‘Derrida and the Deconstruction of Authority’

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Newman, Saul. 2001. ‘Derrida and the Deconstruction of Authority’. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 27(3), pp. 1-10. ISSN 0191-4537 [Article]

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Official URL: http://psc.sagepub.com/content/27/3/1.abstract

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This article explores the political aspect of Derrida’s work, in particular his critique of authority. Derrida employs a series of strategies to expose the antagonisms within Western philosophy, whose structures of presence provide a rational and essentialist foundation for political institutions. Therefore, Derrida’s interrogation of the universalist claims of philosophy may be applied to the pretensions of political authority. Moreover, I argue that Derrida’s deconstruction of the two paths of ‘reading’ - inversion and subversion - may be applied to the question of revolutionary politics, to show that revolution often culminates in the reaffirmation of authority. Derrida navigates a path between these two strategies, allowing one to formulate philosophical and political strategies that work at the limits of discourse, thereby pointing to an outside. This outside, I argue, is crucial to radical politics because it unmasks the violence and illegitimacy of institutions and laws.

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Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1177/019145370102700301