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Talking Liberties. AI image "One of the fears, I think, that many of the so-called critics of deconstruction have had is that it in some way undermines the rationality of the subject, or the thought that the subject could commit himself or herself, with clear conscious intent, to some rationally undertaken project". —Alan Montefiore, Talking Liberties , interview with Jacques Derrida. 1. The Charge of Irrationality What happens when deconstruction is accused of undermining rationality? In a 1992 interview with Alan Montefiore, later published as “Talking Liberties,” Derrida was asked whether deconstruction undermined “the rationality of the subject” and, with it, the possibility that a subject might consciously commit itself to a rational project. Derrida does not begin by defending himself against the charge. His first response is almost disconcertingly direct: “I’m not here to reassure anyone.” Rather than accepting the task of defending an established conception...

“Psychologically, setting aside its expression in words, our thought is simply a vague, shapeless mass. Philosophers and linguists have always agreed that were it not for signs, we should be incapable of differentiating any two ideas in a clear and constant way. In itself, thought is like a swirling cloud, where no shape is intrinsically determinate. No ideas are established in advance, and nothing is distinct, before the introduction of linguistic structure. But do sounds, which lie outside this nebulous world of thought, in themselves constitute entities established in advance? No more than ideas do.” — Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics I. When a Word Becomes a Thing We normally think of a concept as the name of a thing. Something exists; the concept identifies it; language gives it a name. Once named, it can be described, compared, and judged. Consider three familiar expressions: human nature , the subject , and human rights . We tend to hear them as thoug...