574
PARTISAN REVIEW
sity of the system he reserves the right to call it a "fiction," an "illu–
sion," or-with the textual leftists-a trope or juridical contract
imposed by power. The trouble is there is no possible standpoint
from which we can possess the demystified knowledge to which such
judgments lay claim.
The moral that Derrida tends to enforce if not preach, then, is
that insofar as the structures of sense making are inescapable, they
are
transpolitical
in character. That is not to say that these structures
are outside institutions in general, but merely that they are specific
to no
one
institution. Left, Right, and Center draw in part on the
same vocabulary (hence our ability to calibrate them on a scale),
which means there is no basis for identifying this vocabulary with a
particular politics, independent of what it is used to do in particular
situations. The very recognition of political conflict, in fact, presup–
poses a common inventory of objects over which different and war–
ring factions compete for control.
Similarly, the very existence of interpretive disagreement over a
text presupposes that different interpreters recognize it to be the
same·
text
they are disagreeing about.
If
it were not the same text, we
shouldn't say they were "disagreeing" bu t that they were talking
about different subjects. Once we say that interpreters "differ" we
have already assumed them to be operating in a common conceptual
world, without which assumption the notion of difference would
make no sense. (The philosopher Donald Davidson develops this
point in his essay "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.") Dr.
Johnson and Jacques Lacan might seem to be so far apart in their
interpretations of
Hamlet
as to be reading two different texts. Actu–
ally, there is a vast common ground between their readings-though
it exists at so seemingly trivial a level that it is easily ignored-and it
is this common ground that would be the basis for adjudicating a
dispute between them . The fact that such a dispute would no doubt
be unresolvable proves only that interpretive conflicts are in practice
unresolved, and remain so because of the fallibility of the evidence
on which interpretive inferences depend. This fallibility is a fact of
no epistemological interest whatsoever and should occasion no
scandal.
My point is that interpretations depend on some assumed point
of reference. Derrida is right to point out that such a point of refer–
ence can't be justified with respect to an
absolute
objectivity, but,
then, why should it need to be? Only with respect to unrealistically
absolute expectations of certainty and finality can we grant any sub-
