Standing Problems 245infinite signification. It is worth remarking here—as is emphasized by most post-
modern writers—that literature and poetry is obviously better able to accommodate
this thesis than philosophy or technical ‘science’ orientated disciplines.
Those metaphysicians—structuralist and Heideggerians included—who believe
that there is a metaphysical core, foundation, or stable centre, are dubbed logo-
centrists. The termlogosderives from the Greek word for word, reason, or language.
Logocentrists assume that a core metaphysical presenceprecedesany signification.
Presence, for Derrida, however is always mediated to us in linguistic signs. Nothing
precedes signs. The intelligible is thus always woven with the sign. There is nothing
outside of the sign. A more adequate account of language here—even technical lan-
guage in science and philosophy—would be one focusing on metaphor. Metaphor
accommodates the ‘rhetorical character’ of philosophical discourse. In fact, the his-
tory of metaphysics and philosophy might be redescribed as a history of metaphors.
Further, against the tradition that focuses on speech as primary—as the medium of
thought (Derrida dubs this false focus on speech as phonocentrism)—Derrida pri-
oritizes writing. The core of his argument here is that phonocentrism (focusing on
speech) is a duplicitous way of making the self-presence of consciousness a primary
reality that can be signified (another manifestation of logocentrism in this case aimed
at Husserlian phenomenology). However, for Derrida speech is not aware of the
gap between the ‘word as sound’ and the ‘infinity of possible meaning’. Speech in
effect is a second-hand form of writing. Writing however makes us aware that mean-
ing incorporates and generates endless difference. Further, for Derrida the written
text—because ofdifférance—necessarily becomes disengaged from the intentions of
the writer. Intentionality and authorship in general are dismissed. Derrida rather
celebrates readers who construct their own meaning. This theory about writing over
speech is the core of his early works such asOf Grammatology,Speech and Phenomena,
andWriting and Difference.
For Derrida, the origin of phonocentrism and logocentrism can be found in the
history of Western thought from Plato. The deconstructive method is basically the
exposing of this process—usually from within the thinkers own terms and vocabulary.
For Derrida it is often the casual metaphors, footnotes, or margins of the text that
are most revealing of these underlying assumptions. It is thus that we have his work
Margins of Philosophy. The main aim of deconstruction is thus to expose metaphysics
and logocentrism. It shows us the unfamiliar at the heart of the familiar.
In summary, for Derrida all foundations are dead. Our conceptual ordering of the
world does not reveal anything about the nature of the world. There is no nature
to reveal. There is no reason able to grasp the world. There are no ontological or
metaphysical ‘centred structures’, although the bulk of Western metaphysics (qua
Heidegger), in fact the history of the West, has been in his words ‘a series of substi-
tution of centre for centre...This history of metaphysics...is the history of these
metaphors’ (Derrida 1978: 227–8). Western metaphysics has always sought reas-
surance and certitude by naming this centre, time and time again, from Plato and
Aristotle up to Heidegger. It is the source of a very deep human arrogance. The centre
contains a ‘presence’ (such as Being, God, spirit, reason, or the Form of the Good).