Limited Inc is a 1988 book by Jacques Derrida,
containing two essays and an interview.
The first essay, "Signature Event Context,"
is about J. L. Austin's theory of the illocutionary
act outlined in his How To Do Things With
Words. The second essay, "Limited Inc a b
c...", is Derrida's response to John Searle's
"Reply to Derrida: Reiterating the Differences,"
which criticizes Derrida's interpretation
of Austin. The book concludes with a letter
by Derrida, written in response to questions
posed by Gerald Graff in 1988: "Afterword:
Toward an Ethic of Discussion".
Searle's essay is not itself included: he
denied Northwestern University Press permission
to reprint it. A summary is included between
the two Derrida essays, and Derrida quotes
the essay extensively."Signature Event Context"
was originally delivered at a Montreal conference
entitled "Communication," organized by the
Congrès international des Sociétés de philosophie
de langue française in August 1971. It was
subsequently published in the Congrès' Proceedings
and then collected in Derrida's Marges de
la philosophie in 1972. It first appeared
in English translation in the inaugural issue
of the journal Glyph in 1977 and was followed
in the same issue by Searle's "Reply to Derrida:
Reiterating the Differences". Derrida's reply
to Searle's reply, "Limited Inc a b c...",
was published in Glyph's second issue later
in 1977. A French edition of Limited Inc was
published by Éditions Galilée under that
same title (but with a point added after Inc)
in 1990.
== Signature Event Context ==
The essay has three section headings, beginning
with: "Writing & Telecommunication" on the
third page, and then followed by "Parasites.
Iter, of Writing: That It Perhaps Does Not
Exist", and concluding with "Signatures".
Derrida highlights Austin's theory of illocutionary
acts in the "Parasites..." section because
he finds it in contradiction to the definition
of communication he has formulated in "Writing
& Telecommunication". There he considers all
communication in terms traditionally reserved
for writing. Derrida lists three traits of
writing. First, it subsists without the subject
who inscribed it. Second, the meaning of the
text is never constrained by its context.
"[T]he sign", Derrida explains, "possesses
the characteristic of being readable even
if the moment of its production is irrevocably
lost and even if I do not know what its alleged
author-scriptor intended to say at the moment
he wrote it". Third, this possibility of rupture
from its origin is provided by a text's elements
(e.g. words) being separated by spacing. Derrida
says that these traits "are valid not only
for all orders of 'signs' and for languages
in general but moreover, beyond semio-linguistic
communication, for the entire field of what
philosophy would call experience".
== Dispute with John Searle — "Afterword:
Toward An Ethic of Discussion" ==
In 1972, Derrida wrote "Signature Event Context,"
an essay on J. L. Austin's speech act theory;
following a critique of this text by John
Searle in his 1977 essay Reiterating the Differences,
Derrida wrote the same year Limited Inc abc
..., a long defense of his earlier argument.
Searle exemplified his view on deconstruction
in The New York Review of Books, February
2, 1984; for example:
...anyone who reads deconstructive texts with
an open mind is likely to be struck by the
same phenomena that initially surprised me:
the low level of philosophical argumentation,
the deliberate obscurantism of the prose,
the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant
striving to give the appearance of profundity
by making claims that seem paradoxical, but
under analysis often turn out to be silly
or trivial.
In 1983, Searle told to The New York Review
of Books a remark on Derrida allegedly made
by Michel Foucault in a private conversation
with Searle himself; Derrida later decried
Searle's gesture as gossip, and also condemned
as violent the use of a mass circulation magazine
to fight an academic debate. According to
Searle's account, Foucault called Derrida's
prose style "terrorist obscurantism"; Searle's
quote was:
Michel Foucault once characterized Derrida's
prose style to me as "obscurantisme terroriste."
The text is written so obscurely that you
can't figure out exactly what the thesis is
(hence "obscurantisme") and when one criticizes
it, the author says, "Vous m'avez mal compris;
vous êtes idiot' (hence "terroriste")
In 1988, Derrida wrote "Afterword: Toward
An Ethic of Discussion", to be published with
the previous essays in the collection Limited
Inc. Commenting on criticisms of his work,
he wrote:
I just want to raise the question of what
precisely a philosopher is doing when, in
a newspaper with a large circulation, he finds
himself compelled to cite private and unverifiable
insults of another philosopher in order to
authorize himself to insult in turn and to
practice what in French is called a jugement
d'autorite, that is, the method and preferred
practice of all dogmatism. I do not know whether
the fact of citing in French suffices to guarantee
the authenticity of a citation when it concerns
a private opinion. I do not exclude the possibility
that Foucault may have said such things, alas!
That is a different question, which would
have to be treated separately. But as he is
dead, I will not in my turn cite the judgment
which, as I have been told by those who were
close to him, Foucault is supposed to have
made concerning the practice of Searle in
this case and on the act that consisted in
making this use of an alleged citation.”
In the main text he argued that Searle avoided
reading him and didn't try to understand him
and even that, perhaps, he was not able to
understand, and how certain practices of academic
politeness or impoliteness could result in
a form of brutality that he disapproved of
and would like to disarm, in his fashion.Derrida
also criticized Searle's work for pretending
to talk about "intention" without being aware
of traditional texts about the subject and
without even understanding Husserl's work
when talking about it. Because he ignored
the tradition he rested blindly imprisoned
in it, repeating its most problematic gestures,
falling short of the most elementary critical
questions.Derrida would even argue that in
a certain way he was more close to Austin,
than Searle that, in fact, was more close
to continental philosophers that himself tried
to criticize.
He would also argue about the problem he found
in the constant appeal to "normality" in the
analytical tradition from which Austin and
Searle were only paradigmatic examples.
In the description of the structure called
"normal," "normative," "central," "ideal,"this
possibility must be integrated as an essential
possibility. The possibility cannot be treated
as though it were a simple accident-marginal
or parasitic. It cannot be, and hence ought
not to be, and this passage from can to ought
reflects the entire difficulty. In the analysis
of so-called normal cases, one neither can
nor ought, in all theoretical rigor, to exclude
the possibility of transgression. Not even
provisionally, or out of allegedly methodological
considerations. It would be a poor method,
since this possibility of transgression tells
us immediately and indispensably about the
structure of the act said to be normal as
well as about the structure of law in general.
He continued arguing how problematic was establishing
the relation between "nonfiction or standard
discourse" and "fiction," defined as its "parasite,
“for part of the most originary essence
of the latter is to allow fiction, the simulacrum,
parasitism, to take place-and in so doing
to "de-essentialize" itself as it were”.
He would finally argue that the indispensable
question would then become:
what is "nonfiction standard discourse," what
must it be and what does this name evoke,
once its fictionality or its fictionalization,
its transgressive "parasitism," is always
possible (and moreover by virtue of the very
same words, the same phrases, the same grammar,
etc.)?
This question is all the more indispensable
since the rules, and even the statements of
the rules governing the relations of "nonfiction
standard discourse" and its fictional"parasites,"
are not things found in nature, but laws,
symbolic inventions, or conventions, institutions
that, in their very normality as well as in
their normativity, entail something of the
fictional.
== See also ==
Searle–Derrida debate
== References ==
