"No, deconstruction is always on the side of the yes"

I only became aware of Derrida after his death. Ten months transpired since the foreclosure of the possibility, almost infinitely remote, but still, nevertheless, present, of the chance to meet him, to learn from him directly, to be taught by a presence and by his voice. No doubt he would have said and did say that this possibility was foreclosed long before this event (and) while he was still alive. But as I think about Derrida and the utter insanity of this and many other of his assertions--for, let's face up to it, they are insane demands he puts forth, insane in the sense that the impossibilities they seek to ground us within what, perhaps, is incompatible with any notion of a sane or coherent consciousness or existence (as well as, it should be noted, any notion of ground that is not ungrounded, abyssal, in the sense of the Ab-grund in German)--I wonder whether these months in which I missed his presence do matter, in a sense of mattering or meaning that Derrida would perhaps never accept and perhaps tirelessly resisted.

This sense is the sense of those "initiated" into Derrida: the immediate followers who claim him as their own, who represent him, both before and after this event, as "deconstructivists," "deconstructionists," or "Derridians." We all felt and feel that these followers exist, even though for fear of betraying his thought they would perhaps never call themselves these names: they saw him, "live," and learned from his presence, from his voice, even as they learned that there is no presence and no voice--indeed, that there only may be, perhaps, this presence or this voice. They were assured that they learned, because the doubt could always be alleviated--in a wholly Cartesian way--by his reality right there in front of them, in his actions and gestures and words that are now (and then) recalled as anecdotes or asides, whether in print or in their own classes or elsewhere. As initiates, as the chosen, they too mime his style, try to incorporate his teachings--those words, that presence. It manifests itself in the most superficial ways, in constructions of phrases--often relying on an unstable vocabulary, "problematized" with neologisms or borrowings from other languages left untranslated, with almost paranoid avoidance of the word "is," with quotations marks, with the endless delaying of subordinate clauses, with puns and plays and unprofitable arbitrariness, with the performance of the content of the sentence or the endless self-reflexivity--and also, sometimes, with deeper import. One gets the sense that this miming is precisely what Derrida would not want: that it is all a sham doing disservice to precisely what is said by the thinker that has granted them, supposedly, the authority to speak in his name about the non-existence of authority. One feels that they ruined the movement, that they seek only self-aggrandizement. In short, one is deeply bitter about the deconstructivists, the deconstructionists, the Derridians.

What we never sense, perhaps, is that Derrida too is one of these people. Derrida does not exist and never did exist: there were only Derridians, deconstructionivists or deconstructionists who ruined the movement even before it could be started. The exculpatory gesture of blaming the "fall" of deconstruction--or at least its popularity--on the reception of Derrida (especially in America in its literature departments) and not on Derrida himself fails to grasp perhaps the most essential sense of everything that Derrida said.

At the same time, however, one wants to hold those who do indeed use his name (even without using it)--accountable. This perhaps is the easier part to grasp concerning this sense of Derrida. One wants (in a gesture similar to psychoanalyzing Freud or blaming Marx's vehemence on the squalid conditions in which he lived) to deconstruct the deconstructionist. This is not only just a desire: it is in fact the only way in which we know we can really hold these Derridians accountable in a way that would respect the Derrida that they claim for themselves, that they fake.

One can outline, then, this double bind: one must deconstruct anyone speaking in the name of Derrida, and yet Derrida is one of these people. The close circle around him, of those who heard him, is really constituted only with versions of himself, disseminated. But, then, how to get rid of those around him who annoy us so much, and, we sense, really indeed ruin deconstruction? We seem to hit at the real challenge for our thinking here: fundamentally, we can never really separate the author from his followers, even when he is declared or even declares himself dead. At this point, things become vertiginous and we perhaps must pull back a little.

But it is here with this pulling back that we can criticize, and really accost those who speak in his name, including Derrida himself. It is precisely when they use his thought that one should oppose them: not in the name of Derrida or what he really said, but in how they are seeking to pull back from the vertigo in which they locate themselves and send us off into reflection. To be a little more precise: the faker who merely follows Derrida would always be able to be opposed or resisted precisely to the extent that they pull back towards or fall back upon one or even a few Derridas. Their readings of his texts, their use of them, their miming of his style and manner and even thought can always and in fact only usefully be criticized precisely though movement of deconstructing the one--and indeed it is here that one sees the deep novelty of deconstruction: that one senses that psychoanalyzing Freud is just superfluous but that deconstructing the deconstructionist is, precisely in its superfluity and impropriety, proper--that is, precisely not by an appeal to what Derrida said but to the construction of a reading of what they (the Derridians) do there to expose how they rely on a fixed Derrida, a Derrida of Grammatologie, or Dissemination, or Glas, of whatever. One can expose in their gestures of faith to what this one Derrida--the Derrida upon which they fall back--said, the fact that this is only what one Derrida said, what one Derrida meant, what one Derrida acted like or performed. If they are a real Derridian--and it is questionable whether Derrida himself was this--they will appreciate what has happened. This is a trick at the same time as it is the most profound understanding of what deconstruction may be about: precisely not comfy positions in universities nor a sort of motivated politics in the streets. There are too many Derridas (even, and barely) for that.

This does not mean that one should simply say that a Derridian misrepresents another, different, Derrida of another text. It means that one must enter into another double bind--perhaps the same but perhaps different: one must prove that what was said or done by this "faker" or "follower" is a misrepresentation of the plurality of Derridas precisely because there is only misrepresentation of this plurality--and not, above all, by using the mere phrase, catchword, or shorthand-name "there is only misrepresentation," or something similar, for this would merely be citing a Derridian text and excluding others. One must prove the impossible, the insane, then. And therefore be a fellow follower, a fellow faker, another one who ruins the movement. But perhaps one can do this in neologisms less or even completely other than Derrida's. This indeed is what Derrida does throughout his corpus: tirelessly, he follows himself.

Derrida, then, was (perhaps) a pose, a performance. But (or, therefore) this means that his death does not matter for me, and yet matters all the more. It isn't that I could have experienced him, heard him speak, etc. if he were alive. It is precisely that I would have only experienced a fraud. And this is exactly what matters in this time after his death.