Derrida, Language Games, and Theory

Author(s): Michael J.C. Echeruo

Source: Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory , October 1995, No. 86,
Dimensions of Democracy (October 1995), pp. 99-115
Published by: Berghahn Books

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41802662

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Theoria: A Journal of
Social and Political Theory

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Derrida, Language Games, and Theory
Michael 7. C. Echeruo

Foucault says (in The Order of Things) that the cardinal error of
European Classical thought was its brazen search for verbal order: the
desire to Ascribe a name to things and in that name to name their
being'. The Eighteenth century was wiser. Under it, language no
longer consisted 'only of representations and of sounds that in turn
represent the representations'. Language was understood as consist-
ing also 'of formal elements, grouped into a system, which impose
upon the sounds, syllables, and roots an organization that is not that of
representations' (Foucault 1970:235). But even that step was not
enough. Saussure' s discovery of 'structural linguistics' radicalized
the concept of the 'formal' in the sense that the relation between the
signifier and the signified came to be seen as absolutely and inherently
'arbitrary'. In Saussure' s linguistic system, there are only 'dif-
ferences'. Meaning is not immanent in the signifier; it is the product of
a difference between one signifier and all other signifiers.
If that were all, we would simply proceed, following Frederic
Jameson, with the 'rethinking of everything through once again in
terms of linguistics' (1972: vii). But that is no longer possible.
Postmodernists have compounded the language issue by rejecting the
(in their view) extremely simplistic view of the relationship between
sign and referent. In speaking and writing, they tell us, we do not
simply generate more than one meaning, nor even a multiplicity of
meanings, but a gross heterogeneity of meanings, a signification
which 'could be neither univocal nor stable'. Every text, every word,
was a collage of collages, every utterance a large mouthful of all-sense
and non-sense. In David Harvey's words, 'Whatever we write
conveys meanings we do not or could not possibly intend, and our
words cannot say what we mean' (1989:49). Derrida' s associate,
Jean-Luc Nancy, put it this way: differance is

nothing other than the infinite repetition of meaning, which does not
consist in its duplication or in any way of always distancing itself to
infinity, but which is rather the grounding of meaning, which is to say the
absence of a ground, which destines it to be that which it is: its own
différance. (1992:39)

A sense of history makes me suspect that there may be more than an

accidental relationship between Foucault' s new archaeology,

Theoria, October 1995, pp. 99-1 16

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
100 Theoria

Derrida' s de
which post-m
not Derrida?
The Russian Formalist, Aleksei Losev, began a 1970 essay on
language theory with the disarming question: To whom and for what
reason do we need to explain the simple truth that we communicate
with one another by means of language and that language which is not
an instrument of communication is not language at all?' (1984:85).
The question arises (he says) because bourgeois linguists had
'suddenly [begun] to view language ... as some kind of aggregate of
mathematical signs'. Losev can understand

that those who recognize that language is an instrument of communication

would think up various kinds of signs to signify that communication, just
as mathematicians also aid in human communication through their
mathematical signs and have no intention whatsoever of abolishing such
communication.

Losev suggests, as a practical matter, that iinguists and mathemati-

cians should simply shake hands with each other in this case and,
having divided up their territory in terms of types of human
communication, leave the communication itself alone and recognize
its whole range of possibilities' (1984:86).
Underneath Losev' s position is an assumption which many modern
Western scholars and philosophers no longer make, namely, that there
is a world out there to be reflected in language. 'What could be
simpler,' Losev" asks, 'than that an objective world exists around us,
that it affects our consciousness, and that our representation of it is
simply the result of its reflection on our consciousness?'(1984:86).
Indeed, as Losev goes on to explain, the last half century has seen 'an
immense multitude of philosophers who forbid including the concept
of the world or being in philosophy'. These philosophers, especially
Husserl and the Neopositivists, consider any philosophy which
addresses problems of objective being or even of world view to be bad
philosophy. 'It turns out,' Losev concludes, that, for these errant
thinkers, 'genuine scientific philosophy only begins when we simply
exclude all problems of world view from it' (1984:87). Losev's dire
concern really is that it is an impossible assignment to seek by any
rational means to correct this aeration. 'In antiquity it used to be said
that one fool can throw a little stone so far into the sea that a thousand
intelligent and educated people cannot find it'. Quite so!
I have some sympathy for Losev. I can see why the prospect of
using words even in a de-constructed critique to seek to understand or
characterize the world of experience can become a frustrating and
pointless undertaking. And elegance has become a virtue very much

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Derrida, Language Games , and Theory 101

in short supply. So has clarity. Yet, for all that sympathy, i

have been clear to Losev as to the bourgeois Neoposit
criticizes, that the movement in our thinking about lang
Locke may not have been as revolutionary as we might suppo
that humans, if you include non-Westerners, have a shrewder
the nature of this medium than Foucault and Derrida allow.
simple, clear or elegant, I understand what I write as my att
position myself and my 'message' ideally (as only I can) to re
angle of vision proper to myself and for my readers. What
decide to use a language as a medium, and so enter into a cont
it. On the basis of that contract, I invoke an aesthetic princi
principle of style, to insinuate my meaning. This is cal
mediation. It is calculated on my part; it is mediated by the c
language. My meaning or message may not be patent, and ca
transparent, but there is a presumption of purposiveness (a
which can, indeed, include deviousness) in the very unde
What we do with language, is communicate. Language, an
languages, create the condition for this communication, and
its limits - each language in its own way.
My proposition is this: languages are best understood as
subject to three laws: the law of their nature as language
including the character of their lexicon; the law of their gr
structures, and the law of their condition in and over time
adaptation.
Firstly, it is obvious enough that human languages are not
however much they may be related. Indeed, to speak of a fa
languages, or of the languages of man, is to acknowledg
languages may even be species-specific. The biological an
more than a manner of speaking, although when invoking it,
be careful to also specify that organisms are not themselves
self-determining.
Furthermore, and secondly, Grammar, especially Universal
mar, is more calculus than geometry; it calculates (e
describes) a relationship, and generates a codex (in the C
model at least) by which individual grammars can be spoken
highest level of generalization.1 The task, as it were, of pain
identifying the syntactical structures underlying language i
apparently, to determine all the sets of rules which
meaningful (and exclude non-meaningful) utterances in l
this task could only produce a formula, not solve the equatio
easy enough to see that language had to have both surface
levels of structuring. It is quite another matter to conclude
logic of those foundations is the same for all languages. Whe
example, our ability to speak of the plural morpheme and its

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
102 Theoria

realizations
explain the p
of that morp
can be meant
symbols can
different ph
Transformat
representatio
than surface
that the lex
1991:31).
In any event, and thirdly, we do recognize that the realization of the
plural morpheme in English as [z] is only a survival or fossil from
earlier centuries of active adaptation. Neither the presence of archaic
plural forms, nor their absence, is the unmediated work of any
individual speakers, or even generations of them. The capacity to
entertain or accommodate these changes must be assumed to be
inherent in particular languages in the first place, or to be (at least) not
incompatible with the nature of those languages. The real point of
Chomsky's famous quip about 'colorless green ideas sleeping
furiously' is its re-iteration of the necessary dissociation between the
lexicon and the dictionary, and between both and syntax. Languages
exist which remind us of that dissociation, not with a travesty of lexis,
but with a symphony of tonal melodies. What Kluckhohn and
Leighton once said of Navaho Indian language comes to mind: 'a
chemical language', 'the most delicate language we know with regard
to its phonetic dynamics' (quoted in Rossi-Landi 1973:25). Lan-
guages borrow words from other languages, but in their own manner,
and in complete consistency with their own inherent phonology. This
resilience and adaptability of language argues for my position that
languages are part of our socialization and yet are (in principle)
greater than and beyond it; that languages are both a means and a
condition for communication and consciousness; and especially, that
languages express us. And us are a variety of peoples, not objects;
certainly not all Indo-European. And this proposition is not just
another variation on Whorf, who, if pressed, would probably have
agreed with Humboldt that the Indo-European family of languages
was the 'most propitious for thought' (Schlesinger 1991:14).
In this context, Losev's view of language is not as reprehensible as
its association with Lenin might otherwise make it. Losev believed
that 'a more or less complete and clear resolution' of the language
problem is possible only 'as a result of a complete and clear analysis
of the Leninist theory of reflection'. The Leninist theoretical context
authorizes a view of language not as an abstract system but as 'that

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Derrida, Language Games , and Theory 103

active contemplation which, with the aid of abstract though

formed into creative practical action of the human individua
communicating with one another' (Losev 1984:89). And w
means makes sense in practice. Language is 'neither an i
thing, nor an ánimate activity. There exist, physiolog
psychologically, thousands of acts that have nothing t
language'. What is specific to language is that

it above all reproduces something in consciousness and thought

that it is the aggregate of certain representative acts. . . . Th
complication of the act of representation is the semantic act, w
not simply reproduce objects but also constructs a particular co
sion of them. (Losev 1984:95)

Naming does not create the object, nor does it replace or re

that object. Instead, the verbal designation 'displays en
semantic activity, restructuring a broad concept in a certain
and forcing us to approach the objectively existing object f
one, very specific and very differentiated aspect' (Losev
This is a pre-condition for the language games Derrida is
play, and which he is wont to make central to his theory o
and translation. The presumption that lexis and syntax are
for meaning argues that utterances within language can, th
play on our expectations from those structures: 'I am w
joke, a riddle, and a plain statement all at the same time. It i
(and more) because of English. And the 'more' of my p
sentence is not without limit; or, more exactly, that th
knowing how much more there is does not mean that th
constraints to what 'more' can amount to. Derrida misses th
entirely in 'Des Tours de Babel'. Babel is not about difficult
nor about incomprehensible neologisms. Finnegans Wake is,
an English text. Nor is Babel about the transformation o
Confusion, of mortar into brick: Derrida himself, like the
Genesis (but not Voltaire) had no way of punning on HIS na
Babel signifies is the absurdity of an all-comers language; of
not determined and made manifest by its own registers: as
text of Urdu and Gaelic and Igbo that is not accommodated
Gaelic or Igbo. Or, as Derrida phrases it, innocently, '. . . in
"lip" designates what we call, in another metonymy, "to
will have to say multiplicity of lips and not of tongues to n
Babelian confusion' (1991:246). What Babel, therefore, re-
the integrity of languages as systems which can ne
accommodate any legitimate games their speakers care to p
their corners.2
We cannot, therefore, use, abuse, or refuse words either as

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
104 Theoria

as concepts if t
advance in the
impossibility o
which those te
The creation of
languages dete
we all know),
In Of Gramm

The Nationality'
the demolition
significations t
signification of

In practice, w
particular lan
language, spe
inaugurates i
'default' - the
placed by a 'd
extremely va
mean that mod
which an insta
never does (or
of a 'relation
significance w
variants, or pe
does not mak
speaking of 'g
Sein) that 'ther
woman or the
essence' ( 1 979
an implicit an
serves to dist
default mode.
rather, the br
be without eff
of that play o
which reinfor
which John L
should not p
quotes'. Moreov
of Derrida' s 'F
commas' whic
74).

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Derrida, Language Games, and Theory 105

A different question altogether arises regarding the u

such language games can be put - different, that is, from
whether there is a possibility of meaning to partic
language. In other words, to say that what Derrida says
sense is not to say that it makes no sense to me. It is to a
that what he does say - his text - is language-in-us
reason of that fact, liable to a play against default
larger questions which Derrida raises regarding meta
tions are themselves also viable only in that context of
use. Languages, I argue, prescribe the kinds of game
played within their scope. Metaphysical games are,
actually (if not pre-eminently) games which particu
permit . Says Derrida, in a passage which only lang
possible:
That which will not be pinned down by truth is, in truth - feminine . This
should not, however, be hastily mistaken for a woman's femininity, for
female sexuality, or for any other of those essentializing fetishes which
might still tantalize the dogmatic philosopher, the impotent artists or the
inexperienced seducer who has not yet escaped his foolish hopes of
capture. (1979:55)

The prose is Ciceronian, which is also to say that it is Latin. To allow

that is also to wonder at the lavish fecundity which often makes
Ciceronian prose, in spite of its posturing, immensely attractive and
feminine. But Tacitus would not have tolerated 'essentializing
fetishes', 'dogmatic philosophers', 'impotent artists', 'inexperienced
seducers' and 'foolish hopes'. The judgement would be one of style,
with all the possibilities of parody and/or sentimentality. What
Derrida means, in translation, at least, is implicated in the very nature
of the language of its original French and subsequent English
rendering, including especially those other resonances (immanent
resonances) which, in the first instance, encouraged a translation into
latinate English. The truth Derrida speaks is his meaning; but only
language, a particular language (or a related family of languages) can
carry its peculiar burden. Derrida' s meaning is not 'true', however,
precisely because Derrida pre-effaces the default meaning of the
language he uses. Worse still, he does not allow for the fact that what
he uses is a language. This is not to say, either, that what he says has no
meaning, for precisely because it is within a language, what we have
can be nothing like the 'rubble of distinct and unrelated signifiers' of
which Lacan speaks in connection with schizophrenia (see Harvey
1989:53).
I suggest, then, that my 'default mode of meaning' is perhaps what
Derrida should have been looking for in that fragment of Nietzsche's
about a forgotten umbrella discussed at some length in Spurs. No dint

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
106 Theoria

of diligence o
internal and
fragment its
would not
appropriates
hidden secret
Nietzsche's pa
too, to re-na
fragment: th
adjective, et
though, that
could 'event
(1979:121-12
pseudo) langu
stability of a
be read; but c
nature, gram
scrambling o
can always ar
But 'proper',
have real mea
with the der
language the
valence), and
to say, where
of meaning al
reflection an
results in the
actually im
resonance wh
By a stable p
lexicon of sa
ur- base (or
writing and o
which, fortu
add this quali
ing the condi
'meanings'. In
bad different
(as in dad), y
semantic poin
DAD. Nor do
languages s
phonetic clus

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Derrida , Language Games , and Theory 107

in languages which nurture consistency within the arbitra

relation between signs and meanings. In that sense, at lea
objects, created in language, and sustained by a linguistic
logic that separates bad from dad , both grammatically a
not by simple difference (such as Saussure defines) nor by
the 'producer', as Derrida says, 'of those differences'
by a healthy and lively recovery of proprietas . Apparentl
we do not so much de-sediment when we use language
Language is a continuous process of re-constructio
hindsight, looks (must look) like deconstruction.
I am suggesting, in fact, that while words are not name
have no unilateral relationship to single objects or even id
would seem to be not so much a structure as an organizat
that is not entirely social. Words are socially-constructed
they are not, in the context of human language, a-natura
that there is a momentum, if not a life, in language which
socialization, constructs how, when and why languages ev
mean. Although this play is part of that momentum and l
free-play, nor is it Derrida's 'endless play of signifiers
means that the limits of free-play define not only, as Jon
and the structuralists would say, the moment of competen
in my view, the inevitability of indigenous, self-governi
I should hazard my other proposition at this junctur
differ from one another not only in their grammar, but, s
their ecology. That, at least, is one explanation I can addu
kind of variation in culture which we often try to explain
language use. Roland Barthes's point, in 5/Z, is well
guages, too, are like myths: they do not and cannot pre-da
inventors. We must not, therefore, appear here to be
language (and myth) by ascribing to them the virtues
insight. But, having said that, I must quickly underscore t
Barthes seems to deny natural life to language and my
reducing them to mere artifacts, mere monuments
industry. We may fashion myths and languages to con
hegemonies, and use them as if we made them. But
ourselves create myths or languages. Nor is our power ov
such that we are able to erase language, and make a sente
capable of meaning. What offers a better prospect, pe
understanding of the hermeneutical dynamics which p
guages to extort particular meanings from us, the dynam
languages) which allow for unique kinds of textual in
example, word-formation in German, euphony in
monosyllabism in English. What would it matter that a la
not have the convenience which both Cicero and Derrida

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
108 Theoria

those magica
mere - itasi
the unavailab
I suggest tha
phrase) has to
of a culturo-
an example r
Essays , that
and darkness
for them arc
was improba
'the low stat
himself (in
anything but

it was one of
people which l
can certainly
thought. ( 1 8

Nor can thos

difference w
Egyptians ou
play'. I suspec
re-instating
inherent (gen
other (inclu
re-marked,
linguistic an
biology. Or
precisely tho
play of light
like Derrida'
event. Play l
There may
unpreparedne
within identi
celebration o
conflict rath
accept duality
the opposite.
Egyptian tho
just as the 'w
morphemic d
to a manner

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Derrida, Language Games , and Theory 109

distinction between Indo-European and Egyptian lan

should we, like Spinoza and others like him, propose
theory of language to account for this difference, w
European languages being pre-Adamic? It makes emin
my view, to assume a near-simultaneous existence of
equivalent to the Big Bang idea. What this tells us, thoug
the spirit of the preceding analogy), the forms of life tha
emerge are precisely those than can emerge.
Without a doubt, Derrida makes a cogent point in W
Difference when he denies any user of language the
insurance against caprice. There can, therefore, be no
that the possibility which language creates for this kind
not automatically and permanently accessible to user
however, is that there would seem to be good reason
African languages (extending my argument somewh
signatures which (if that were the only issue) would be s
the concepts of Selfhood and Otherness as elaborated
discourse. In these languages, instead, we have an acc
rather than a discriminating, form of duality. And it
important issue for theory to consider in what way
pre-dispose human cultures precisely to such and similar
tions. I use 'pre-dispose' rather than 'prescribe' becaus
earlier, languages do also adapt themselves, in and over t
(including other linguistic) circumstances.
And this brings me to my last point. Does contempora
theory, in its formulation of general laws, take the natu
languages into serious account? Hegel's stand on t
question is not in doubt. Echoing Rousseau, Hegel argu
are really only three varieties of languages, and thes

almost exactly to three different stages according to wh

consider men gathered into a nation. The depicting of objects is
to a savage people; signs of words and of propositions to a ba
and the alphabet to civilized people.

This may be so. Rousseau's (and Hegel's) formulas wou

three discrete and exclusive zones of communication,
own medium. What is not so clear is whether intention ,
remains the same at every stage, or whether (as is more
their point), intention expands (becomes more civilized)
from objects through signs to the alphabet. The quest
important because if the voulier-dire is unchanged, we w
dealing with a sophistication of medium, rather than of m
even were the expansion of intention not at issue, the qu
seem to arise regarding the capacity of languages operatin

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
110 Theoria

mode to realiz
operating in th
seems to find
Contemporary
quite ignored
language and
mathematica
quarters in th
consideration
the Serbian l
adoption of a
(Cyrillian), L
script is based
he asks is th
sufficiently ne
able to learn
themselves in their intercourse with the educated?' Abel had a clear
notion of the difference between the vernacular and the literate,
although, within the European scene, he placed them in a hierarchy
not of civilization and savagery, but of high and folk culture. Rather,
as he says in the same essay, the

popular tongue would supply the greater portion of roots and forms, while
the literary standard would furnish developments and application; the
relation being similar to that existing between the Swabian, or the
Saxon-Lowland dialects, and the High German speech of cultured society.
(1882c: 188-189)

To understand the force of Abel's options, we should remember his

attitude to national consciousness as expressed in language. Abel
states quite categorically: The difference between what different
nations think, do, and therefore speak, is still more clearly seen in
other verbal particulars' ( 1 882a:9). The differences between Germans
and Englishmen can be sensed, at a glance, in the difference between
the English words fair and equitable and German billig (which unites
both ideas.) Although we can see or suspect some race-bound
elements even in this small comparison (perfidious Albion!), we
should recognize the essential impulse behind his examples. It is that

to some nations, some thoughts do not occur sufficiently often, or are not
vivid or incontrovertible enough to seem to make special words necessary
for them while to others they appear more important and are considered
worth embodying in particular vocables. (1882a: 16)

We do not have to accept Abel's list of determinants ('natural

disposition, surroundings, and history') to see the basic plausibility of
his position.

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Derrida, Language Games, and Theory 111

Chomskean linguistics has avoided dealing with these

seeking only to transform rather than etymologize m
virtually ignoring the fact of diachronism.3 We come face
the problem only in those sociologists who have conce
selves with non-European peoples. I am thinking specifical
Jack Goody's reformulation of the Hegelian idea: the 'r
between modes of thought and the modes for the pro
reproduction of thought', Goody says, '[lies] at the h
unexplained but not inexplicable differences that so m
have noted' between oral/primitive and literate/civiliz
(1977:43). The argument, couched in the phrases of mo
logy, is that

oral cultures tend to define concepts through situational, o

frames of reference that are minimally abstract. Ideas are com
either through their concrete manifestations or through their co
rarely in terms of other abstract ideas.

But the problem, not properly addressed by Derrida, c

legitimacy of language as an instrument of mediation
binaries (not the dualities) which Western episteme h
between science and magic, abstract and concrete,
civilized. For it hardly needs remarking that, in this r
underlying notions are more than forms of free fro
solution is acted out in a language game. In his scheme, ob
language of literacy is considered to be of a higher order
orality. Written language is thought to provide more s
analytic tools for the treatment of history (otherwise 'a d
than could oral language. Such tools, in turn, encoura
reflexity [jí'c] and self-scrutiny' (JanMohamed 1984:2
1977).
The question really is this: What is it that makes scripted languages
better tools than orated ones? One answer would seem to be that
literacy - the scripting of language, the invention of the alphabet - is
always signal to the presence of special forms of consciousness.
Societies whose languages do not have an alphabet remain conserva-
tive and homeostatic. Such societies valorize collectivity rather than
individuality, and are dominated by a totalizing imperative. My own
response would, in a sense, tend in the same direction as Goody's. I,
too, would argue that languages shape the patterning of thought within
cultures in very profound ways. Jack Goody does make it clear that
'oral cultures are unable to develop these characteristics not because
of some genetic racial or cultural inferiority but simply because they
lack the proper tool, namely literacy' . I would not have needed to say
that myself. Literacy (the concurrent presence of script) creates a
historical pre-condition for those specific adaptations anticipated in

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
112 Theoria

my third law
language set.
That layer, like Derrida' s italicizings, creates a virtual sub-set of
language within the shell of the original language. The alphabet
allows for infractions and heresies to be accommodated within
language in ways that would have been impossible (physically, and
mechanically) in a phono-dependent language system. In a way what
the alphabet does is to accentuate those features of language which,
because oral language is almost entirely dependent on phonic
elements, could never have been substantially altered otherwise. It is
the alphabet that makes it possible for Derrida to make his most
important moves. In the passage from Spurs quoted earlier, Derrida is
able to distinguish his feminine from language's feminine . The
alphabet allows him to italicize the -ty in bothfemininity and sexuality ,
in ways that would not have been possible using only the phonic
features of the language. Goody's halfway house is untenable.
The objection may be raised, in this case, that italics do indeed
mimic in script the spoken tone , and that such tone would make
Derrida' s distinctions just as well, perhaps even more easily. The
difference is that whereas such tonal changes are part of the
supra-segmental repertoire of particular languages, and to that extent,
are rule-bound, scribal conventions (triple-brackets, for example) are
dictated not by pre-grammar but are only accommodated by grammar.
Hence, we may state that the peoples and languages of Africa and their
thought processes are not tied to an irremediable bind of indigenous
mediocrity, arising from the necessarily un-evolved and primitive
nature of their (unscripted) language systems. Every text, thus,
embodies both linguistic and extra-linguistic phenomena and ele-
ments. The reader has to deal with what the theorists have called intra-
and extra-cultural 'lacunae', the baggage of significances which
betray the divergences in the circumstances of coding and decoding. I
think it is a mistaken kind of theory which suggests that efforts to
provide the 'missing' elements in the lacunae of texts are ipso facto
misdirected and misleading, or that a simple matrix based on the
grammar of European languages is applicable, without revision, to
African language texts.
In OfGrammatology , Derrida remarked that Saussurian linguistics,
for all its good intentions, was itself still knee-deep in 'the old grid to
which is given the task of outlining the domain of a science', and
hence, of re-inscribing contrasts between the external and the internal,
image and reality, and between representation and presence
(1974:33). My own contention is that the contrasts may well have
been pre-defined for both Derrida and Saussure by the languages they
have used, as it would not be if they were Egyptians. What literacy and

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Derrida , Language Games, and Theory 113

writing (read civilization) have done is to conflate lang

systems, to make possible this absorption of one's meani
capacity into the language structures of Universal civilizati
To conclude. I announce my rejection of the dualism
obsession with the dichotomies of subject and object, of th
and the psychic, for example, which have governed
contemporary European philosophical discourse. Post-str
and post-modernism, as Madison phrases it, are indeed a
terized by their rejection of such distinctions and divisions
spirit and body, between reason and emotion, between the r
the irrational (1988:52). I announce a return to duality. I do
dualism on the same implicitly logical conditions as do
structuralists. I do not, for example, posit a larger,
immeasurable neo-Nietzschean opposition between civili
barbarism, so-called; in a word, a dualism in the persons of
Dionysus. For me, Duality goes with ambivalence; dual
ambiguity. Apollo supposes Dionysus. Apollo and Dionysu
tension, but an existence. If (or, since) there is Apollo, then
be (not just, is) Dionysus. Mine is not the either/or of dualis
both/and of duality. In theory, then, duality asserts, wher
derives.
Pascal was right: '[Man] cannot conceive what a body is
less what mind is, and least of all how a body can be joined
This is [Man's] supreme difficulty, and yet it is his ve
(1966:94). Pascal was paraphrasing St Augustine, whose
dualism was more descriptive than analytical. That is to say
for body and soul is not, therefore, in St Augustine, to
separate regimes of the self, but rather to better describe th
of Man himself, as observer and recipient of Providential g
even so, person becomes a derived entity; derived, that is,
logic of a dualism in which self-hood is a mathematical
rather than an object. In lay terms, language and cultur
body opposed to soul, though both co-habit the person. The
the Self thus remains Cartesian. Difference and undecid
well as method and truth, arise necessarily and appropriately
adoption of this model. Hegelian idealism may have come
with Kierkegaard, as Husserl said, but not the habit, et
Derrida and the grammar of European usage, of seeking to
penetration of reality through one family of languages.4 We
the means to do better than that.

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
114 Theoria

NOTES

1. But see Rudolf Carnap (1992:72-84)

2. 1 have argued elsewhere that Roger Caillois s play on travesty, camouflage, and
intimidation depends almost entirely on his use of particular languages. Games and
play are words constructed by the general fabric of specific language systems
(Echeruo 1994:150).
3. I am not arguing the same case as some linguistic relativists and anthropological
primitivists who posit a 'fixed' correlation between language, thought, and culture; or
who suppose that some languages (Latin, for example) were more 'primitive' than
others (e.g. English) because of the differentiation and specialization in their
morphology and syntax. For a discussion of which, see Hallpike 1979: chs 2 and
3).
4. According to Derrida, 'Metaphysics' and 'Western thought' are virtually synony-
mous. Irene E. Harvey says of Derrida's work that it is a response to the tradition of
[Continental] Western philosophy 'from Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, through
Husserl, Heidegger, and Lévinas' (1986:xi) On Husserl, see Madison (1988:ch.4).

REFERENCES

Abel, Carl. 1882a. 'Language as the Expression of National Modes of Thought

Linguistic Essays. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin.
Abel, Carl. 1882b. 'The Origin of Language', in Linguistic Essays.
Abel, Carl. 1882c. 'The Possibility of a Common Literary Language for the S
Nations', in Linguistic Essays.
Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z: An Essay {1970) (transi, by Richard Miller). New York:
and Wang.
Caillois, Roger. 1961. Man, Play, and Games (transi, by Meyer Barash). New York:
Free.
Carnap, Rudolf. 1992. 'Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology', in Richard Rorty (ed.),
The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method. Chicago: Chicago Univer-
sity Press.
Cooper, Robert L. & Spolsky, Bernard (eds). 1991. The Influence of Language on
Culture and Thought: Essays in Honor of Joshua A. Fishman 's Sixty-fifth Birthday.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Derrida, Jacques. 1974. Of Grammatology (transi, by G.C. Spivak). Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.

University Press.

Harlow). Chicago: Chicago University Press.

with introduction and notes by Peggy Kamuf). N

Press.

University Press.
Echeruo, Michael J.C. 1994. 'Redefining the Ludic
Festival Mode', in Ronald Bogue and Mihai I. Spario
The Margins of Literature. Albany, NY: State Un
pp. 137-56.
Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences.
New York: Random House.
Freud, Sigmund. 1962. Character and Culture (introduced by Philip Reiff). New York:
Collier Books.
Goody, Jack. 1977. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hallpike, C.R. 1979. The Foundations of Primitive Thought. Oxford: Clarendon.
Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of
Cultural Change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Harvey, Irene E. 1986. Derrida and the Economy of Differance. Studies in Phenomeno-
logy and Existential Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Derrida, Language Games, and Theory 115

Jameson, Fredric. 1972. The Prison-house of Language: A Cri

Structuralism and Russian Formalism. Princeton, NJ: Prince
Press.
JanMohamed, Abdul. 1984. 'Sophisticated Primitivism: The Syncr
Literate Modes in Achebe's Things Fall Apart', Ariel : A Review
English Literature, 15,4, pp. 19-39.
Llewelyn, John. 1992. 'Responsibility and Indecidability', in D
DERRIDA: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 72-96.
Losev, A[IekseiJ. F[ederovichJ. 1984. Language as an Instrument of
the Light of Lenin's Theory of Reflection', Soviet Studies in Lite
pp. 85-107.
Madison, G. B. 1988. The Hermeneutics of Postmodernity: Figures and Themes. Studies
in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. 1992. 'Elliptical Sense' (transi, by Peter Connor), in David Wood
(ed.), DERRIDA: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 36-51.
Pascal. 1966. Pensées (transi, by A.J. Krai lshei mer). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Kossi-Landi, Ferruccio. 197 J. Ideologies of Linguistic Relativity . lhe Hague: Mouton.
Saussure, Ferdinand. 1966. Course in General Linguistics. New York: McOraw-Hill.
Schlesinger, J. M. 1991 . I he Wax and Wane of Whorrian Views , in Robert L. Cooper
and Bernard Spolsky (eds), The Influence of Language on Culture and Thought.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 7-44.
Wood, David (ed). 1992. DERRIDA: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

This content downloaded from

85.165.54.152 on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:22:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms