Derrida’s ‘Writing and Difference’ (review)

In providing an undergraduate-level introduction to the eleven essays of Writing and Difference, Wood seeks to correct some lingering misunderstandings surrounding Derrida himself — he ‘took authorial intention very seriously’ (p. 5) — and deconstruction — which is ‘deeply traditional’ (p. 12). The opening chapter, on ‘Context’, is a fast-paced round-up of relevant facts and terms and does a good job of introducing Derrida in a fresh and immediate way, approaching his work through his desire to ‘retain the movements of life’ (p. 4). The ‘Overview and Themes’ chapter is even more condensed, seeking to capture a vibrancy and immediacy in which the essays of Writing and Difference ‘turn round, talk to each other, dance, connect and separate’ (p. 20). ‘Reading the Text’, by far the longest chapter, moves through the eleven essays one by one. The discussion of each essay begins with a brief overview, followed by a broadly linear reading, and finishes with a small number of study questions that extend and explore the ideas and problems Derrida grapples with: for example, ‘What difference would it make to you and your work if you were a psychiatrist and read what Foucault and Derrida have to say about madness?’ (p. 59). The discussion interweaves a presentation of the arguments and flow of each essay with three subordinate strands: material from elsewhere in Derrida’s œuvre (up to and including his most recently published interview from 2007), judicious quotation from philosophers implicitly or explicitly evoked in Writing and Difference, and quotation of Derrida’s contemporaries and commentators, notably Hélène Cixous. The result is a well contextualized but still fast-moving account. The brief final chapter, ‘Reception and Influence’, focuses mainly on the rise of deconstruction in the United States, and is followed by a short list of further reading and a comprehensive index. Wood’s Derrida is daring, revolutionary, and untamed, and she is sensitive to Derrida’s style of writing without letting it (for the most part) take over her own approachable idiom. The reader is frequently addressed in the second person, sometimes interpolated — ‘Imagine a book: Jacques Derrida’s Guide to Your Life . . .’ (p. 16) — and invited to be invaded and inhabited by Derrida’s writing. This book has many features that will be attractive to the undergraduate readership the series seeks: ideas, people, and movements are briefly explained, while potentially unfamiliar terms are clarified en passant. Analogies are drawn to help the reader both understand and grasp what is at stake at key moments in Derrida’s text: the structuralist ‘invasion’ is likened to ‘the current Allied presence in Iraq’ (p. 29), and the analogy broadened to take in the danger encountered by a war journalist. Nevertheless, an undergraduate with no previous knowledge of Derrida may well struggle with the speed at which this book moves, and with the brevity and density of some of its explanations, particularly in the ‘Overview of Themes’ chapter. The curtailed discussions often raise more questions than they answer, leaving the reader wanting to reach for Writing and Difference itself — which, after all, is the point.