Deconstruction and originary analysis : Gans, Derrida, and generative anthropology
Date
1994
Authors
Van Oort, Richard
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
In the wake of Saussurian structuralism, the twentieth century has spawned a great deal of interest in the formal structures that make up our cultural heritage. But "synchronic" investigation, as Jacques Derrida's key "post-structuralist" term différance points out, suffers from a certain idealization of history that has no answer to the temporal element in culture. In short, it has no means for exploring history in its broadest sense, namely, in terms of ethical evolution. At the same time, the Derridean critique, though hitting structuralist formalism at the heart of its ungrounded moment in a metaphysics of ideal presence, nevertheless refuses to present a positive ground from which to explore culture in its ethical, aesthetic, and linguistic incarnations, believing that all "grounds" suffer from the same "logocentric" desire for metaphysical presence. But need this negativity be thus hypostatized as a "groundless ground" itself? To what extent does the abyss of the Derridean aporia found a (de)structured a priori itself?
This thesis explores the positive recuperation of Derrida via the generative anthropology of Eric Gans, whose "transcendental hypothesis" or "scene of origin" seeks to give historical and ethical-in a word, anthropological-rigour to Derrida's agnostic formalism. Gans contends that all explanations of culture, in order to be considered scientific, must begin where all sciences begin-at the origin of their subject-matter. Hence, human science must begin in a generative scene of anthropological origin. Yet unlike the empirical sciences, human science can only understand the origin of its subject-matter-culture-in terms of the origin of its own presence as a theory. For to engage in human scientific investigation is also to engage in culture in its broadest sense: namely, at the level of the ethical. Generative anthropology presents itself as the secular counterpart to the universal religious intuition that humanity originated in an event. But to the religious story of creation, generative anthropology proposes its originary hypothesis, thus foregrounding the transcendental element of metaphysics in a plausibly conceived, historical scene of origin, from which explanations of culture can be generated.
Chapter 1 of the thesis explores the epistemological questions addressed by Gans's conviction that human science must begin in a scene of origin. Thus, it examines, first, the inadequacy of the empirical epistemology of the natural sciences, upon which the social sciences have largely sought to take their model, and, second, Gans's suggestion that what is needed is a synthesis of the work of two thinkers in the human sciences: that is, a synthesis which combines Rene Girard's fundamental anthropology with Derrida's deconstructive epistemology. The essential premise underlying the argument is that Gans's generative anthropology successfully builds on the work of Girard by introducing the Derridean problematic---différance (difference and deferral)-to provide a linguistic ground for Girard's radically nonformalistic postulate of the scene of victimary origin. Chapter 2 continues the dialogue, showing the greater explanatory power of the Gansian model of "originary analysis" over Derridean deconstruction. Thus, it proposes that Derrida's analysis of Kafka's parable "Before the Law" all but divulges an aesthetic model of human origin. To Derrida's model of the aporetic character of representation, originary analysis proposes the concrete context of the originary sign, which ultimately forms the fulcrum of the originary scene. The basis for the analysis stems from Gans's genetic scheme of linguistic evolution, comprehensively outlined in his The Origin of Language. The conclusion upon which the thesis finally comes to rest is that Gans's evolutionary scheme, grounded in the formal structures of language, provides a positive basis from which to explore deconstruction as, ultimately, an "aesthetic" manifestation of the scene of human origin.