Review Reviewed Work(s): The Theory Mess. Deconstruction in Eclipse by Herman Rapaport Review by: Charles J. Stivale Source: SubStance, Vol. 31, No. 1, Issue 97: Special Issue: The American Production of French Theory (2002), pp. 136-144 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3685817 Accessed: 06-03-2023 14:06 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to SubStance This content downloaded from 141.217.20.120 on Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 136 Reviews was a and Kelly's of much mo boo Francophon the relationshi question. Le H that everyone departments, w Ann San Di Rapaport, Her Columbia Univ In this overv proposes Derrida the to fo prov perspectives o systematically due to combin develop his a hist study as engagements a bewilderingly the has theoretica self-eviden becomes quite argument, by he situating strata of De inter In the openin deconstructio shows how Derrida himself unmasks with limited results the bad faith and deception behind such rejection. For, as Rapaport admits, Derrida's efforts still could not prevent such a response and related faux bonds ("purposive failures to comprehend," [6]) that resulted in the continuing eclipse of deconstruction. Indeed, what better example to provide than the successive instances of eclipse related to Derrida's insistence that meaning cannot be Substance # 97, Vol. 31, no. 1, 2002 This content downloaded from 141.217.20.120 on Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Reviews 137 abstracted fro initiating, encounter decades" eclipse in w (11), within "Whenever social th practice While Rapapo module, I wo successive optation cha estab four-chapter that he relate Braidotti, on c Geo deconstru Graff and literary Wellek, Fra stud and D particularly t (e.g. E Terry America diverse as "la recep university], culturally" (3 A second fou deconstruction the pretext Cambridge. outside for Great the points b R prote to the truth the stark Jiirgen its a wit diff Habe Benjamin. T interpretation and Gayatri The S Marxist Derrida Substance (64) # pr 97, This content downloaded from 141.217.20.120 on Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms V 138 Reviews contain consid positions and a ecli group single journal and and Screen John Pau dogmat decades" (68). W "subject-pos Ellis and opened sign, work a Ellis, Kegan become as concep critical as the subjec constit constructivist an interpellati ideology that w postcolonialism This partial chapter prominent Laclau of of this of the more Cha diverg concept possibili than Rapaport wildcat a theo and these o exami a sh sees hermen so-called theo hermeneutical community Starting that appro constitute They are also theoretical the c of arrival reviewing t and of the r holier-than-th Rapaport feels raised by Alla D'Souza: the "d Substanc This content downloaded from 141.217.20.120 on Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Reviews 139 academic stan factionalism a anger at var exaggerated Rapaport a still f "major parts composition ( students of the (and a languag departments Donoghue the for 1990s oriented read handmaiden Rapaport a wou to here embracing con Donoghue's ca studies. many Yet, he teachers discourse and simplifying m and students paranoid asses truth has in been free Bloom a conc ideological D'Souza's many theory "used b agendas" (98). Wellek "openly in misr identif political Feminist bulld Accus concludes that action-say, creating an conjecture As was for a ce illi is f Cultur less-than particularly Substance # 97, This content downloaded from 141.217.20.120 on Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms V 140 Reviews Deconstructio were advocates doubt for of that the permission course, Besides mu offerin Studies or lite were homogen deconstructio Introduction ( "cultural as op discredit[ing] Hence, having key issues the Cultural S Rapaport t for in "L He immediat Treichler anth "claim[ing] th studies" which based critiques social practic "symptomatic Henry Girou "commonality antipodes of F "meanings are passively and g this paradigm secondariness 103). In o this proffering his define what I c U.K." fault (104, with my crit work in partic as bewildering This tendenti social-studies Substanc This content downloaded from 141.217.20.120 on Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Reviews 141 performance not declarativ prescription o (104-105). Rap everything is a (Paris: U.G.E., Rapaport deve "who wave suc is Judith Butle Routledge, to what 1997 he doe misprision Butler's of found an thoroughly 116). To complete this central cluster, Rapaport quite usefully poses the problem of "a dead end of vicious duality," that is, the dueling paradigms of social studies (stressing authenticity of the social act as performed by empirical agencies) versus a cultural paradigm of virtuality (stressing the dominant mediation of all forms of reality, including the political). Referring again to Butler's Excitable Speech, he points to "a fallacy of critical thinking endemic to much cultural study, namely, the construction of a vicious dualism whereby a circulation between two paradigms occurs," one (paradigm of representation, of the virtual) lurking nearby to "invalidate and replace" the other (paradigm of performance, of the social act), and vice-versa. By studying the emergence of this "vicious dualism" in writing by Stephen Greenblatt, Anne McClintock, and Butler's Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1989), Rapaport emphasizes the "debilitating prevalence [of dualistic impasses] across a wide spectrum of cultural study" (118). In the final three-chapter cluster, Rapaport brings Derrida's writings back to center stage. Two related chapters ("Deconstruction of the Social Relation," I and II) show just how restricted and inherently contradictory are the positions previously studied vis-a-vis Derridean perspectives on social relations. Derrida tends to emphasize precisely the nonsituatedness, the instability of these relations, but not via "mere multiplication of the subject in terms of various perspectives that operate under a rubric such as subjectpositions" (127). Rapaport closely examines Derrida's reflections on questions of sexuality and gender in "Difflrence sexuelle, diff6rence ontologique" (in Psyche [Paris: Galilee, 1986]) which focuses on Heidegger's writings. Substance # 97, Vol. 31, no. 1, 2002 This content downloaded from 141.217.20.120 on Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 142 Reviews Rapaport als throughout 1990s. the on D These Political," debunking of these aspe recent and u Nancy, in.the Drucil social from argues furthe critiquing race, r leftist and soc gen Two brief, c the "theory reflective po Derrida's ... rem compare bringing models, an them paras and Rapapor like jetties th backwaters," destabilizing c its effects are only to "avoi phenomenolo about" yet a judgmental h mess," conce adjudication" As and in for Derr scurrilou many ways offend[ing], supplant it must or be ev be has to be rea work or to ju Said's plea, in Substan This content downloaded from 141.217.20.120 on Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Reviews 143 protocols for of cr curricular Rapaport right which is past, through the cr determination most part, bee Hence, in an Rapapor which to st accounting not been in ev deconstruction" have heretofor future generati toward That on a an this sembl other note of Derrida, project and report best. by To eclipse of is ro a the grant the R iss unmistakable i critical and di due to the gr interdisciplinar receives no affiliation issue as con with an inh lapse, at other serious the ve m recalls uncomf hands of his m insights of his impulse to sett diminished to render it all but obsolete. the Still, one thing is certain, and this is the source of The Theory Mess's greatest strength: Rapaport is well read in all of Derrida's works, has also read the works of his critics, fair and foul, and has reflected seriously and at Substance # 97, Vol. 31, no. 1, 2002 This content downloaded from 141.217.20.120 on Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 144 Reviews great length scene of through which the whi will be informed p responsibilit Cha Way Substan This content downloaded from 141.217.20.120 on Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms