Genealogy of Nihilism by Cunningham Conor

Author:Cunningham, Conor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781134474011
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

7

DERRIDA

Spinozistic Plotinianism

Nothing is outside: the text

For both Plotinus and Heidegger, the Nothing is the impetus of our approach to what is most real in the world, although beyond essence and existence: the One, or Being. This is also an important point in Derrida’s analysis.1

(Eli Diamond)

In a certain way thought means nothing.2

( Jacques Derrida)

This chapter does not offer a reading of any particular text of Derrida’s. Instead it analyses the implications that can be discerned from what is deemed to be a central claim of Derrida’s philosophy, namely that there is nothing outside the text.3 From this almost axiomatic claim this chapter extracts a logic that brings Derrida close to both Spinoza and Plotinus. The idiom which Derrida’s philosophy assumes invites complication and often obfuscation. Instead I shall endeavour to keep the terms used and the logic employed as simple as possible. But the endeavour to critique this most slippery of thinkers will require some difficult moves, which unfortunately are unavoidable.

Derrida argues that language cannot have an outside; he also asserts that nothing is outside language, that is, the text. As a result, language is left in some sense bereft. Language, because it is linguistic, cannot have an outside yet, in a sense, language is but the movement towards an outside. Language is the ‘embodiment’ of the desire for an outside. This is true because language desires to say something, for language hopes that its significations actually bear significance. The outside is maybe the secret name for this desire. Language, in that it endeavours to communicate or to say something, wishes there to be something in what is said. In desiring thus, language desires that which is not reducible to itself. Language is in this way the desire for something other than language. But this other is forbidden by Derrida. Furthermore, it is declared to be impossible. It is impossible because language is language. Language as language is, then, its own limitation. Language would need to be other than language if it were to have an outside. But language is always itself, language is always language. Consequently, all signification is inside. Only nothing is outside language. As there is no outside available, language must generate one. Indeed, for Derrida language is the movement of this generation.

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