You are on page 1of 4

Deconstruction,

Derrida, and Blake’s


Contraries

Prachi Wahi
3/26/2012
M. A (prev.) English
1

Jacques Derrida’s discipline of deconstruction is based upon structural differences,


where almost all ideological concepts get their meaning only by virtue of a corresponding
arrangement by one’s opposition with the other. This concept is eventually led by Derrida
towards an overturning of the oppositions. In Politics of Friendship, Derrida implies this
concept upon “the political problem of friendship” (27), whereby he denotes the volatile
and relative quality of the meaning and relation of friendship and animosity.

Derrida begins the discussion by citing a quotation attributed to Aristotle: “O my


friends, there is no friend.” This statement promptly acts towards collapsing the structure
that holds friendship and animosity as two binaries, just like the self and the other. The
argument opens up the possibility of probing the element of self-contradiction within the
notion of friendship itself, where the self can be seen as splitting into two, “welling up and
falling back on itself” (28). Clearly, Derrida suggests the idea of doing away with the notion
of identification of somebody as something, which implies a political manipulation of fixing
up a perspective and imposing it on others. The suggestion is to challenge the primary
established truth of one being acknowledged as good, and the other as evil, in order to
extend the realm of knowledge and realize the Machiavellian significance of both in a
political context. Here, Diane Perpich, in her article, highlights Derrida’s reading of the
tension in friendship’s relation to virtue, and observes that there is something at
loggerheads with the idea of friendship to suggest “I will love you only if you are virtuous”
(450). The reason is that the meaning of virtue and vice itself is on shifting grounds, just like
friendship and animosity are when viewed from a political lens – “turning the virtue of
virtue against itself” or to transform “enmity into friendship” (33). Derrida says, “This is
something other than a reversal” (31).

Here, we would like to shift the attention towards William Blake’s notion of contraries
(not opposites), implying Derrida’s concept of “the coexistence of incompatible values” (34).
In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake declares: “Without Contraries is no progression.
Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human
existence” [PLATE 3]. In a similar tone, Derrida suggests the possibility of “The inversion of
repulsion into attraction” (32). The intimation is that, as Blake’s title denotes, Heaven and
Hell are to be married, united in a combining whole. Blake sees the conventional opposition
between the good and the evil as a religious construction by the institutional church, and
not a categorization by the Holy Scripture. Thus, the institutional church stands as a figure of
power and authority, dictating its codes on the common masses, where Christ is placed as
virtuous, good, angelic, and belonging to the Heaven; whereas Satan is seen as vicious, evil,
devilish, and belonging to the Hell. Blake, in a Derridean fashion, attempts to collapse and
brush aside this binary construction, and places them as contraries that are interchangeable.
Therefore, in a replacement of the command of moderation in the “heavenly” Book of
Proverbs in the Old Testament, Blake, in his “Proverbs of Hell,” dictates, “The road of excess
leads to the palace of wisdom” [PLATE 8]. The aim in both the dictations is the same –
search for truth, knowledge, and wisdom. The difference lies merely in the manner – either
2

by way of moderation or excess. Here, one can identify how politics is at work behind these
two dictations. This is precisely what lies in the politics of friendship that Derrida tries to
expatiate on.

What Derrida and Blake both are trying to reach at is the rejection of an absolute
positioning, which is proved impossible due to the interchangeability. If mere attributes
such as Desire and Energy determine the evil, then Christ must be evil, because of His
energetic desire to help and save humanity; and if Reason is always the good, then Satan
must be the angel, because he acted rationally in his defiance against God. Similarly, today’s
friend could be tomorrow’s enemy. That is how the politics works.

Thus, the scheme of deconstruction works in order to illuminate that truth and
meaning should not be viewed as fixed, stable, indestructible orders, as Derrida reflects, “if
one must love truth, how will one love anything other than one’s own truth” (44). The
suggestion is to come out of the subjective realm into the world of plurality, where
knowledge should be gained through experience and investigation, and not by mere
authoritative dictation.
3

Works Cited

Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Dover Publications, Inc.

Derrida, Jacques. Politics of Friendship. Verso.

Perpich, Diane. "Universality, Singularity, and Sexual Difference: Reflections on Political


Community." Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2005: 31 (4): 445-460.

You might also like