Derrida and science

In my remarks on "Derrida and Speculative Realism," one of you left a wonderful comment addressing my remark that Derrida "lacks any significant engagement with science," pointing out that I should have mentioned the work on François Jacob, as well as consider the Origin of Geometry, which are areas in which Derrida dabbles or dips into science--alongside Leroi-Gourhan, who I mention in the post. My response was what follows. In short, I agreed, but I also thought it was important to try and think the relationship between Derrida and science very precisely. But before I get into that first and foremost one has to, as my commentator emphasized, immediately disqualify any notion that Derrida is outright hostile to science. There's just nothing in the record to suggest that. The Sokals of the world might want to show something intrinsic lies between postmodernists and science, but Derrida isn't simply a postmodernist (and not only because he explicitly says he isn't), and such accounts don't prove much anyway in the first place, other than that there is a complex relationship between the humanities, the structures we call postmodern and which characterize our cultural moment, and science, which I think is best comprehended sociologically--not in self-aggrandizing, staged "events," by which we really mean, "media events" (and in the popular, pejorative, and even now wholly conservative sense of "media"), whose only deplorable function is to stir up anti-intellectualism (of which there is much too much already in the United States).

Once this is registered, as my response in fact emphasizes, and as I have continually emphasized on this blog, I think what we have to realize next is that we cannot even trade on these popular notions in order to defend what Derrida is doing: that is, disparaging someone like Sokal doesn't do much. It is akin with the ineffectiveness of Derrida's oft repeated objection to his objectors, "you have not read me." That is, when there is misreading out there, what is needed is an exposition that relies on more general, but more accurate characterizations of what Derrida is up to--not the injunction, addressed to the most visible of opponents, to read more and more, without anything else more to say. The latter maneuver risks keeping the misunderstanding in place in order to let us retreat to our self-satisfied knowledge. Obviously my commentator is in no way making these moves. But he does do something else which I would like to resist, and which might link up with these strategies that play on the figure of "misunderstood Derrida." This is to imply that if Derrida brings up or even reads something scientific, it somehow counts as addressing science, and this (even if it is, indeed, in small amounts, which my commentator rightly acknowledges) combats the misunderstanding. My position will be clear from what I say:

It is good to mention the work on François Jacob. This dovetails with the work on Leroi-Gourhan that I mentioned--and there are some more seminars to be published on the topic of life that should make Derrida's interests there clearer, perhaps relating him more to biology. On this theme, there should also be more in these seminars on Nietzsche, who is actually more absent than people might think from the Derridian corpus--though perhaps this is only because of his prolific output, and the fact that his considerations of Nietzsche are already so powerful and interesting. The work on Nietzsche, combined with the recent writings (and seminars) on the animal and Deleuze might make this whole science-related area light up.

But I feel that we have to be clearer here, we can't equivocate. We can't really say that because Derrida occasionally is very interested in one aspect of science (as I'll argue below, agreeing with you, scientificity), and even dips occasionally into scientific discourse, we can count him as really interested in a lot of science, or at least more interested in more of it than the caricatures. While I take the point that he will always be more of whatever the caricatures make him out to be, I'd say that this really is already by definition true, and claim we have to get more precise about what we mean by science and its relation to questions of scientificity.

I think Derrida is interested more in science in terms of its institution, founding, and the policing of its borders--his work on psychoanalysis is a great example of this. I think this is generally pretty plausible--we might indeed all agree that scientificity is actually the main obsession of Derrida. But for me, this means he is precisely not interested in most of science. The occasional dip into data and scientific activity, mixed with his prolonged questioning of institution, doesn't equal what we rightly want from him, which is some way to bring his work into connection most science.

You see I make no real mention here of data, or results--I'm not arguing as an empiricist. I'm just not overusing the power of metonymy.

I'd also say that the Origin of Geometry precisely backs up my point. In that work, the issues there are more detailed, and because they are concerned (rightly) with stressing the (incredible) uniqueness of Husserl's position, on the one hand, and still working out notions of writing, on the other, we get something that is more "internal" to the field, if you like, and can be construed as a detailed analysis of geometry and its scientificity. But I'd wouldn't really consider it like this without significant reservations--I'd say, like the work on Jacob, it is still more interested in institution as more of a general question (which of course bears on each instance of its internal problematic).

Obviously all the terms here, "internal" and "general" are put in question, but I'm pretty adamant about resisting giving into what Derrida does with them here (he's obviously showing scientificity has to bear on each instance "internal" to a field, such that we can't say scientificity is an external, general problem in the sense that I'm using these words--a sense that takes scientificity as somehow prior to the scientific activity of the field), if only because I'm trying to outline another (and I'd argue, more pressing, and in fact the most obsessive) problem he is concerned with, which is the provisionality of his work. Derrida, because he is interested in the problem of institution, becomes less interested in most of science: what we need to do is not act as if he already addressed it in its entire, but take Derrida there using what we have got. This is why I stressed that what he's doing is not at all incompatible with science--and why I lamented he didn't do more with it while he was alive (though the work on Jacob was indeed a very serious consideration).

So while the general popular question of whether Derrida is pro- or anti-science is badly posed, the objection to it is perhaps not adequately outlined either. Though one is right to register how most considerations of Derrida are dishonest, I'd say what this objection that stresses the presence of "scientific" elements in Derrida's texts ends up doing is using Derrida's "obsession," combined with dips into science, to make his work seem like it continually addressed science, like some massive problematic always in the background, when it really didn't. The issue of institutions was such a massive problematic, and it was in fact always right there in the foreground.

In short, what I'm saying is that "science" is a huge term. And indeed one can use this fact to say that Derrida indeed addresses science. But I say what we need to conclude from the wide range of this term is precisely that the occasional dip into science, with a prolonged meditation addressing one aspect of science doesn't mean Derrida addresses even a lot of science. It means his work is specific, it takes a specific turn, and in fact if it doesn't address the majority of science, that's even totally excusable: he was only one man after all! It certainly means that he wasn't hostile to science--but let's not distort what he did in order to counter some inane "popular" objection. We need more objections to whatever misunderstanding are out there put in terms of what Derrida indeed didn't do, is all I'm saying.

Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, let's not act as if what people want from Derrida when they bring up science is only a consideration of empirical results, even if they are indeed empiricists. Let's not imply that it's the people who want some science for Derrida who are really the wrong ones, because they perhaps have a real limited view of what science actually is. This seems to trade on a misunderstanding of "empiricism" which is even greater than whatever misunderstanding of Derrida is out there. One is right to say that Derrida addressed empiricism in Of Grammatology (and I'm going to do a very close reading of this in a couple days--look out). But I'd argue that this doesn't mean he thereby participates in any way in the "empiricism" mentioned here--which is, given this notion of "empiricism," a good thing. What he says might then have a real future with real empiricism. But more than that, it might have a future with science--since he's not hostile to it at all--a science which is, indeed because of its actual empiricism in certain parts, and the methods as well as practices that emerge around its empiricist core, not just reducible to an uncomplicated, flat, undifferentiated "empiricism."

...So ends my response, but I'll elaborate on one last thing. One can also critique empiricism and not be anti-science. Derrida in fact does this many times, and I don't fault him for it--since it realizes science is such a wide, varying field. Empiricism and especially positivism are very particular things, and Derrrida has very particular objections to each of them. He also has, as was mentioned, very particular arguments in support of the former in Of Grammatology, which wouldn't merely reduce to the proposition that it can be, at times "more radical" than transcendentalism. If everything was judged on the basis of whether it was more or less radical (a word Derrida himself finds puzzling and calls into question in Rogues), as it seems to do at this juncture in critical theory, cultural criticism, and philosophy, we'd find that many things were probably more radical than we expect. But this is what is really being advocated in such a defense of empiricism by way of its "radicality," is it not? That it is only good insofar as it shakes up the metaphysical tradition, and surprises us? Deleuze borders on such a position, as I read him. But such a position might better look to Comte in the first place, who made the dissolution of metaphysics through positivism his very mission, way back in the mid-19th century. Or structuralism (to stay in France), that adventure most "radical" thinkers still disparage quite openly, and which promised--as its very mission--to dissolve philosophy into anthropology and install that within the "sciences of man." It is in fact, against this dissolution that Derrida, continually wrote and in fact worked (that is, in the institutions he was a part of and, eventually, directed)--which is often completely lost on Anglo-American audiences (who are scandalized that Bourdieu can reveal such a radical was really trying to preserve philosophy!). Why are we so suprised that deconstruction, which strives always to resist mere destruction, would insist on the need to reconsider any assured notion of what is "radical," especially if it is used as a measure--doesn't such a measure precisely stabilize radicality? That is, not in order to use it strategically, but to flatten it into what is dismissible in advance?