Derrida’s Allergy to Elaboration: A Saussurean Critique
Introduction: Derrida’s Complaint and Its Problems Late in his career, Jacques Derrida voiced irritation at a question he often encountered in American academic settings: “Could you elaborate?” He described this request as “l’attitude utilitaire, manipulatrice,” a utilitarian and manipulative gesture he associated with U.S. intellectual culture and portrayed as foreign to the European milieu ( see link to video below ). This remark is striking for a thinker committed to questioning the assumptions of the entire philosophical tradition. More importantly, it mischaracterizes the nature of communication itself. Derrida implicitly treats elaboration as coercion, as if clarification were an act of domination rather than a basic communicative necessity. A Saussurean perspective shows why this claim cannot stand: without clarification, there is no shared system of signs at all. The critique that follows takes a firm stance, Derrida’s reluctance to clarify his conceptual lexicon i...