Derrida, Hegel, and the Language of Finitude

Abstract

This article explores Jacques Derrida’s far-reaching challenge to the notion that introspection is the grounds of self-determination. Beginning with the claim of Hegel’s philosophy to anticipate any readings—or misreadings—with which we confront it, I focus on Derrida’s unique understanding of linguistic positing as both the ultimate dynamic of performance and the most systematic critique of any claim for the power of language to act. In Hegel’s Aesthetics, the self’s discursive nature is distinguished not by its auto-interpretive or auto-generative capacities, but by its failure to establish itself as the foundation of its own operations. From the perspective of what Derrida will describe as the experience of linguistic finitude, we find that similar problems arise in Aristotle—where reference to negation cannot be subsumed under a theory of something and nothing—and in Benjamin—for whom denomination ironically fails to serve as a comprehensive theory of what language can claim, i.e., name, as its own. From “White Mythology” to his latest texts, Derrida thus demands that we conceptualize verbal events less in terms of agents who act and more with reference to modalities of expression that are impossible to assimilate to traditional propositional logic. Revealing language to be a dynamic whose irreducibly limited resources are not unfailingly devoted to its own self-fashioning, Derrida’s oeuvre provides a vantage point from which to assess the ideological pitfalls of any theoretical project that would base its critical authority on its ability to account for its own self-reflexivity.

From his earliest essays to his final lectures, Jacques Derrida endeavored to come to terms with the legacy of German Idealist philosophy. First and foremost, this involved a sustained engagement with the work of G.W.F. Hegel, a thinker who makes extraordinary claims for the self-grounding, self-explicating authority of his project. Seemingly resistant to the usual interpretive strategies, Hegel is notorious for presenting his readers with unique challenges, or threats. There is a widespread sense, as William James put it more than a century ago, that the Hegelian “system resembles a mousetrap, in which if you once pass the door you may be lost forever. Safety lies in not entering” (275). As the history of Hegel scholarship attests, grappling with a philosopher by steadfastly refusing to do so is a chaotic endeavor at best. Of course, Derrida has inspired somewhat similar reactions. Like Hegel, he is frequently accused of redefining the standards of argumentation to such a degree that he cannot help but have the last word, pre-empting commentary or criticism before it is ever formulated. Does this mean that the only recourse one has in the face of the Hegelian monolith is to seek to outdo it by undertaking an even more radical transformation of conceptuality, or is it simply the case that Derrida was profoundly influenced by his Idealist predecessor?

Derrida wrote a great deal about his relationship with Hegel. What I want to argue in this essay, however, is that some of Derrida’s most important contributions on Hegel are in texts that never cite him by name. In particular, Derrida’s account of linguistic performance—an analysis developed across a host of essays on different literary and philosophical figures—offers insights into the more radical dimensions of Hegel’s understanding of language and subjectivity. The result is a call to view language not as an infinite resource of signification or performance, formation or destruction, but as a dynamic whose transgressive potential paradoxically depends precisely on its essentially finite character. It is only from this perspective, Derrida suggests, that a full evaluation of Hegel’s theory of praxis is possible.

Although he is sometimes described as “transcending” Hegel, if not rendering him obsolete, Derrida himself avoids such gestures. On the contrary, Hegel is to be championed, for his work shows “that the positive infinite must be thought through . . . in order that the indefiniteness of différance appear as such” (Speech 101–2). At the same time, Derrida stresses the need to at least attempt to mark one’s departure, even if it is only...