Hum Stud (2009) 32:3351

DOI 10.1007/s10746-009-9108-2
RESEARCH PAPER

Foucault and Derrida: The Question of Empowering

and Disempowering the Author
Antonio Calcagno

Published online: 2 April 2009

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract This article focuses on Michel Foucaults concepts of authorship and

power. Jacques Derrida has often been accused of being more of a literary author
than a philosopher or political theorist. Richard Rorty complains that Derridas
views on politics are not pragmatic enough; he sees Derridas later work, including
his political work, more as a private self-fashioning than concrete political
thinking aimed at devising short-term solutions to problems here and now.
Employing Foucaults work around authorship and the origins of power, I show that
Derrida is indeed fashioning himself. This self-fashioning is not merely private
or fanciful. Rather, I argue that Derrida can be read as employing what Foucault
would call technologies of the self to not only show the play of possibility and
impossibility at work in all politics and thought, but also to use his savoir to create
two important and potentially constructive power structures. First, there is the power
of deconstruction itself as a militant critique that calls for a forceful and irreducible justice. Second, there is the power of Derrida himself, understood as leaving
behind a legacy of himself as the originator of deconstruction and as a public
intellectual.
Keywords
Critique

Foucault
Derrida
Authorship
Authorial and political power

Introduction
While alive, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida had very little to say or do with
one another; one could rightly say that they were highly critical and sceptical of
A. Calcagno (&)
Department of Philosophy, Kings University College at UWO, 266 Epworth Avenue, London,
ON N6A 2M3, Canada
e-mail: acalcagn@uwo.ca

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each others philosophical projects. In fact, Derrida (1978) gave one small talk,
which was later published as an article, on Foucaults mistreatment of Descartes
view of madness in the Meditations. Foucault (1975) responded to Derrida in his
article, My Body, this Paper, this Fire. Here, Foucault accuses Derridas petite
pedagogie of ignoring history and the structuring forces therein. It is as if Derrida
writes in abstract metaphysical terms without being cognizant of the archaeologies
and genealogies that condition his work, ultimately delimiting the force of
deconstructions power of critique (Sprinkler 2008, p. 92). Following the
publication of this article, there was a long silence between the two philosophers.
Derrida finally responded to Foucault, long after Foucaults untimely death, in his
article, To do Justice to Freud: The History of Madness in Psychoanalysis
(1994). Though Derrida and Foucault hardly discussed one anothers work at any
great length, the small articles that we do possess reveal both fundamental
agreements and disagreements in their respective approaches to philosophy and the
problems/challenges that faced our world.
Despite their not talking directly to one another, scholars have worked long and
hard to try and bring both philosophers together on various questions. Most of the
literature that we have focuses on a certain theme, and scholars use Foucault and
Derridas work to highlight, compare, and contrast various approaches or critiques.1
Undoubtedly, this is a very rich enterprise, yielding invaluable insights and critiques
that shed light on pressing social and political questions. But, what happens when
we try and apply Foucault and Derridas respective philosophical methodologies to
one another? What would it be to read Foucault as a subject of deconstruction and
Derrida through Foucaultian genealogy and archaeology? These are huge undertakings and I do not pretend to carry this out fully here. I do, however, wish to
subject Derrida to a Foucaultian analysis, ultimately showing that Derrida himself,
as an author and a self, has something profound to say about politics and
subjectivity.
Modernity placed a great emphasis on political structures that ultimately
conditioned individual subjects, indeed allowed them to realize themselves more
fully as subjects. Think of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his notion of the people,
John Locke and his views on law being the salvation of the people, G. W. F. Hegel
and the state, Immanuel Kant and transcendental public right, etc. A Foucaultian
analysis of Derrida as a self and an author can be seen to reverse modernitys
emphasis on larger objective structures as a condition, end, or source for political
subjectivity. Rather, the self and, more precisely, the self-authoring self become the
very conditions of politics and various social and political structures, including the
state, law, democracy, etc. Derrida himself, read through a Foucaultian analysis,
becomes an example of how this subjective politicisation comes to operate.
Scholars have often read Derridas political contribution as focused on certain
issues, as if his ideas admit no authorship. A Foucaultian analysis shows that
Derridas political effectiveness depends upon his very self-fashioning as an author.
For example, many have written against capital punishment or on the rights of
1

More recently, for example: Derrida and Foucault on madness: Harrison 2007; on friendship: Mclaren
2006; on feminism: Chanter 2006; on evil and morality: Ophir and Mazali 2005.

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refugees, but there is only a small cluster of Derridean or deconstructive-inspired

approaches that stand out from other critiques and approaches (see, for example,
Lawlor 2002, 2007; Waldenfels 1996). There is a Derridean approach to these
questions, and it is singular and unique. The author Derrida, then, inspired and
continues to inspire a certain way of dealing with social and political questions. The
implication is clear: ones self-authoring can be political and can have enormous
political influence, inspiring a whole new approach in political thought and action.
The more recent thought of Alain Badiou focuses on how subjectivity coincides
with events; one is subjectivated in and through the event, and ones subjectivity
continues to acquire validity and sense through fidelity to an event (see, for
example, Calcagno 2007a). I do not propose to take on Badiou in this paper. I think
the following analysis of Derrida is important today because it moves away from the
pre-eminent logic of the event, demonstrating that subjects themselves are the
source or condition of politics and not events.
I will show, writing from a Foucaultian perspective, how one of the classic
criticisms of Derrida can be understood and challenged within the framework of
Foucaults philosophy. I focus on Foucaults concepts of authorship and power.
Derrida has often been accused of being more of a literary author than a philosopher
or political theorist. Richard Rorty (1996) complains that Derridas views on politics
are not pragmatic enough; he sees Derridas later work, including his political work,
more as a private self-fashioning than concrete political thinking aimed at
devising short-term solutions to problems here and now (pp. 1318). Employing
Foucaults work around authorship and the origins of power, I will show that
Derrida is indeed fashioning himself. This self-fashioning is not merely private or
fanciful. Rather, I argue that Derrida can be read as employing what Foucault would
call technologies of the self to not only show the play of possibility and
impossibility at work in all politics and thought, but also to use his savoir to create
two important and potentially constructive power structures. First, there is the power
of deconstruction itself as a militant critique. Second, there is the power of
Derrida himself, understood as leaving behind a legacy of himself as the
originator of deconstruction and as a public intellectual.
One of Foucaults great insights was that power could be destructive and
oppressive but it could also be creative and constructive. Following Foucault, I will
argue that the author Derrida, both the person and the thought, can serve as
instantiation of creative power. Part of this creativity includes showing limitations
and potential dangers structured within power. To this end, I will also show how one
has to be mindful of various shortcomings in Derridas work, including claims of
irreducibility and the force of the impossibility and possibility of the double-bind
that is differance. More precisely, one of the central differences between the two
thinkers surrounds the question of origins. Foucaults genealogical method of
critiquing power structures in various political and institutional forms demonstrates
how the very use of the words origin and foundation are fraught with both
destructive and constructive powers embedded and expressed by deep structures of
knowledge (savoir). Derrida sees an origin as impossibly accessible but nonetheless
conditioning human experience. Whereas Foucault calls for a constant genealogical
critique that implies a critique of genealogy itself as a technology, Derrida makes no

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such claim for deconstruction and differance insofar as he describes them as

irreducible.
Foucault on the Self and Authorship
The influence of Roland Barthes essay Death of the Author (1990) on later
twentieth century thought in undeniable. It is unsurprising, then, that both Foucault
and Derrida deal with Barthes (as well as Maurice Blanchots) claim in different
ways. Foucault himself had a consistent interest in the question of authorship, albeit
from different perspectives in his life. Even if we accept Arnold Davidsons threefold periodic division of Foucaults work (i.e. genealogy, archaeology, and ethics),
Foucaults later works that focused on bio-power, ethics, subjectivity and authorship
cannot be read apart from earlier works, especially if we accept with Foucault
(Foucault 1970, pp. 6263) the twofold nature of his project: uncovering limitations
and exclusions of power through critique, and genealogy. Though a vast amount of
scholarship exists discussing the power of the author as writer, as conveyor and
producer of a certain truth (Burke 1998; Fisher 1999, pp. 27990; Gordon 1999, pp.
395414; Sprinkler 2008, pp. 7598), little work has been done on the author as
writing him- or herself, authorship as self-writing, self-empowering, self-fashioning.
I propose to read Foucaults text What is an Author? not only as a work of
critique and genealogy but also a work on self-authorship or self-fashioning. I will
do this through Derrida the author.
In What is an Author? Foucaults (1977)2 goal is twofold. First, he wishes to
address critiques of his own position that argue that Foucault employs authored
texts, including those by Carl Linnaeus, David Ricardo, Georges Louis Buffon,
Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, without really discussing the author and his or her
work. He admits, however, that his goal was not so much to discuss authors and
authorship, but to analyze verbal clusters as discursive layers which fall outside the
familiar categories of a book, a work, or an author (1977, p. 113). This being said,
Foucault admits that he must take the foregoing critiques seriously, and so his essay
tries to address this lacuna in his thought vis-a`-vis then-contemporary views of the
author. Second, he tries to lead his readers to think about certain critical questions
that condition the genesis and archaeological understanding of the author today. He
maintains that the category of the author must not be abandoned completely as it is a
site that is useful for understanding certain structures of power but it also has
creative, subjective implications.
Foucault (1977) identifies two trends that mark contemporary views of the
author. First, there is the notion that writing of our day has freed itself from the
necessity of expression; it only refers to itself, yet it is not restricted to the confines
of interiority (1977, p. 116). What has been undermined by contemporary
authorship is the notion of reference. The authors text need not refer to some
object, be it fiction or non-fiction. The notions that texts must mean something
specific and refer to something concretely outside of themselves are no longer viable
2

This essay first appeared in the Bulletin de la Societe francaise de Philosophie (1969), 63(3), 73104. It
was also delivered as a lecture before the Society at the Colle`ge de France on February 22, 1969.

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propositions. In Derridas language, texts need not refer to an external reality as

metaphysically or onto-theologically present. Foucault remarks,
[W]riting [is] an interplay of signs, regulated less by the content it signifies
than by the very nature of the signifier. Moreover, it implies an action that is
always testing the limits of regularity, transgressing and reversing an order
that it accepts and manipulates (1977, p. 116).
If the author is truly dead, as Barthes and others argue, then we have no identifiable
subjectivity that emerges with authored texts, either on the party of characters or
authors.
Thus, the essential basis of this writing is not the exalted emotions related to
the act of composition or the insertion of a subject into language. Rather, it is
primarily concerned with creating an opening where the writing subject
endlessly disappears. (1977, p. 116).
This disappearing leads to Foucaults second claim concerning the nature of the
contemporary author, namely, the very death of the author. Whereas Greek epic
tried to immortalise various subjects, especially when we think of how effective
Homer has been with his characters throughout the ages, contemporary views of the
dead author maintain that it is really hard to say who Homer is or who his characters
are, especially if we examine the legacy of various appropriations of Homeric
writings and criticisms throughout the ages. In fact, all we have are different
Homers, Odysseuses, Eurykleias, Telemachuses and Penelopes. Multiplicities of
interpretations bespeak the impossibility of identifying and pointing to a specific
author or the singular meaning of a text. Older approaches that maintained the
possibility of singularly identifying the author or specific interpretations of an
authored text are now impossible. Moreover, authors now speak freely of death and
finitude as opposed to immortality. The goal no longer is immortal life, but now the
emphasis is on death and sacrifice.
This conception of a spoken or written narrative as a protection against death
has been transformed by our culture. Writing is now linked to sacrifice and to
the sacrifice of life itself; it is a voluntary obliteration of the self that does not
require representation in books because it takes place in the everyday
existence of the writer (1977, p. 117).
Foucault adds, Where a work had the duty of creating immortality, it now attains
the right to kill, to become the murderer of its author (1977, p. 117).
Given this new claim regarding the death or disappearance of the author,
Foucault questions whether this has sufficiently been examined and explored. He
argues that the death or the disappearance of the author has raised serious questions
that ultimately will lead him to argue that rather than displacing the traditional
views of authorship, such views have arrested a genuine change or becoming of
the author. For Foucault, the claims regarding the death of the author have become
too absolute, unmindful of the genetic implications of their own claims. Rather than
an absolute death or disappearance of the author, Foucault wishes to argue that there
is an emergent shift in the way we view authors, but this shift does not preclude the

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notion of the author having certain content, power and critical functionality. In order
to prove his point, he begins to carry out both the critique and genealogical analysis
called for in The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Order of Discourse, texts that
appeared soon after What is an Author? (Foucault 1969).
Foucault makes two critiques against the view that maintains the death or
disappearance of the author. First, he argues that such positions do not sufficiently
analyse contexts and relations, all very important for Foucaults own project. It
would be right to say, and Foucault agrees, that the views associated with the death
or disappearance of the author wish to engage in a new form of critique that do not
try to re-establish the connection between the author and his or her work or the
author and the thought expressed in his or her work. Foucault wonders, however,
What of a context that questions the concept of a work? What, in short, is the
strange unit designated by the term, work? Assuming that we are dealing
with an author, is everything he wrote and said, everything he left behind, to
be included in his work? (1977, p. 118).
Employing the language of the Archaeology of Knowledge, the discourse of authors
and authorship yield certain concepts and themes, which Foucault (1969, p. 85) calls
strategies, that raise questions about how we organize the words and things
associated with authorship. Foucault begins to list questions that need to be asked
about the organization, cataloguing and publication of an authors work, questions
that determine the context and theme of the nature of authorship (1977, p. 119).
Foucault argues that the recent attention paid to the death of the author has
profound implications for what the author has produced, namely, his or her work.
What is the status of this work and how do we come to pronounce that this is
authentically or inauthentically an authors work? It seems that those who argue for
the death or disappearance of the author fail to consider the relation that exists
between the author and his or her product, thereby severely compromising the force
of the claim about death or disappearance, especially if we still possess and refer to
the works that these authors claim are dead.
Such questions only begin to suggest the range of our difficulties, and, if some have
found it convenient to bypass the individuality of the writer or his status as an
author to concentrate on a work, they have failed to appreciate the equally
problematic nature of the word Work and the unity it designates (1977, p. 119)
The second critique is specifically directed against Derrida. In particular,
Foucault attacks Derridas concept of ecriture. He describes Derridas project,
rightly I think, in the following manner:
Strictly speaking, it should allow us not only to circumvent references to an
author, but to situate his recent absence [it] is concerned with neither the act
of writing nor the indications, as symptoms or signs within a text, of an
authors meaning[.] (1977, p. 119)
Foucault claims that Derrida has transposed the empirical characteristics of an
author to a transcendental anonymity (1977, p. 120). For Derrida, there is no
longer an author that writes, but a play of signs that point to an ever-shifting

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and -deferring origin (i.e. what was traditionally called an author) and the constant
differentiations of meaning (what he calls iterability) through the arch-conditioning
of differance. Differance is described by Derrida as irreducible and it structures and
conditions all texts, that is, all of experience. It has a twofold function.
First, as signs continue to articulate themselves in time, signs that have passed are
no longer. Their present being is no longer. What we do have of them in the present
hic et nunc is merely a trace of their former sense. As long as there is some flow of
continuous experience that unfolds in time, senses and meanings that are no longer
graspable in some fleeting sense of the present have already changed their meaning
insofar as they no longer can be present as they once were. So, differance temporally
affects the meaning of sense in the interplay between what once was said, spoken,
written or experienced and what is currently being experienced, said, written or
spoken. The consequence of time, a time that flows and conditions reality
continuously, is that senses and meaning of signs continuously differentiate and
defer their meanings. The second function of differance has a spatializing or
intervalling function. As signs are read, written, experienced or spoken, we note that
something allows one sign to be distinguished from another, that is, one sign is
separated from another, occupying a certain space and not another as well as leaving
some kind of space between signs. Differance allows signs to be constantly spaced
such that we can distinguish one sign from another in a connected chain or sequence
of signifying signs.
For Foucault, Derridas account lacks agency; it is anonymous. But, is it really so
anonymous? Is not Derrida the author of deconstruction? Derrida would claim
that he is not the author; he simply articulated what is already at play. Foucault
remarks,
The conception of ecriture sustains the privileges of the author through the
safeguard of the apriori; the play of representations that formed a particular
image of the author is extended with gray neutrality. The disappearance of the
author is held in check by the transcendental. (1977, p. 120)
Before turning more fully to Derrida, I would like to look at Foucaults response
to the question of the death of the author. Again, rather than a nothing that is implied
by the death of the author, Foucault argues that an empty space has been created
where the nineteenth century author once stood (1977, p. 121). Questions have to be
asked and an analysis of the discourse has to take place. Foucault proposes four
characteristics of discourse that support this use [of the author] and determine its
difference from other discourses (1977, p. 124). An enunciative discourse refers to
a series of statements (enonces) that define the conditions in which a function is
executed that gives to a series of signs (not grammatical or logical signs) their
specific existence (Foucault 1969, p. 142). He limits his analysis to books with
authors. First, he claims that they are objects of appropriation.
The form of property they have become is of a particular type whose legal
codification was accomplished some years ago. It is important to notice, as
well, that its status as property is historically secondary to the penal code
controlling its appropriation. (Foucault 1977, p. 124)

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Obviously, Foucault refers to the fact that an author is first and foremost, for us, a
discourse that is defined by copyright and by multinational corporations that control
such rights to publish, including electronic rights. He notes that
it was at the moment when a system of ownership and strict copyright rules
were established (toward the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of
the nineteenth century) that the transgressive properties always intrinsic to the
act of writing became the forceful imperative of literature. (1977, p. 125)
From the start, Foucault points out that authorship has changed and been
redefined by certain social and cultural and legal practices. One should also remark
that the contemporary discourse of authorship relies heavily on those that make
public, circulate or publish texts. The status of authentic, legitimate, valid,
authors, or the category of real or published authors also conditions the
specific existence of authors. In the academy, there is still a distinction made
between different types of presses and media, from university presses (which are
ranked) to Internet publishing or blogs. When we consider who or what an author is,
to whom do we refer and what authority do we believe? Without doubt this is
crucial in considering the status of an author.
Second, the author function is not a universal or constant in all discourse.
There was an oral tradition where authors were cited as authorities. So, when
ancient or medieval authors would cite Pliny or Aristotle, not only did they cite
them as a reference but they also cited them as speaking truth. Today, as Foucault
notes, when we cite authors, they do not necessarily carry out the same truth
function as did earlier textual authorities. Even if the source was anonymous,
ancient texts would cite these anonymous texts as true. This changed.
Authentication no longer required reference to the individual who had
produced them; the role of the author disappeared as an index of truthfulness
and, where it remained as an inventors name, it was merely to denote a
specific theorem or proposition, a strange effect, a property, a body, a group of
elements, or pathological syndrome. (1977, p. 126)
Third, Foucault notes that the author function does not arise spontaneously by
attributing a work to a specific creator. It is a very complex function that is
dependent on recognition, use of the authors work, and the reception and
dissemination of work.
Undoubtedly, this construction is assigned a realistic dimension as we speak of
an individuals profundity or creative power, his intentions or the original
inspiration manifested in writing. Nevertheless, these aspects of an individual,
which we designate as an author (or which compromise an individual as an
author), are projections, in terms always more or less psychological, of our way
of handling texts: in the comparisons we make, the traits we extract as pertinent,
the continuities we assign, or the exclusions we practice. (1977, p. 127)
The way we use an author begins to define the author, for example, as either poet
or philosopher. An author is defined by a series of complex and precise
procedures.

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Finally, the author function does not always have to refer to an individual.
Foucault speaks of a plurality of egos (1977, p. 130) that works together to form
and shape the very existence of a specific author. Foucault gives the example of a
mathematical author. Here, Foucault distinguished three egos or individuals that
coincide and belong to the same existent, namely, the author (1977, p. 130). In a
mathematical treatise the I who actually composes the treatise is not equivalent to
the I that concludes or is associated with a certain mathematical doctrine. So, we can
distinguish Pythagoras from the Pythagorean theory. Pythagoras was a specific
individual who wrote at a specific time, but his theory has been with us throughout
most of recorded Western history. Finally, one speaks of a third individual or ego:
One who speaks of the goals of his investigation, the obstacles encountered, its
results, and the problems yet to be solved and this I would function in the field of
existing or future mathematical discourses (1977, p. 130). More precisely, this
third ego could refer to the future uses and discussions generated by the use of
Pythagoras theorem.
Derrida as Author
The debates between the philosophies of Derrida and Foucault are well known and
have been much discussed (Burke 1998; Flynn 1989, pp. 201218; Naas 1997, pp.
141152). We are also familiar with Foucaults challenge to Derrida, especially as
taken up in his Archaeology of Knowledge (1969, pp. 135138; 144145). Here,
Foucault dismisses the Derridean notion of the trace that continues to alter itself
through the iterability of differance. Foucault also does not believe that there will
always be an absence or non-dit that conditions human understanding or
knowledge. We are also familiar with Derridas own criticisms of Foucaults
historical approach, especially as they pertain to Descartes and Freud (1978, 1994).
I do not wish to re-discuss this well-trodden field. What I would like to carry out in
this section of the paper, however, is a thought experimenta short genealogical
analysis that has not been taken up, at least to my knowledge. Suppose we accept
Foucaults premise about the four characteristics of authorial discourse, then what
can be said about the specific discourse we call deconstruction and what can we
say about its author, Jacques Derrida?
I would like to argue that Rorty is right, in part, to claim that there is a selffashioning that characterizes Derridas writing, but this self-fashioning is not merely
Derridas own invention. For the author Derrida to exist, a whole web of enonces
that form a discourse that is much larger than Derrida himself has to come into play,
much as Foucault has suggested above. It would be wrong to say that Derridas
work is private, as will be seen later; rather, Derridas work does carry a selfinvestment that can be understood by the term hupomnemata. Hupomnemata, in
the technical sense, can be books of accounts, public registers, or personal
notebooks to be used as memoranda (Foucault 1997, p. 236). Foucault draws from
Seneca and remarks, the writing of hupomnemata can contribute to the
formation of the self across scattered logoi (1997, p. 238). They were ways that
writers could show themselves or make themselves seen; they made one appear
before the other. They were not private musings. Rather, they were personal texts

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through which one made oneself public, and in that making public, one also created
oneself. One was authored by what others read. Derrida must be read in this double
way as self-authoring but also as being authored by others.
Following Foucaults characteristics mentioned above, we can posit four lines of
questioning that can be applied to the fashioning or genesis of Derrida the author.
First and foremost, there is a legacy that legally belongs to the estate of Jacques
Derrida. Royalties are paid and reproduction rights are safeguarded. Also, prior to
his death, Derrida established archives for his work at UC Irvine.3 His publishers
along with his family now control what appears and what does not appear. There are
also his long-time friends, like Hele`ne Cixous, who continue to write about Derrida
after his death. It was Derrida who ordered that drafts of their work together be sent
to Cixous after his death (Cixous and Derrida 2001; Cixous 2008)4. His legacy
continues to be perpetuated, even by students who continue to digest his work and
by professors who continue to teach his philosophy. This being said, the question
arises: Who is Derrida here? Derrida himself would certainly argue that there is no
one Derrida here, but an iterable trace of Derrida that keeps mutating through the
temporization of differance. Foucault would argue, however, that if one were to
become more historical and specific (and not transcendental in the Derridean sense)
one could easily establish where the various lines of Derridean authorship originate.
There is certainly a particular flavour to the Yale or literary Derrida as opposed to
his reception in various departments of philosophy, for example, dismissal in most
analytic departments and warm reception in Continentally-oriented departments.
Depending where you read and hear about Derrida, one can note specifically why
and how a certain interpretation unfolds.
Second, we come to the question of where Derrida is recognized as a legitimate
author. Again, in some contexts he is considered a charlatan and in others he is
considered a revolutionary thinker and writer, inspiring a host of imitators and
followers. More specifically, depending on the historical context in which one reads
Derrida, one can trace, to borrow Foucaults term, what kind of author he is. Even in
his works, the term authorship is questionable. In his own writings, he tried to show
that there was nothing like an author who can be explicitly pointed to or referred to
by connecting him or her to his or her work. Foucault identifies this as the
nineteenth century view of the author. Both Foucault and Derrida would agree that
there is a certain death of the author, but for Foucault, it could be argued that
Derridas own texts show different authors: The Derrida of literary theory (Derrida
1976, 1978) and phenomenology (Derrida 1973), the Derrida of politics (1997), the
Derrida of religion (2002a, b) and the Derrida of ethics (Derrida 2000, 2001b). Each
of these authorial stances of Derrida not only reveals different interests and concern
but also different styles of writing. An author does not merely repeat the same thing
over and over again, as Derrida rightly observes. His work is a testimony to this fact
and we could see how these different authorial stances or styles point to different
authors.
3

The archives for Derridas work can be accessed at http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/uci.html.

Insister of Jacques Derrida (2008) is a stream of consciousness, poetic writing that Cixous addresses to
her deceased beloved friend, Jacques Derrida.

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If we hold deconstruction to its word, then it follows that there cannot be one Derrida
but constantly differentiating authors we call Derrida, not repeatedly iterating
multiplicities or traces of Derrida the author. Here, however, is where Foucault
and Derrida theoretically diverge. Though there are many authors and various
differentiating Derridas and Derridean texts, there is still a coherent unity that one
could point to and call Derrida. This is the core of a discourse that Foucault points to as
distinguishable in his Archaeology of Knowledge. There is an author called Derrida
with certain definable, legally traceable works that can be studied and examined as a
Foucaultian discourse. There is a school of thought called deconstruction; we employ
the verb to deconstruct in everyday speech; there are identifiable schools of literary
theory and criticism called deconstructive, e.g. Yale. We can specifically trace
which authors/schools employ Derrida (1985) through various indexing, bibliographies
and search engines, all of which are accessible on the Net. Derrida himself spoke of
deconstruction as irreducible, an irreducible justicea claim that always plagued him
and conflicted with his view of deconstruction as double bind of possibility and
impossibility inscribed in the quasi transcendental or arch-structure of difference.
Third, we come to the creation or fashioning of Derrida. Rorty claims that
Derridas later work is a private self-fashioning. But, is it really merely private?
Following Foucault, I maintain that Derridas later period is not merely private, but
a collective, complex undertaking of the creation of an authorial function called
Derrida. I do not pretend to lay out a complete genealogy of how this happens, but I
would like to point to at least four factors that helped fashion the author Derrida,
especially in his later period. First, there is his reception in North American schools
of literary theory, especially Yale, Stanford, and UC Irvine. It was his writings about
the nature of the text and how one experiences the world as text that drew these
schools attention. They recognized his body of work and gave Derrida a place to
speak and publish and teach. A school of deconstruction was born from this cross
fertilization between France and the United States. Derrida himself will speak of
American deconstruction versus deconstruction in general (1996, p. 78ff).
Second, there are the famous and controversial debates in philosophy; major
Anglo-American thinkers like Searle and others like Habermas debate Derrida. Here
the debate is not so much about texts, but more about language, reference, truth,
objectivity, and meaning. It was his reception or non-reception in various
departments of philosophy that caused such controversy and fuelled the image of
Derrida as either a villain or hero. Think of the 20 philosophers, including Quine,
who wrote and urged Cambridge University to deny Derrida an honorary doctorate.
All of this increased Derridas prominence as an author, conditioning the discourse
of how or why Derrida is an author. Thirdly, there are the media representations of
Derrida throughout the world. He was called upon to speak about countless
controversies, problems, world events, etc. He was also written about and critiqued.
Think of the famous New York Times obituary and the ire it raised because of its
lack of recognition of Derridas contribution to thought and philosophy. There is
also the movie, Derrida, which depicts and shows him under a different light. Also,
think of how his books and essays were published in various languages. Books that
exist in French, for example, are not the same when they are translated in English
and vice versa. Often, there is different content and different texts are published in

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various collections. Fourthly, there is the Derrida that was intimately known by his
family, friends and fellow thinkers like Cixous. They speak of Derrida in different
ways and in different contexts. They appropriate his work and his person to
represent Derrida in a certain way. Finally, there is Derrida the industry. Here, I
simply refer to the dissertations, articles (including this one here!), lectures, films,
speeches, books, interviews, blogs, etc. that can be traced to Derrida the author,
thinker, philosopher, artist, politician, ethicist, etc.
We come now to our final characteristic, namely, the plurality of egos that constitute
the authorial function. One can distinguish the person, the physical writer Derrida,
from his texts, and one can also distinguish the third ego, the ego that works with and/
or against the legacy of Derrida. The Derridean, who claims to draw from the
authorship of Derrida to make certain claims or carry out certain projects, is vital in
expanding the significance or discursive power of Derrida the author because he or she
continues to keep the Derridean discourse alive in a certain given, historical context.
Thus far, what I have tried to show is that if we accept Foucaults analysis, we
can uncover certain enonces that condition the existence of the authorial function or
discourse we call Derrida. The construction that has gone into Derrida is more
than a private fashioning on the part of Derrida, as Rorty claims; it is a complex
network of elements and relations that work together to shape the existence of
Derrida the author. I may have created the impression thus far that Derrida was
merely a creation of external sources, but this is not true. Derrida cooperated in this
fashioning, he worked with colleagues and against critics to create an authorial
place for himself. Recall that the two etymological roots of authorship refer to
something being proper or authentic to one-self but also to one who in ancient Rome
held the office of public increases or awards, who would launch or originate
something meant for public use or the common good. Derrida used what Foucault
called technologies of the self to better understand and fashion himself.
Derrida as Self-Fashioning
The objective and subjective fashioning that gives rise to Derrida the author bespeaks a
certain use and deployment of power. Both Foucault and Derrida rightly see part of this
power as critical insofar as deconstruction could be read as the serious attempt to show
the limitations of oppressive nature of what Derrida calls a meta-physics of presence,
where meaning is considered as a unified, totalizing, holistic project. It would be fair to
say that both Foucault and Derrida shared the same critical struggle to change their
readers thinking on the nature of meaning and truth through critical analysis, albeit in
different methodological forms. Those who are sympathetic or reject this critical
approach would, in turn, try to establish ways of thinking and acting that would best
suit their support or antipathy to the Foucaultian or Derridean projects. But, if we
continue following our Foucaultian method, we have to ask what kind of power
becomes manifest in the discourse we call Derrida? What kind of exclusions and/or
inclusions? Is power merely a militant critique as Derrida defines it in Rogues?
(2004)5 Here, again, the discussion becomes complex. I cannot pretend to deliver a full
5

See Derridas discussion of the five foyers of the democracy to come in his Rogues (2004).

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genealogical account here in the scope of this paper, but I would like to perhaps sketch
some points of interest.
First, I would like to examine Derridas self-fashioning. Foucault defines
technologies of the self as a specific historical domain that needs to be explored. He
defines the technologies of the self as reflective and voluntary practices by which
humans not only fix for themselves rules of conduct but also seek to transform
themselves, to modify their singular beings and to make their lives a work
(Foucault 1994, n. 338, p. 545). When chided by Richard Rorty about his private
self-fashioning, Derrida replies that although he greatly respected Rortys reading,
he had to disagree. Derrida maintains that Rortys distinction between private and
public, where the private refers to the singular, is untenable. Derrida remarks,
I must say that I obviously cannot accept the public/private distinction in
the way he uses it in relation to my work. This distinction has a long history, of
which the genealogy is not so well known, but if I have tried to withdraw a
dimension of experiencewhether I call it singularity, the secret or
whateverfrom the public or political sphere, and I will come back to this, I
would not call it this private. In other words, for me the private is not defined
by the singular (I do not say personal, because I find this a slightly confused
notion) or the secret. In so far as I try to thematize a dimension of the secret
that is absolutely irreducible to the public, I also resist the application of the
public/private distinction to this dimension. (1996, pp. 7879)
Derrida argues that his use of the word secret is not to be confused with what
Rorty means by private. In fact, Derrida criticizes Western political discourse
because it touts democracy as openness, where all are equal and the public realm is
open to all (2004, p. 81), yet this very openness is cause for alarm, especially when
it comes to state security, thereby increasing the necessity of state secrets and
confidential documents, etc. to which no one has rights. The contradiction that lies
within Western politics is described as hegemonic and dominant (Derrida
2004, p. 81).
In attempting to think through the category of the secret, Derrida sees himself as
trying to challenge and undo this very paradox at the core of Western political
discourse. It is this very closedness or totalitarianism in Western thinking that
Derrida tries to undo with his own thought. His democracy to come is precisely
defined as a militant critique that examines these very paradoxes at the core of
Western politics. Another paradox of Western democracy that Derrida looks at is
the very nature of the claim of freedom within Western democracy. People are free,
but they are only free insofar as they are legitimately sanctioned by law to be free in
state constitutions, etc. There is a double bind. On one hand, we claim to be free,
but, on the other hand, in fact, we require our freedom to be sanctioned ab initio
(Derrida 1996, p. 81). More specifically, we should see his critiques of capital
punishment (Abu-Jamal) (Abu-Jamal and Derrida 1999) and abuses of human rights
(Bosnia) (Derrida 2001b) and terrorism (9/11) (Borradori 2003) as critiques of
Western liberal discourse that consistently tend to ignore the double-binds that
structure and make possible its own political structure. In the case of Abu Jamal, for
example, you have a country that claims that people are free and have an inalienable

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right to life, property and freedom, and yet, the system sees no problem in stripping
these very inalienable rights when it is convenient or judged fitting, resulting in
what Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben call the state of exception.
Derrida is acutely aware that he has launched a movement called deconstruction
but he also recognizes that he alone is not the sole creator and fashioning agent. He
admits there are at least two different versions of deconstruction: the French and
North American versions (Derrida 1996, pp. 8388). Derrida tackles critics who
argue that deconstruction is pointless and meaningless. If it is true that
deconstruction is pointless and meaningless, then why, Derrida asks, do so many
people want to get rid of it? He is puzzled by this fact (1996, p. 85). One merely has
to think of the Cambridge fiasco where leading Anglo-American philosophers,
including Quine, petitioned to block the honorary doctorate to Derrida. However,
as time passes, and when I see so many people trying to get rid of this word [i.e.
deconstruction], I ask myself whether there is not perhaps something in it (Derrida
1996, p. 85). Furthermore, Derrida notes that what deconstruction takes seriously is
the fact that the self called Derrida, to borrow from Foucault, is a creation of
human beings that practice (for and against) reflexive and voluntary rules on how to
interpret deconstruction and Derrida. Derrida is affected by these rules and is
formed as well as being formative.
I have the same feeling as Rorty in the sense that deconstruction, in the
manner in which it is utilized and put to work, is always a highly unstable and
almost empty motif. And I would insist that everyone can use this motif as
they please to serve quite different political perspectives, which would seem to
mean that deconstruction is politically neutral. (Derrida 1996, p. 85)
Neutrality here refers to the fact that deconstruction de natura can alter and shift its
meaning depending upon the discourse it finds itself in. It is used and regulated in
certain ways, much as Foucault rightly discerned about the nature of all discourses.
The rules, creators of such rules, and the use of such rules in certain contexts will
create a discourse to which we can point and discuss. Derridas neutrality does not
refer to a non-partisan and objective neutrality; here he is being ironic and
redefining the use of the term as multi functional and discursive.
Derrida has been used in different discourses and different political battles as an
authority (Enns 2007). Think of his cross-over into literature, education, sexuality
studies and sexual politics, media, and university discourses. He remarks,
But, the fact that deconstruction is apparently politically neutral allows, on the
one hand, a reflection on the nature of the political, and on the other hand, and
this is what interests me in deconstruction, a hyper-politicization. Deconstruction is hyper-politicizing in following paths and codes which are clearly
not traditional, and I believe it awakens politicization in the way I mentioned
above, that is, it permits us to think the political and think the democratic by
granting us the space necessary in order not to be enclosed in the latter. In
order to continue to pose the question of the political it is necessary to
withdraw something from the political and the same thing for democracy,
which, of course, makes democracy a very paradoxical concept. (1996, p. 85)

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It is this very cross-over and this cross-fertilization in various discourses that really
helps deconstruction be neutral and hyper-political.
Derrida, as author of deconstruction and as author of his deconstructive political
program, has undoubtedly had a huge influence on politics, especially as he is
understood as a controversial author (Hobson et al. 2006, pp. 303314). Derrida the
author of deconstruction and the author of himself as the cluster Derrida
commanded (and still does albeit not in the same way as when he was living6) great
political force. In a famous7 interview about 9/11 with Giovanna Borradori, he
weighs in on the then-recent political event. He critiques George W. Bush and the
perpetrators of 9/11, but he does so in a peculiar way, showing how their respective
naming of situations and events is rife with imprecision and confusion. For example,
he challenges the whole notion of war and the political status of terrorism as
international (Borradori 2004, pp. 156159). In this very same text, Derrida
develops and applies his own notion of auto-immunity (by referring to three
temps) where the double bind of life and suicide plays itself out (Borradori 2004,
pp. 144152).
If we apply what Foucault says about the authors four characteristics, we see that
Derridas speaking and writing, all acts of self and self-formation are clearly
political. There is a whole university and publishing network that will disseminate
his work and his person; it exists in many languages. The attention that Derrida
received for his comments on 9/11 were seized by others in order to show the
deficiency of American and European foreign policy. Most important, however, is
the fact that Derrida has a certain authority that comes with his authorial status. This
authority carries with it a certain power, which I will discuss later.
The root sense of author is that of a political office associated with increasing
certain privileges and benefits. Without a doubt, whoever uses and employs
Derridas thought to argue or even critique a certain position, appeals to an
authoritative author. It is not only what Derrida says, but that it is Derrida himself
that says it. A similar critique could have well been made by a good Derridean
deconstructionist, but it certainly would not have had the same political force of
something that came from Derridas own person. As Derrida wrote and authored his
works, as he spoke and lobbied for certain changes, the clusters of meanings
associated with his name and deconstruction acquired not only new but also
powerful senses. Derrida himself admits that he has been met with such contempt
and downright hatred. If he is so insignificant as an author, then why all of the
attention and controversy? This is the case because his very authoring of himself as
writer, philosopher, activists, etc., carried with it a unique power. The ideas without
Derrida himself will never have the same power as when they were expressed by
Derrida himself. Now that he is dead, his authorial authority has suffered a
significant change, just as has Foucaults.
Thus far, I have tried to unpack what one could possibly intend by Derrida the
author. I examined Derrida from the perspective of Foucaults four authorial
6

This is significant because it demonstrates that Derrida was more powerful when alive and making
appearances as opposed to now, when all we have are his words, his legacy.

Famous and forceful because it was Derrida and not some unknown figure.

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characteristics and I also presented Derridas own views concerning his selffashioning. Together, we have the beginnings of a genealogy of Derrida the author. I
would like to examine one very important element that cannot be ignored, namely,
power. For Foucault, power was both limiting and repressive but also creative. He
saw his genealogy as a means to understand the construction and playing out of
power, which could, in turn, act as a critique of repressive power. Both Derrida and
Foucault share the same conviction when it comes to their own philosophiesthey
are very critical and seek to show the underlying structures and contradictions that
lie at the core of any hegemonic or totalitarian political regime. How would a
Foucaultian look at Derridean power?
Negatively, there are two dangers. First, there is the danger of the Derridean
discourse being totalized as the only way to read texts. The hostility and opposition
to deconstruction in departments of philosophy and literature is not only rooted in a
rejection of Derridas philosophical claims but also in the use and abuse of
deconstruction by academics themselves. Often, and this used to be prevalent at
many conferences, presenters would use deconstruction as a vehicle to justify and
say pretty much what they wanted. Derrida is aware of this tendency, and hence, the
above-mentioned comments on deconstruction being whatever what one wanted it
to be. Here, one finds a crude relativism and interpretative nihilism that Derrida
himself is sceptical of, although he admits that it is possible within his system to
come to such a conclusion about deconstruction.
For a Foucaultian, and this brings me to my second point, the problem lies in the
fact that every discourse still has some unified sense or core of meaning. It is
understandable and can be chronicled and dissected. Derridas claims concerning
the impossibility of origins and the iterability of meaning fail to make presentable
any content of any given discourse, especially political ones. Foucault views
deconstruction as undermining the very possibility of critique because it renders
impossible any unified senses that would emerge from a genealogy of discourses.
This is the core of Foucaults rebuttal of Derridas analysis of the cogito in the
History of Madness. But, though there is iterability and a constant differentiating of
meaning, this movement of differance does not flow at such a rate or speed that
change is not traceable or imperceptible. Differentiating meanings can be examined
if the rate of iterability and differentiation is equal to or slower than the rate of
conscious understanding (Calcagno 2007b). There is a legacy that one can work
with as evidenced by the Derridean oeuvre that deals with a vast amount of texts and
political problems that can be examined and looked at.
Derrida has significantly reworked key figures within the history of Western
philosophy, including Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Rousseau,
Kant, Edmund Husserl, etc. The impact of his authorship has been that we no longer
read these authors in the same way; he has created a legacy of new readings that in
time will be reread and reworked, thereby confirming what he saw as the inevitable
and irreducible work of differance. Derridas fidelity to his deconstructive project
was central in the fashioning of his politics. His politics were an extension of his
own views on authorship. Derrida was always a political thinker, though the
language of later texts became more explicitly political. As he thought about politics
and political events (e.g. 9/11 or the 11th of September), he developed a

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49

vocabulary to show how his earlier notions of differance and ecriture could be
reworked to show the double bind at play in auto-immunity and the democracy to
come. The latter does not refer to an ideal political state that will one day appear;
rather, the democracy to come concerns the inherent double bind within any
political situation.
First, it shows that there is always more to be done in order to bring about any
kind of justice that is always coincidental with injustice. Second, it shows how our
political notions always run the risk of becoming fixed political ideals or goals,
thereby crushing the iterability at work in any thinking or acting in politics. What
we think about and how we act in politics is never identical with how we speak or
express it. There is always a disjunction at play in our awareness and speaking and
acting within politics; there is always some kind of gap. This gap or interval is what
facilitates the alteration of and experience of meanings, including those of politics.
For example, when Derrida speaks of political forgiveness (2001a) as in the case of
the Holocaust, he says that such forgiveness is truly impossible as the victims are no
longer living and cannot forgive their murderers. Yet, politicians and religious
leaders today ask for forgiveness; they continue to be ashamed, even though they
themselves did not commit any crime. They appeal for forgiveness to those who are
not present to forgive. There is a double bind at play here. Derrida consistently was
identified with the double bind of impossibility and possibility, even as it manifested
itself in politics. No matter where he went, he was deconstruction. People could
anticipate the same, consistent logic, but always expressed in new language and
terms. In fashioning himself, he fashioned a certain political style, critique or
position.
The more creative side of the power of Derridean deconstruction, and this is more
from Derrida himself than from Foucault, who remained sceptical of deconstruction
as a philosophy, can be seen, for example, in one of Derridas very last texts,
Rogues. Derridas language here is unusually frank and pointed. When writing
this text he knew his end was near, and one can sense the urgency in Derridas
voice. He urges us to fight and to change the present day state of affairs, namely, the
presumed rationality and legitimacy of Western liberal democracy. He speaks in a
straightforward manner, identifying his later notion of the democracy to come with
five foyers or entry ways. He sees deconstruction as the democracy to come, that is,
the very articulation of the double-bind of possibility and impossibility that is at
the core of differances application to the political. The democracy to come
recapitulates themes that have been consistently prevalent in Derridas work right
from the beginning. The five foyers of the democracy to come include: (1) a militant
political critique without end; (2) an advent that will never come to show itself fully
(the promise); (3) a moving beyond borders and citizenship to an international
notion of sovereignty that differentiates itself and shares new things (nouveaux
partages); (4) justice; (5) an unconditional injunction to let the political and the
democratic come (Derrida 2003, pp. 126135). These five foyers can be read as a
political guide for a deconstructive approach to politics, but to do so would miss the
political force or power of Derrida as an author. These foyers are not merely objects
to which we must conform; rather, they are extensions of Derrida himself, his own
creations. We are faced with a double bind here: We cannot be like or follow

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Derrida as he is no longer, and the meanings of Derridas deconstructive project will

continue to change. We can never repeat the Derrida that was, but his legacy
continues to haunt us. Politically, Derridean authorship, as in the case of the
democracy to come, reveals two important structures at play in any authorial politics
(that is, politics authored by someone and politics that carry authority by virtue of
the author herself).
First, the legacy of the author, as Foucault shows, can be named and pointed to;
he or she carries with him or her cluster of referents that are not absolutely fixed but
which unfold in and through time. Second, as Foucault rightly observed, any kind of
authorship carries with it a certain legacy. Derrida is not anonymous and neither is
his thought. He is the author of himself and his political legacy. Political power,
then, is not only structural, as both Foucault and Derrida claim, but it is also
profoundly subjective as is evidenced by the impact and force of the author Derrida
and deconstruction. Deconstruction, without the personality and person of its author,
would mean precious little politically if it were not backed up by the very authority
of the author Derrida.
Derridas political legacy, much like Foucaults, is one of hope, understanding
and change. Like Foucault, there is an emphasis on critique of totalitarian or
hegemonic political rule but there is also an articulation of what Derrida feels
deconstruction can create: new political structures and new political meanings and
ways of understanding ourselves, which are both self-creations and authorial
creations of others. In the end, a Foucaultian analysis of Derrida the author reveals
two philosophers that share similar aspirations, especially political ones, but two
different approaches to similar problems and contexts. This similarity, however,
does not imply that the two discourses of Derrida as author and Foucault as author
are collapsible to or identifiable with one another. Their discursive differences speak
for themselves.8

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8

I would very much like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of Human Studies who read a draft of
this article. Their suggestions and critiques were very insightful and helped with the reworking of the
article.

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