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2. Analogy and Anagram: Deconstruction as Deconstruction of the as
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2 Analogy and Anagram Deconstruction as Deconstruction of the as Though I tried to argue in the previous chapter that the double gesture of deconstruction might helpfully be compared to the antinomy between a conditional and an unconditional hospitality, that deconstruction as such might be thought of as a kind of hospitality, there is, it has to be said, something woefully inadequate about this comparison, indeed , something fundamentally mistaken about the notion that deconstruction might be understood through any such comparison or analogy. For it is as if deconstruction itself, deconstruction as such, before being a critique of phonocentrism or logocentrism, of phallogocentrism or carnophallologocentrism , were first of all, and much more simply, a critique of the as such; as if Derridean deconstruction as philosophy, as critique, before being a critique of the so-called metaphysics of presence, were first of all a critique of being as presence, or more simply still, a critique of the as that makes all presence possible; as if Derridean deconstruction , before being a critique of individualism, humanism, nationalism , or Eurocentrism, were first of all a critique of the as if, a critique of the performative fiction that gives rise to the phantasms of autochthony and property, of the self-same of any self, species, state, or sovereign god; as if, in short, Derridean deconstruction, before being a critique of the analogies of sovereignty, were first of all, and from the very beginning, a critique of the ‘‘as,’’ the ‘‘as such,’’ and the ‘‘as if’’ that make all comparison and analogy possible. 37 One need go no further than what Derrida himself has said about deconstruction to make such a case. Near the end of ‘‘The University Without Condition,’’ for example, Derrida argues that the little word ‘‘as’’ in ‘‘as if’’ or ‘‘as such’’ might well be or have been the name of the real target of deconstruction, since it is, he says, ‘‘authoritative’’ in all phenomena and all philosophy as science or as knowledge.1 Hence Derrida in that and other texts will discreetly but unmistakably separate the ‘‘as’’ from the ‘‘if’’ in order to argue that the proper modality of the event, of the unconditionality of the event, is neither ‘‘as,’’ the event as past, present, or future , the event as this or that, nor ‘‘as if,’’ the event as possibility, performative fiction, or virtuality, but, more simply, ‘‘if,’’ the event, as Derrida liked to say, ‘‘if there is any.’’ Yes, it is ‘‘as if’’ deconstruction as philosophy were from the very beginning a critique of this authoritative or sovereign ‘‘as,’’ a critique, then, not only of analogies of sovereignty but of the sovereignty of analogy, of what I will call here the ‘‘sovereign reign of analogy.’’ But since Derrida was not often given to speaking so generally about deconstruction, because he preferred more local, contextualized analyses, and because I think he appreciated it even less when others spoke so generally , I would like to demonstrate in this chapter that such an interpretation of Derrida is justified already by Derrida’s 1968 reading of Plato in ‘‘Plato’s Pharmacy’’ and by his subsequent readings of Plato, from his 1987 essay ‘‘Khōra,’’ right up through one of his very last works, in 2003, Rogues.2 Since, as I will argue, the premises for so many of Derrida’s readings of canonical texts in the history of philosophy can be related in some way to this critique of analogy, it is essential to return to these texts on Plato in order to understand both the terms and the form of these readings and this critique. Moreover, because a reading of the khōra or, as we will see, of Khōra in Plato’s Timaeus became so central to Derrida’s late political works, because the unconditionality of Khōra is so often opposed in these later works to the sovereignty of the Good, it is important to understand the philosophical background of this political critique. As we will see much later, in Chapter 10, it is this very ‘‘reign of analogy’’ initiated by Platonic metaphysics that will feed the sovereignty of every phantasm and allow the Good to become the ultimate phantasm of sovereignty, and it is Khōra—Khōra not exactly beyond all being but ‘‘before’’ all being— that will allow us to call into question both the phantasms of sovereignty and the sovereignty of the phantasm. This reading of analogy in Plato, I will argue, will ultimately give Derrida...