[Discussion] Book review: Paola Marrati, Genesis and Trace: Derrida Reading Husserl and Heidegger

[gpultar@cstgroup.org]

Paola Marrati. Genesis and Trace: Derrida Reading Husserl and Heidegger.
Translated by Simon Sparks. Cultural Memory in the Present Series. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2005. xiv + 258 pp. Notes, bibliography. $55.00
(cloth), ISBN 0-8047-3915-3; $21.95 (paper), ISBN 0-8047-3916-1.

Reviewed by: Nicholas Di Liberto, Department of History, University of
Pennsylvania.

Published by: H-German (August, 2005)

The Birth of Deconstruction out of the Spirit of Phenomenology: The Search for
"Profound" Origins

Much of the recent scholarship on Jacques Derrida has moved away from according
his characteristic "deconstructive method" a narrow relevance primarily to
literary criticism towards appreciating its merits as a critical philosophical
project unto itself. This interpretive trend sees deconstruction as a
constructive engagement with the critique of Western metaphysics in the
twentieth century. One effort in this direction has been to recapture Derrida's
early reading of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. Paola Marrati's work is an
attempt to rethink this relation of influence. For Marrati, as early as his
dissertation of 1953-54, the young Derrida produced a "singular interpretation"
of Husserl's work that was to lead the latter to formulate the questions that
would concern him in his subsequent career.[1] Moreover, Husserl proves to be a
more substantial and productive influence for Derrida than any other
philosopher--even Martin Heidegger. The author explicitly concludes
"Deconstruction ... is born in Derrida's work on Husserl; more than this,
however, it is born in the work that Derrida has done with Husserl, thanks to
him and, ultimately, against him, something that cannot be said of any of the
other authors with whom Derrida has concerned himself. Not even Heidegger" (p.
181).

Genesis and Trace was originally published in French in 1998, when the author
worked at the Marc Bloch University in Strasbourg.[2] There the book developed
through her close collaboration with the philosophers Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
and Jean-Luc Nancy. The original French edition appeared through Kluwer Academic
Publishers in the Netherlands in its series on Husserl.[3] Wolters Kluwer also
publishes the journal Husserl Studies. Marrati's book carries the traces of
these elements of production and publication. The language and structure of the
text will be relatively inaccessible for those unversed in the language of
Husserl's phenomenology or unfamiliar with the key terms of Derridian
philosophy. This problem is complicated further by the fact that the author
employs this Derridian language and style seamlessly, with no interest in
translating it for a non-specialist audience. More importantly, for those
unacquainted with the influence of Husserl's phenomenology in French academic
philosophy, which began in the early 1930s and continued into the postwar era,
or with Derrida's own admittedly outsider status in the acadmie, I fear the
stakes of Marrati's work may be a mystery. This situation is not helped by
Marrati's reluctance to state these concerns explicitly at the outset or to
provide anything more than an internal exegesis of the philosophical texts.
Although I certainly feel this book must be admired for its own merits, as a
work of intense philosophical interpretation and certainly an important
contribution to our understanding of Derrida's development, I want to suggest
that a broader consideration of the historical genesis--to use her key
term--would both strengthen her argument and render it more accessible to a
wider audience of philosophers and intellectual historians.

After exploring some of Marrati's main points, I would like to raise the issue
of what is implicit in the authors attempt to locate the birth of deconstruction
in Derrida's early philosophical thought. Her insistence on the "singularity"
and independence of the origin of deconstruction can be viewed as an act of
legitimation of Derrida's philosophical project, which leads her to elide the
historical and intellectual context of this reception in favor of a purely
internal reading. What is more, this narrow focus on the internal connections
between philosophical texts would seem to belie the fundamental Derridian point
about the ambivalence of any pure "birth" or origin.

Marrati makes the basic claim that the persisting questions of Derridas
deconstruction arise out of his criticism of Husserls phenomenology. The most
important of these questions is what Derrida calls the "contamination" of the
empirical and the transcendental. For Marrati, Derrida arrives at this question
through his thinking "with and against" the problem of genesis in Husserl's task
of transcendentally grounding philosophical reflection. Contamination designates
the continuing presence of the finite in the infinite, of the temporal in the
eternal, and the insurmountable paradox of worldly genesis as both origin and
becoming. The discovery of this contamination leads Derrida to challenge the
tenability of the phenomenological reduction. Husserl maintained that the
practiced phenomenologist could "bracket out" or "place in abeyance" (epoch;)
the "natural attitude" or "prepredicative" way in which we attend to objects in
the intersubjective world of experience (Lebenswelt), thereby throwing into
relief the transcendental acts of consciousness or of a transcendental subject.
Of course, the practice of phenomenological reduction was always the result of
an attempt to ground phenomenology's own reflection: it was not only a method
but also the result of its practice and the proof of the possibility of
phenomenology as theoretic reflection.[4] Similarly, Marrati suggests that
Derrida discovers in investigating the problem of genesis the unavoidable
paradox in the reduction as method and result of phenomenological reflection.
Despite the phenomenologists effort to isolate the pure activity of
consciousness, these acts always refer back to or "intend" an ontology that is
already in place, a genesis that is "always already" constituted by a passive
temporal synthesis (p. 15). Husserl holds onto the supposition that the
separation of the phenomenological from the natural attitude as well as the
separation of transcendent and empirical life is possible in phenomenological
reflection. Derrida introduces "contamination" as the inability to dissociate
the world in its historical becoming from the becoming of the world in
transcendental consciousness. We can see incipient in this analysis a critique
of "metaphysical presence" that was to be the mainstay of Derrida's
deconstruction. In Husserl's phenomenological reduction, Derrida discovers the
impossibility of a "pure presence" of thoughts for consciousness precisely by
recovering the "trace" of its worldly genesis.

Derrida develops this point further through criticism of the linguistic
implications of the phenomenological way of thinking. Language serves as "the
fundamental condition of possibility of phenomenological difference" (p. 52). If
transcendental reduction is the means to arriving at the theoretical attitude in
acts consciousness, then the possibility for thematizing this content requires a
phenomenological language. But, for Derrida, the possibility of such a language
rests on the split that is made in the sign between its pure expression and its
indicative value. Phenomenology, in other words, requires "a purely expressive
language" (p. 64). This state is achieved by viewing language as pure ideality,
as in the example of imagination or fantasy. In Derrida's view, this activity
amounts to the positing of a "solitary mental life" of interiority over against
an "other" exterior world--the intersubjectively constituted world--to which it
need not refer, but which will always remain as a "trace" or contamination of
its worldly origin. This is in part the problem and paradox of the
phenomenological reduction being both productive of theoretical knowledge and
the result of its own practice: any supposedly pure theoretical presence must
retain its "non-present" origin in time. As Marrati writes, "The possibility of
a purely phenomenological language, of a language that can submit the world to
epoch, is the very possibility of distinguishing body from soul within language
itself. There is no absolute life, no absolute living life unless the soul does
not need the body" (p. 62). On this basis, Derrida claims that Husserl fails to
free transcendental reflection from the traditional oppositions of metaphysics
and the privileging of interiority (p. 52). We must recognize, for Derrida, the
"diffrance" or limitation of a purely expressive language in a solitary mental
discourse that would maintain an ideality of signs and a complete "othering" of
an exterior world of intentional meaning significations. By speaking in terms of
asymmetrical oppositions, by privileging the consciousness-side of experience,
Husserl ultimately falls prey to logocentrism.[5]

The second part of Marratis work focuses on Derrida's confrontation with
Heidegger's thinking of an "originary temporality" under which the two related
projects of Being and Time are placed: the existential analytic of Dasein and
the destruction (Destruktion) of the history of ontology (pp. 114-116). The
notion of contamination with which Derrida confronts Husserl's transcendental
reflections can be mapped onto Heidegger's point of departure for the
existential analytic of Dasein. Heidegger denies Husserl's focus on
transcendental consciousness and the "bracketing" of the world it requires; for
Heidegger, self and world are contained in Dasein. This state of affairs means
that what can be discovered in phenomenological interpretation "already belongs
to Dasein" even if it has the tendency in its everyday mode of being to "cover
up" these ontological issues. Marrati reveals how Derrida concludes that
Heidegger's existential analytic requires the "epoch of all metaphysical
interpretation" and the naming of Dasein (p. 146). On this basis, Derrida claims
that Heidegger ultimately fails to throw off the traditional oppositions and
ordering of metaphysics.

Marrati follows this claim in an interesting discussion of the Heideggerian
notion of "being towards death" as that which discloses to Dasein its "ownmost"
possibility. Many will be familiar with Heidegger's notion of
being-towards-death developed in division 2 of Being and Time. This is the
notion that only when confronted with the potentiality of death does Dasein find
disclosed its "uttermost possibility" of authentically taking a stand in
existence. Death is a perfect point of entry for a Derridian deconstruction
because it is, like writing, at once the site of a possibility and impossibility
for being. Death is a universal experience. Yet my death cannot be experienced
by anyone else; that is to say, I cannot experience it as "one" (das Man) does.
Moreover, Dasein cannot properly experience death as a temporal being because it
is not characterized by a succession in time. Death is final and thus defies the
temporal structure of experience in which Dasein is, as Heidegger puts it,
"always ahead of itself" in its projects. It is only through "being with" the
death of others that we recognize this possibility. It is here that Derrida
finds the inevitable fall-back position whereby Heidegger attempts to support
the opposition of inauthentic, undifferentiated being and authentic
"being-towards-death." The distinction between the empirical death of man
(verenden) and "authentic dying" (eigentlich sterben) of Dasein, and of the
"ontic" and "ontological" levels in general, is something achieved only through
language. As Marrati puts it, "this distinction is only possible because Dasein
is presupposed" as that which "can itself testify to its being Dasein, that is,
to its potential being for death" (p. 163). Death, at once Dasein's "ownmost
possibility," is also an impossibility in the sense that Dasein cannot die, nor
truly experience the death of others. There is again an issue of the "trace" as
a contamination of the empirical and the transcendental, which was first
constructively taken from a dialogue with Husserl, and now deployed against the
Heideggerian hierarchy of asymmetrical oppositions between authentic/inauthentic
or ontic/ontological.

This interpretation is a very specialized study of Derrida's reading of Husserl
that seeks to show how the unique questions that emerge initially from this
reading predate Derrida's reception of Heidegger, and thus distinguish
deconstruction from Heideggers philosophical project. If we do not view the
Husserl reception in this sense as the originary moment of Derrida's
philosophical apprenticeship, Marrati emphasizes that we run "the risk of
turning deconstruction into a formal and empty structure, a method that one
might indifferently apply to all sorts of texts in order to investigate their
undecidability" (p. 181). This is as close as Marrati comes to explicitly
revealing what is at stake in her reading of Derrida. Deconstruction is not
first "applied" but properly born in Derrida's thinking of the problem of
contamination in Husserl's thought. Derrida would continue to repeat this
thought of contamination, always altering it to be sure, but never reducing this
"profound lineage, as the never abandoned categories of ideality and the
contamination of the empirical and the transcendental suggest" (p. 183).

In my view, the question remains why there is a need for the author to defend
deconstruction in this way, or at the very least to provide for it an
alternative, more "profound" lineage. Marrati never claims that this is an
introduction to Derrida's thought or a history of the reception of German
philosophy in postwar France. However, she does tell us in a perfunctory
footnote that in explanations of the role of phenomenology in French
philosophical debates, she finds that "the opposition between 'historical' and
'internal' reasons--in other words, between structure and genesis--is ultimately
insufficient for reading a work that, from The Problem of Genesis on,
constitutes an attempt to reconsider all such categories" (p. 199 n2). While I
certainly accept this point of diffrance, I find it surprising that she proceeds
to fall back on a purely internal reading of Derrida's work. This decision
generates the suspicion that the concern for the status of deconstruction as "a
theoretical thinking: a philosophy" has its own historical grounds in the
author's implicit agenda (p. xiii).

The difficulty of this book may be in part the result of bringing a work
intended for a French audience unchanged into an English edition.[6] The French
reader may better ascertain the value of an attempt to locate the root of
Derrida's thought in a philosophical questioning derived from the criticism of
Husserl. For it was Husserl who imparted to his French audience in 1929 the
following insight: "Jeder, der ernstlich Philosoph werden will, mu sich einmal
im Leben auf sich selbst zurckziehen und in sich den Umsturz aller vorgegebenen
Wissenschaften und ihren Neubau versuchen. Philosophie ist eine ganz persnliche
Angelegenheit des Philosophierenden."[7] Derrida had not been born when these
words were uttered; however, the conception of phenomenology as the most
rigorous philosophical thinking of real existence would dominate the academic
world in which the young Derrida was educated. I do not mean to reduce Derrida's
thoughtful engagement with Husserl to the question of his academic pedigree and
cultivation in the premiere institutions of French secondary education (the
Louis-le-Grand to cole Normale Suprieure trajectory, etc.). However, to find the
origin of deconstruction here, as Marrati does, is to place Derrida's thought in
a philosophical tradition unimpeachable for its seriousness and rigor.

The issues at stake are the French reception of Derrida himself and the related
concern of his reliance on Heidegger. Derrida's influence in academic philosophy
and the humanities in France was much less significant in comparison to his
influence in the United States. The enfant perdu held a marginal position in the
French academic field as matre-assistant at the cole normale (1964-84) and
thereafter as director of the Collge Inernational de Philosophie. His works
after the Husserl studies were not as well received by the academic
establishment. He was considered by many to be more of a literary critic than a
serious philosopher. Marrati wants to turn our focus to the work on Husserl in
part to recuperate Derrida as a "serious" philosopher. While this shift in focus
may be helpful and justified for our understanding of Derrida, I also believe
that this strategy must be made explicit. Likewise, if we are to accept the
independence of Derrida's questioning of traditional metaphysical dichotomies
from Heidegger's "ontotheology," then it would have been worthwhile for the
author to link this localized concern with what intellectual historians of
postwar France have come to regard as a general tendency to overestimate the
Heideggerian influences in French philosophy.[8]

Finally, one could argue that the author's focus on the "internal" reasons for
Derrida's work with/against Husserl and the "confrontation" with Heidegger's
existential analytic of Dasein takes for granted a "Derrida" and his
"reading-of" as unproblematic origins or as pure presences. Marrati's internal
reading of "structure" in this sense could be problematized by the
"contamination" inherent in its own "worldly genesis." Who is this "Derrida"? A
Derrida whose absence we now "mourn" and whose insights in life would seem to
have defied the oppositions of reader/writer, philosopher/literary critic
implicit in Marrati's representation.


Notes

[1]. First published in French as Jacques Derrida, Problme de la gense dans la
philosophie de Husserl (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990) and very
recently in English as The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy, trans. by
Marian Hobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

[2]. Paola Marrati-Gunoun, La gense et la trace. Derrida lecteur de Husserl et
Heidegger (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998).

[3]. The Netherlands and Belgium have a rich tradition of Husserl reception, due
in part to the location of the main Husserl archive at the Katholieke
Universiteit in the Flemish town of Leuven.

[4]. This observation, that "the reduction is its own presupposition," was
famously made by Husserl's apprentice, Eugen Fink. For the best introduction to
this problem and to Husserl's ideas in general see Maurice Natanson, Edmund
Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1973), pp. 75-77.

[5]. Here Marrati might have compared Derrida's reflections with those of
Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, where
the latter introduces an influential criticism of Husserl's egological
perspective. In general, I find the absence of any reference to Merleau-Ponty in
Marrati's text troubling, given that philosopher's enormous influence on the
reception of Husserl in postwar French academic philosophy.

[6]. Yet this has nothing to do with the actual work of translation, which is
extremely faithful to the French original.

[7]. Edmund Husserl, "Die Cartesianischen Meditationen und ihre kritische
Umbildung zur meditierenden Erschlieung des transzendentalen ego," lecture given
on February 23, 1929 at the Institut d'tudes germaniques and the Socit franaise
in Paris.

[8]. This is one of the main conclusions of Alan D. Schrift's excellent essay
"Is There Such a Thing as 'French Philosophy' Or Why Do We Read the French So
Badly?" in Julian Bourg, ed., After the Deluge: New Perspectives on the
Intellectual and Cultural History of Postwar France (Lanham: Lexington Books,
2004).



Citation: Nicholas Di Liberto. "Review of Paola Marrati, Genesis and Trace:
Derrida Reading Husserl and Heidegger," H-German, H-Net Reviews, August, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=104731128701230.


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