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never worked at all. True, it is a dream we cannot escape. The hope of
presence is incurable. But it is incurable precisely because it is a
dream, not reality . Being never
is
present as the myth of presence
claims it is. And yet the dream also has a reality insofar as dream itself
is an aspect of our reality, of the kind of beings we are . Now Wittgen–
stein, too , admittedly takes account of what is unreal or misguided in
the traditional view of language-not only of what is too limited or
abstract. The thrust to an "inner" life, the beetle-in-the-box syn–
drome , represents perhaps half of the ideal of presence. But in his
version, the routine working of language in the ordinary world of
human interests and activities overmasters the persistent dream. The
ghost of inwardness can be shoved into the lumber-room of super–
stitions where all ghosts belong. For Derrida , in contrast, it's a very
live haunt indeed . He has to ask, not how shall we supplement a
one-sided and partly foolish view of language, but how shall we dis–
mantle a deeply mistaken yet inevitable conception? He has to ask
head on: Is language
ever
like that? To find what's happening when
we speak, we must take the ghost apart-a tricky job, for ghosts are
notoriously hard to catch , let alone to disarticulate.
Where have we got to? Both Derrida and Wittgenstein find
philosophical thinking about language perversely inflexible , and
both seek to shake up somehow our thinking about it. But since they
conceive the traditional triad so differently, the questions they ask of
language are correspondingly different . Yet here too there is some–
thing shared in their two enterprises. Neither seeks to substitute for
a wonted rigidity some new philosophical system that will replace it .
On the contrary , they both cultivate techniques for questioning
language and for catching it at work; techniques to free it from the
illusions of philosophy, not to enslave it afresh. Let me try to charac–
terize very briefly these two techniques and then enumerate some–
what randomly some contrasts between them.
Wittgenstein's technique-forgive me for saying it once more–
is to reconstruct language at work. Derrida's, in contrast, is to
decon–
struct its alleged working. Wittgenstein complexifies the traditional
account by setting the real machinery to work in 'a whole range of
ways, over and over , till philosophical simple-mindedness withers
away (or seems to) and the silly ghost of inwardness flutters harmless–
ly off (or so one hopes) . His method , though deep and difficult ,
