Theory against itself

Within the theoretical discourse of our time, one of the most provocative challenges to the philosophical foundations of our tradition comes from a collection of rigorously subversive textual practices referred to as “deconstruction.” As the opening quotation indicates, Derrida's challenge to traditional philosophy seems to oppose the philosophical ideal of coherence – the ideal to which theory gravitates – with the effect of deconstruction, which is to discover the heterogeneity of the discursive or textual conditions of theory, the fissures and ambiguities in the conceptual structure of the epistémè (the fabric of signs and texts that constitute the historical present). At times, as in the above passage, the relation between theory and deconstruction seems to be one of antagonism. When philosophy proposes an ideal order capable of appropriation by theoretical discourse, deconstructive critique shows the discourse to be already contaminated by the same impurities philosophy is trying to escape. For many, the significance of this theory-subverting power is to spell the fundamental antagonism between theory and deconstruction. Yet, even among the advocates of deconstruction, the precise relation of theory to deconstruction is not so clear.