After the Center: On Derrida’s Two Interpretations of Interpretation

Structure, Sign, and Play. AI image

  

“There are thus two interpretations of interpretation, of structure, of the sign, and of play. One seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin that escapes play and the order of the sign, and lives the necessity of interpretation as an exile. The other, which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms play and attempts to move beyond man and humanism, the name of man being the name of that being who, throughout the history of metaphysics or of onto-theology—that is to say, throughout the whole of its history—has dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of play”.

Introduction: When the Center No Longer Holds

What becomes of interpretation once thought can no longer rely on an origin? When the reassuring stability of a center begins to waver, interpretation ceases to be a secondary gesture applied to already constituted meaning; it becomes the very space in which meaning emerges. Jacques Derrida’s 1966 lecture, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, is often remembered for announcing the “rupture” that unsettled structuralism. Yet near its close, Derrida formulates a distinction that quietly reorganizes the trajectory of the entire essay: “There are thus two interpretations of interpretation, of structure, of the sign, and of play.”

This remark does not merely contrast two theoretical positions. It names a division that continues to shape contemporary reflection, situating interpretation between the lingering desire for presence and the unsettling affirmation of play.

Structure and the Function of the Center

Derrida begins by recalling how Western thought has historically depended upon the concept of structure while simultaneously neutralizing its most disruptive implication. A structure, he observes, has always been assigned a center — “a point of presence, a fixed origin” — whose function was to organize the system while limiting what he calls its “play.” The center permitted substitution among elements but escaped substitution itself. Paradoxically, it belonged to the structure while remaining beyond structurality.

Such an arrangement reassured thought by placing the principle of order outside the movement it governed. From that immobile point, anxiety could be contained.

The event Derrida identifies does not consist in the simple disappearance of structure but in the growing recognition that the center is not a natural site. It is a function — a non-place produced through a series of substitutions. Once this becomes thinkable, the consequences are far-reaching: “in the absence of a center or origin, everything became discourse.” No transcendental signified stands outside the system of differences; meaning unfolds within an open field whose limits can no longer be secured by appeal to foundational presence. Interpretation, under such conditions, ceases to be optional. It becomes the very mode of our engagement with signs.

The First Interpretation: Nostalgia for Origin

Within this transformed landscape emerges the first interpretation. It “seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin that escapes play and the order of the sign, and lives the necessity of interpretation as an exile.” Interpretation appears here as a symptom of loss. If reading is required, it is because immediacy has been interrupted. The interpreter resembles one searching for a forgotten homeland, convinced that beneath the proliferation of signs lies a stable meaning awaiting recovery.

This orientation should not be dismissed as naïve. It expresses a powerful philosophical desire, the longing for ground, for a point where substitution might finally come to rest. Throughout the history of metaphysics, such a desire has taken many names: essence, consciousness, God, man. Each promised access to what Derrida elsewhere calls “full presence.” Under this interpretation, thought is guided by the hope that play can be mastered, its uncertainties reduced by returning to an origin presumed to precede the system.

The Second Interpretation: Affirming Play

Opposed to this nostalgia stands a second interpretation, one that “is no longer turned toward the origin” but instead “affirms play.” Derrida associates this path with Nietzsche, whose critique of metaphysics displaced the search for truth in favor of the interplay of interpretation and signification. Here, the absence of a center is not experienced as deprivation but as a condition of possibility. Meaning is not uncovered behind the sign; it emerges within the dynamic relations among signs themselves.

Such affirmation demands a different philosophical temperament. If the first interpretation dreams of rest, the second learns to think without refuge. It abandons the expectation that discourse must culminate in a final signified capable of halting the movement of meaning. Derrida underscores the stakes of this shift when he writes that the name of “man” has long designated the being who “has dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of play.” Moving beyond this dream does not entail rejecting humanity; rather, it requires relinquishing the metaphysical assurance once attached to that figure.

An Irreducible Tension

The decisive gesture of the lecture lies elsewhere. Derrida does not present these interpretations as alternatives from which one might calmly choose. Instead, he suggests that they are “absolutely irreconcilable even if we live them simultaneously and reconcile them in an obscure economy.” Modern thought does not simply progress from nostalgia to affirmation; it inhabits the tension between them.

No straightforward return to origin remains credible after the decentering of structure. Yet the desire for presence has not vanished; it continues to orient inquiry, often in subtle forms. Every effort to stabilize meaning betrays this inheritance, even when undertaken by discourses seeking to move beyond metaphysics. Conversely, the affirmation of play cannot entirely silence the impulse toward grounding. What emerges is not resolution but oscillation.

Interpretation After the Rupture

Interpretation becomes the name of this oscillatory condition. It unfolds between the memory of foundation and the exposure to groundlessness. What Derrida diagnoses is less a theoretical dispute than a structural duplicity within thought itself. The interpreter stands simultaneously within the legacy of metaphysics and beyond it, compelled to navigate a field where certainty has lost its privilege yet remains strangely compelling.

The question that follows is no longer how to interpret correctly according to a secure method. Rather, it concerns how thinking proceeds once the dream of presence has been recognized as precisely that — a dream. If the center no longer arrests substitution, interpretation cannot aspire to finality. It marks our participation in a discourse whose elements refer endlessly to one another without converging upon an ultimate ground.

Conclusion: Thinking Without Ground

Derrida’s distinction reaches well beyond the context of structuralism. It sketches the horizon within which contemporary reflection continues to operate. We interpret not because truth lies hidden behind appearances, but because no center remains capable of guaranteeing the closure of meaning.

Between the longing for origin and the affirmation of play, thought discovers its modern predicament: to search for ground while knowing that none awaits discovery, and to persist nonetheless in the movement of interpretation.

Bibliography

Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” In Writing and Difference, 278–294.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. “Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss.” Translated by Felicity Baker. London: Routledge, 1987.