“Legislators and Interpreters”: Le Malheur of Deconstructionism

When Jacques Derrida accuses the project of the Enlightenment of being totalitarian, illusive, racist, imperialist, devoid of any intellectual merit and moral ground, Jürgen Habermas unexpectedly responds that Derrida’s deconstruction represents a betrayal of what was best known about the Enlightenment since it undermines reason, destroys universality, and renounces the hope of any emancipation. Derrida, from a modern viewpoint, fails to provide norms of judgment, misunderstands the foundations of the Enlightenment, and shows no critical responsibility; while modernity, in Derrida’s logic, is philosophically inconsistent and authoritarian in nature. If the Enlightenment is worse, deconstructionism is more than worse. Deconstructionism, in line with this, appears to have a “tragic fate” since one could no more tell when it has begun and where and how it is has been developing. Deploying an archeological method and a genealogical design, this paper offers an epistemic digging into the structures of thoughts that rest behind Derrida’s deconstructionism. Differently put, it addresses deconstructionism in relationship with its descendants. The concepts of Enlightenment, modernity, postmodernity, philosophy, literature, post-theory, or the demise of theory become fundamental to trace the trajectory and the development of Derrida’s thinking. The legacy of metaphysics has turned out to be the legislator for deconstructionism, and Derrida has functioned as a rebellious interpreter and hunter to history itself.