3

Khora: Being Serious

with Plato

"[ am on th e threshold of re ad ing Plato and Aristotle. [ love

them and [ feel [ have to sta rt aga i n and aga i n a n d aga i n . It
is a task which is in front of me, before me. "

" Roundtable , " 9

" We have go tte n more than we think we know from 'trad i

t i o n but the scene o f the gift a ls o obl igates us to a ki n d of
, '

filial lack of p i e ty at once serious and not so serious, a s

,

rega rds th e th i nking to which we have the greatest debt. "

PdS I 39fPoin ts 1 3 0

A HOAx

On May I S, 1 996, The New York Times reported on its front pa ge a

story of a h oax that was played on Social Text, th e chief outlet of th e
"cultural studies" movement; the headline of the story ran " Po s t m od ­
ern Gra vi ty Deconstructed, Slyly. " The Times re po rte d a story that
had j ust appeared i n Lingua Fra nca and s u b s eq u e n tl y created quite a
controversy, in whic h a p h ys ic is t named Alan S o ka l revealed that he
had subm i tted a sati re e nt i tl ed "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward
a Transformative Hermeneutic of Quantum G r a v i ty aimed at makin g
"

w h a t postmodernist s o c i ol og ists of science say abo u t g r a vity l ook

" "

silly, wh i c h is what the Times meant by "deconstructed . " The e d i to rs

of Social Text took it quite se r i o u s l y and had j ust published it, wh i c h
led to Soka l 's "gotch'ya . " Taki ng on a look of p erfe ct grav i ty, Sokal took
on what he took to be the relativism of the cultural studies movement,
pa rticularly as regards h a rd science" - the gravely se rious issue of the
"
72 DECON STR UCTION I N A N UTS H ELL

principle of gravity in mathematical physics. I Soka l , for whom "grav­

ity" is not a suggestion, but the law, said that he defended the truth
of "the sill iest quotes about mathematics a nd physics from the most
prominent academics . I invented an a rgument pra ising them and
. . .

li nking them together. All this was ve ry easy to carry off becau s e my
argument wasn't o bl iged to respect any standard s of evidence or logic. "
Sokal feels obl iged to rise to the defense of "science" against its
"bashers , " whi c h is obvious l y what he thinks "deconstruction" means.
Sokal's rakish claim was that i n a postm odern perspective "the space­
time manifold ceases to exist as an objective physical reality; geometry
becomes relational and contextua l ; and the foundational conceptual
categories of prior science - a mong them, existence itself- become
problematized and rel ativiz e d " Defending hi mself to the Times re­
.

porte r, Sta n ley Aronowitz , co-founder of th e journal and City U niver­

sity of New York professor, said Sokal is i l l rea d and half-educated"
" -

and "got it wrong. " That d oe s not seem like much of a defense, as it
leaves the reader to wonder what "standards of evidence or logic" e dito r
Aronowitz uses when he accepts articles for publication in hi s journal .
Stanley Fish, among other things Executive Director of Duke U niver­
sity Press, which publishes Social Text, was incensed that anyone
should disturb , disrupt, transgress, mime, satirize, or subvert postmod­
emists (who spend their time, of course, doing just that to everybody
else). Fi sh said he was not am used , that this was a bad joke, not funny
at al l and then , like an aging Sh a kespe are scholar, invoked the most
,

classical and straight sta ndards of academic propriety against Soka l .

Questioning the very ethics o f Al a n Sokal, Fish took all th is very seri­
ously and i n dig n a ntly arg ued that the so c io l ogy of science is i n the
serious business of d e lim i tin g science, not of bashing it, of showing
the extent to which scientific claims are embedded in social, politica l ,
and even sexual systems possessed o f s e rious political implications Z .

I See Alan D. Sokal , "Transgress ing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative H er

meneutics of Quantum Gravity, " Social lext (Spring/Sum mer 1 996), 2 1 7 2 5 2 ; and
"A Physicist Experiments with Social Stud i es , " Lingua Franca (May/J U l i e 1 996),
62 64. Science Wars, cd . Andrew Ross (Dnrha m , N . C . : Duke U n i versity Press, 1 996)
is a separate pri n t ing of th i s issue of Socia l Text, whose contributors a re respon d i l lg to
a wave of criticism headed by Paul Gross and Norman Levitt's Higher Superstition
(Balti more: The Johns H opki n s U n i vers ity Press, 1 994), which presel lts the cultural
stud ies critique of "value free science" as "science bashing. "
2 Sta n ley Fi s h , "Professor Soka l 's Bad Joke , " The New York Times, )I.·l ay 2 1 , 1 996,
p. 2 3 , "Op ed" page. The d i sanalogy, if I may weigh i n on this d i spute , between the
 KI/()I<A R E I N G S E R I O U S WITH PI.ATO

In a letter sent out over the Internet which he had withdrawn from
publication because the Times would not publish it in full, Soka) says
that he knows all that and that he is interested only in exposing the
excesses of the sociology of science!
Sokal's satire, the Times reporter comments, i s an "impenetrable
hodgepodge" bolstered with lengthy footnotes and citations of the work
of Aronowitz and "the likes of Jacques Derrida. " The likes of Jacques
Derrida ! Alas, that Derrida should live to hear his name used as a sign
of non -sense and resistance to gravity ! Alas, that something as serious
as "deconstruction" would come to do service for sllch silliness ! Restor­
ing the gravity of deconstruction, showing that deconstruction is seri­
ous business, clearing the name of a very responsible man, seeing the
serious side of what Derrida and others call "transgression , " which
tickles Sakal's funny bone - that is serious business .
The last thing Derrida is interested in doing is unde rmining the
natural sciences or scientific knowledge generally. A "deconstruction"
of natural science, were it undertaken seriously and with a sufficient
sense of gravity, would be good news. Its effect would be to keep the
laws of science in a self-revising, self-questioning mode of openness to
the "other, " which here would mean the scientific "anomaly, " the
thing that defies or transgresses the law (nomos). A deconstructive ap­
proach to science would keep the scientific community open to the
upstarts, the new ideas, the audacious young gradu a te students who
come up with unexpected h ypotheses that at first look a little funny
and then a little brilliant. A deconstructive approach to natural science
would maintain that the "laws" of science are always deconstructible
(revisable) j ust in virtue of an science to come, one that is presently
unforeseeable. A de constructive approach to science would be good
news and hard science. The sneaking suspicions that something may
be wrong with what we currently believe, while keeping a watchful eye
that current paradigms not be taken dogmatically, that something else,
something other, still to come, is being missed - that deeply decon-

rules of baseball and the law of gravity seems to me to outweigh the a n alogy. For a
twi t of Fish's ind ignati o n , see also Torn Frank, "Textual Reckon ing," in These Times
(May 27, 1996), 22 24. The New York Review of Books used th is opportunity to take a
shot at Derrida in Steven \Veinberg, "Sokal's Hoax, " The New York Review of Boks
(August 8, 1 996), 1 1 1 5; Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in ph ysics, says we n eed "to
pr otec t o urselves from the irra t i o n a l tendencies that sti l l beset human ity, " i m plying
that if Derrida a nd deconstruction get hold of our children's minds, i t will not be long
until "burning witches" makes a come back (p. 1 5).
74 DECON STR UCTION I N i\ N UTSI-WLI.

structive frame of m i nd goes to the heart of hardba ll science , if it has

a heart!
S o, i f deconstruction would have interesting and con structive th i ngs
to say about sci ence , very much in the spirit of the most responsible
and serious Kuhnian and post- Kuhnian ph i l osophers of science,
Anglo-Ameri cans philosophers all, I m ight add ; 3 if deconstruction is
gravity itself; if, more generally, a "deconstruction" of science or theol­
ogy, of literature or law, of whatever, is a lways an attempt to open it
up, not bash it o r knock it sensel ess , then h ow did Derrida's good n a me
get d ragged i nto this hoax? H ow, to put it in a nutshell , do " Derrida"
or "d econstruction" eventually come to mean the devi l h i mself?
In the "Roundtabl e , " the case in point is not physics but Greek
phi l osophy. But the serious study of Greek philosophy, of Plato and
Ari stotle, fo r example, will serve very well to stake out Derrida's vi ews
about doing serious work, about standards and criteria i n any academic
discipline - from investigating the laws of gravi ty to the study of Origi­
nal Sin - and , hence, to d issociate him from the silliness , the stupid­
ity, the stupefying n onsense, that he thinks that anyth i n g goes.

DECONSTRUC'TION Is S ERIOUS BUSINESS

" Doing deconstruction , " if deconstructio n is something to do, is not

a matter of the very latest, up-to-date, ahead-of-itself, avant-garde,
postmodern , one-upmansh ip. Deconstruction has to do with the oldest
of the old as well as with what is coming. If there is anyth i ng at all to
deconstruction, then what it describes, namely, a certa in auto-decon­
structing tendency built right i nto th ings , is as old as the h i lls, as an­
cient as Plato, as medieval as Thomas Aquinas, as modern and
enl ightened as Desca rtes , Kant, and Hegel - a nd N ewton . I n the
" Roundtable, " Derrida reaffirms h is love of the great tradition of Greek
philosophy and of Plato and Aristotle i n particular. He tells us that as
rega rds the Greeks he is a perpetual beginner, that they are always
ahead of h i m , that reading them is an i n fi n ite task that is always "be-

I I have made a halting, imperfect beginnin g for myself in th is di rection in my

Radical Hermeneu t ics: Repetition , Deconstruction , and the Hermeneu tic Project
(Bloomin gton : Indiana U n i versity Press, 1 987), chap. 8. The work of Robert C rease
is among the most i nteresti n g in this field of a "hermeneutics" of th e natural sciences,
which i s , I th ink, i mportantly consonant with a decollstructive approach to science.
 KlI()RA B�:JNG S I': R I O U S WITI I PLATO 75

fore" him. Derrida is perfectly serious. Contrary t o the popular misrep­

resentations of deconstruction as some sort of ene my of the tradition,
something that ignores or distorts the great "cano n , " Derrida treats
g reat dead white European males like Pl ato with sc r upulo u s and loving
care So, to "do deconstruction" - and do it we must lest it be done
.

unto us -we must take the Greeks ser io usl y and espec ia lly Plato,
,

whose discussion of thc khOra in Timaeus 48- 5 2 d raws Derrida's par­

ticular interest. 4 Deconstruction, after all , is serious busincss! It is grav­
ity itself, if it has an itself.
In th e current chapter, in order to get some idea of the seriousness
of Dcrrida's app roach to the tra d ition , I will begin by se ttin g forth what
he ca l led early on his "exorbitant method"; then I will take up the
"example" he p ro p oses to us of a deconstructive analysis: his treatment
of Plato's kh6ra . Finally, I will offer a n opinion about why it is that
Derrida's interest is drawn to the khOra. I will show how Plato's treat­
ment of the khO ra serves Dcrrida as a "sur-name" for differance, that
is, a kind of "a l lego ry of differa nce. For kh6ra exposes a certain "im­
"

purity" (KhOra 94/0N 1 26) and intractability at the very core of philo­
sophical concepts, a certain retreat and recession from philosophy's
grasp, right th ere in Plato , who is the very paradigm of wh at we mean
by philosophy, the horse's mouth of philosophy, thus leading us up to
the very l im its of philosophy - and to the heart of dcconstruction, if it
has a heart.
Plato and Aristotle, Derr id a says , are always ahead of him. Reading
them is always a matter of startin g over again, always an i nfinite task.
"We" - always an immensely p roblemati c term for Derrida - a re all

• Actually, Plato drew Derrida 's intercst ea rly on, a s well , i n an extremely famous
article entitled " Plato's Pharmacy" ( 1 968), th e first pa rt of Dissemina tion, a well
known piece that has been extensively commented on, which is mentioned i n the
q ue sti o n put to him by Professor Broga n in the "Roundtable. " For this reason, I have
chosen to gloss, instead , Derrida's l a te r i n terest in Plato, which is also the one that is
on his m i nd in the "Roundtable, " which he worked out in two essays written som e
twenty years later, "How Not t o Speak: Denials" ( 19 8 5 ) and " Khdra " ( 1 987). For
help with "Plato's Pharmacy, " see Walter Brogan, " Plato's Pharmakon : Between Two
Repetitions, " in Derrida and Decons tructio n , ed . l I ugh Silverman (New York:
Routledge, 1 989), pp. 7 2 3 . For a very helpful commentary on Derrida's Plato, early
and late, see Catherine I I . Zucker!, Postmodern Platos (Chicago: The Un iversity of
Chicago Press, 1 996), chaps . 7 8 . For criticisms of " Pl a to's Pha rmacy, " see Stanley
Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (New York: Oxford U n i versity Press, 1 9 87); a nd , more
rccently, Yoaf Rinon , "The Rhetoric of jacques Derrida. I. 'Plato's Pharmacy, ' " Re
view of Metaph ysics, 46 ( 1 992), 369 386; "The Rhetoric of jacques Derrida . I I .
'Phaedrus, ' '' Review of Metaphysics, 4 6 ( 1 99 3 ) , 5 37 5 58 .
76 DECONSTRUCTION IN A N UTS H E L L

children of the Greeks. At least the Greeks form a considerable pa rt of

"our" grandpa rentage , of at least some of "us, " since those of "us" who
hail from Asia or were hauled unwillingly from sub-Saharan Africa
have different genealogies and usually do not feel all that Greek. While
Derrida's admiration for Heidegger should not be underestimated, he
wants no part of Heidegger's "Greco-" and "Emo-centrism, " which
goes hand in hand with Heidegger's concomitant mythologizing and
theologizing of the "homeland" of Bei ng, of Being's mother tongue,
and of the Germans-as-Heirs-of-the-Hellenes, the master myth (and
myth of the masters) that steered much of Heidegger's thought and
abominable politics. That is both wildly funny, Derrida says, and ex­
tremely dangerous (OLE 1 09- 1 1 O/0S 68-69). Stil l , despite Heidcg­
ger's excesses, if "we" means both the NATO-ese world of Euro­
Americans and the colonizing reach that world has made into the rest
of the world, then we a re always bound to study the Greeks if we want
to understand who we are and what we can become and what is going
on around the globe.
But this reading of the Greeks is not to be "conservative" or repro­
ductive, not because Oerrida rejects the very idea of such a reading,
but because such a reading is always a first reading, preparatory, pre­
liminary, ground-laying, contextualizing. This first reading is to be
followed by a more "productive, " fine-grained, distinctly deconstruct­
ive readi ng, which explores the tensions, the loose threads, the little
"openings" in the text which the classical reading tends to close over
or put off as a problem for another day, which is really j ust a way to
forget them. But that means that the very idea of a deconstructive
reading presupposes th is more reproductive and classical reading that
stays on all the expressways and does not pursue the little sideroads or
venture into unmarked areas. The classical reading follows what we
might call the dominant tendencies of the text, the smooth superh igh­
ways with numbered exits. Only after that reading, or through it, or
best of all along with it, does a deconstructive reading settle in to point
out the dead-ends and aporias and to make th ings more difficult. As
Heidegger said , authenticity is a modification of inauthenticity; being
different is always a modification that gives a new bent and twist to the
same. But always, please remember, all this is in order to open things
up, to find a way to read "otherwise" (au trement), in the name of the
incom i ng of the other (I'inven tion de l 'autre) .
The relati onship between the first and the second readings, between
 KH()RA, B E I N G S E R I O U S WITI I PLATO

the dominant and the deconstructive rea di n gs , may be seen to m i rror

the r e l a ti onsh i p between the m a instr e am institutions and the College .
The idea is n ot to j ett is o n the classical d is c ip l i n e , but to d isturb it by
way of explori ng w h a t systematically d ro ps through its g ri d and , by so
d i s tu rb i n g it, to open it u p . Th ere is a fair amount of confusion about
th is, 1 think , in the po p u l a r representations of D e r r i d a . Alan Sokal,
The New York Times, a n d The New York Review of Books ce rta i n ly got
themselves confused about it. Such critics te n d to see decon struction
a nd whatever is meant by "transgression" as an " a n yth ing g oe s " herme­
n eut i c s given over to arbitrary and, de s p i te its critique of s u bj e c tivity,
highly subjectivist re adi ngs that are of not much h e l p to se r i o u s stu­
d e n ts - of Greek ph i l osop h y or the law of grav i ty or a n ythi n g else, not
all t h a t far removed from witch-burning! Thus, the dis t i n c ti o n be­
tween fi rst and second readi ngs , between classical and deconstructive
re a d i n gs , te n d s to b e c o n s tr u e d popu l a r ly as the d i st i n cti on between
gravity ( l i te r a l ly!) and l evity, be tween serious (scholarly, "responsible")
re a d i ng s on the one hand and silly (unscholarly, i rresponsible, even
d a n ge r o u s ) read i n gs on the o th e r . But, for Derr id a , a deconstructive
reading is e x c eed ingly close , fi ne - g ra i n ed , meticulous, schola rly, s e ri ­
ous, and , above all , " re s po n s ibl e , " both in the s en s e of b e i n g able to
give an a c c ou n t of itself in s ch ol arly terms and in the sense of " re­
sponding" to s ome th ing in the text that tends to d rop out of view.
Ind eed, Derrida has l ittle patience with the nonsense that is often i m ­
po rted under the label o f the "play of s i g n i fi e rs . " " The i nfe ren c e s , " h e
says, "to which these games o f association and society pastim es have
for a long time been g iv i n g rise are facile, tedious, and naively j lIbila­
tory" ( UG I l l /AL 289).

AN EXORBITANT METHOD

Because of the confusion over this issue, and the i m p o rta n c e of getting
D e r r i d a right on this point, let us follow a pa ss age that is often over­
looked i n Of Grammatology, even t h o ugh it a ppe ars in the famous
di sc u ss i on of dec o n st r u c t i o n as a n " exo rbi ta n t method , " exorbitance
of course presupposing an orbit to d i splac e . Derrida is abo u t to scan­
dalize the Good a n d the J ust, the K n i gh ts of Good Conscience, by
saying "there is no th i ng outside the text" (DLG 2 26-227 lOG 1 57-
1 5 8), which he c a l l s "the ax i a l proposition of th i s essay" (DLG 2 3 31
78 DECON STRUCTION I N A N UT S H F. L L

DC 1 63). That is the famous, scandalous part, and one of the most
thoroughly misrepresented utterances in contemporary philosophy. A
deconstructive reading, Derrida says, always settles into the distance
between what the author consciously intends or means to say (liouloir­
dire), that is, what she "commands" i n her text, and what she does not
command, what is going on in the text, as it were, behind her back
and so "sur-prises, " over-takes, the author herself. That d istance, or
gap, is something the deconstructive reading must "produce. " Clearly,
such a structure, or relationship, cannot be produced by a respectful,
reproductive, doubling, s e l f effac i ng commentary that follows the con­
-

scious choices the author is making, since that, to the extent that it is
possible, wi l l p ick u p only one end, the conscious i n tentiona l ity of ,

the relationship.
But at this point Derrida says, and this is the part that is overlooked
by his critics (and too often by his admirers):
This moment of doubl ing commen tary should no doubt h ave its pl ace
in a critical read ing. To recogn i ze and respect a l l i ts classical exigencies
is not easy and req uires all the i nstruments of traditional criticism [ DLC
227/0C i 58J.

To read Plato and Aristotle well, one must learn Greek, learn as much
as possible about their predecessors, contemporaries, and successors,
about their religious, social, political , and historical presuppositions,
understand the complex history of subsequent interpretations of their
works, etc . This is "not easy"; indeed, it is an infinite task, and decon­
struction is not a license to circumvent it. For otherwise, if this read i n g
does not take place, then "anyth ing goes , " and readers may say of a
text whatever comes into their heads:
Without th i s recogn ition and this respect, critical production would risk
developi ng i n a ny d i rection at a l l and authorize itself to say almost any
thi ng [DLC 227/0C 1 58J.

Yet this r e s p ec tfu l commentary is necessary but not sufficient:

But th is i n d i spensable guardrail has always only protected, it has never
opened a reading [ DLC 2 2 7 /0C i 5 8J.

We can not establish the relationship between what the author com­
mands and does not command if we do not first get a command of
what of the author says or, better, what is being said in the text. S uch
 KlI(}RA SF-I N C S E RIOllS W ITH PLATO 79

a classical exigency, Derrida says, provides guardra ils, parameters , ho­

rizons within which interpretation takes its first steps . Now, if such
guardra ils are enforced absol utely, they will grind the "tradition" to a
halt, "mummify" it, as Nietzsche would say, so that the tradition of
reading Plato and Aristotle will bccome a matter of handing on ready­
made results, passing along finished formulas for mechan ical repeti­
tion and recitation. Then the traditional criticism will not protect at
all, unless you regard embalming as a form of protectio n . So, the only
way to be really loyal to a tradition, that is, to keep i t alive, is not to
be too loyal, too reproductive; the only way to conserve a tradition is
not to be a conservative.
That is why the possibil ity m ust be kept alive of reading otherwise,
which means always passing through the classical discipline, and never
having abandoned or jettisoned it, to explore what it omits, forgets,
excludes, expels, marginalizes, dismisses, ignores, scorns, slights, takes
too lightly, waves off, is j ust not serious enough about! About all these
omitted - "de-legitimated" - el ements, the deconstructive reading is
scrupulous, gravely in earnest, deadly serious. A deconstructor is like
an inspector who is gravely concerned with a little crack he observes
in a n airplane's fuselage (given the laws of gravity), wh ile everyone else
on the i nspection team is eager to break for lunch - thus reversing the

popular stereotype that the deconstructive readi ng is silly and sloppy.

The deconstructive reading is "transgressive" of the protection that
the traditional reading affords . In what sense? That, Derrida says, can
be answered negatively. It does not mean: ( I ) saying wha tever comes
into your head about the text, however absurd and ridiclllous ­
although that is evidently what Amy Gutmann, Alan Sakal, Gertrude
Himmelfarb, William Bennett (DDP 488n l IPR 1 5n8), a nd The New
YOTk Times think "deconstruction" is - which is why Gutmann thinks
it gives aid and comfort to Mormon polygamy while Steven Weinberg
is worried about witch burning!
(2) Nor does this trans-gression consist in a n act of absolute tran­
scendence by means of which one lifts oneself out of one's textual
boots or peeks around behind the text to some sort of naked , prelinguis­
tic, hOTs-textual , ahistorical , lin interpreted fact of the matter called the
thi ng-in-itself, or Real Being, or the "transcendental s ignified, " or
whatever sets your heart aflame. We are all always and already, on
Derrida's tell ing, embedded in various networks -social , h istorical,
linguistic, pol itical, sexual networks (the l ist goes on nowadays to in
80 DECON STRUCTION I N A N UTS I I ELL

elude electronic networks, worldwide webs) -various horizons or pre­

suppositi ons, which is what Oerrida means by the "general text" or
"archi-text" or "textuality" or, here, j ust "text. " And it is in this context
that he formulates the memorable text, " There is noth ing outside of
the text" ("if n'y a pas de hors-text") (OLG 227 lOG 1 5 8). For, on
Derrida's view, if ever we try to lay aside the enframing texts of Plato
and Aristotle and look "directly" at the things themselves of wh ich they
spoke , we will do so only through other frames, other horizons, other
socio-historico-linguistico-political presuppositions, other "differen­
tial" relationships or networks, which in Oerrida's language are de­
scribed as the "differential play" of the "trace" or of ecriture (about
which more shortly). Oerrida is not trying to bury the idea of "objectiv­
ity" but, a Ltle l ike Kant, to force us to formulate a more sensible
version of i t tha n of some ahistorical Ding-a n-sich .
Of this "textual" point, literature is an exempla ry example . There
rea lly is no Jane Eyre (alas , I love her madly) outside the text of fane
Eyre whom we may consult, say, to find out if she really did hear Mr.
Rochester call her name , "Jane , " from across the moors; and, having
published her book, Charlotte Bronte has lost all right authoritatively
to settle these matters for us. But what literature exhibits "purely, "
exemplarily, as it were, is true in varying ways and degrees of every
other discourse. No one ever gets privileged access to the Secret that
sits smiling behind all language and interpretation waiting for us but
to knock; we are all in the same textual boat together, forced to do the
best we can with such signs and traces as we can piece together, work­
ing out of one worldwide-web site or another. It is not that texts and
languages have no "referents" or "objectivity" but that the referent
and objectivity are not what they pass themselves off to be, a pure
transcendental signified . Derrida is not trying to destroy texts or the
ability to read texts or to turn everything - th e great Greeks , Plato and
Aristotle, m athematical physics and the law of gravity i ncluded - into
fiction , or to deny the d istinction between reality and fiction; he is
trying, rather, to disrupt "the tranquil assurance that leaps over the text
toward its p resumed content, in the direction of the pure signified"
(DLG 2 28/0G 1 59). "If n 'y a pas de hors-text" means: there is no
reference without difference, that is, without recou rse to the differen­
tial syste ms - be they literary or mathematical - we have at our dis­
posal.
Well, then, what does Derrida mean by "tra nsgression"?
 KH()RA: B � J N G S E R I O U S W I T H Pl ATO 81

A t r a nsg r es s i on req u i res something to t ra n sgr e s s a border that pro­

,

h ibits passage, a l i m it that forbids trespass , a fo rbidden a pple to i nvite

the bite . We must, accord i ngly, l earn to read Pl ato and A ristotl e , study
h a rd and pass our exams i n our l egitimated "Intermediate Greek" and
" H istory o f Anci e n t Ph i l osophy" c o u rses, subm i t ourselves to thc m os t
classical exigencies of " profcssional rigor and compcte n ce , " pass
through the asceticism of the most trad itional "discipl i n e , " legitimate
oursclves a c c o r d i ng to the most classical norms ( DDP 49 I IPR I 7 ) - in
short, take whatever the masters of l e g i ti m at i on can hand out. B u t
this m u s t n o t become an excuse fo r conservatism , for a conservative,
reproductive tra d i tiona lism that does not " prod uce" anyth ing, O J allow
an open ing for the other, for the i nvention of the o th e r The invention .

of the other req u i res fi rst the conventions of the sa m e in reference

to which one sets out to find something contra vening and counter­
conventional, something transgressive of the h o rizon of legitimation .
Transgrcssion is a co n tr o ll e d contravention or invention , requiring the
d iscipline of an al ready standing frame or horizon to tra nsgress , wh ich
is why i t is described as a "double gesture . " Transgression thus is a
passage to the l i m i t (passage d [imites, d fron tieres) , the c rossing of a
well-dra ..n border that we all share, giving someth i ng straight a new
bent or incli n a ti o n or twist. One can i magine that Derrid a has in mind
a n i mpudent doctoral student i n physics giving the standa rd parad igm ,
n o t to mention the ful l professors, a certa i n amount of h e l l , which is
q uite different from uninformed critici s m !
Derrida's i d e a is not to let t h e fi rst re a d i n g become the l a s t word and
not to break the te n sio n between the dom inant, classical r e a dings
" "

and the transgressive readings , between the much revcrcd sta n d i n g par­
adigms and th e a nomalies that circulate with i n and eventually open
up the syste m . Conservatism breaks t h e tension in one wa y, by ta king
its stand with i n the standing horizons a nd presen t parad igms, shooting
out of the skies everything transgressivc, wh ile the silliness descried by
Alan Sokal or Amy Gutm ann - and Jacques De rrida ! - breaks it in the
opposite way, by not passing th rough the classical d i scipline and so
removing any borders to trespass .
Without a n exampl e, all of this m i gh t sound l ike so m u ch smoke
a nd m i rrors ,a bit of i n tellectual razzle-dazzle. Derrid a 's cxample i n
t h e " Roundtable" is Plato. Even a n d especially i n a ph ilosopher a s
"ca nonical" a s Plato, who in a certain sense sets t h e scelle fo r and
defi nes the te rms of thc canon , who i s the canon for the ca n o n , even
82 DECO N ST R U CTION I N A N UTSHELL

here "the possibilities of rupture are always waiting to be effected" and

"the most rad ically deconstructive motifs are at work" (AL 53). An
important metaphysical text like Plato's is never "homogeneous, "
never self-identical, "never totally governed by 'metaphysical
assumptions' " (AL 5 3 ) . Radical motifs can always be detected and re­
leased:
I t can always b e s ho w n (I h a v e tried to do so, for example, i n rel a ti o n
to the khOra of the Timaeus) that the most radi c a lly deconstructive m o ­
tifs a re at work " i n " what i s called the Platonic, Cartesian, Ka nti a n text
[AL 5 3] .
Derrida uses the same example o f the khOra in the " Roundtable" (RT
9), so his analysis of Plato's khOra will repay our study, to "illustrate"
how to "do" deconstructive readings of the great cano n , how they
"work. " For Plato, it will turn out, is not j ust another, not even the
first, "example" of what is called "ph ilosophy" and the philosophical
canon . Plato is a beginning we can never get past or behind; we are
always b egi n n er s beginning with Plato.

Km)RA

In th e essay entitled "KhOra, " Derrida draws a d is t i n ctio n between the

"philosophy" of Plato and the "text, " a distinction that, we will see,
parallels the distinction between dominant-reprod uctive and trans­
gressive-productive readings of Plato. "The philosophy of Plato, " Der­
rida says, is an abstraction and a simplification, while the text from
which it has been excised is complex and heterogeneous, a m ulti­
plex of innumerable threads and layers. The text, he says , produces
numerous "effects" - semantic and syntactical, constative and per­
for mative, stylistic and rhetorical, etc. - only one of which is its "philo­
sophical content. " "Platonism" is an artifice - but not an arbitrary
on e - constructed by cutting and pasting, trimming Plato's text neatly
arou nd the borders, combing out all the knots and conundrums, the
involutions and convolutions, creating the safe, sanitized, distilled "ef­
fec t " called Plato's "philosophy":
This will be called Platonism or the philosophy of Plato, which is n e i
ther arbitrary n o r illegitimate, since a certa i n force of thetic abstraction
at work in the heterogeneous text of Plato can recommend one to do
so . . . . " Platon ism" is thus certa i n l y o n e of th e effects of the text signed
 KHORA: BEING SERIOUS WITH Pl.ATO 83

by Plato, for a long t i m e and for necessary reasons, the dominant ef

,

fect, but th is effect is a lways turned back agai nst the text (KhOra 8 1 8 2/
ON 1 20].

The "philosoph y " of Plato, which is an ensemble of " theses, of phi­ " "

losophemes, " of thematic philosophical "claims, " which corresponds

then to the "dominant, " reproductive reading, can be turned against
the "text" of Plato, which is an ensemble of te xtua l events - "this en­
semble without limit which we here ca l l the text" (KhOra 8 3 /0N
1 20 ) - in which are embedded any number of other, "transgressive"
tendencies. The philosophy can then be made to monitor or police
the text, "dominating, according to a mode which is precisely all of
philosophy, other motifs of thought which are also at work in the text"
(KhOra 82/0N 1 20). A homogeneous and dominant, theti e and philo­
sophic effect of the text is made to bend back on the text as a whole,
made to govern it rigorously, made to keep watch over its inexhaustible
heterogeneity for deviations and transgressions.
Privileging the philoso ph y of Plato is what Derrida means by "logo­
centrism, " making the logic of the argument, the demonstrably true
or false claims, the center, while sending everyth ing else off to the
periphery as mere rhetoric or ornamentation, letting the logic lead the
letter. The result of th is l og o ce n tric hegemony of the "philosophy, "
this concentration of "theses, " is that the text is "neutralized , "
"numbed, " "inhibited , " even though these heterogeneous fo rces c o n ­
ti nue to stir in their inhibited form . Platonism is not only the first
"example" in the West of the construction of such a phi lo sophy but
" , "

also the paradigm that "commands this whole history, " since "philoso­
phy" will always be in one way or another "Platonic. "
Hence the necessity to conti n u e to try to think what takes place in Plato,
with Plato, what is sho wn there , what is hidden , so as to win there OJ
to lose there [KhOTa 84/0N 1 2 1 ] .

" Deconstruction" will consist i n a fine-grained reading o f the text, of

the literality and textuality of the text, slowly, scru p ul o usly, seriously,
in releasing the still-stirring forces that philos ophy and l ogocentrism
" "

strive to conta i n .
B y taking up the khOra , Derrida turns - predictably - to a n unpre­
dictable , dark, and remote spot in the vast and gleaming architecture
of Pla toni s m . When we think of Plato, we think of the two worlds
or regions allegorized in the cave: the upper world of the i n telligibl e
84 m:CON STRlJCTION I :- A N UT S H E LL

p a ra d i g ms the sphere of invisible and u nc ha n g i n g be i ng in the sun of

,

the Good that shines over all, as opp o sed to th e sensible likenesses of
the fo r m s in the changing, visible world of becom i n g , to which the
d istinction in the fa c u l t ies between sure logos and merely probabl e
doxa corresponds . When p r es e nted with a neat distinction or opposi­
tion of this sort - and this d i stinction ina u gu ra tes philosophy, carves
out the very space of "meta-physics" - Derrida will not, in the man ner
of Hege l , loo k for some uplifting, di a l ect i c a l reconciliation of the two
in a h igher third thing, a concrete un iversal, which contains the
"truth" of the first two. I nstead he will look a round - in the text it­
,

self- for some third thing which the distinction omits, some untruth,
or b a r e ly true remnant, which falls outside the famous distinction,
which the truth of either s e para tely or b oth t oget her fails to ca p t ur e ,
which is neither and both of the two .
In th e Timaeus, the missing third thi ng, a thi rd nature or type (tri­
ton genos, 5 2s)- khOra - is s uppl ied by Plato himself. KhOra is the
immense and indeterm inate spatial re c e pta c l e (dekhomenon, hypo­
dokhe) in w h i ch the sensible likenesses of the e t e rnal paradigms are
"engendered , " in which they are ins c ribed" by the Dcmiurge, there b y
"

providing a "home" for all things. KhOra is nei th e r an i ntel l i g ible form
nor one more sensible thi ng, but, rather, that in which (in quo) sensi­
ble things arc inscribed , a tabula rasa on whi c h the De m i u rge writes.
This rec e pta c l e is like the forms inasmuch as it h a s a kind of eternity:
it nei th e r is born nor dies, it is always already there, a n d h e n c e is
beyond temporal c omi n g to-b e and passing awa y ; yet, it d o es not have
-

the etern ity of the inte lli g ibl e paradigms but a c e r tain a -c h ro n is ti c a­
temporality. Because it belongs neither to the intelligible nor to the
sensible world, Plato says it is "hardly real . " Moreover, while it cannot
be perceived by the senses but only by the mind , still it is not an
intell igible object of the mind, like the forms. H e n c e , Plato says it is
not a legitimate son of reason but is appreh e n ded by a spurious or
c orr u pte d logos, a hybrid or bastard reasoning. KhOra is neither intelli­
gi b l e be i n g nor sensible b e c oming , but a little like both, the subject
matter of n eith e r a true logos nor a go od mythos.
So, what khOra is, is d iffi cult to say. It is j ust this aporetic, enig­
matic, tongue-tying third thing that d r aws Derrida's attention. For
herc he comes upon something that tends to d rift to the edge of philos­
ophy's screen , beyo n d or beneath (en decal philosophy's grasp (KhOra
9 3 /0N 1 2 5 ) , situ a te d too low for ph ilosophy's conceptual radar to pick
 KIIORA B E I N G S E R I O U S W ITH PI .ATO 85

u p , thereby eluding t h e order of categorics that Plato has insta lled.

Perhaps, Derrida says, th is enigmatic structure, which fits into neither
gen re, is too neutral and indeterm i nate to have any "generic" d etermi­
nation at all, or to have anything at a l l to do with "generation, " s o
that perhaps khOra "signal[sl toward a genre beyond genre , " perhaps
"beyond categoria l oppositions, which in the fi rst place al low it to be
approached or said" (KhOra 1 7 ION 90). Like pure being, or pure noth­
ingness; both and neither. This third th ing, introduced not by some
wild -eyed, disheveled deconstructor, his pants torn and h i s pupils di­
lated, but by the cold eye of sober old three-piece-suited Plato him­
self- it is mentioned in all the canonical commentaries - is j ust the
sort of thi ng, or non-thing, to attract the interest of Derrida 's "exorb i ­
tant method . " This method , we n o w sec , consists i n closely, seriously,
minutely following the text until we see that the orthodox, received ,
dominant interpretation has been produced by a wave of the hand that
brushes aside the d eviations and transgressive moments . (So now who
is being serious a nd who is being silly?)
The word khOra is the common Crcek noun for a concrete area or
place; a khorion , for example, is a district or an estate, and khorismos
is a separation in the sense of a gap or space between . KhOra is tra ns­
lated into Latin as locus a nd into French as lieu . For Derrida , who
chooses to leave the word untransl ated , although he plays with lieu
throughout the piece, the khOra ean be understood as a great a byss
(abime) or void which is "filled" by sensible th ings. Now, the d iscus­
sion of the khOra , Derrida points out, is "located" in the m iddle, in
the mid-place (m ilieu) , of the text of the Timaeus. Inasmuch as the
Timaeus is intended to survey the whole of the kosmos, l i ke a "eosmo­
ontologic encyclopedia" ( KhOra 67/0N 1 1 3 ), this discussion occurs
like a great chasm or abyss in the middle of the book. That is a "tex­
tual " feature of the Timaeus, thc sort of thing logo-centric ph ilosophers
brush aside because of its seeming irrelevance to the "argum ent. "
Now, for Derrida, the order of composition of the Timaeus, the
quasi-law of its textuality, governing all the substitutions and permuta­
tions that go on i n the tcxt, is fixed by an elaborate m ise en a blme. A
m ise en abime is a vertiginous play of reflections , as when an image is
infinitely reAected in a mirror held up against a m irror. For example,
physicist Alan Soka l 's satiric deconstruction of the principle of "grav­
ity" was a mise en abime that m ocked the "gravity" of postmodcrn ism ,
suggesti ng that the feet of postmodern th inking, not q u i te reachi ng the
86 D�:CONSTRlJCnON I N A NUTS H E L L

ground, l a c k tractio n . So, De r r id a sets out to show that the staging

(m ise en scene) of the discussion of the khOra in the tex t of th e Timaeus
is a m i rro r- p l a y of "khOral" images. Whence the rhetorical trope, mise
en abime - Ietting the same notion or image be reflected across s ev e ral

structures within the work, as in a play within a play - functions in the

text of the Timaeus to "enact" o r " pe rfo rm " the meaning of th e khOra .
For the kh6ra is an "abyss, " a void of empty space; it is also an infinite
play of reflections in which the p ara d igms pro du ce their images, si m ­
ply " reflecting" sensible th i n gs l ike a m i rror th a t is not a lte red by the
im a ges it reflects (KhOra 46-47/0N 1 04) The d iscllssion in th e Ti­
maeus of the b ottom less abyss of the khOra is staged in the text by a
reflection wi th o ut l i m it, without bottom or groun d , of "kh6ra l " im­
ages, by a play of reflecti o ns that induces in li S , the readers of Plato, a
sen s e of d izziness and vertigo as before an abyss . Whence Derrida's
scrupul o usly close reading of the text- here turned to the opening
" prefa ce " to the Timaeus ( l 7A-27B) - consists in exh i bi t i ng the s everal
m ises en abime to be found in the text, and this by way of leading
us into the indeterm i n ate a bys s toward which Pl ato ' s own c atego ri a l
determinations advance.
Socrates opens the Timaeus by m ak i n g a reference back (by "re­
flecting" back) to the Republic- "the chief the m e of yesterday's dis­
course was the sta te " (Timaeus 1 7c). The politeia , De r ri d a points out,
is str uctu red a round a certa in "pol itics of sites" or pl ac es (KhOra 49/
ON 1 04) in which e ac h m a n , w om a n, and child is a ss ign e d his proper
place (khOran). Justice is a c erta i n j ust distribution of pl a c es , of the
r u le rs , the m i l ita ry, and th e craftsmen, each in their proper place.
That politi ca l distribution goes hand i n hand w i th the distribution of
be in gs and cognitive faculties a l on g a divided line, assigning each their
measure of truth and reality a cc ord ing to the p l ace each takes on the
line, forming thus a kind of onto-theo-Iogic of pl a ce. (But wh e re , then,
is khOra on the line? What place is occupied by place "itself, " if it has
an itse l f ? Where to locate on or in the divided line that w h ic h is nei­

ther sensible nor supersensible, a l th o u gh it is i n a certain way both?

By what faculty is it apprehended? On wh a t place in the line is khOra to
be found - or is the line in the khOra ? Wh a t place does the ph ilosopher
h imself, whose office it is to order by assigning place , occupy when he
assigns these places?)
Socrates is a " kh 6 ra l " fi g u re in the d i a l og u e , because Socrates "op­
erates from a sort of non - pl ac e " (KhOra 5 5 /0N 1 0 7), as a man who
 KIIORA B E I N G S E R I O U S WITH PLATO 87

does not h a v e a proper place . H e is neither a poet, that race - o r

genos - of i mita to rs , n o r o n e o f the sophists, those who wander from
place to place full of empty words, neither of whom can speak well of
the state and e xtend "yesterday's" conversation . In reference to those
who can speak we l l , the genos of ph i losophers and leaders of the polis,
he says t o Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates, "you , " "the people of
your c l as s , " y o u people who have a place, a settled site in the city (th e
agora), from which to speak the truth of the politeia . Socrates h i msel f
fe igns not to bel ong to th i s class , to h a ve n o place, to b e at best l ike
them , an imitation of them, and in so doing feigns to look like the
feigners, the poets or the sophists, a lt h o u gh he seeks to escape m e r e
i m i tation (Timaeus 1 9Bff. ) . Hence, Socrates is a third thing, a certa i n
"third kind" (triton genos), nei t her a true philosopher who knows the
truth nor a mere dissembler, but a little like both . S ocra tes effaces
hi mself and says he will let the true phi losophers, Timaeus and his
fri e n ds, do the talking, reserving for himself th e role o f an open recep­
tacle for what his friends will offer h i m ( 2 0c), to be "informed" by
them, to receive their gift. So, the n , does S ocrates not look l ike khOra
(KhOra 59/0N 1 09)?
But let's be serious with Plato (KhOra 4 1 -43/0N 1 0 1 - 1 O2)! This is
only the preamble to the Timaeus, a bit of theatrical staging, and Plato
has not yet got down to business, to stating his claims, to l aying out his
logoi. But can we - a nd th is is w h a t Derrida is asking- speak seriously,
properly, of the kh6ra , as if it were an eternal b e ing about which we
could give a s ta b l e logos ? Or may we relax and enjoy ourselves , telli ng
a l i kely story (ton eikoton my than) about it, which is all that the proba­
ble world of sensible appearances permits? Both and neither- since
khOra is a third thing, neither intell igible nor sensible, the discourse
on w h i ch can be p r ope r l y situated neither as logos nor mythos, certa i n
or probable .
Next, Derrida identi fies th e text of t h e Timaeus as itself having a
"khoral" structure. For the Timaeus is structured like a vast receptacle,
as a ser ie s of mythic or " n arrative receptacles of receptacles" (Kh6ra
7 5 /0N 1 1 6 - 1 7) , a string of myths containing myths - the very struc­
ture of which (containing receptacles) mirrors kh6ra itself, which con­
ta in s all . Critias tells a sto ry (200ff. ) that bears all the marks of what
Derrida l ikes to call a p o s ta l network, a message that p a s s e s through
" "

several postal " relays , " which is in fact for Derrida a feature of every
text, not just the Timaeus. The story Critias tells he remembers having
88 DFCON STR u c n O N I N A N U T S H E L L

been told as a child of ten by his ni nety-year-old grandfather, Critias

the elder. The latter had himself been told the story by the great Solon,
who was a friend of Dropides, the father of the elder Critias. Solon
was himself given the story by an Egyptian priest, who had learned it
h i m self from ancient Egyptian writings that record the foundation of
Athens. The story then told to Socrates by the younger Critias is thus
embedded in layers upon layers of "textuality, " m ultiple stratifications,
boxes inside boxes, which helps gives us some idea of what a "text" is,
namely, from texere, weaving together; any discourse, whether oral or
written down, is a "text" and passes through these textual layers. In
another place, Derrida points out a similar thing about the construc­
tion of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, which does
emblematic service as an indicator of the heavily textualized nature of
what we call the "sacred scriptures . " 'I hat raises various problems for
a theory of "revelation, " and not only for fundamentalists, which can­
not be a matter of taking dictation from a divine speaker. The same
thing is true of any text, ancient or modern , sacred or profane, which
would always be structured, "constructed" of layer upon layer, fold
upon fold, ply upon ply, so that to read a "text" is always to un-fold ,
de-construct, what is going on.
The story Critias tells concerns the most noble deed in the history
of the Greeks, although it is unknown to the Athenians of the fifth
century. In the Egyptian region cal led Sais on the Delta, the citizens
have a deity called Neith , who they assert is the same as the one the
Greeks call Athena;S hence, they regard themselves as brothers to the
Athenians, having a common m other and goddess-foundress. Thi s
amazing thing Solon learned from an old Egyptian priest whom he
met when he visited Sais. The old priest chides Solon and the Greeks

l is Plato suggesting that A then a was black. "out of Africa , " as suggested by Martin
Bernal i n his Black Athena : The Afroa.� ia tic Roots of Classical Civiliza t ion . I. The
Fabrica tion of Ancie n t Greece, 1 78 5 1 98 5 (New Brunswick, N . ) . : Rutgers U n i versity
Press , 1 987), pp. 5 1 5 2 ? Keeping the a ttention a l ive between the reproductive and
productive readings is cruci a l . Noth ing gua ra ntees that a n argument that appeals to liS
in no small part because it i s impudent, unorthodox, and de centering will not come
undone from the sheer pressure of traditional scholars h i p . FTOm wha t I can judge, the
jury a ppears to be in and the verd ic t is bad for Bern a l ' s delieiolls suggestion (it would
have d riven H eideggcr over the edge ! ) . I ndeed , had AthenalNeith h a i led fTO m Egypt
a t a l l , as the myth at the beg i n n i ng of the Timaeus suggests - wh i ch not a lot of
scho l a rs bel i eve she would be at best a l i tt l e 0 1 1 t h e swa rthy side. like St. Augusti n e ,
n o t a sub-Saharan Nubi a n . See Jasper Griffi n , "Anxi eties of I n fl uence , " The New
York Review of Hooks. 4 3 . N o . 8 (June 20, 1 996). 67 7 3 .
 KHORA B E I N G S E R I O U S WITH PLATO 89

for being perpetual children because t h e y are unable to p r eserve writ­

te n records of the most an c i ent times, both their own a n d that of oth­
ers. For while the N ile protects the citizens of Sa is from the excesses
of nature, great cataclysms among the Greeks have period ically wiped
out their historical arch ives . Thrown back on memory alone, Greek
genealogies and stories are the tales of children . The priest proceeds to
tell the astonished So l o n , who was all ears, that Ath ens was n i n e thou­
sand years old, a thousand years older even than Sa is, and flourished
as the greatest city of those ancient times. He describes the constitution
th at Athena gave them, which "by some mysterious coi ncidence"
(25F.) resembles the politeia a bo u t which Socrates had spoken "yester­
day, " so that what Socrates took to be but a painting of an ideal vision
is in fact a portrait of a forgotten historical fact. Then the p riest tells
Solon of the unparalleled valor and skill of Athens in t ur n i n g back an
invasion by the formidable army l a unched from the island of Atl anti s
that saved the whole M editerranean world from conquest. Afterward,
a great earthquake destroyed a ncient Athens and swallowed the island
of Atlantis i nto the sea .
This whole story - about the value of preserving written records - is
recalled with much effort overn ight by the younger Critias (to whom
it was recalled by the elder Critias, who remembered h ea r i n g it as a
child from Solon, who recalled being told it by the priest), having been
reminded of it by Socrates's discourse yesterday. How indeed could he
forget a story that was burned i nto his mind at such a n e a r l y age!
Having said all this by way of "preface" (26c), Critias vol unteers to
Socrates to tell him the whole story in detail, for th e story of Athenian
victory over Atlantis will satisfy Socrates's demand to see the still life
painted in th e Republic put in motion, to see the polis at work , that is,
at war. Critias divides the task between himself and Timaeus, who is
the astronomer among them . To all th is Socrates responds that he can
think of noth ing better than to receive this feast of reason. The remain­
der of the Timaeus is devoted to Timaeus's d iscourse on the creation
of the kosmos, while what has been preserved of Critias's speech
concerning the battle with Atlantis - appears in the d ialogue of that
name.
So much "khoral" play, so many "khoral"-ograph ies, so many stag­
ings, enactments, imagi ngs, and reflections of kh6rQ in the text before
it becomes a philosophemc: " [A] chain of oral traditions, " "[s]o many
Greek children , " reflections reflecting themselves- all of which is told
90 m:CONSTR ucnON IN A N UTSH E L L

Socrates , who re c e i ves a l l (KhOra 72-73/0N 1 1 5 ), who r e fl ec ts every

image, and is remembered by C ri ti as because it was told him as a
c h i l d , at an "impressionable" a ge when the s to ry made a lasting im­
,

print upon h i m , as if p a i n t ed with wax i n indelible l etters" (26c). I n

"

childhood , the mind is l ike a pure receptacle.

An e n fra m in g mise en abfme o f fi cti o n s stages the scene the Ti­
maeus: F l : the Timaeus is a fictitious d i a l ogu e which contains anothe r
fiction: it opens b y "reflecting" (on) the conversation of y e sterd a y. " "

F2: that sec o nd fiction, th e Republic, co n s tru c ts the fi c t i ve model of

an i deal city. F 3 : the brief resume of the politeia by Socrates at the
beginning of th e Timaeus. S ocra te s then says that he w o u l d l ike to see
this ideal fi gu re of the poiiteia put in motion , l i ke a man l o ok i ng at a
painting of a be a u t i fu l animal who would like to s e e the animal given
life, so that "today's" conversation would add a s eco nd more living ,

graphe to the first. For this S o c ra te s says he h i m s e lf would be a ll ears ,

or a l l eyes, a ready receptacle, but he is not c a p a b l e of generating it
himself. Critias accepts the challenge, volunteering t o tell Socrates a
story he r e h e a rs e d the night before to Timaeus and H ermocrates ( =

F4), which is the tale he learned from his g ra n d fa th e r ( = F 5), who in

turn was told it by Solon ( = F6), who was told i t from a p ri e s t who
read it in the old Egyptian writings (F7).
Of this multi-plex textualized surface - wh ich we are otherwise in­
cl ined to t rea t as a kind of literary preamble to the serious p h i l o s oph y
to c om e D e r r i da asks :
-

[n this theater of i rony, where the scenes interlock in a series of recepta­

cles without end and wi th o ut bottom, how can one isolate a thesis or a
th e me that c o u l d be attributed calmly to the "philosophy of Plato , " in
d e ed to philosophy as the Platonic thing [KhOra 80/0N l 1 9) ?

To do so is t o flatten o u t and smooth over all the folds a n d pl i es of the

text, to "violently d e n y the st r u c ture of the textual scene, " to br u s h off
this play of reflections as incidental, marginal, a c c i d e n ta l asides and
i n d u l ge in still a n oth e r fi c t i on c a l l ed th e phil o s o phy of Plato. "6 The
"

analysis s e rv es to:

6 The text is l aced with i ronies. The Athen ians, the addressees to whom this tale is
being told, are a l s o the source, mode l . and i n s pi ra ti on of the tal e . All this talk about
tales being told is, of course, all written down by Plato, even as all these stories (fic
tions) are about the greatest deed or work (ergon) of the Greeks. Of Solon hi mself, a
m a ll of deeds, we a re told that he wou l d have b ee n a great poet had he not been
i n terrupted by the demands of actuality.
 KIIC)Rtt BEING SERIOUS WITH PLATO 91

accentuate the d ynam i c tension between the thetic effect a nd the tex­
tual fiction , be tw ee n on the one hand the "ph i l osophy" or the " pol itics"
which i s here a ss oc ia ted with him [ SocratesJ contents of identi fiable
and transm issible m ea n i ngs l ike the identity of a knowledge - and on
th e other h a nd a textual d r i ft which ta kes the form of a myth , in a ny
event of a "saying, " whose origi n appears a lway s u ndefined , pull ed
back, entrusted to a respon s i bi l ity tha t is forever adjou rned, wi thout a
fixed and determ inable subj ect. From one tel l i n g to the next, the author
gets fu rthe r and fu rth er away [KhOra 90/0N 1 2 3 24J

The origin of the text is more and more withdrawn , the author more
and more ancient ("dead"), the text more deeply interwoven in other
texts, so that there is no easily identi fied and assured origin in this
genealogy, no clearly identified father of the text, which ends up being
a bit of a bastard or an orphan. This in contrast to what is sai d in the
Phaedrus: that while written texts are orphans, the living word always
has its father/author on hand to defend it lest it be misunderstood.
Derrida's point here, as in "Plato's P h armac y, his first a nd quite
"

famous essay on Plato, is that every text, written or oral , is a bastard or

an orphan, its father/author having departed, and that this is a struc­
tural feature of discourse, which is a lways already interwoven with and
contained by other texts, whose roots sink into a dense context which
we have only limited success in unraveling. Even a book of genesis is
caught up in a genealogy and family history we cannot make out or
remember. The text is always a bastard . This system or boxes inside
boxes, containers containing containers - this "khOral" quality - is a
feature of textuality itself. We are all like the Creeks whom the Egyp­
tian priest scolds, children whose fathers have fled the family scene.
So, when Timaeus gets around to discussing khOra in the middle,
in the mid-place (mi-lieu), of the Timaeus he invokes this "familial
schema . " KhOra is called a nurse who receives and n u rtu res sensible
things into maturity, or a mother in whom the eidos fathers its off­
spring, sensible things. Of course, khOra is not really a wife or a nurse
but su i generis, a third thing (tri ton genos), an individual (a "th is")
and not even a genus. She/it is too passive and indeterminate even to
engender anything, and we cannot assimilate her/it into any anth ropo­
logical or theological schemas. She/it is not an origin at all but, if
anything, the "relation of the interval of the spacing to wha t is lodged
in it to be received in it" (Khora 92/0N 1 2 5 ). Khora is not a normal
origin or mother -she and the eidos do not make up a familiar family,
92 DECONSTRUCTION I N A N UTSH H.l.

a h a p py couple. But that is not bad news. The khOra is not the product
of sloppy thinking, but a case where Plato has pressed the fabric of
p hi l o s ophy hard, where Plato finds h im se l f up against something that
s l i ps free of ph i lo sophy, that eludes and is exterior to phi losop h y, older
than ph i l os oph y, pre-philosophica l , of which philosophy knows how
to s pea k neither truly nor probably. That is why philosophy tends to
stick to the father (eidos) and its legitimate son (cosmos), as if the father
begets the son without the help of a woman - a bad biology to which
the whole history of ph ilos op hy and theology gives ample witness.
To think out the origin of the kosmos one must go back to something
outside thought, out of mind - like the antique Athens recalled by the
Egyptian priest but wiped out w i th ou t a trace and utterly forgotten by
the Athenians of Socrates's day. By the sa m e token, philosop h y must
i n vo ke a forgo tten preorigin which is structurally lost to philosophy's
m e mo r y .

Two TROPICS OF NEGATIVITY

It might appear at times that khOra looks a l ittle l ike the unknown
God, th e deus absconditus, the mysterious origin beyond origi n , about
whom we cannot say a thing. This confusion or convergence of decon­
struction and negative theology was something for which Derrida was
criticized - why not congratulated? - right out of the gate, back in
1 967, at the first presentation of the essay on "differance, " to which he
has repl ied on several occasions , i nc l ud i ng a 1 986 essay entitled "How
Not to Speak: Denials" (Psy. 5 3 5ff. IDNT 7 3ff. ), which incl udes an
interesting discussion of "khOra. " While th e essay "Kh6ra " is a pref­
ace - on the p refa ce to the Timaeus - to a work that is still unpub­
lished , "How Not to S pe ak " explores the analogy and, more
important, the disanalogy of khora with the God of negative theology.
This essay p ro v i des us with an opportunity to learn a little something
about differa n ce and to understand something, albeit something nega­
tive, about the relationship between deconstruction and theology. 7

7 I have explored this question in some detail in my Prayers a nd Tea rs of lacques

Derrida , Part I; and in "The Cood News About Al teri ty : Derrida and Theology, "
Fa ith and Philosophy, 1 0 ( 1 99 3 ) , 4 5 3 470; " M ysticism and Tra nsgressi o n : Derrida
and M eister E c k h a rt , " Con tinental Philosophy, 2 ( 1 989), 24 39. See also Rodolphe
Casehe , "Cod, For Example" in Inven tions of Difference (Cambridge, Mass . : H a rvard
 KHORA: B EI N G S E R I O U S WITH PLATO 93

In this essay D e rr ida draws our attention to the tension between

what he calls two "tropics of nega ti v i ty, that is, two opposi ng ways i n
"

which phil osoph ical thought finds itself up aga i n s t its l i m i t s , against
someth ing that resists be i n g sa id, two th i ngs equally unsayable but for
quite opposite reasons. The first is the most fa m i l i a r and pr e stigi ou s
text in all of Plato's work - the one that makes all the standard antholo­
gies used in "I ntroduction to Philosophy" courses - the famo us and
sublime passage from th e Republic, 5 09 Bff. i n which Plato describes
the idea of the Good as " b eyo nd bei ng" (epekeina tes ousias). Here the
movement (the "tropic") of negativity, of not-saying or u nsayabi l i ty, is
u pwar d , h yperb oli c , "obeyi ng a logic of the sur, of the hyper, over
and beyond , which heralds all the hyper-essentialisms" of Christian
Neoplatonism . For the trad i t i o n of n ega ti v e theology, s tretc h ing from
pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to Meister Eckhart, turned on a v i e w
of the Christian God that had been basically ca s t in th e te rms of Plato's
theory of the Good beyond Being. In th is first movement, th i n k i ng has
run up agai nst an excess of transcendence, a being of such superemi­
nent su r - re a l i ty that, while giving birth to be i n g , movement, and
knowledge, it is itself be y o n d them all . S ti l l , as the offspring of its
father and cause, the sensible world is " l i ke the Good , and , so, the
"

excess of the Good is s itu a ted within an " a na l og ica l commun ity" in
vi rtue o f which the se n si bl e world is sa id to b e "l ike" the int e l l i gi b le
worl d . Hence, the Good can be se n s i bl y c o m pa red to the "sun " of the
sensible world ; for, like the sun , the Good is neithe r seeing n o r visible ,
neither knowing nor intelligible, but a third thing, viz . , the i r light,
cause, and mediu m (Psy. 563-566).
But the khora c o ns t i tu tes another way to be otherwise tha n Being,
another kind of third th i n g , one moving in a fully opposite d i rectio n
and s ubmitting to different tropes . Rather than "hypcrexistence" or
supe r e m i ne nt be ing, kh6ra seems to d rop below b e i n g, barely to be at
all, to be if at all next to noth ing. Derrida maintains that Plato has
adopted two very heterogeneous ways of s pea ki n g about th i s quasi­
be i n g or shadowy real m called khOra, ab o u t which it is a d m i ttedly very
hard to s p ea k , but for reasons that are op pos i te to the "Good . " In the
first st ra te gy the resistance of khOra to philosoph ical discourse is bro-
,

U n iversity Press, 1 994), pp. 1 50 1 70; Kevin Hart, The Trespass of the S ign: Decon·
struction , Theology, and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 1 9 8 5 );
and the essays coll ected in DeTTida and Nega t i ve Theology (ON'D.
94 DECONSTR UCI'lON IN A N UTS H E L L

ke n down and khOra is assimi lated into philosophy, assigned a place

interior to ph ilosophy - a nd this by way of being treated according to
the classi ca l mode of analogy which governs the allegory of the cave .
KhOra itself is neither i ntell igible nor sensibl e , but "participates" in
pred icates of both; hence, it can be analogical l y said to be "mother,
nurse, sieve, receptacle, i mpression . " That all ows us to sketch a kind
of Platoni c "holy family": the father ( = form) generates his offspring
( = sensibl e th ing) in the mother ( =:= receptacle). Or we may say that
the receptacl e holds and embraces th e sensible thing like a nu rse ( 500).
That takes the foundling khOra off the streets and provides it with a
h o m e in the holy family of philosophy, in the i nterior of the canonical
history of philosophy, as a predecessor of Aristotelian h yle, Cartesian
extensio, a n d the pure form of space in Ka nt (Psy. 566-567IDNT
1 04- 1 0 5 ) .
But it i s the second w a y that Plato also describes khOra that is of
more interest to Derrid a , for here khOra tends to slip outside phil o s o ­
phy, to resist any a nalogizing or participatory schem a , to remain adrift
and l os t . Now, Plato says kh6ra is "amorphou s , " and even though
things come to be and pass away in it, khOra i tself does not become (or
"participate" in) any of these things ( 5 0B-C). Although khOra takes on
the look of the thi ngs with which it is fi l l ed , that is true only for the
wh ile that they persist and these things do not in any way stain or mark
it in their brief station. Hence, khOra can be likened neither to its
sensible i mpri nts, which vanish from it without a trace , nor to intelli­
gible pa radigms, which are still more removed from it (KhOra 1 5- 1 61
ON 89). It is, therefore, not a receptacle, beca use it is "older" th a n any
rec eptacle, which is someth ing later on i nscribed in it. As something
absolutely indifferent to anyth i ng sensible or intell igible, it cannot be
treated metaphorically, which always a mounts to providing a sensible
liken ess for someth i ng i nte l l i gib l e (KhOra 2 l-2 2/0N 92). It is not so
much a third kind as no kind , without generic determination. KhOra
is j ust there; "there is" (if y a) khOra, and this meant in the most m ini­
malist sense . Th i s "there is" must not be confused with any generosity;
it is n ot to be taken to mean that it "gives" anyth ing, as i n the German
"th ere i sles gibt . " It is nothing kindly a nd ge nerous, a nd does n ot
" g i ve " or provide a place, which is the trap that Heidegger falls into

whe n h e fi nds a "giving" in this es gibt whic h puts th inking-as-thank­

ing in its d e b t . Nor is it properly receiving, since it is unaffected by
t hat by which it is filled . It is not even absol utely passive inasm uch
 KHORk BEING SERIO U S W ITH PLATO 95

as both active and passive operations take place i n it. I t res i sts every
theomorphic or anthropomorphic a n a lo gy . It is not any kind of "it"
(it, id, quod) that is or does or gives a n y thi ng .
Hence, khOra , w h i c h can be spoken of neither properl y nor meta­
phorically, p us h e s up aga inst the very limits of nam ing (KhOra, 1 5 1
ON, 89). The poi n t of his a na l ys i s, Derrida says, is to show that this
i mposs i b il ity of find i ng a proper name for khora , the mot ;uste over
and outside of some rhetori cal trope or other, is not some sort of fa i l i ng
on Plato's part, or the b a d l uck th is passage in th e Timaeus has had i n
the history o f interpretation, but a structural feature o f Pla to's thought .
Plato has been forced b y the th i n gs themselves t o include khOra within
his account - he cannot "not speak" of it- yet he does not know to
"not speak" of it, that is, to respect its negativity. For the task of d i s ­
cussing the khOra is that of dete r m i n i ng s om e th i ng indeterminable,
something that cannot in principle ta k e on any determ inatio n , ne i th e r
that of the paradigm nor that of the copy. E ve ryth i ng Plato says of it,
or that is said of it in the hi s tory of i nte rp retat i o n , comes too late,
constituting a retrospective illusion, an "anachronism" (KhOra 24-261
ON 9 3 -94) bo r n of speaking of it in terms borrowed from the th i ngs
which it contains but from which it i tsel f withdraws . KhOra is indiffer­
ent to every d eterm in a t io n - n o t serenely or subli mely indifferent, for
it is too l o w ly for that and that is the wrong trope and tro pi cs, but let
us say a by sma l l y indifferent. KhOra is always " pr i o r " to any mark or
im p r i n t , any form or determ ination that is attr i bu ted to it; it has noth­
ing proper, no property of i ts own . It receives all and becomes none of
what it receives, l i ke the air that remains free of the l ight by wh i c h it
is suffused (KhOra 3 6 -3 7/0N 99), l ike a mirror that remai ns unaffected
by the images that come and go across its surface . KhOra belongs to a
time out of mind, out of memory, to a preorigin older tha n memory,
like the ancient c i ty of Athens that did battle with Atlantis only to
di sappea r w itho u t a trace (KhOra 96/0N 1 26).
Of this impl a c ab ly , i m po ssibl y d ifficult thing, we do not know how
to speak or how to avoid speaking; i ndeed , i t is this i m p o ssib i l i ty that
drives th e need to say someth ing about it. KhOra is not a u n i versal
(abstract place i n general), nor a particular (a contained place), but
something r ad i c a l ly s i n gul a r: pl ace itself- with in wh ich m u ltiple
places are i nscribed . Like every singula rity. it bears a proper name ­
treat KhOra as if it were a pr op e r name, like someone you know, capi­
talized - even though it has no p rop e r name or essential propriety but
96 DECONSTR UCTI ON IN A N U TS I I ELL

just takes on the form of wh a t e v e r inhabits it. For we need , we m us t ,

speak of "something like the kh O ra wh i ch is not somethi ng a n d which
-

is not {ike a n y th i ng " (Khora 26/0N 94), s o m e way to determine th i s

utterl y i ndeterminable somewhat. We need some w a y t o address i t : not
"the khOra" but "Oh , KhOra . " "Who are you , KhOra" (KhOra 6 3 /0N
I l l )? By using the word khora and thus dra wi n g upon the stock of
common Greek nouns, Plato pi cks up a trace left in language by some­
th ing that has withdrawn from l a n guag e (Psy. 5 6 7-569fDNT 1 0 5-
1 08), s i n k ing beneath its surface, l i ke Atl a nti s s i n ki n g i n to the sea.
The discou rse on the khora thus forms a n almost perfect inversion
of the d iscourse on the Good . On the o n e account, thi ngs are de­
scribed from above, in a tropics of hyper and a u dela , beg i n nin g with
the Good as the su p re m ely real , hyper-essential, su r-real source of
sensibl e th i n gs and the i nextinguishable l ight in which they are seen
to be th e copies of their intelligible paradigms . That would p rov id e an
agreeable schema to C h ri s ti a n N eoplatonism , which seized upon it as
a way to articulate its experience of the transcendence of God . On the
other account, things a re explained from below, in a trope of hypo and
en deea , beginning with an almost perfectly u n intell igible or indeter­
minate origi n , or non-origin, or pre o ri gi n , in which sensible thi ngs
-

are inscribed according to eternal patterns . On the one hand, a h yper­

essential sur-real ity for which words fa il us, of wh ich words fall short;
on the other, a hypo-essential sub-reality, an almost u n real, indeter­
minable indeterminacy wh ich seems rather to fail word s , to fall short
of word or m e a n i n g . In biblical terms, it was perhaps a little more l ike
the chaos over which the spirit of God bent. On the one h an d h y p e r ­ ,

bole and the excess of being, essence, and meaning; on the other,
defection, less than mean ing, essence , an d being. On the one hand ,
a classic p h ilo s oph e me ; on the other, exorbitant textuality - and dif­
fera nee.

DIFF"F.RANCF.: KlI6RA Is ITS S U RNAME

Derrida is interested in khOra for fa mil y reasons, not because khora is

a mother or a wet nurse, but because she/it is a cousin (eousi n/cousine)
of deconstructi o n , a kin of th e kin-less, of the same non-kind a s what
he calls differa nce. If differance is what deconstruction is all about, in
a n u ts he l l , then "khOra is its surname" (Khora 9 5 /0N 1 26). To deploy
 KfIGRA: B E I NG S I ': R I O U S WITI I PLATO 97

a famous Platonic image: the story of khOra works l ike a n "allegory"

of differance, each addressing a common, kindred non-essence, im­
propriety, and namelessness . Just as Plato composed the allegory of the
cave to explain the surpassing excess of the aga thon , so, on the other
side of being, Derrida can put Timaeus's story of the khOra to work
explaining the lowly recessiveness of dif{era nce, being's h u mble h i nter­
lands or u nderside. It also helps us to understand the divergence of
deconstruction and negative theology, since differa rzce is khOra 's
cousin, not God's. Derrida loves khOra the way he loves differa nce,
illegitimate children both .
In another work, entitled Saur [e nom , the second pa rt of a tril ogy
"on the name" of wh ich Khora is the third part, Derrida speaks of
" 'something' without thi ng, like an indeconstructible Khora . " But
something like khora is "indeconstructible" not because she!it is a firm
foundation , l ike a metaphysical ground or principle, or like the eternal
form of the Good , that can be "sheltered from deconstruction . "
Rather, her undeconstructibility a rises because she is a "place" that
takes place "as the very spacing of d e-construction" (Sa ur l 04/0N 80),
the space in which everything constructible and deconstructible is con­
stituted , and, hence, beyond the reach of construction or d econstruc­
tion . Dif{era nce, l ike khora , is a great receptacle upon which every
constituted trace or mark is imprinted , "older, " prior, preoriginary.
Far from bearing a l ikeness to the God of the great monotheisms, a
"super-being" (hyperousios) who is affi rmed all the more eminently i n
being negated i n the negative theology of Christian Neoplatonism, a
God to whom Plato's aga thon bears a fam ily resemblance , differance
is better compared to khOra , that is, to the incomparable, unmeta­
phorizable, desert-like place without properties or genus . Rather than
of the edifying, uplifting, highly proper, and propitious family resem­
blance of God and the agathon, the father of us all, both above and
beyond Being- these are the best families and they travel in the high­
est circles! - it is perhaps better, more graphic, to think, of kh6ra and
djf{erance as a couple of bastards . (As an aside, it is also worth asking
oneself where the hearts of the prophets and of J esus would be - with
the St. J ames's street aristocrats, the best and the brightest, or with the
Dickensonian bastards. )
Levinas was fond of sayi ng that, although the transcendent God of
the Hebrew scriptures was systematically excl uded by the totalizing
categories of Greek philosophy, still from time to time the utter a lterity
98 DECONSTRUCTION IN A N UTSHEl .1 .

of God did on rare o cc as i o n s break o ut in philosophy - most n ota bly

in Desca rtes's idea of the infinity of God i n the Third Meditation, and
in Plato's n o t i o n of the epekeina tes ousias, the Good be yo nd being.
Derrida may be un de rs tood to make a co u n te r - m ove to Le v i na s , or,
better, to offer a counter-part by which the Levi n a s i a n gesture i s always
already d i stu rbe d (for i t will never be a matter of ch oo s i n g between
these two). F o r Derrida, khOra may be ta ke n as one of those " pla ces "
in the history of p h i l oso ph y where t h e differa nce by w h ich all th i n gs
are inhabited w ea rs th r ough , where the abyss i n th in gs opens up and
we catch a glimpse of the groundlessness of our beliefs and pra ctice s .
The face of the other person , Le v i n a s says i n a very upl i fti n g and beau­
ti fu l image at the end of Otherwise tha n Being, is the trace God leaves
behind as he w i t h d ra ws from the worl d . 8
KhOra , Derrida m igh t say, in a more d o wngr a di n g and n ot- a ll- th at­
beautiful image , is on e of the traces differ-ance leaves on P l ato , on the
Creeks, on philosophy, on us - for "we" are all marked by the Creeks
and (their) " ph i l o s ophy " -as it " retreats" from view. As th e spacing in
which the tra i ts of our beliefs and practices are inscribed , d iffera n ce is
in re-trait. That is wh y Derrida says that, in spe ak i ng of the kMra ,
Pl ato has not simply invented some utterly novel idea; rather, he h as
borrowed a word from the common stock of G reek n o uns , b ut a word
in wh ich a certain form l ess n e ss or n a me less n ess has left its mark
(KhOra 1 8/0N 90-9 1 ), so me t h i ng a b ou t w h i c h phil os oph y cannot phi­
l osoph i z e , s om eth i n g that resists philosophy, that wi thdra ws from p h i ­
losophy's view and g ra sp . Not from above, as in the upl i fti ng and
edifying m od e of Plato, Levinas, and n e ga t i ve theology, but from
below, as if p a s s i n g beneath philosophy's vision, too low for philosophy
to go - "behind and below the assured discourse of ph il os o ph y" (Khora
94/0N 1 2 5 ) .
In the khOra , Plato gi ve s expression t o a n in tr a c ta bl e "necessity"
below, an unci rcumventable, an achronic "preorigi n , " wh i c h is n ot to
be confused with the Etern al , Originary "Truth" ( c api tal letters for
c a p i t al fellow s ! ) of the intelligible pa rad i g ms above:

The strange difficulty of this whole text l i es indeed in the distin ction
between these two modal ities: the true and the necessa ry. The bold
stroke consists here in going back beh i n d and below the origi n , or also

R E mm a n ue l Levinas, Otherwise tha n Being, or, Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso

Lingis (The Hague: Ma rti nus N i jhoff, 1 98 1 ), p. 1 8 5 .
 KHORA R � : J N C S �� R I O U S WITH PLATO 99

the birth , toward a necessity which is nei th e r generative nor engendered

and which carries phil osophy, "precedes" (prior to the ti me that passes
or the eternal time before h i st ory ) and re ce i ves the effect, here the
" "

image of oppositions (intelligible and sensible): philosophy. Th is neces

sity (khOra is its sur name) seems so virginal that it does n ot even have
the name of virgin any lo nge r [KhOra 94 95/0N 1 26 ] .

In the khOra Plato affirms - or concedes - a counter-origin, a non-en­

gendering non-origin , truth-less, intractable and necessary, down
below, that in its own way mocks the prestigious, fatherly, originary,
truth-making power of the eidos (and above all of the Good) up above .
As far as Derrida is concerned , Plato is here hitting upon the effect
that differanee always produces, running up aga inst the necessity that
differa nee always imposes on any discourse- and "khOra is its sur­
name . " By "necessity, " then, Derrida does not mean an eternal or
necessary truth but the necessary un-truth that forces itself i nto eve ry
verity. So, Derrida is interested in khora because he regards it as a tip­
off, a signal, or a clue that phil osophy is in a certain amount of trouble
here - like a politician who is asked an embarrassing question for
which his advance men did not prepare him. Plato has here run up
against an effect of differanee and may be read as telling us a likely
story about differanee, offering us a mirror image o r likeness of that
which robs his - the- assured distinction between origin and copy of
its security.
So, if you can bear it, if you are not already too dizzy, [ propose one
last m ise en abime: the khOra reflects differanee (a play of re Aections in
a black pool). Khora is its sur-name, its over-name, the name we i n­
scribe over an abyss. For j ust as khOra , by providing the space within
which the sensible copy of the intelligible is inscribed , precedes and
precontains the opposition between the two, so differanee precedes and
precontains all the oppositions that a re inscribed within it, including
those oppositional distinctions with which philosophy opened for busi­
ness among the Greeks.
Let m then, like the fool who says in his heart that God does not
exist, ask "what" differa nee "is , " in a nutshell , having duly noted the
impossibil ity of asking anything that foolish . By differa nce, Derrida
does not mean anything mysterious - technically speaking, "diffe
ra nee" does not "mean" anything at all, and if it does, "he" ( Derrida)
does not "mean" it, for the same reason that it does not answer to a
"what" or an "is . " [n the most tentative and general sense , Derrida is
1 00 DECON STRlICTI ON IN A N UTS H E l .1 .

describin g the code o f repeatability, o f which language i s the most

familiar but by no means the only example, within which our beliefs
and practices are "inscribed. " Rather than th i nking of language in the
classical way, as a set of exterior signs of a l ready constituted interior
tho ughts (another defining feature of "Iogoccntrism"), Derrida , fol low­
ing Sauss ure and modern linguistics, thinks of users of language invok­
ing coded, that is, repeatable, marks or traces that build up or
constitute from within certain unities of mea n i ng as "effects" of the
code. These traces are not inherently meaningful in themselves but
"arbitrary" a nd "conventional . " Thus it makes no difference whether
you sa y "rex, " "rai, " or "king" so long as "we" - those who share these
conventions" - can tell the difference between rex a nd [ex, roi and [ai,
and king and sing. The meaning -and referencc - is a function of the
difference, of the dista nce or the "spacing" between the traces, what is
called, in a perfectly serious way, the "play" of differences or traces.
By the "play of differences" Derrida does not mean something capri­
cious, l ike romping in the nude down the Champs-Elysees (cf. UC
I I Z/AL 289), but the d i fferential spacing, th e discerned distance, the
perceived (heard , seen) intervals between traces first analyzed in struc­
tural l ingu istics . 9
That meaning a n d reference is a function o f the play o f d i fferences
is confi rmed in a perfectly serious a nd quite commonsensical way
every time we use a dictionary. The "meaning" and "reference" of a
word in a dictionary is set in terms of other words with which it is
internally related. A word has a "place" in a dictionary, not only the
one that you have to "look up, " which is a function of its graphic
setting ( its spelling), but also a semantic place or setting, a position , a
ra nge of connotation and denotation relative to other words (places) in
the language . The mean ing of a word is defined differentially, relative
to the meaning of other words . What you will never find i n the dic­
tionary is a word that detaches itself from these internal relationships
and sends you sailing right out of the dictionary into a mythica l , mysti­
cal thi ng in itself "outside" of language, wistfully called the "transcen­
dental sig nified . " A serious dictionary is a good sober example of the
"play of d ifferences , " of the differential spacing within which, by

9 See Ferdi nand d e Saussure, Cou rse in Ceneral Linguistics, tra ns . Roy Harris
(Lond on: Duckworth , 1 9 8 3); for a helpfu l commentary, see Jonathan Cllller, Ferdi
na nd de Sa ussure, rev. ed. (Ithaca, N. Y . : Cornell U n i versity Press, 1 9 86).
 KIIORA: BEING S ERIOUS WITH PLATO 101

means of which, all the users o( the language make what sense they are
able to make . So when Derrida says of "khOra " that it is "the relation of
the interval or the spacing to what is lodged in it to be rece ived in it"
(KhOra 9210N 1 2 5), that is also well said of dif{era nce, to sp e a k darkly
and through a veil (and never face to facel ) of dif{era nce.
In classical terms, Derrida is deeply resistant to "essentialism , " the
notion that there are ideal meanings ("presence") that somehow or
another antedate the play of traces to which the play m ust conform
itself (must "represent"). Essentialism is a view that legitimately traces
its genealogy back to Plato h imself, to at least "one" Plato, the famous,
dom inant, orthodox, patriarcha l , aristocratic, classi cal , philosoph ical
one, the one you have to know to pass your Plato course. (You will
have to attend a course at the College if you want to lea rn about the
bastards . ) Derrida holds, on the other hand , that presence is always
th e "effect" of the play of traces, of "representations" - wh ence his
(not all that) paradoxical dictum that presence is the effect of represen­
tation (VP 5 S/SP 5 2). For meaning and reference are always built up
slowly and tentatively from below, from within the networks of codes
and assumptions within which we all always and already operate. to
Derrida's notion of dif{erance results from i ntroducing two i mprove­
ments on this Saussurean point of departure.
( I ) In the first place, Derrida a rgues that, though rule-bound up to a
point- let's be serious: there surely are rules of grammar and of usage,
standardized and normalized linguistic practices - the play of traces is
not a "closed system" but ultimately a n open-ended play (see OLe
42- I OS/OG 27-7 3). He argues agai nst the "closure" of the play and
holds that the effects of which "iterability, " the code of repeatabil ity,
is capable cannot i n p ri n c i pl e be contained, programmed , or pre­
dicted . It always possible, in principle, as a "structural" matter, to re­
peat differently; that is built right into the very idea of "iterability"
or "repetition . " Furthermore, any such "laws" as one would "fo rge"
(formulate/fake) would themselves be effects or subsets of the play of
traces, would be inscribed within them "later" and so would not gov­
ern over them a priori (earl ier) . The play of differen ces is always
"older" than any of its effects, constituting a quasi-arche "before " the
archical law the rules would impose. Laws are always deconstructible,
but the play of traces, in itself, if it has an itself, is not deconstructible.
I II
For a more careful exposition of Dcrrida's cla i m , see my Radical I lermeneutics,
chap. 5 .
IOZ DECON STRU CfION I N A N UTS HELL

That is why Dcrrida will also speak of differa nce as an a rch i-writing,
which is reflected here when he calls the khOra a "pre-origi n . " By
arch i-writing Derrida d oes not mean that, historica l ly, writing is older
than speech, as his careless critics too precipitously claim. Nor is he
trying to establish writing as a still higher principle of language than any
logico-semantical laws. Rather than on a firm foundation or perfectly
enclosed system he is trying to pull the plug on any l eak-proof system
by acknowledging a still lower un-principle, an unsettling, d i s-placing
"necessity" we are under to labor always under a play of traces, having
to cope with an i rrepressible iterability that can never be contained or
decisively regulated . He does not stake out the ground of a higher
principle but concedes a certain an-arche at the bottom of our princi­
ples. Derrida is not denying that we have "principles" and "truth" - let
the word go forth and let there be no mistake about that. He is just
reinscribing our truths and principles within the an-arche of differa nce,
attaching to them a co-efficient of "contingency. " For the only "neces­
sity" he acknowledges is the necessity that precedes all oppositions,
including that between the p r i nciple and what is based upon the prin­
ciple, the n ecessity, the requirement, always to forge truths and princi­
ples slowly from below, inscribi ng them in a vast and meaning-less
rec e pta cle called differa nce.
That is why you cannot, stricto sensu, ask "what" differance "is , " or
for its " meaning " or "truth . " Strictly speaking : it is the condition of
possibility of these things, which are so many effects of its play, traces
traced on its surface, from which it itself withd raws (re-trait). More
str ictly still: differance is a quasi-condition of possibility, because it
does not describe fixed boundaries that delimit what can h appen and
what not, but points a mute, Buddhist finger at the moon of u ncon­
tainable effects . Everything from the God of Christian Neoplatonism
to rubbish heaps, from the most subli m e laws of physics or ethics to
the hate-talk on Rush Li m ba u gh ' s radio show, from the Declaration
of Independence to street-corner rap - everything is inscribed in diffe­
ra nce, which is its enabling and also slightly disabling quasi-condition .
This notion of differance as a quasi-condition provides us with the
answer to the question of the analogy or convergence of deconstruction
and negative theology. Deconstruction is deeply enamored of the stra­
tegic and formal resources of negative theology. Deconstruction loves
the way that n egative theology has found to say the unsayable, the
twists and turns it takes in dealing with the impossible by which it has
 KHDRI\: B E I N G SERIO U S W ITH PLATO 103

been struck, with its impossible desire, a l l o f which Derrida deeply

admires, so that to be compared with negative theology is n o critici�m
for h i m , but a high compl iment that associates him with the best fami­
lies. But in thc end Derrida must defer this honor and decline this high
compliment and 'ress up that deconstruction consorts with bastards .
Deconstruction h a s to d o not with the hyperousios, the super-being
beyond being, but with something like kh6ra , a cousinlcousine if there
is such a thing, som ething that is neither a being nor a non-being, but
a ccrtain "quasi-condition" within which both are inscribed . So Der­
rida thinks of negative theology as a kind of "hypcressentialism , " faced
with thc problem of how not to spcak of a "transcendent" being beyond
being, whereas deconstruction, humbly and from below, has the prob­
lem of how not to speak of this quasi-transcendental condition , th is
necessity or necessary condition, this condition of possibility a nd im­
possibility, called differance.
To try to make this "necessity" without truth , this necessa ry un­
truth, look more edifying, think of the way, aftcr thc apple, Cod scn t
Adam and Eve packing and imposed upon them the "necessity" of
work, sweat, and pain, and, later on, after the tower, disscminated the
tongues of the builders at Babel and imposcd upon them the "neces­
sity" of translation . Just so, godless differa nce i mposes upon us all the
necessity to work out meaning and reference by the work, sweat, and
pain of the "play" (some fun ! ) of differences , the necessity to translate
among many competing codes, to cope even with incompatible codes,
and to hol d our head as a sea of iterability washes over us.
Still , th is necessity does not cause Derrida to lose heart: "these trai ts
are not negative" (KhOra 94/0N 1 26), but, rather, a way to keep things
open, since deconstruction for Derrida is always an affirmation of the
other, a precu rsorial way to make way for the invention of the other.
Thus, a good deal of the analyses undertaken by Derrida test the l i m i ts,
push to the frontiers, transgress the boundaries, that are put in place
by the several "-ologies" that would regulate the "an-archie freedom"
of the trace. Derrida is constantly i nterested in the new, unpredictable,
unforeseeable , unprogrammable "effects" that are forth-coming, in­
coming, in-ventable within a currently prevail ing set of conventions.
Hence, if Derrida is not an essentialist, neither is he a conventionalist,
for conventional ism is just an alternate way of regulating and conta in­
ing the play of traces. Deconstruction is, rather , an unconventional
conventionalism, an in-ventiona lism , bcnt on giving things a new bent
or twist, on twisting free of the containing effects of both essentialism
1 04 m:CO N STRUC,ION IN A N UTSHELL

and conventionalism , in ord er to release certain unforeseeable effects,

looking for "openings , " making room for - giving a place to - what is
unforeseeable relative to some horizon of foreseeability.
(2) In addition to arguing against closure, Derrida also gene ra l izes
what was o r i gi na ll y a linguisti c model in Saussure so that dif{era nee is
not restricted to language but leaves its "mark" on everything­
institutions, sexual ity, the worldwide web, the body, whatever you
need or want. This does not amount to arguing that these things are
all l i nguistic - an error he calls "linguisticism" -which is true only up
to a point. Rather, he is arguing that, like language, all these structures
are marked by the play of differences, by the "spacing" of which dif{e­
ranee is one of the names. That is why he speaks of the "trace" and
not the "signifier, " which belong s to linguistics and would implicate
him in a l inguisticism with which he would have no part, although
that is a m istake of which he is commonly accused by people who
m ust, I am con v inced , be going on secondhand accounts of his work.
In the previous chapter, we saw what deep interest Derrida takes in
"institutions. " In an institution, individuals are distributed across a
hiera rchized, institutional spacing, a play of places, which define in
advance the role, the power, and the voice of the individual, some­
thing that is embodied in expressions like the "main office, " the "top
floor, " and "power corridor. " To l ive and work within an institution is
to exercise a "differential" function, to be inserted or inscribed within
the differential space of the institutional hierarchy. That spacing is true
no less of society at large. Contrary to Rousseauism, the young Oerrida
argued (OLe 1 49-202/0G 1 0 1-40), even the most "primitive" society
is marked by this spacing, hie r a r c hy, dif{eranee, or "archi-writing, "
even if such a society lacks writing in the strict or n a rro w sense. Wher­
ever one is, one is placed within a play of differences, "received" or
"inscribed" within dif{era nce- in a family, an institution , a society, a
language, a history, an academic disc i pl i ne an army, etc .
,

Or in a sexual relationship - whence all the attention Oerrida pays

to the gender issues s u rrounding khOra. The debate about homosexual­
ity comes down to a debate a b ou t an over-organized , over-regulated,
narrowly oppositional space in which there a re only two hierarchically
ordered places, a "bina rity" of male and female, of m a l e over female.
For Oerrida, the way to break this up is to open up all the other pla c es
that this binary scheme closes off. In Oerri d a s view, "male" and "fe­
'

male" arc fixed c onta ine rs prisons, trapping men no less th a n women
,

within one place, one role, closing off the possibility of " innumerable"
 KHORA: B E I N G S �: R I O U S WITH PLATO 105

genders, not just two. That is why "feminism, " while constituti ng a
strategically necessary moment of "reversal , " a s al u tary overturning
that purges the system of its pres en t masculinist hegemon y, m ust give
way to "displacement, " which is a more radical "gender bender" i n
which the whole mascul i ne/feminine schema is skewed . S o differance,
the "third kind" or gen us , makes it possible to get b e yo nd (or beneath)
two kinds, not j ust to three, but to the "innumerable, " that is, to the
indefinitely new, because differential , possibilities that a re opened up
once you acknowledge the contingency of "two . " "One, two, three,
b ut where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth . . . " (Timaeus 1 7 A)? I I
It should n ot go u nn o tic e d that Derrida describes this drea m of in­
numerable ge nders as "choreographies , " khOra-ogra phies , that is, the
joyful, dance-like marking off of places, multiplying the places of sex­
ual spacing (PdS 95-1 1 6/Points 89- 1 08; cf. OCP 2 27-2 28). The ef­
fects of a deconstructive analysis as regards the issues of gender cover
a wide range. For deconstruction wants to let "straight" men get i n
touch with their feminine s i de , and "stra ight" women with their mas­
culine side, and, hence, to bend u p these rectilinear orthodoxies a
little. But it is also happy to see men get in touch with men, and
women with wome n , gay and lesbian "rights" (which also means
"straight"). Dilige et quod vis fac. B u t in the end, i t would "dissemi­
nate" the v e ry idea o f "m a sc u l i ne" and "feminine" as n a r row, contin­
gent, constraining straitjackets, "straigh t" effects with i n an indefinite,
differential play of traces.
Differance, c o nta i n i n g all, including all the genders, all the places,
is a pa ndekhon , not as a universal container mothering, nursing , OJ
"holding" all, but, more pa rad o x ically, as an open-ended and porous
receptacle of the uncontainable, of inn umerable and i ncalculable ef­
fects, as an un-principle, an an-arche. Differance is an abso l u te1y neu­
tral receptacle- khOra is i ts sur-name - that suppresses nothing,
releasing the innumerable, the unforeseeable, the " invention of the
other. "
Differance is the nameless name of this open-ended, uncontainable,
general i za ble pl ay of traces .
And khOra is its sur-name.
II
For m ore o n Derri da and feminism, see Diane Elam , Fem i n ism a nd Decon­
struction: Ms. en Abyme (New Yo rk : Routledge, 1 994); and the collection enti tled
Derrida and Fem inism: Recasting the Question of Woma n , ed . Ellen Fed er, M a ry
Rawl i nson , Emily Zakin (New York: Routledge, Chapma n , and Hall , forthcoming).