "exclusion," especially whenat least one of the characters-Scott's Rebecca,Eliot's Deronda-is so attractive and appealing as to"deserve"membershipin the majority gentile society.Is it not the case that Jewish endogamy has beenjudged much more harshly (as clannishness, in thenegative characterization) than any other kind ofendogamy?

scend. One might hope that politically oriented criti-cism could sustain in its analysis the complexity ofinsight and subtly nuanced reflection that a literarycritic can bring to bear on a literary work. No suchluck here! Instead, one finds a simplemindedness(or,to be more generous, an ignorance) that would be outof place in most newspapers.At a time when an IsraeliLabor government is negotiating with its Arab neigh-bors and the Palestinians, Robbins can speak ofZionism as something that only mistreats-"margin-alizes and excludes"-Palestinians. Absurdly, Rob-bins concludes his Forum reply with a patronizingrecommendationto Lassner,Alkalay-Gut, and Good-blatt to "exemplify"dissent and diversity within Is-rael, which he says is in dire need of these twoqualities. Robbins has maybe missed the last fourdecades of Israeli history, not to mention the centuryor so of contentious Zionist history? Israel has longhad a vociferous and at times large peace movementfavorable to compromise with the Arabs. I wouldgladly argue the merits of Zionism and justify Israel'sright to exist and to defend itself, but the PMLAForum is not the appropriateplace. At the very least,a fair-minded, informed person cannot reduce thecomplexities of the Israeli-Arab conflict into a simplematter of the Zionists' being unfair to the Arabs. Inthe aside Robbins had to be brief, but it is clear fromhis reply that he really takes a simplistically negativeview of Israel.

Second, there is the issue of literary representationsof Jews and Judaism. According to Robbins, DanielDeronda's Zionist vocation "excludes and marginal-izes" Gwendolen Harleth; as Lassner, Alkalay-Gut,and Goodblatt accurately point out, Harlethdoes nothave to marry Deronda to fulfill her fictional destiny,which Eliot suggests is not exhausted by the marriageand romance plots. Just as many readerscomplainedto Walter Scott that Ivanhoe should have wed themore interestingheroine, Rebecca (presumablya bap-tized Rebecca), so readers have wanted to pairDeronda and Harleth-Gwendolen being more inter-esting than Mirah, or perhapsthan any other charac-ter in the novel. The reader as matchmaker! Daniel'smarrying Mirah and Rebecca's not marrying thegentile Ivanhoe evoke Jewish endogamy, which cangenerate anxiety about "exclusion," especially whenat least one of the characters-Scott's Rebecca,Eliot's Deronda-is so attractive and appealing as to"deserve"membershipin the majority gentile society.Is it not the case that Jewish endogamy has beenjudged much more harshly (as clannishness, in thenegative characterization) than any other kind ofendogamy?

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