Comments

Straussian "Marxism," assuming that the eponym is not merely a Structure, Sign, Perhaps something has occurred in the his-
pseudonym for Hegel? In the traditional academic slaughter of the tory of the concept of structure that could
father, one of the most popular, if confusing, variations seems to be and Play in be called an "event," if this loaded word
the adoption of one or more surrogate "fathers'' whose chastity in the did not entail a meaning which it is pre-
alleged paternity seems beyond doubt. the Discourse of cisely the function of structural-or struc-
the Human turalist-thought to reduce or to suspect.
But let me use the term "event" anyway,
Sciences 1 employing it with caution and as if in quo-
tation marks. In this sense, this event will
have the exterior fonn of a mpture and a
Jacques Derrida redoubling.
Ecole Nonnale Superieure It would be easy enough to show that the
concept of structure and even the word
"structure" itself are as old as the episteme
-that is to say, as old as western science
and western philosophy-and that their
roots thrust deep into the soil of ordinary
language, into whose deepest recesses the
episteme plunges to gather them together
once more, making them part of itself in a
metaphorical displacement. Nevertheless, up
until the event which I wish to mark out
and define, structure-or rather the struc-
turality of structure-although it has al-
ways been involved, has always been neu-
tralized or reduced, and this by a process
of giving it a center or referring it to a
point of presence, a fixed origin. The func-
tion of this center was not only to orient,
balance, and organize the structure-one
cannot in fact conceive of an unorganized
structure-but above all to make sure that
the organizing principle of the structure
would limit what we might call the free-
• ''La Structure. le signe et le jeu dans le discow:s
des sciences humaines." The text which follows is
a translation of the revised version of M. Der-
rida's communication. The word "jeu" is variously
tr:anslated here as "play," "interplay," "game," and
"stake," besides the nonnative uanslation "free•
play." All footnotes to this article are additions by
the translator.

2 47
 Jacques Derrida Structure, Sign, 1111d Play

play of the structure. No doubt that by orienting and organizing the If this is so, the whole history of the concept of structure, before
coheren7e of the sy~te?', the center of a structure permits the free- the rupture I spoke of, must be thought of as a series of substitutions
play of Its elemen~ ms1de the total fonn. And even today the notion of center for center, as a linked chain of determinations of the center.
of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself. Successively, and in a regulated fashion, the center receives different
Nevenh~less, the center also closes off the frecplay it opens up and fonns or names. The history of metaphysics, like the history of the
makes poSS1ble. Qua center, it is the point at which the substitution of West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. Its matrix-
contents,_ clements, or tenns is no longer possible. At the center, the if you will pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being so
permutation or the transformation of elements ( which may of course ellipitical in order to bring me more quickly to my principal :heme-
be structures enclosed within a structure) is forbidden. At least this is the determination of being as presence in all the senses of this word.
permutation has always remained interdicted 2 (I use this word dc- It ,vould be possible to show that all the names related to funda-
liberatcl)'. ): Thus. it has always been thought that the center, which is mentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated the
by .definmon unique, constituted that very thing within a structure constant of a presence-eidos, arche, telos, energeia, ousia ( essence,
which governs the structure, while escaping structurality. This is why existence, substance, subject) aletheia, transcendentality, consciousness,
classical. thought_ c?ncerning structure could say that the center is, or conscience, God, m:111, and so forth.
paradoxically, wuhm the structure and outside it. The center is at the The event I called a rupture, the disruption I alluded to at the be-
cent~ of .the totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the ginning of this paper, would presumably have come about when the
totality (1s not part of the totality), the totality has its center else- structurality of structure had to begin to be thought, that is to say,
where. The cen~er is not the center. The concept of centered struc- repeated, and this is why I said that this disruption was repetition in
ture-although It represents coherence itself the condition of the all of the senses of this word. From then on it became necessary to
episteme as philosophy or science-is contradictorily coherent. And, think the law which governed, as it were, the desire for the center in
as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of a desire. the constitution of structure and the process of signification prescrib-
The concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of a freeplay ing its displacements and its substitutions for this law of the central
based on a fun~amental ground, a freeplay which is constituted upon presence-but a central presence which was never itself, which has
a fundamental immobility and a reassuring certitude, which is itself always already been transported outside itself in its surrogate. The
beyond the reach .of t~e freep!ay. With this certitude anxiety can be surrogate docs not substitute itself for anything which has_ someh?w
m~tcr~d, !or a~ety 1s invariably the result of a certain mode of pre-existed it. From then on it was probably necessary to begm to think
be1?g implicated m the game, of being caught by the game, of being that there was no center, that the center could not be thought in the
as ~t were from the very beginning at stake in the game.a From the fonn of a being-present, that the center had no natural locus, that it
basis of what we therefore call the center (and which, because it can was not a :fixed locus but a function, a sort of non-locus in which an
be eith~r inside or outside, is as re~~ly called the origin as the end, innnite number of sign-substitutions came into play. This moment was
as readily arche as telos), the repetitions, the substitutions, the trans- that in which language invaded the universal problematic; that in
fonn~tions, and the p~uta?ons are always taken from a history of which, in the absence of a center or origin, everything became dis-
meaning [sens]-that 1s, a history, period-whose origin may always course-provided we can agree on this word-t_hat. is to say, ~v?en
be revealed or whose end may always be anticipated in the form of everything became a system where the central s1gn1fied, the original
presence. This is why one could perhaps say that the movement of or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system
any archeology, like that of any eschatology, is an accomplice of this of differences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the
re?uction of the structurality ~f structure and always attempts to con- domain and the interplay of signification ad infinitum.
ceive of structure from the basis of a full presence which is out of play. Where and how does this deccntering, this notion of the structurality
: !.nterdit~: "f?rbidd_cn." "d_isconccrtc~,'' "coru;oundcd," "speechless." of structure, occur? It would be somewhat naive to refer to an event,
,. • • • _qui ~an t~~Jours dune. certamc manierc d'&tre impliqu~ clans le jcu, a doctrine, or an author in order to designate this occurrence. It is no
d etre pns au Jeu, d etrc comme etre d'enttte de jcu d:ans le jcu." doubt part of the totality of an era, our own, but still it has already

249
 Jacques Derrida Structure, Sig11 1 and P!.ty

begun to proclaim itself and begun to work. Nevertheless, if I wished the critique we are directing against this complicity, without the risk
to give some sort of indication by choosing one or two "names," and of erasing difference [altogether J in the self-identity of a signified re-
by recalling those authors in whose discourses this occurrence has most ducing into itself its signifier, or, what amounts to the same thing,
nearly maintained its most radical formulation, I would probably cite simply expelling it outside itself. For there are two hetcrogenous
the Nietzschean critique of metaphysics, the critique of the concepts ,1·ays of erasing the difference bet\\'een the signifier and the signified:
of being and truth, for which were substituted the concepts of play, in- one, the classic way, consists in reducing or deriving the signifier,
terpretation, and sign (sign without truth present); the Freudian critique that is to say, ultimately in mbmitting the sign to thought; the other,
or self-presence, that is, the critique of consciousness, of the subject, of the one we are using here against the first one, consists in putting into
self-identity and of self-proximity or self-possession; and, more radi- question the system in which the preceding reduction functioned:
cally, the Heideggerean destruction of metaphysics, of onto-theology, first and foremost, the opposition between the sensible and the intelli-
of the determination of being as presence. But all these destructive dis- gible, The paradox is that the metaphysical reduction of the sign
courses and all their analogues are trapped in a sort of circle. This needed the opposition it was reducing. The opposition is part of the
circle is unique. It describes the form of the relationship between the system, along with the reduction. And what I am saying here about
history of metaphysics and the destruction of the history of meta- the sign can be extended to all the concepts and all the sentences of
physics. There is no sense in doing without the concepts of meta- metaphysics, in particular to the discourse on "structure." But there
physics in order to attack metaphysics. \Ve have no language-no are many ways of being caught in this circle. They are all more or
syntax and no lexicon-which is alien to this history; we cannot utter less naive, more or less empirical, more or less systematic, more or less
a single destructive proposition which has not already slipped into the close to the formulation or even to the formalization of this circle.
form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks It is these differences which explain the multiplicity of destructive
to contest. To pick out one example from many: the metaphysics of discourses and the disagreement between those who make them. It was
presence is attacked with the help of the concept of the sign. But within concepts inherited from metaphysics that Nietzsche, Freud,
from the moment anyone wishes this to show, as I suggested a moment and Heidegger worked, for example. Since these concepts are not ele-
ago, that there is no transcendental or privileged signified and that the ments or atoms and since they are taken from a syntax and a system,
domain or the interplay of signification has, henceforth, no limit, he every particular borrowing drags along with it the whole of meta-
ought to extend his refusal to the concept and to the word sign itself- physics. This is what allows these destroyers to destroy each other
which is precisely what cannot be done. For the signification "sign" reciprocally-for example, Heidegger considering Nietzsche, with as
has always been comprehended and determined, in its sense, as sign-of, much lucidity and rigor as bad faith and misconstruction, as the last
signifier referring to a signified, signifier different from its signified. metaphysician, the last "Platonist." One could do the same for Heideg-
If one erases the radical difference between signifier and signified, it is ger himself, for Freud, or for a number of others. And today no
the word signifier itself which ought to be abandoned as a metaphysi- exercise is more widespread.
cal concept. 'When Levi-Strauss says in the preface to Tbe Raw and What is the relevance of this formal schema when we turn to what
the Cooked 4 that he has "sought to transcend the opposition between are called the "human sciences"? One of them perhaps occupies a privi-
the sensible and the intelligible by placing f himself] from the very leged place-ethnology. One can in fact assume that ethnology could
beginning at the level of signs," the necessity, the force, and the have been born as a science only at the moment when a de-centering
legitimacy of his act cannot make us forget that the concept of the had come about: at the moment when European culture-and, in
sign cannot in itself surpass or bypass this opposition between the conseqnence, the hist0ry of metaphysics and of its concepts-had
sensible and the intelligible. The concept of the sign is determined by been dislocated, driven from its locus, and forced to stop considering
this opposition: through and throughout the totality of its history and itself as the culture of reference. This moment is not first and foremost
by its system. But we cannot do without the concept of the sign, we a moment of philosophical or scientific discourse. it is also a moment
cannot give up this metaphysical complicity without also giving up which is political, economic, technical, and so forth. One can say in
• Le cru et le cttit (Paris: Pion, 1964), total assurance that there is nothing fortuitous about the fact that the
::,
..t:. 250
c.o
Jacques Derrida Structure, Sign, and Play

critique of ethnocentrism-the very condition of ethnology-should his quest and from his first book, The Elemnztar~ Structures o~ Kin-
be systematically and historically contemporaneous with the destmc• ship II Levi-Strauss has felt at one and the same time the necessity of
tion of the history of metaphysics. Both belong to a single and same era. utiliring this opposition and the impossibility of making it accep~blc.
Ethnology-like any science-comes about within the element of In the Elementary Structures, he begins from this axiom or de.6.mtion:
discourse. And it is primarily a European science employing tradi• that belongs to nature which is universal and spo~taneous, not de-
tional concepts, however much it may struggle against them. Conse• pending on any particular culture or on any determinate norm. That
quendy, whether he wants to or not-and this does not depend on bdongs to culture, on the other hand, which depends on a system of
a decision on his part-the ethnologist accepts into his discourse the norms regulating society and is therefore capa~l~ of vary mg from
premises of ethnocentrism at the very moment when he is employed one social structure to another. These two de.6.runons are of the tra-
in denouncing them. This necessity is irreducible; it is not a historical ditional type. But, in the very first pages of the Elementary Structures,
contingency. We ought to consider very carefully all its implications. Levi-Strauss, who has begun to give these concepts an accepta_ble
But if nobody can escape this necessity, and if no one is therefore standing, encounters what he calls a scandal, that is t? .say, something
responsible for giving in to it, however little, this does not mean that which no longer tolerates the nature/culture opp0S1n~n he has a':-
all the ways of giving in to it are of an equal pertinence. The quality cepted and which seems to require at one_ and the sa;ne t"':e the pred~-
and the fecundity of a discourse are perhaps measured by the critical cates of nature and those of culture. This scandal LS the incest-prohi-
rigor with which this relationship to the history of metaphysics and bition. Tile incest-prohibition is universal; in this sense one coul? call
to inherited concepts is thought. Herc it is a question of a critical re- it natural. But it is also a prohibition, a system of norms and inter-
lationship to the language of the human sciences and a question of a dicts; in this sense one could call it cultural.
critical responsibility of the discourse. It is a question of putting ex:•
pressly and systematically the problem of the status of a discourse Let us assume therefore that everything universal in man derives. from ~h~
which borrows from a heritage the resources necessary for the de- order of nature and is characterized by spontaneity, that eveirching whic
construction of that heritage itself. A problem of economy and is subject to a norm belongs to culture and presents the attributes of the
strategy. relative and the particular. We then find ourselves confronted ~y a fa<=:,
If I now go on to employ an examination of the texts of Levi-Strauss or rather an ensemble of facts, which, in the light of ~h~, preced!ng defiru-
tions, is not far from appearing ~ a scand~I: !he prohib_mon of incest pre-
as an example, it is not only because of the privilege accorded to sents without the least equivocation, and indissolubly h_nked to~her, the
ethnology among the human sciences, nor yet because the thought of two characteristics in which we recognized the contradictory attributes of
Levi-Strauss weighs heavily on the contemporary theoretical situa• two exclusive orders. The prohibition of incest constimtes a ~e, but ~ role,
tion. It is above all because a certain choice has made itself evident alone of all the social rules, which possesses at the same t:imC a uruversal
in the work of Levi-Stra~ and because a certain doctrine has been character ( P· 9) •
elaborated there, and precisely in a more or less explicit '111A1ffle7', in
relation to this critique of language and to this critical language in Obviously there is no scandal except in the interior of a system of
the human sciences. concepts sanctioning the difference between nature an? _c_ulture. I~
In order to follow this movement in the text of Levi-Stra~ let beginning his work with the factum of the incest-prohi_b1n~n, Lev1-
me choose as one guiding thread among others the opposition between Stra~ thus puts himself in a position entaili~g that this differe_nce,
nature and culture. In spite of all its rejuvenations and its disguises, which has always been assumed to be self-evident, _becomes o~~t~-
this opposition is congenital to philosophy. It is even older than Plato. atcd or disputed. For, from the moment that the mcest-pro~b1no~
It is at least as old as the Sophists. Since the statement of the opposi- can no longer be conceived within the nature/culture oppostnon,. 1t
tion-pbysis/nomos, ,pbysis/tecbne-it has been passed on to us by can no longer be said that it is a scandalous fact, a n?cleus of OF,<=;tty
a whole historical chain which opposes "nature" to the law, to edu- within a network of transparent significations. The 111cest-prohib1non
cation, to art, to technics-and also to liberty, to the arbitrary, to , Le, nructurtt llhnmtairei de /11 t,11Tenti (Paris: Pres.us Universitaires de
history, to society, to the mind, and so on. From the beginnings of
Fnnce, 1949).
253
Jacques Derrida Structure, Sign, and Play

is no longer a scandal one meets with or comes up against in the do- would be more apt to say today: state of nature and state of culture),
main of traditional concepts; it is something which escapes these con- while lacking any acceptable historical signification, presents a value
cepts and certainly precedes them-probably as the condition of their which fully justifies its use by modem sociology: its value as a meth-
possibility. It could perhaps be said that the whole of philosophical odological instrument."
conceptualization, systematically relating itself to the nature/culture Levi-Strauss will always remain faithful to this double intention: to
opposition, is designed to leave in the domain of the unthinkable the preserve as an instrument that whose truth-value he criticizes.
very thing that makes this conceptualization possible: the origin of On the one band, he will continue in effect to contest the value of
the prohibition of incest. the nature/culture opposition. More than thirteen years after the Ele-
I have dealt too cursorily with this example, only one among so mentary Structures, The Savage Mind• faithfully echoes the text I
many others, but the example nevertheless reveals that language bears have just quoted: "The opposition between nature and culture ':"hie~
within itself the necessity of its own critique. This critique may be I have previously insisted on seems today to offer a value which 1s
undertaken along two tracks, in two "manners." Once the limit of above all methodological." And this methodological _val~e is. not _af-
nature/culture opposition makes itself felt, one might want to qu~ fected by its "ontological" non-value (as could be said, 1f this notion
tion systematically and rigorously the history of these concepts. This were not suspect here): "It would not be enough to have a~sorbed
is a first action. Such a systematic and historic questioning would be particular humanities into a general humanity; this first enterpnse pre-
neither a philological nor a philosophical action in the classic sense of pares the way for others .•. which belong to the natural a?d exact
these words. Concerning oneself with the founding concepts of the sciences: to reintegrate culture into nature, and finally, to reintegrate
whole history of philosophy, de-constituting them, is not to undertake life into the totalit_v of its physiochemical conditions" (p. 327).
the task of the philologist or of the classic historian of philosophy. In On the other hand, still in The Savage Mind, he presents as what
spite of appearances, it is probably the most daring way of making he calls bricolage1 what might be called the discourse of this method.
the beginnings of a step outside of philosophy. The step "outside The hricoleur, says Levi-Strauss, is someone who uses "the means at
philosophy" is much more difficult to conceive than is generally hand," that is, rhe instruments he finds at his disposition around him,
imagined by those who think they made it long ago with cavalier ease, those which are already there, which had not been especially conceived
and who are in general swallowed up in metaphysics by the whole with an eye to the operation for which they are to be us~d ~nd to
body of the discourse that they claim to have disengaged from it. which one tries by trial and erl'Or to adapt them, not hesitating to
In order to avoid the possibly sterilizing effect of the first way, the change them whenever it appears necessary, or to try several of them
other choice-which I feel corresponds more nearly to the way chosen at once, even if their form and their origin are heterogenous-and so
by Levi-Strau~onsists in conserving in the field of empirical dis- forth. There is therefore a critique of language in the form of hricolage,
covery all these old concepts, while at the same time exposing here and it has even been possible to say that bricolage is the critical lan-
and there their limits, treating them as tools which can still be of use. guage itself. I am thinking in particular of the article by G. Genett~,
No longer is any truth-value attributed to them; there is a readiness "Structuralisme ct Critique litteraire," published in homage to Levi-
to abandon them if necessary if other instruments should appear more Strauss in a special issue of L'Arc (no. 26, 1965), where it is stated
useful. In the meantime, their relative efficacy is exploited, and they that the analysis of brico/age could "be applied almost word for word"
are employed to destroy the old machinery to which they belong and to criticism, and especially to "literary criticism." 8
of which they themselves are pieces. Thus it is that the language of If one calls bricolage the necessity of borrowing one's concepts from
the human sciences criticizes itself. Levi-Strauss thinks that in this way the text of a heritage which is more or less coheren: or ruined, it mu~t
he can separate method from truth, the instruments of the method and be said that every discourse is hricoler1,r. The engineer, whom Levi-
the objective significations aimed at by it. One could almost say that
this is the primary affirmation of Levi-Strauss; in any event, the first • L11 pemle 111rw11ge (Paris: Pion. 1961 ).
• A bricoleur is a jack-of-all trades, someone who potters about with odds-and-
words of the Elementary Stmctures are: "One begins to understand ends, who puts things together out of bits and pieces.
that the distinction between state of nature and state of society (we • Reprinted in: G. Genette, Figrrrer (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966), p. 145.

254
 Jacques Derrida Structure, Sign, and Play

Strauss opposes to the bricoleur, should be the one to construct the merit this name and this treatment. The name is specious and the use
totality of his language, syntax, and lexicon. In this sense the engineer of the myth improper, This myth deserves no more than any other
is a myth. A subject who would supposedly be the absolute origin its referential privilege:
of his own discourse and would supposedly construct it "out of noth-
ing," "out of whole cloth," would be the creator of the verbe, the In fact the Bororo myth which will from now on be designated by the name
verbe itself. The notion of the engineer who had supposedly broken rtference-mytb is, as l shall try to show, nothing other than a more or _less
with all forms of bricolage is therefore a theological idea; and since forced transformation of other myths originating either in the same soc1~ty
Levi-Strauss tells us elsewhere that bricolage is mythopoctic, the odds or in societies more or Jess far removed. lt would therefore have been legm-
are that the engineer is a myth produced by the bricoleur. From the mate to choose as my point of departure any representative of the group
moment that we cease to believe in such an engineer nnd in a discourse whaaoever. From this point of view, the interest of the reference-myth does
breaking with the received historical discourse, as soon as it is ndmitted not depend on its typical character, but rather on its irregular position in the
that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage, and that midst of a group (p. 10).
the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs then the 2) There is no unity or absolute source of the myth. The focus or
very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took the source of the myth are always shadows and virtualities which ~re
on its meaning decomposes.
elusive, unactualizable, and nonexistent in the first place. Everything
This brings out the second thread which might guide us in what is begins with the structure, the configuration, the r_dationship: The dis•
being unraveled here.
course on this accntric structure, the myth, that IS, cannot itself have
Levi-Strauss describes bricolage not only as an intellectual activity an absolute subject or an absolute center. In order not to short change
but also as a mythopoetical activity. One reads in The Savage Mind, the form and the movement of the myth. that violence which con-
"Like bricolage on the technical level. mythical reflection can attain sists in centering a language which is describing an acentric structure
brilliant and unforeseen results on the intellectual level. Reciprocally, must be avoided. In this context, therefore it is necessary to forego
the mythopoetical character of bricolage has often been noted" (p. scientific or philosophical discourse, to renounce the tpisthne which
26).
absolutely requires, which is the absolute requirement that we go back
But the remarkable endeavor of Levi-Strauss is not simply to put to the source, to the center, to the founding basis, to the principle,
forward, notably in the most recent of his investigations, a structural and so on. In opposition to epistemic discourse, structural disc?urse
science or knowl~dge of myths and of mythological activity. His en- on myths-mythological discourse-must itself be mythomorpbtc. It
deavor also appears-I would say almost from the first-in the status
must have the form of that of which it speaks. This is what Levi•
which he accords to his own discourse on myths, to what he calls
Strauss says in Tbe Raw and the Cooked, from which I would now
his "mythologicals.'' It is here that his discourse on the myth reflects like to quote a long and remarkable pas.c;age:
on itself and criticizes itself. And this moment, this critical period, is
evidently of concern to all the languages which share the field of the In effect the study of myths poses 2 mcthodologic:al problem by the fact
human sciences. What does Levi-Strauss say of his "mythologicals"? that it c:annot conform to the Cartesian principle of dividing the difficulty
It is here that we rediscover the mythopoetical virtue (power) of into as rrumy pans as are necessary to resolve it. There exists no veritable
bricolage. In effect, what appears most fascinating in this critical search end or term to mythic:al analysis, no secret unity which could be grasped
for a new status of the discourse is the stated abandonment of all ref- at the end of the work of decomposition. The themes duplic:ate themselves
erence to a center, to a subject, to a privileged rtference, to an origin, to infinity. When we think we. have discnta~gled them from ~a~~ other
or to an absolute arche. The theme of this decentering could be fol- and c:an hold them separate, it is only to reallZC that they are 101rung to-
lowed throughout the "Overture" to his last book, The Ritw and the gether again, in response to the ~ttraction of un!orcseen a~niti~. I~ conse-
Cooked. I shall simply remark on a few key points. quence, the unity of the myth 1s only tendennal and pr0Ject1ve; 1t never
reflects a mte or a moment of the myth. An imaginary phenomenon implied
r) From the very start, Levi-Strauss recognizes that the Bororo by the ende:avor to interpret, its role is to give a synthetic fonn to the
myth which he employs in the book as the "reference-myth" does not myth and to impede its dissolution into the confusion of contraries. It could

257
 Jacques Derrida
Structure, Sign, and Play

therefore be said that the science or knowledge of myths is an anaclastic, sophical field. Empiricism would be th~ genu~ of which these faults
taking this ancient term in the widest sense authorized by its etymology, a
would always be the species. Trans-philosophical co~cepts would be
sc~ence which admits into its definition the study of the reflected rays along
with that of the broken ones. But, unlike philosophical reflection, which transformed into philosophical naivctes. One c~uld ~1ve many exam-
claims to go all the way back to its source, the reflections in question here ples to demonstrate this risk: the concepts of sign, history, truth, and
concern rays without any other than a vinual focus .... In wanting to so forth. What I want to emphasize is simply that the_ passage bey~nd
imitate the spontaneous movement of mythical thought, my enterprise, it- philosophy does not consist in turning the page of p~1losophy (_which
self too brief and too long, has had to yield to its demands and respect its usually comes down to philosophizing ~adly), but 1~ cont1~mng t~
rhythm. Thus is this book, on myths itself and in its own way, a myth. read philosophers in a certain way. The mk I a":1 speakm_g of 1s always
assumed by Levi-Strauss and it is the very price of his endea~or. I
This statement is repeated a little farther on (p. 20): "Since myths
have said that empiricism is the mat~i~ of all t~e foul.ts menacmg a
themselves rest on second-order codes (the first-order codes being
discourse which continues, as with Levi-Strauss m part1cul~~• ~o elect
those in which language consists), this book thus offers the rough
to be scientific. If we wanted to pose the problem of empmc1sm. and
draft of a third-order code, destined to insure the reciprocal possibiiity
of translation of several myths. This is why it would not be wrong
bricolage in depth, we would probably en~ up ve~y quic~ly with a
number of propositions absolutely contradictory m relation to the
to consider it a myth: the myth of mythology, as it were." It is by this
status of discourse in structural ethnography. On the one hand, struc-
a~sence of any real and fixed center of the mythical or mythological
turalism justly claims to be the critique of empi~i~ism. But at ~he same
discourse that the musical model chosen by Levi-Strauss for the com-
time there is not a single book or study by Levi-Strauss which does
position of his book is apparently justified. The absence of a center
not offer itself as an empirical essay which can always be completed
is here the absence of a subject and the absence of an author: "The
or invalidated by new information. The structural sc~emat~ are alw~ys
myth and the musical work thus appear as orchestra conductors whose
proposed as hypotheses resulting from a finite q~anmy of mformat1~n
listeners are the silent performers. If it be asked where the real focus
and which are subjected to the proof of expene_nce. Numerous texts
of the work is to be found, it must be replied that its determination
could be used to demonstrate this double postulation. Let us tu_rn once
is impossible. Music and mythology bring man face to face with virtual
again to the "Overture'' of The Raw an~ t?e Cooked,_ w~ere 1t see.ms
objects whose shadow alone is actual. ... Myths have no authors"
(p. 25). clear that if this postulation is double, it 1s because 1t 1s a quesnon
here of a language on language:
Thus it is at this point that ethnographic bricolage deliberately as-
sumes its mythopoctic function. But by the same token, this function
Critics who might take me to task for not having begun b~ making an ex-
makes the philosophical or epistemological requirement of a center haustive inventory of South American myths before analyzmg them would
appear as mythological, that is to say, as a historical illusion. be making a serious mistake about the nature and the role of the~e docu-
Nevertheless, even if one yields to the necessity of what Levi-Strauss ments. The totality of the myths of a people is of the order of the d1SCo~rse.
has done, one cannot ignore its risks. If the mythological is mytho- Provided that this people docs not become physically or morally e~tmct,
morphic, are all discourses on myths equivalent? Shall we have to this totality is never closed. Such a criticism would therefore be eqm~alcnt
abandon any epistemological requirement which permits us to dis- to reproaching a linguist with writing the grammar of a language w1t~out
tinguish between several qualities of discourse on the myth? A classic having recorded the totality of the words which ~ave been uttered smce
question, but inevitable. We cannot reply-and I do not believe Levi- that language came into existence and without kno~mg the ve_rbal exch~nges
Strauss replies to it-as long as the problem of the relationships be- which will take place as long as the language contmues to exist. Ex~nen~e
tween the philosopheme or the theorem, on the one hand, and the proves that an absurdly small number of sentences ... allows the lmgu~st
mytheme or the mythopoem(e), on the other, has not been expressly to elaborate a grammar of the language he is studying. And ~~~ a ~amal
grammar or an outline of a grammar represents valuable acqu1s1nons m the
posed. This is no small problem. For lack of expressly posing this prob-
case of unknown languages. Syntax does not wait until it has been possi~le
lem, we condemn ourselves to transforming the claimed transgression to enumerate a theoretically unlimited series of events ?efore ~ecommg
of philosophy into an unperceived fault in the interior of the philo- manifest, because syntax consists in the body of rules which presides over

259

)
Jacques Derrida Structure, Sign, and Play

the generation of these events. And it is precisely a syntax of South Ameri- supplement a lack on the part of the signified. Although Levi-Stra.uss
can mythology that I wanted to outline. Should new texts appear to enrich in his use of the word supplementary never emphasi:tes as I am doing
the mythical discourse, then this will provide an opportunity to check or here the two directions of meaning which are so strangely compounded
modify the way in which certain grammatical laws have been formulated, within it, it is not by chance that he uses this word twice in his "In-
an opportunity to discard certain of them and an opportunity to discover troduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss," 11 at the point where he
new ones. But in no instance can the requirement of a total mythical dis- is speaking of the "superabundance of signifier, in relation to the sig-
course be raised as an objection. For we have just seen that such a require- nifieds to which this superabundance can refer":
ment has no meaning (pp. 11-16).
In his endeavor to understand the world, man therefore always has at his
Totalization is therefore defined at one time as useless, at another time
disposition a surplus of signification (which he portions out amongst things
as imf,ossible. This is no doubt the result of the fact that there are according to the laws of symbolic thought-which it is the task of eth-
two ways of conceiving the limit of totalization. And I assert once nologisrs and linguists to study), This distribution of a supplemrntary al-
again that these two determinations coexist implicitly in the discourses lowance [r.ttion supplementaire]-if it is permissible to put it that way-is
of Levi-Strauss. Totalization can be judged impossible in the classical absolutely necessary in order that on the whole the available signifier and
style: one then refers to the empirical endeavor of a subject or of a the signified it aims at may remain in the relationship of complementarity
.finite discourse in a vain and breathless quest of an infinite richness which is the very condition of the use of symbolic thought (p. xlix).
which it can never master. There is too much, more than one can say.
But nontotali7.ation can also be determined in another way: not from (It could no doubt be demonstrated that this ration mpplementaire
the standpoint of the concept of finitude as assigning us to an empiri- of signification is the origin of the ratio itself.) The word reappears
cal view, but from the standpoint of the concept of freeplay. If to- a little fart her on, after Levi-Strauss has mentioned "this floating sig-
talization no longer has any meaning, it is not because the infinity of nifier, which is the servitude of all finite thought":
a field cannot be covered by a finite glance or a finite discourse, but
because the nature of the field-that is, language and a .finite language In other words-and taking as our guide Maus.s's precept that all social
-excludes totalli:ation. This field is in fact that of {Teeplay, that is to phenomena can be assimilated to language-we see in mana, W akau, ori:md«
say, a field of infinite substitutions in the closure of a finite ensemble. and other notions of the same type, the conscious expression of a semantic
function, whose role it is to permit symbolic thought to open.te in spite of
This field permits these infinite substitutions only because it is finite,
the contradiction which is proper to it. In this way are explained the ap 4

that is to say, because instead of being an inexhaustible field, as in the parently insoluble antinolnies attached to this notion. ••. At one and the
classical hypothesis, instead of being too large, there is something miss- same time force and action, quality and state, substantive and verb; abstract
ing from it: a center which arrests and founds the freeplay of substi• and concrete, omnipresent and localized-mAna is in effect all these things.
tutions. One could say-rigorously using that word whose scandalous But is it not precisely because it is none of these things that 'IM1ltl is a
signification is always obliterated in French-that this movement of simple form, or more exactly, a symbol in the pure state, and therefore
the freeplay, permitted by the lack, the absence of a center or origin, capable of becoming charged with any sort of symbolic content whatever?
is the movement of mpplementarity. One cannot determine the center, In the system of symbols constituted by all cosmologies, mi:ma would simply
the sign which supplements' it, which takes its place in its absence-- be a valeur symbolique zbo, that is to say, a sign marking the necessity of a
because this sign adds itself, occurs in addition, over and above, comes symbolic content rupplemrntary [my italics] to that with which the signified
as a mpplement.10 The movement of signification adds something, is already loaded, but which can take on any value required, provided
only that this value still remains part of the available reserve and is not, as
which results in the fact that there is always more, but this addition
phonologists put it, a group-term.
is a floating one because it comes to perform a vicarious function, to
'The point being that the word, both in English and French, means "to sup- Levi-Strauss adds the note:
ply a deficiency," on the one hand, and "to supply something additional," on the
other. ""Introduction a !'oeuvre de Marcel Mauss," in: Marcel Mauss, Sociologie et
" • • • ce signe s'ajoute, vicnt en sus, en supplement."
11
tmtbropologi, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 19so).

16o 16r
 Jacques Derrida Structure, Sign, and Play

Linguists have already been led to formulate hypotheses of this type. For pect this concept of history, there is a risk, if it is reduced without
example: "A zero phoneme is opposed to all the other phonemes in French an express statement of the problem I am indicating here, of falling
in that it entails no differential characters and no constant phonetic value. back into an anhistoricism of a classical type, that is to say, in a de-
On the contrary, the proper function of the zero phoneme is to be opposed terminate moment of the history of metaphysics. Such is the algebraic
to phoneme absence." (R. Jakobson and J. Lutz, "Notes on the French formality of the problem as I see it. More concretely, in the work of
Phonemic Pattern," Word, vol. s, no. i [August, 1949], p. 155). Similarly,
if we schematize the conception l am proposing here, it could almost be Levi-Strauss it must be recognized that the respect for structurality,
said that the function of notions like 111a11't is to be opposed to the absence for the internal originality of the structure, compels a neutralization
of signification, without entailing by itself any particubr signification (p. r of time and history. For example, the appearance of a new structure,
and note). of an original system, always comes about-and this is the very con-
dition of its structural specificity-by a rupture with its past, its origin,
The superabzmdance of the signifier, its supplementary character, and its cause. One can therefore describe what is peculiar to the struc-
is thus the result of a finitude, that is to say, the result of a lack which tural organization only by not taking into account, in the very mo-
must be supplemented. ment of this description, its past conditions: by failing to pose the
It can now be understood why the concept of freeplay is important problem of the passage from one structure to another, by putting his-
in Levi-Strauss. His references to all som of games, notably to roulette, tory into parentheses. In this "structuralist" moment, the concepts of
are very frequent, especially in his Conversations,12 in Race and His- chance and discontinuity are indispensable. And Levi-Strauss does in
tory ,18 and in The Savage Mind. This reference to the game or free- fact often appeal to them as he does, for instance, for that structure
play is always caught up in a tension. of structures, language, of which he s:iys in the "Introduction to the
It is in tension with history, first of all. This is a classical problem, \Vork of l\1arcel Mauss" that it "could only have been born in one
objections to which are now well worn or used up. I shall simply fell swoop":
indicate what seems to me the formality of the problem: by reducing
history, Levi-Strauss has treated as it deserves a concept which has Whatever may have l,een the moment and the circumstances of its appear-
ance in the scale of animal life, language could only have been born in one
always been in complicity with a teleological and cschatological meta-
fell swoop. Things could not have set about signifying progressively. Fol-
physics, in other words, paradoxically, in complicity with that philoso- lowing a transfonnation the study of which is not the concern of the social
phy of presence to which it was believed history could be opposed. sciences, but rather of biology and psychology, a crossing over came about
The thematic of historicity, although it seems to be a somewhat late from a stage where nothing had a meaning to another where everything
arrival in philosophy, has always been required by the determination possessed it (p. xlvi).
of being as presence. With or without etymology, and in spite of the
classic antagonism which opposes these significations throughout all This standpoint does not prevent Levi-Strauss from recognizing the
of classical thought, it could be shown that the concept of episteme slowness, the process of maturing, the continuous toil of factual trans-
has always called forth that of historia, if history is always the unity formations, history (for example, in Race and History). But, in ac-
of a. becoming, as tradition of truth or development of science or cordance with an act which was also Rousseau's and Husserl's, he must
knowledge oriented toward the appropriation of truth in presence and "brush aside all the facts" at the moment when he wishes to recapture
self-presence, toward knowledge in consciousness-of-self." History the specificity of a structure. Like Rousseau, he must always conceive
has always been conceived as the movement of a. resumption of his- of the origin of a new structure on the model of catastrophe-an
tory, a diversion between two presences. But if it is legitimate to sus- overturning of nature in nature, a natural interruption of the natural
sequence, a brushing aside of nature.
,, Presumably: G. Charbonnicr, Entntims avec Clllude Uvi-Strauss (Paris: Besides the tension of freeplay with history, there is also the tension
Plon-Julliard, 1961}.
• Race ,rnd Histof'y (Paris: UNE$CO Publications. 1958}, of freeplay with presence. Freeplay is the disruption of presence. The
u " ••• !'unite d'un devenir, comme tradition de la vcrite dans la presence et la presence of an element i~ always a signifying and substituth·e refer-
presence i soi, vers le savoir dans la conscience de soi." ence inscribed in a system of differences and the movement of a chain.

262

)
Jacques Derrida StTucture, Sign, 1111d Play

Freeplay is always an interplay of absence and presence, but if it is history-has dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the
to be radically conceived, freeplay must be conceived of before the origin and the end of the game. The second interpretation of inter-
alternative of presence and absence; being must be conceived of as pretation, to which Nietzsche showed us the way, does not seek in
presence or absence beginning with the possibility of freeplay and not ethnography, as Uvi-Strauss wished, the "inspiration of a new hu•
the other way around. If Levi-Strauss, better than any other, has manism" (again from the "Introduction to the Work of Marcel
brought to light the freeplay of repetition and the repetition of free- Mauss").
play, one no less perceives in his work a sort of ethic of presence, an There are more than enough indications today to suggest we might
ethic of nostalgia for origins, an ethic of archaic and natural inno- perceive that these two interpretations of interpretation-which are
cence, of a purity of presence and self-presence in speech 15-an ethic, absolutely irreconcilable even if we live them simultaneously and
nostalgia, and even remorse which he often presents as the motivation reconcile them in an obscure economy-together share the field which
of the ethnological project when he moves toward archaic societies-- we call, in such a problematic fashion, the human sciences.
exemplary societies in his eyes. These texts are well known. For my part, although these two interpretations must acknowledge
As a turning toward the presence, lost or impossible, of the absent and accentuate their difference and define their irreducibility, I do not
origin, this structuralist thematic of broken immediateness is thus the believe that today there is any question of choosing-in the first place
sad, negative, nostalgic, guilty, Rousseauist facet of the thinking of because here we are in a region (let's say, provisionally, a region of
freeplay of which the Nietzschean affimt11tion-the joyous affirmation historicity) where the category of choice seems particularly trivial;
of the freeplay of the world and without truth, without origin, otl'ered and in the second, because we must first try to conceive of the com-
to an active interpretation-would be the other side. This affimt11tion mon ground, and the differance of this irreducible difference. 17 Here
then determines the non-center otherwise than as loss of the center, there is a sort of question, call it historical, of which we are only
And it plays the game without security. For there is a sure freeplay: glimpsing today the conception, the fOrm4tion, the gestation, the la-
that which is limited to the substitution of given and existing, present, bor. I employ these words, I admit, with a glance toward the business
pieces. In absolute chance, affirmation also surrenders itself to genetic of childbearing-but also with a glance toward those who, in a com-
indetermination, to the seminal adventure of the trace. 10 pany from which I do not exclude myself, tum their eyes away in
There are thus two interpretations of interpretation, of structure, the face of the as yet unnameable which is proclaiming itself and
of sign, of freeplay. The one seeks to decipher, dreams of decipher- which can do so, as is necessary whenever a birth is in the offing, only
ing, a truth or an origin which is free from freeplay and from the under the species of the non-species, in the formless, mute, infant,
order of the sign, and lives like an exile the necessity of interpretation. and terrifying form of monstrosity.
The other, which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms free-
play and tries to pass beyond man and humanism, the name man being
the name of that being who, throughout the history of metaphysics
or of ontotheology-in other words, through the history of all of his
Discussion
JuN HYPPOLITE: I should simply like to ask Derrida, whose pres-
• ".•• de la presence i soi dans la parole." entation and discussion I have admired, for some explanation of what
,. "Toumee vers la presence, perdue OU impossible, de l'origine abscnte, cette
thematique muctunliste de l'irnmediatete rompue est done la face triste, nigatiw,
is, no doubt, the technical point of departure of the presentation. That
nostalgique. coupahle, rousseauiste, de la pensce du jeu dont f11f/i.rm11tion nietz.. is, a question of the concept of the center of structure, or what a
scheenne, l'lffinnation joyeuse du jeu du monde et de !'innocence du devenir, center might mean. When I take, for example, the structure of certain
l'lffinnation d'un monde de signes sans faute, sans veritc, sans origine, offert a
une interprc!tation active, ser:ait l'autre face. Cette 11fli.rmation determine 11lors 1, "From diffber, in the sense of "to postpone," "put off," "defer.'' Elsewhere
non-centre /IUtremem ~ comm, pert, du cmtre. Et elle joue sans sccuritc. Car Derrida uses the word as a synonym for the Gennan Aufscbub: "postponement,"
ii y a un jeu nlr: celui qui se lirnite l la tubstmmon de pieces domu,s 1t e:r- and relates it to the central Freudian concepts of Verspiitung, N11cbtriiglicbk1it.
istirmts, prlsimtes. Dans le hasard ahsolu, l'affirmation sc livre aussi l l'indb:er- and to the "detours to death" of Beyond the Plt111Url! Principle by Sigmund
minatlon glnltiqut, a l'aventure shni,u,le de la trace." Freud (Standard Edition, ed. James Strachey, vol. XIX, London, 1961 ), Chap. V.
 Discussion Structure, Sign, and Play

algebraic constructions [ensembles], where is the center? Is the cen- would become part of a much larger fiel~ in whic~ what you want
ter the knowledge of general rules which, after a fashion, allow us to to do, what you are in the process of doing, :h~t ts, the loss of the
understand the interplay of the elements? Or is the center certain center-the fact that there is no privileged or original structure-could
elements which enjoy a particular privilege within the ensemble? be seen under this very form to which man ~ould be res~ored. •:
My question is, I think, relevant since one cannot think of the struc- this what you wanted to say, or were_you gettm_g at something else.
ture without the center, and the center itself is "destructured," is it That is my last question, and I apologize for having held the floor so
not?-the center is not structured. I think we have a great deal to long.
learn as we study the sciences of man; we have much to learn from JACQUES DERRIDA: With the last part of your remarks, I can ~ay that
the natural sciences. They are like an image of the problems which I agree fully-but you were asking a question. I was wondering '!1Y·
we, in turn, put to ourselves. With Einstein, for example, we see the self if I know where I am going. So I would answer you by saying,
end of a kind of privilege of empiric evidence. And in that connection first, that 1 am trying, precisely, to put myself at a p0int so that I do
we see a constant appear, a constant which is a combination of space- not know any longer where I am going. And, as to this l?5s of the
time, which does not belong to any of the experimenters who live the center, I refuse to approach an idea of the "non-cent~r" which _would
experience, but which, in a way, dominates the whole construct; and no longer be the tragedy of the loss of the center-this sad?ess 1s ~las-
this notion of the constant-is this the center? But natural science has sical. And I don't mean to say that I thought of app:oaching an 1dea
gone much further. It no longer searches for the constant. It considers by which this loss of the center would be an a~atto?· .
that there a.re events, somehow improbable, which bring about for As to what you said about the nature and the s1tuano~ of man •~
a while a structure and an invariability. Is it that everything happens the products of nature, I think ~hat we h_ave 3½'e~dy d1~cussed this
as though certain mutations, which don't come from any author or together. I will assume e~tirely with you t~s parnaltty which you ex-
any hand, and which are, like the poor reading of a manuscript, realized pressed-with the excepnon of your [choice of) words, and here the
[only] as a defect of a structure, simply exist as mutations? Is this words are more than mere words, as always. That is to say, I cannot
the case? Is it a question of a structure which is in the nature of a accept your precise formulation, although I am not prepared to offer
genotype produced by chance from an improbable happening, of a a precise alternative. So, it bei~g understood_ that I do not_ know wh~re
meeting which involved a series of chemical molecules and which or- I am going, that th~ w~rds which w~ are ~sing do not sati~fy me, with
ganized them in a certain way, creating a genotype which will be these reservations m mmd, I am entirely m agreement with you.
realized, and whose origin is lost in a mutation? Is that what you are Concerning the first part of your question, the Einsteinian c?ns~~nt
tending toward? Because, for my part, I feel that I am going in that is not a constant is not a center. It is the very concept of var1ab1bty
direction and that I find there the example-even when we are talking -it is, finally, the concept of the game. _In other wor_ds, it is not the
about a kind of end of history-of the integration of the historic; concept of something-of a center starnng from which an observer
under the fonn of event, so long as it is improbable, at the very center could master the field-but the very concept of the game which, after
of the realization of the structure, but a history which no longer has all, I was trying to elaborate.
anything to do with eschatological history, a history which loses it•
self always in its own pursuit, since the origin is perpetually displaced. HYPPOLITE: It is a constant in the game?
And you know that the language we are speaking today, a propos of
DERRIDA: It is the constant of the game . .
language, is spoken about genotypes, and about information theory.
Can this sign without sense, this perpetual turning back, be under- HYPPOLITE: It is the rule of the game.
stood in the light of a kind of philosophy of nature in which nature
will not only have realized a mutation, but will have realized a per- DERRIDA: It is a rule of the game which does not govern the game;
petual mutant: man? That is, a kind of error of transmission or of it is a rule of the game which does not dominate th_e game. Now, when
malfonnation would have created a being which is always malformed, the rule of the game is displaced by the game itself, we must find
whose adaptation is a perpetual aberration, and the problem of man something other than the word rule. In what concerns algebra, then,
::,
JI 266 267
.J
\
 Discussion
Structure, Sign, 4nd Pl4y

I think that it is an example in which a group of significant figures, conceptual world, to see Sein, W4brbeit, and Welt as irreduciblr part
if you wish, or of signs, is deprived of a center. But we can consider of a single, primal question, Certainly in his V or-Fragen a_nd m ~he
algeb~ from two points of view. F.ither as the example or analogue last chapter of the Nietzsche book he advan~es a 1.arath~an no~on
of this absolutely de-centered game of which I have spoken; or we of game as the step outside (or behind) plulosophy. It 1S mterestmg
~an try to co~sider algebra ~s ~ limited field of ideal objects, products to contrast his Nietzsche with Heidegger's; it seems to me that you
in the Husserlian sense, beginrung from a history, from a LebfflS'Welt, would agree with him in reversing the latter's primacy of Sein over
from a subject, etc., which constituted, created its ideal objects, and Seiendes, and thereby achieve some interesting consequences for the
co~eq~ent_ly _we shou~d. always he abl~ to mak~ su.hstitutions, by re- post-humanist critique of our announced topi~, '.'les sciences bu~ines."
acttvanng m it the ongm-that of which the s1gruficants, seemingly For surely, in Spiel 4Js Weltsymbol the presiding Worldga~e. 1~ pro-
lost, are the derivations. I think it is in this way that algebra was foundly anterior and anonymous, anterior to the Platonic div1S1on of
thought of classically. One could, perhaps, think of it otherwise as being and appearance and dispossessed of a human, personal center.
an image of the game. Or else one thinks of algebra as a field of ideal The other figure is that writer who has made the shifting center of
obje~ts, produced by the activity of what we call a subject, or man, his fictional poetics the narrative game in "the unanimo171 night," that
or histo_ry, and thus, we recover the possibility of algebra in the field architect and prisoner of labyrinths, the creator of Pierre Menard,
of classical thought; or else we consider it as a disquieting mirror of
a world which is algebraic through and through. DERRIDA: You are thinking, no doubt, of Jorge Luis Borges.
HYPPOLITE: What is a structure then? If I can't take the example CHARLES MoRAzE: Just a remark. Concerning the dialogue of the
of algebra anymore, how will you define a strueture for me?-to see past twenty years with Levi-Strauss on the possibility of a grammar
where the center is. other than that of language-I have a great deal of admiration for
what Levi-Strauss has done in the order of a grammar of mythologies.
DERll.tDA: The concept of structure itself-I say in passing-is no I would like to point out that there is also a grammar of the event-
longer satisfactory to describe that game. How to define structure? that one can make a grammar of the event. It is more difficult to
Structure should be centered. But this center can be either thought, establish. I think that in the coming months, in the coming years, we
as it was classically, like a creator or being or a fixed and natural will begin to learn how this grammar or rather this set of grammars
place; or also as a deficiency, let's say; or something which makes of events can be constituted. And [this grammar] leads to results, may
possible "free play," in the sense in which one speaks of the "jeu dans I say, anyway with regard to my personal experience, which are a
la machine," of the "jeu des pieces," and which receivc,-and this is little less pessimistic than those you have indicated.
what we ~ ~ory-;a s~ries of determina.tions, of signitiers, which
~ve no SJgnifieds [ngnifilsJ finally, which cannot become sig- LUCIEN GoLDMANN: I would like to say that I find that Derrida,
mfiers except as they begin from this deficiency. So, I think that what with whose conclusions I do not agree, has a catalytic function in
I have said can be understood as a criticism of structuralism, certainly. French cultural life, and for that reason I pay him homage. I said once
that he brings to my mind that memory of when I arrived in France
• RICHARD MACKSEY: I may be off-side [hors jeuJ in trying to iden-
in '3+ At that time there was a very strong royalist movement among
nfy prematurely those players who can join your team in the critique
the students and suddenly a. group appeared which w~ ~uall~ in
of metaphysics represented by your tentative game-theory. Still, I was defense of royalism, but which demanded a real Merovmgian. kmg!
struck by the sympathy with which two contemporary figures might In this movement of negation of the subj~ct.or of the center, 1f ~ou
view that formidable prospect which you and Nietzsche invite us to like, which Derrida defines remarkably, he IS m the process of say1~g
contemplate. I am thinking, .first, of the later career of Eugen Fink, to all the people who represent this position, "But you contradict
a "reformed" phenomenologist with the peculiarly paradoxical rela- yourself; you never carry through to the end. Finally, in cr1;ti_cizing
tionship to Heidegger. Even as early as the colloquia at Krefdd and mythologies, if you deny the position, the existence, of the cnac and
Royaumont he was prepared to argue the secondary status of the the necessity of saying anything, you contradict yourself, because you
268
 Discussion
Structure, Sign, and Play

are still M. Levi-Strauss who says something and if you make a new
tive meaning. Here or there I have ~sed the '_Vord ddc~n~t~tion,
mythology•.. ," Well, the criticism was remarkable and it's not which has nothing to do with destruction. That 1s to say, It 1s simply
worth taking it up again. But if I have noted the 'few words which
a question of (and this is a necessi~y of cr!ticism in the ~lass~cal sen~e
were added to the text and which were of a destructive character, we of the word) being alert to the 1mphcat1ons, to t~e h1stor1cal s~d1-
could discuss that on the level of semiology. But I would like to ask mentation of the language which we use-and that 1s not destruct10n.
Derrida a question: "Let us suppose that instead of discussing on the I believe in the necessity of scientific work in the classical sense, I
basis of a series of postulates toward which all contemporary currents,
believe in the necessity of everything which is being done and even
irrationalist as well as formalist, are oriented, you have before you a
of what you are doing, hut I don't see why I should renounce or why
very different position, say the dialectical position. Quite simply, you anyone should renounce the radicality of a critical work under the
think that science is something that men make, that history is not an
pretext that it risks the sterilization of scie!1ce, huma~_ity, progress, ~~e
error, that what you call theology is something acceptable, an attempt
origin of meaning, etc. I believe that the ~1s~ of stenhty _and of s;e:1!1-
not to say that the world is ordered, that it is theological, but that zation has always been the price of luc1d1ty. Concermng the m1t1al
the human being is one who places his stake on the possibility of giv- anecdote, I take it rather badly, because it defines me as an ultra-
ing a meaning to a word which will evemuall y, at some point, resist
royalist, or an "ultra," as they said in my native country not so long
this meaning. And the origin or the fundamental of that which is be-
ago, whereas I have a much more humble, modest, and classical con-
fore a typical state of dichotomy of which you speak ( or in gnmma-
ception of what I am doing.
tology the action which registers before there is a meaning) is some-
Concerning Mr. Moraz6's allusion to the grammar of the event,
thing which we are studying today, but which we cannot, which we
there I must return his question, because I don't know what a gram-
don't even want to, penetrate from the inside, because it can be pene-
mar of the event can be.
trated from the inside only in silence, while we want to understand
it according to the logic which we have elaborated, with which we SERGE DousaovsKv: You always speak of a non-center. How can
try somehow or other to go farther, not to discover a meaning hidden you, within your own perspective, explain or at least understand what
by some god, but to give a meaning to a world in which that is the a perception is? For a perception is precisely the manner in which the
function of man (without knowing, moreover, where man comes from world appears centered to me. And language you represent as flat or
-we can't be entirely consistent, because if the question is clear, we level. Now language is something else again. It is, as Merleau-Ponty
know, if we say that man comes from God, then somebody will ask said, a corporeal intentionalit>:,. An~ star~ing from this util~zati?n of
"Where does God come from?" and if we say that man comes from language, in as much as there is an mtent1on of language, I mev1tably
nature, somebody will ask "Where does nature come from?" and so find a center again. For it is not "One" who speaks, hut "I." An~ even
on). But we are on the inside and we are in this situation. Is this posi- if you reduce the I, you are obliged to come across once agam the
tion before you, then, stiil contradictory? concept of intentionality, which I believe is at the base of a whole
thought, which, moreover, you do not deny. Therefor!! I ask how you
JAN Korr: At one time this famous phrase of Mallarme seemed to
reconcile it with your present attempts?
be very significant: "A throw of dice will never abolish chance."
["Un coup de des n'abolira jamais le hasard."] After this lesson you DERRIDA: First of all, I didn't say that there was no center, that we
have given us, isn't it possible to say that: "And chance will never could get along without the center. I bel~eve that the. center _is a _func-
abolish the throw of dice!" ["Et le hasard n'abolira jamais le coup tion, not a being-a reality, but a function. And this function 1s ab-
de des."] solutely indispensable. The subject is absolutely indispe?53ble. I don't
destroy the subject; I situate it. That is to. say, I. bebeve t~t a; a
DERRIDA: I say "Yes" immediately to Mr. Kott. As to what Mr.
certain level both of experience and of philosophical and sc1ennfic
Goldmann has said to me, I feel that he has isolated, in what I said,
discourse one cannot get along without the notion of subject. It is a
the aspect that he calls destructive. I believe, however, that I was
question of knowing where it comes from and how it functions. There-
quite explicit about the fact that nothing of what I said had a destruc-
fore I keep the concept of center, which I explained was indispensable,
Discussion

as well as that of subject, and the whole system of concepts to which

you have referred.
Since you mentioned intentionality, I simply try to see those who
are founding the movement of intentionality-which cannot be con-
ceived in the tenn intentionality. As to perception, I should say that
once I recognized it as a necessary conservation. I was extremely con-
servative. Now I don't know what perception is and I don't believe
that anything like perception exists. Perception is precisely a concept.
a concept of an intuition or of a given originating from the thing itself,
present itself in its meaning, independently from language, from the
system of reference. And I believe that perception is interdependent
with the concept of origin and of center and consequently whatever
strikes at the metaphysics of which I have spaken strikes also at the
very concept of perception. I don't believe that there is any perception.

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