Derrida on Heidegger and technics

In 1986 Derrida was at Yale and had various discussions about Heidegger that allowed him to consolidate his thinking. In 1987 these discussions were spun out a bit in his contribution to conference or joint-discussion entitled "Reading Heidegger." Derrida presented what he came up with the year before. This was published in Research in Phenomenology ("On Reading Heidegger," #17: p.177). David Krell outlines in the following what Derrida was saying at this conference, which hit at four points: as Derrida said, "four threads are to be drawn out here, emanating from four areas of hesitation and disquiet in my current reading of Heidegger..." I want here to focus on the second of these points, which Derrida specifies as "the privilege of essence in Heidegger's account of technique and the necessary contamination of essences."
I've tried in previous posts and papers to sketch certain aspects of the relationship between Derrida and Heidegger's notion of technics. My conviction is that Derrida has a lot to offer us thinkers of the philosophy of technics or technology, or philosophical thinkers the ramifications of technology, more than we expect. He also has a lot to offer Heideggerians, I think, for whom a Heideggerian formulation of technics remains perhaps the most crucial and lasting contribution of Heidegger's later thought. I think this is the case even though others see Derrida's contribution to technics being something more along the lines of providing a narrative of hominization, like Bernard Stiegler.
This does not interest me as much: I fundamentally don't think Derrida's thought hits its hardest there. For me, it is in the second point around C, in the outline below, which is the most crucial, because it extends a notion of technics to all of phenomenological thought: "withdrawal, reserve, reticence, holding-back, may well be a strategy of protection." He means a Heideggerian strategy of protection against contamination by technics (the non-essential technological aspect of technics). In other words, Heidegger performs what he says: withdrawal also, at the level of his discourse, his text, withdraws (from contamination).
But things don't stop with just this. For what this allows us to ask is the following: What could it mean to think withdrawal otherwise than as protection? This is what Derrida is getting at, this is what he thinks Heidegger falls a little short of doing. And it's understandable, for to think withdrawal otherwise than as protection against technology would be to think withdrawal as a function of technology, as permeated by the technical. This would in turn make the phenomenon itself--which is self-veiling or withdrawing--technical. A technical phenomenon: this is what it is impossible for Heidegger, and incumbent upon Derrida, to think. One then can think of a technical phenomenology, which would not look so much like the scientifically aided heterophenomenology of Daniel Dennett (as venerable and useful and amazing as that is), but more like grammatology, that science the impossibilities and possibilities (as impossibilities) Derrida looked at long ago.
Regardless, this is my case for looking at Derrida as different than Stiegler in his emphasis, which I think (as the two last volumes of Technics and Time recently made their English-language appearance) actually makes him more and more relevant for thinking technics in a unique way now. Here then, is the outline of what Derrida said then was his second point of hesitation about Heidegger:

II. The privilege of essence in Heidegger's account of technique and the necessary contamination of essences:
A. Heidegger avers that the essence of technique is nothing technological : his thinking of technique as such and as an essence tries in a classically philosophical manner to shelter the thought and language of essence from contamination.
B. Yet can anything in language and in thought be sheltered absolutely from technicity? In the very will to protect oneself against "x" one is more exposed to the danger of reproducing "x" than when one tries to think contamination.
C. Contamination, a contagion born of contact and a kind of touching, foils every strategy of protection; it puts at risk the central theme of Heidegger's thinking--that of the ontological difference.
1. Being's difference from beings is itself dissimulated in beings, and thus appears to be a kind of contamination. Yet Heidegger would insist that contamination is merely an "ontic" scheme, a mere "metaphor."
2. The Heideggerian figure of Being's self-veiling, its withdrawal, reserve, reticence, holding-back, may well be a strategy of protection.
3. Contamination requires the thinking of a kind of différance that is not yet or no longer ontological difference.

The technical relation

In a televised interview (printed in Echographies of Television, 113-7), Bernard Stiegler asks Jacques Derrida a brilliant question about some lines Derrida said in the above film:

In the film, in which you play yourself, you say to Pascale Ogier, your partner: "To be haunted by a ghost is to remember what one has never lived in the present... Modern technology, contrary to appearances, increases tenfold the power of ghosts." Might you elaborate on this statement: "the future belongs to ghosts?"

Derrida replies with the following:

...Phantom preserves the same reference to phainesthai, to appearing for vision, to the brightness of day, to phenomenality. And what happens with spectrality, with phantomality... is that something becomes almost visible which is visible only insofar as it is not visible in flesh and blood. It is a night-vision [translation modified]. As soon as there is a technology of the image, visibility brings night. It incarnates in a night body, it radiates a night light. At this moment, in this room, night is falling over us. Even if it weren't falling, we are already in night, as soon as we are captured by optical instruments which don't even need the light of day. We are already specters of the "televised." In the nocturnal space in which this image of us, this picture we are in the process of having "taken," is described, it is already night. Furthermore, because we know that, once it has been taken, captured, this image will be reproducible in our absence, because we know this already, we are already haunted by this future, which brings our death. Our disappearance is already here. We are already transfixed by a disappearance or disapparition which promises and conceals in advance another magic "apparition," a ghostly "re-apparition," which is in truth properly miraculous, something to see, as admirable as it is incredible, credible or believable, only by the the grace of an act of faith [translation modified]. Faith which is summoned by technics itself, by our relation of essential incompetence to technical operation. (For even if we know how something works, our knowledge is incommensurable with the immediate perception that attunes us to technical efficacy, to the fact that "it works:" we see that "it works," but even if we know this, we don't see how "it works;" seeing and knowing are incommensurable here.)

"What a sentence! Is it a sentence?"

It seems to me that Derrida is paranoid about tone (a writing's attitude towards its readers). His entire method of inquiry, insofar as it can be rigidified into "moves," or "rules," or (in a sightly richer formulation of the same thing) ethical demands for specific actions (see The Gift of Death for an articulation of how tough these alleged "moves" can be), could be said to be the emptying out of tone. "Emptying out" means here however, at the same time, an infinite expansion of the reliance on tone: tone is everything and nothing at once. In other words, Derrida's project can be seen as a giving of thickness to the idea of tone, and trying to overcome our reliance on it as a positive tool that forwards (or--and this is infinitely more pressing for Derrida--shuts down or dismisses the other's) discourse.
For example, the question of Derrida when reading Beyond Good and Evil is first and foremost one that problematizes or develops tone. "What a sentence!" he exclaims in The Politics of Friendship. But then he asks and adds (that is, supplements) the really crucial part: "Is it a sentence?" In other words, is this passage in Nietzsche merely a fragment and nothing more? Is it--and here the real inquiry begins if one follows Derrida carefully--merely an emphatic gesture, hot air, meant to rile up one's spirits more than communicate or remain communicable? Or is it precisely thereby communicating? In other words, is it resisting being said, being stated in a sentence--is it just remaining a fragment of tone--or is the tone precisely what makes it a sentence, brings it into the field of the possibility of representing? Here is the full passage (the, indeed amazing, Nietzsche included):

The transmutation to which Nietzsche submits the concept of virtue--sometimes, as has often been remarked, also in the Machiavellian sense of virtù--shudders in the tremor of this perhaps. This is something other than a reversal [or, as Foucault would say, a sacrifice--mj]. The famous passage on "Our virtues" (para. 214) from the same book [Jenseits--mj] turns resolutely towards us, towards ourselves, towards the "Europeans of the day after tomorrow" that we are, and, first of all, towards the "first-born of the twentieth century." It invites us, we the "last Europeans," to be done with the pigttail and the wig of "good conscience," the "belief in one's own virtue (an seine eigne Tugend glauben)." And here again, the shudder of the sentence, the shudder of an arrow of which it is still not known where and how far it will go, the vibration of a shaft of writing which, alone, promises and calls for a reading, a preponderance to come of the interpretative decision. We do not know exactly what is quivering here, but we perceive, in flight, at least a figure of the vibration. The prediction: "Alas! if only you knew how soon, how very soon, things will be -- different! --" ( -- Ach! Wenn ihr wußtet, wie es bald, so bald schon -- anders kommt!).
What a sentence! is it a sentence? Do we know that -- that things will be different; and how very soon things will be different? Do we not already know that? Can that be measured by knowledge? If we knew that, things would no longer be different. We must not totally know this in order for a change to occur again. So, in order for this knowledge to be true, to know what it knows, a certain non-knowledge is necessary. But the non-knowledge of the one who says he knows that we do not know ("Ah if you only knew," a ploy or a figure which is neither a question or an affirmation, not even a hypothesis, since you are going to know very soon, starting at the end of the sentence, that which you would know if you knew, and that therefore you already know: "Ah if you only knew!") -- to wit, what the person signing the said sentence (which is not a full sentence, but only an incomplete subordinate) cannot state without attributing to himself knowledge concerning what the other does not yet know, but already knows, having learnt it in this instant -that is, instantaneously, and so soon (so bald) that it will not wait until the end of the sentence.
The acceleration in the change or the alteration which the sentence in suspension speaks (wie es bald, so bald schon --anders kommt!) is in truth only its very rapidity. An incomplete sentence rushes to its conclusion at the infinite speed of an arrow...
-The Politics of Friendship, 31

One can see (and Bernard Stiegler brings this out best) that Derrida is a thinker only of speed--the only thinker to think speed. For he is able to duplicate this speed of Nietzsche, albeit differently, in that amazing remark: "Quelle phrase! Est-ce une phrase?"
This is deconstruction in a nutshell. But what can be lost is that Derrida's sentence is really developing that space in which tone operates positively--positively, that is, as a the purest space of a difference. In other words, its own work of affirmation (but is it affirmation? and thus is it not negation?) is located here.
What the problem is, as I see it, is that this space is perhaps infinitely problematized or given its infinite thickness (as the purest space) too quickly for us: in its gauging how pure this difference is, we forget already that it is a pure difference--the pressure of its purity already deferring all our calculations as to the level of its difference. We're thus left with the task of catching up with Derrida (as he catches up to himself), constantly, rather than feeling all this as an incitement to precisely see how this space of difference (to be deferred already) is a space of tone, as we asserted. This is not actually his fault entirely: he is preparing us for moving within the rhythms of this forgetting and remembering, i.e. allowing us to exercise ourselves so we may perhaps attain the right speed. But still, Derrida allows us (and a whole generation of thinkers has been plagued by this, dealing with it in more or less productive and provocative ways) to doubt sentences and language as a whole, and yet not feel that we have an obligation to express through it. In other words, in his haste to point towards the the deferring (or the differing, it does not matter which comes first) he does not make us feel as well as he should this doubt as the very condition of (an unconditioned) ethics. No doubt he tries--strenuously, his entire life. But because in his haste to pass through that point where difference becomes deferred (already), he leaves us merely with a demand and not a field or formation of impossibilities or possibilities--except in what Americans call the "readings" of Nietzsche (and so many others) that he "produces" in this haste. One then makes the mistake of seeing what Derrida advocates as the endless production of readings (which is precisely to ignore what he calls above the "vibration of a shaft of writing which, alone, promises," my emphasis): text is everywhere, without also being (and this is the only Derridian point) nowhere. This objection is not one (like Gillian Rose's) about the difficulty or impossibility of expanding on what the demand is--indeed we're familiar since Heidegger (if not Kant) of the problems one encounters when one thinks that one can quickly and easily do this. It is rather an objection (and Rose also begins to hit on this at the same time) to Derrida's situating this demand always within the speed of his analysis--of too quickly folding it back into his text.
This means, with respect to tone, that it is vital to look closer at that point (or points) where difference defers itself and expand it in terms of how it belongs (or already belonged) or does not belong to tone. That is, (rather than emptying it out--and this would be really emptying it out--into logical "moves," which is how that explication of Nietzsche by Derrida so stupidly is begging to be read, but in fact cannot be read qua merely "moves"--it needs to be read as precisely the following)--that is, at this point there must be established a field in which the difference to be broken down (and how, we cannot determine in advance) will be constituted, in which it is articulating itself and (in fact) in which the possibility (or impossibility) that it has already deferred itself is developed (and indeed, unlike the majority of American theorists, philosophers, and critics, this is what some truly amazing souls actually do mean when they talk of Derrida's "moves"--more power to them!). One might call this, then, lending expression to the possibility or impossibility of the deferred in the different--and this, as I see it, is the task of Foucault.
If we become familiar enough with Foucault's task (and it might be that also of Deleuze--and Deleuze and Guattari--though, alas!, I am not yet authorized to say), we can begin to specify this possibility--and specify it as a determinate, quantifiable field (i.e. as a discursive formation, or as a field of "moves" taken in the good, developed sense)--with respect to tone in how it posits a space in which arguments can turn on themselves. I'll look at this more in detail later with respect to Matthew Arnold and I.A. Richards. For now, I'll just let (if I can) the necessity of becoming familiar with this task disseminate itself.

Praise for Rorty's Heidegger

I know it isn't a popular opinion, but I think there is much to be said for Rorty's pragmatist interpretation of Heidegger. Why? Well, it makes the claims that Hubert Dreyfus' interpretation of Heidegger is pragmatist sound absolutely foolish. Dreyfus isn't a pragmatist. He is a phenomenologist. And if people are going to accuse his phenomenology of being too pragmatic, too unconcerned in the more "transcendental" issues Heidegger is bringing up, well, they should probably not call Heidegger a phenomenologist then. And if they do that, they miss precisely what Heidegger was doing with phenomenology even in the introduction to Being and Time. In other words, they should probably think of him as a Kantian, which is just as absurd as not calling him a phenomenologist.
Rorty, then, shows what a real pragmatist interpretation of Heidegger would have to be. And he does so precisely by taking Heidegger's more "transcendental" remarks seriously. If he is errs in his interpretation, it is precisely in not considering Heidegger's phenomenology in the way Dreyfus does--in short, by considering only his more "Kantian" transcendental statements (for what it is worth, he errs in the opposite direction with Derrida and Nietzsche, by not considering these claims enough). In short, Dreyfus, far from being a pragmatist, actually combats the position of Rorty continuously, in my view.
And this already is how Rorty can be extremely useful, as I said. But he is most useful in this manner when he interprets (quite rigorously, I might add) the claims Heidegger makes regarding truth, particularly in "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit" but also in Being and Time. While one may disagree with his conclusions about the correspondence theory of truth in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, in considering Heidegger he has to flesh out exactly what a sort of non-correspondence theory of truth would have to be. If one can get past his statements that sound like relativism--which they are not, because they are pragmatist (Rorty I think enjoys or finds useful--like Derrida--being scandalous [I later took this word back, cf. my comment below] and always makes his pragmatist claims sound as relativist as possible, while always opposing relativism--perhaps to show, quite nobly I think, that pragmatism can oppose relativism right at the limit where the two might come together)--Rorty is exactly right in saying that a non-correspondence theory of truth in Heidegger is an attempt to get outside the power struggles that correspondence theories of truth since Plato have made us enter into. On Rorty's reading, then, one can see in a different way why Heidegger would so vigorously oppose Nietzsche. It is not because of a sort of leveling-down of all things into expressions of objectivity that Heidegger is opposing primarily but the fact that in Nietzsche truth is always a form of dominance. Eliminating or toning-down this dominance-structure in truth is Heidegger's objective--or is at least one of them. This is a hard thought for many Heideggerians to think, I think. But it is extremely rewarding, because one doesn't then have to disclaim that non-correspondence truth is just an other type of truth that, as it were, supervenes upon the truth that is correspondence, as Dreyfus tends to do in order to make Heidegger a bit more palatable there. Indeed, in the end, Dreyfus is right that Heidegger isn't calling for something totally different than the correspondence theory of truth to all of a sudden take over our dealings with truth. Correspondence has a particular role to play still. And so Rorty I think is ultimately wrong when it comes to what Heidegger is claiming, precisely because he does not see this role other than as a mere means that pragmatists' non-correspondence dealings with truth will employ. But he is extremely useful for going a little beyond Dreyfus to flesh out the possibilities that are there.
Of course, someone who thinks Dreyfus is full of it to begin with for not dealing with Division II (an inane criticism, since he is always dealing with it) and more "transcendental" statements  (again, which he always does) will not learn anything from Rorty in this respect. And thus one can see why their being closed-off to this interpretation, thinking that they are really "going beyond" the supposedly watered-down Anglo-American Heidegger, is mere self-righteousness. One should emphasize that Stiegler and Derrida (and, now that I think about it, John Sallis and Jean-Luc Nancy) are some examples of thinkers who did remain open to this Heidegger, and one can see by the amazing nature of their interpretation that it is quite profitable to do so. If they break with Heidegger on certain issues, one could make the case that they are precisely breaking with this effort of Heidegger to remove power from truth: they assert that power is still around even in Heidegger's truth, and this is why they keep calling themselves more Nietzschian than Heideggerian (Derrida goes so far as to call for the rescue of Nietzsche from a Heideggerian interpretation--cf. the opening pages of Of Grammatology).

Bernard Stiegler: links and phusis

Here is a wonderful site with many interviews and other recordings of Bernard Stiegler. It includes even a portion of The Ister in which he plays a prominent part in the discussion of Heidegger.

I might also include here a remark concerning Stiegler's interpretation of Heidegger's discussion of technics in Stiegler's Technics and Time (volume 1). Stiegler explains Heidegger's theory of technics in a wonderfully simple way that is absolutely productive to think about. He inserts the discussion of phusis that we find in Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics right in the middle of a recounting of Heidegger's argument in "The Question Concerning Technology," and the result is to elaborate much better than Heidegger in that later essay how modern technology "challenges" nature. This is expressed vaguely there, and Stiegler wonderfully clarifies it:

Modern technics inflicts violence upon phusis [that most basic determination of being as growth or bringing-itself-forth]; technics is no longer a modality of disclosure in accordance with the growing of being as phusis. Technics becomes modern when metaphysics expresses and completes itself as the project of calculative reason with a view to mastery and possession of nature, itself no longer understood as phusis.

-Technics and Time, I, General Introduction, 10 (my italics)

It is this "in accordance with" that shows that technology is setting against nature or rather against beings as a whole, the totality of existents. Because technics have transformed in their essence to the point at which they disregard or are no longer open to the possibility of beings to grow or bring themselves forth, to upsurge, technics dominates their possibilities, absents them from their own ability to disclose, or, in short, discloses them for them. This taking over of the bringing forth of being, this vicarious or prosthetic control is what constitutes the challenge. I could comment more on this, and perhaps be clearer, but I think the important thing is to note Stiegler has a great explanation here, that reading the Introduction into the questions concerning technics that Heidegger pursues is crucial.