In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

2 The Critique of Phenomenology: An Investigation of “‘Genesis and Structure’ and Phenomenology” Although the examination of Fink’s 1933 Kantstudien essay places Derrida¤rmly in the center of an incontestable tradition of Husserl’s interpretation , Derrida’s interpretation of Husserl must be seen as a critique of Husserlian phenomenology. The critique can be seen most easily in Derrida’s “‘Genesis and Structure’ and Phenomenology.” Derrida originally presented this essay at a conference on the notions of genesis and structure in 1959. The proceedings of this conference were not, however, published until 1965 in Entretiens sur les notions de genèse et de structure. When it was published, “‘Genesis and Structure’ and Phenomenology” appeared with this editor’s note: “M. Derrida, qui a revu et complété son texte, a ajouté un certain nombre de notes explicatives et de références.”1 Derrida would not only revise the essay for its 1965 publication, but he would also revise it for its inclusion in the 1967 Writing and Difference. Because of its own peculiar genesis, this essay has an unrivaled privilege in regard to Derrida’s interpretation of Husserl. That Derrida would continue to revise an essay written in 1959 indicates that it contains the most basic critique of phenomenology running from his 1954 Le Problème de la genèse, through his 1962 Introduction to Husserl’s “The Origin of Geometry”, to his 1967 Voice and Phenomenon. Derrida always criticizes Husserlian phenomenology for deciding to close off genesis with a structure; Derrida’s critique of phenomenology is always a critique of its teleology and therefore of its archeology . But as we shall see in “‘Genesis and Structure’,” Derrida’s critique takes two interrelated forms. On the one hand, Husserl closes off genesis with a structure for which he lacks intuitive evidence; on the other, he closes off genesis by supposing that the structure will be fully intuitable as such in the future: absolute presence. The ¤rst form of the critique depends on Husserl’s intuitionism, in fact, on the “principle of all principles”; this critique is a phenomenological critique. Without elimi- nating the ¤rst critique, the second criticizes that very intuitionism; this second critique, which includes the ¤rst within itself, de¤nes the deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence, and it anticipates what we are going to see in Voice and Phenomenon. This double critique (at once phenomenological and super-phenomenological) is based on the necessity of the problem of genesis. 1 In “‘Genesis and Structure’ and Phenomenology,”Derrida presents his “hypothesis” as a “confession”; he confesses it because it seems to go against the grain of what is most clear in Husserl. Derrida warns that Husserl had always tried to resist any type of thinking that is speculative or “dialectical,”at least, Derrida says, “in the sense that Husserl always sought to ascribe to it” (ED 229/154). Husserl had always tried to resist a type of dogmatic thinking which would decide between two competing modes of description—in this case, genetic and structural—and thereby close off the debate (ED 229/155). In phenomenological description, there is no choice, option, or decision, according to Derrida. Instead, the thing itself determines whether a genetic or a structural description is appropriate; the thing itself keeps itself open to continuous interpretation. Despite this warning, Derrida argues that Husserl succumbs to the speculative attitude: “a debate [between genesis and structure] regulates and gives its rhythm to the speed of [Husserl’s] descriptions.” Remaining “incomplete,” the debate “leaves every major stage of phenomenology unbalanced ”(ED 232/156–157). In order to respond to the debate, Husserl “appears ,” as Derrida says—and by this word he indicates that his “hypothesis ” might not be con¤rmed—“to transgress the purely descriptive space and transcendental pretension of his investigation towards a metaphysics of history in which the solid structure of a Telos would permit him to reappropriate . . . a wild genesis” (ED 232/157). Being essentially internal to history and yet,somehow,prescribed to it from the outside,this telos would allow Husserl to reappropriate a genesis which “seemed to accommodate itself less and less to phenomenological apriorism and to transcendental idealism”(ED 232/157). Husserl, therefore, seems to respond to the debate’s incompleteness with a decision, a decision through which phenomenology would relapse into dogmatic metaphysics, into “dialectic,” at least in the sense that Husserl always sought to ascribe to it. Derrida tries to con¤rm his hypothesis by examining brie®y Husserl’s...

Share