Jacques Derrida and the Challenge of History by Sean Gaston (review)

Sean Gaston has an impressive knowledge and understanding of a wide range of works by Jacques Derrida and by philosophers of history, notably Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl, and Ricœur, but also many others such as Hayden White or Quentin Skinner. He has a substantial bibliography of secondary sources, and is meticulous in dating and naming locations of speaking or writing (not insignificant in a work on history). Gaston seems to aim to show that Derrida should be seen 'not as a philosopher of language but as a philosopher of history' ('Preface', p. 1; repeated on the dust jacket). This over-simplified mission statement does disservice to the care with which Gaston expounds (for example, on p. 5) Derrida's own explicit statement that 'deconstruction is not a philosophy of history' (nor indeed a philosophy of, say, language). It might be more appropriate to see the monograph as a fine and patient Derridean investigation of how philosophies of history fall short—or exceed, as if there were places of transcendence or contexts which do not spread or recede (a fine chapter on contexts). Indeed, by the final chapter, Gaston is too modest, closing with Derrida's insistence that deconstruction resists the sway of philosophy and history—for what has been interesting is the oscillating journey, to and fro between what is wanted and what must always be wanting. The volume is clearly addressed to philosophers of history in the first part in particular. The dry chapter titles ('History and Historicism', mostly on Derrida's engagement with Husserl, and to some extent Heidegger, or 'History and Historicity', mostly on Derrida's engagement with Heidegger, and to some extent Hegel) suggest the abstract level of the discussion with few concrete historical examples for illustration, save the occasional brief reference to context, for instance, national socialism. Gaston is fascinated by Derrida's predilection for giving dates to his writing (with an odd excursion into dates near his birthday). I would have loved more analysis of Derrida's engagement with historical events and texts both to leaven the universalizing language of philosophy/theory and to enlighten the question from a different angle. However, Gaston's evocation of the events and texts of 1985–91, for example (Chapter 4), might inspire others to dig deeper. Again, my preference would have been to develop the following insight: 'In a series of publications […], Derrida explored a range of sexual, racial, political, anthropological and historical determinations in Heidegger's thought' (p. 59). Unfortunately there is no feminist, postcolonial, or class-inflected challenge to philosophy or to the writing of history here—and indeed, Derrida aside, over 90 per cent of the references are unselfconsciously to (white) male writers, although Gaston does allude to Derrida's abiding interest in sexual difference including in relation to Heidegger or Hegel. A final gripe: for readers of Derrida in French, it is frustrating to read quotations in English. Gaston has good command of French and sometimes draws attention to the meaning of words—for example, 'entamer' as 'breach' and 'broach' (p. 113)—but does not explain the translation choices made.