Derrida-Husserl

toward a phenomenology of language

James Mensch

pp. 1-66

in: The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 1, 2001.

Abstract

This chapter focuses on those items in Husserl's phenomenology that Derrida regards as undercutting his analysis of language. It uses Derrida's account to exhibit from a Husserlian perspective the possibility of a phenomenology of language. This can be put in terms of the fact that Derrida's Speech and Phenomena is more than a commentary on Husserl's text. In its recourse to the concrete phenomena of language, in its attention to the actual elements required by linguistic functioning, Derrida's account can be considered to be guided by the Sachen selbst. In the Logical Investigations Husserl begins his analysis of language by differentiating its expressive and indicative signs. It follows from phenomenology's own descriptions of the movement of temporalization and of the constitution of intersubjectivity. It is capable of being indicated and expressed in a multitude of ways. Involving as it does absence and presence, its self-constitution grounds the possibility of the ongoing self-description that is phenomenology.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund

Derrida Jacques