Derrida's style--beginnings and endings

by Seth Warren

Derrida "begins" "Plato's Pharmacy" with these words, idiosyncratic, enigmatic and logically irksome from the get-go:

A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its laws and its rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception. (63)

Thus, after the (anit)preface, he "begins" chapter I, declaring, "To a considerable degree, we have already said what we meant to say," and the next paragraph continues, "Since we have already said everything, the reader must bear with us if we continue on a while. If we extend ourselves by force of play" (65). Notice that in this last proposition the locus of activity is left ambiguous; "we" are doing the extending, yet are we not "forced" to? Who is actually in control?

Derrida is playful in terms of form and content. What he is arguing is something which can only be explained using and being used by "the logic of play," and thus his argument is itself playful. A good example of the way in which the playfulness of form and content coalesce is Derrida's numerous "translations" of Plato's arguments against writing, or the pharmakon. Derrida reveals the characters underlying Plato's critique: pharmakon as corpse, magician, drunk, parricidal bastard, slut, mask and spent seed. With all of this eccentric, and as he will show, untenable categorization, meaning can only be understood from the playground: "The entrance of the pharmakon on the scene, the evolution of the magic powers, the comparison with painting, the politico-familial violence and perversion, the allusion to makeup, masks, simulacra--all this couldn't not lead us to games and festivals, which can never go without some sort of urgency or outpouring of sperm" (150).

Elsewhere Derrida also describes the pharmakon in a manner playful in both form and content, that is, poetically and with complex and somewhat indistinct implications: "It keeps itself forever in reserve even though it has no fundamental profundity nor ultimate locality. We will watch it infinitely promise itself and endlessly vanish through concealed doorways that shine like mirrors and open onto a labyrinth" (128). It is immediately following this almost lyrical statement that Derrida begins the chapter entitled "The Pharmakos," in which he furthers his deconstructive tickling of the "Platonic text," breaking down more of the philosopher king's binaries, and even dispelling the notion that "there exists, in all rigor, a Platonic text, closed upon itself, complete with its inside and outside" (130). All this he does by analyzing the effects of a certain word which does not even exist in the Phaedrus. The pinnacle of play.

If using a literally non-existent word to bolster up the bulk of his argument is the pinnacle of play in terms of complicated content, than his poetic pseudo-narrative which marks the "end" of the "essay" is perhaps the best example of play in terms of style. Instead of any kind of summarizing wrap-up (which would indeed counter his entire discussion of play), Derrida leaves us with an image of grand old Plato at work in his proverbial pharmacy, like some kind of crazed scientist, chattering to himself, trying to pin down the nature of play with all the logos of his being. Incidentally, you might agree that we find the frazzled philosopheme in a state similar to ours upon reading this text for the first time. We laugh at him but we empathize as well:

Holding the pharmakon in one hand, the calamus [quill] in the other, Plato mutters as he transcribes the play of formulas. In the enclosed space of the pharmacy, the reverberations of the monologue are immeasurably amplified. The walled-in voice strikes against the rafters, the words come apart, bits and pieces of sentences are separated, disarticulated parts begin to circulate through the corridors, become fixed for a round or two, translate each other, become rejoined, bounce off each other, contradict each other, make trouble, tell on each other, come back like answers, organize their exchanges, protect each other, institute an internal commerce, take themselves for a dialogue. Full of meaning. A whole story. An entire history. All of philosophy. (169)

THESE WORDS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES--and Plato shudders in his shoes realizing that words do this, he "gags his ears" (170). Is this traditional rational-philosophical discourse? Is this the discourse of the classroom or of the playground? I argue that Derrida does stay couched in the classroom--but not at the expense of missing recess. This is because, unlike Plato, Derrida has seen that the distinction between the classroom and the playground is slight, perforated by the sticks and stones of mischievous mercenaries like Thoth and Pharmakon (the "class clowns"). Because of them we see the playground subtly seeping into the classroom and vice versa. For Derrida, it is always already recess. He is a distraction to the class. Some would have him stay at school for detention. But this will not stop the antics of play, and thus it will not stop its patron clown. Derrida always "ends" in the spirit of play, "by force of play," playing with it as it plays through him, as it played through Plato, as it plays with history, all of philosophy. The walls of the school will go down like the walls of Plato's Pharmacy.

For more on Derrida's style, the differences between his earlier and later works, and his critics' opinions of these differences, click here.