Derrida and Psychology: Deconstruction and its Ab/uses in Critical and Discursive Psychologies

Derrida and PsychologyDeconstruction and Its Ab/uses in Critical andDiscursive Psychologies

Alexa HepburnStaffordshire University

Abstract. This paper assesses the role of deconstruction as an importantorientation for critical and discursive psychologists. In order to understandwhat deconstruction involves, key aspects of Jacques Derrida’s work arehighlighted and explained, notably ‘undecidables’ such as the trace, thesupplement, differance. The ways in which undecidability can be incorpor-ated into, and used to develop, critical and discursive work are explored.Previous attempts at incorporating deconstruction within critical psycho-logy texts are examined, and it is suggested that the more radically anti-foundationalist features of a Derridean deconstruction are typicallyby-passed in this literature. It is argued that deconstruction in this broadersense offers political as well as critical possibilities. It is suggested thatdeconstruction provides a radical orientation to language and meaning, anda resource for showing us how identities and realities can be constituted inorder to be recognizable as not constituted. It is concluded that deconstruc-tion is important for the development of both critical and discursivepsychology, allowing as it does a more profound reflection on both thesupplementary character of psychological phenomena, and the processes ofmarginalization and exclusion which have put these subversive psycho-logies into play.

KEY WORDS: critical psychology, deconstruction, Derrida, discursive psy-chology, post-structuralism

Psychologists, in common with many other disciplines, have not held backfrom appropriating the term ‘deconstruction’:

Deconstruction: an attempt to unravel what is actually said, and theunderlying assumptions and biases that lurk behind the communication.We often hear people say things like ‘I’m not prejudiced but . . .’.(Cardwell, 1996, p. 74)

A critical discursive reading is always, in some sense, a deconstruction ofdominant forms of knowledge. (Parker, 1997, p. 289)

This paper develops the argument that key features of Derridean deconstruc-tion are missing from work in critical psychology, and that this oversight has

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denied critical psychology some powerful analytical and textual tools.Implicit in critical ab/uses of deconstruction are links with discourse work,as the above two quotes show. There will therefore be an examination of theway deconstruction in its more inclusive sense can inform both the criticaland discursive traditions in psychology.

In the fields of philosophy and literature, deconstruction has been devel-oped and used as a method of reading (e.g. Culler, 1983; Wood, 1990,p. 45). Moreover, it is a method which has notable critical potential:‘deconstruction, as a particular set of textual procedures, can operate as aradical force’ (Eagleton, 1981, p. 140). It is this potential that has been takenup by various critical psychologists. However, in much of this workreferences to deconstruction have often involved little beyond highlightingand dismantling taken-for-granted textual assumptions (e.g. Burman, 1990,1994; Parker, 1989; Parker, Georgaca, Harper, McLaughlin, & Stowell-Smith, 1995; Parker & Shotter, 1990; Sampson, 1990).

Whether one agrees with Derrida or not, it is important to address thedevelopment of the practice of deconstruction in all its complexity, ratherthan to criticize it in terms of received views or simple stereotypes. AsMorag Patrick (1997) observes, the danger is that deconstruction will beunderstood within our traditional frameworks, thereby missing what isdistinctive about Derrida’s interrogation of the authority of certain dis-courses. Similarly Rodolphe Gasche (1994) despairs of the ‘naıve andintuitive receptions of Derrida’s work’, with its ‘reduction to a few sturdydevices for the critic’s use, represent[ing] nothing less than an extraordinaryblurring and toning down of the critical implications of the philosopher’swork’ (p. 25). So it seems that problems abound with existing readingsof Derrida’s work, although the danger which accompanies a highlighting ofthese problems—and indeed a danger with this paper—is the provision of, orimplicit reliance upon, a ‘purist’ account of deconstruction. This wouldintroduce an inappropriate definitiveness and authority into Derrida’s work,which is antithetical to the same deconstructive moves it attempts toexplicate.

However, these problems with inappropriate definitiveness constructDerrida’s work in an inappropriately ‘either/or’ kind of way—either it isabout something concrete and describable, or it is about a kind of ‘anythinggoes’ interpretative analysis, and so is impossible to describe accurately.This paper will attempt to disrupt this polarized understanding of decon-struction, and highlight aspects of Derrida’s work which have been ignoredor marginalized in critical work, while attempting to avoid merely establish-ing a new ‘definitive version’. It is written in the spirit of opening up furtherpossibilities for engagement with deconstructive work in critical and dis-cursive psychologies. Recognizing that no critique can ever fully escapefrom what it criticizes, and that we need to work within this tension, is oneof the major deconstructive insights that Derrida gives us. To this end my

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reading of Derrida is inevitably also an ab/use—both an appropriation and adistortion—in the sense that aspects of Derrida’s work are initially selectedand interpreted in the first half of this paper, and these interpretations aresubsequently put to use in the second half of the paper. The aim overall is toopen up new possibilities for both critical and discursive work.

In ‘Letter to a Japanese Friend’ Derrida (1983/1991) explained thedevelopment of deconstruction—how it ‘imposed itself’ upon him in OfGrammatology (1976)—and discusses the problem of translating and defin-ing what deconstruction ‘is’. He suggests that any attempt to assign it adefinite meaning will itself be open to deconstructive oppositions, and thatanyway deconstruction does not ‘exist’ outside its highlighting potentialwithin texts. Deconstruction is parasitic on the fixity of binary oppositions:any text already contains within it the elements necessary for its owndeconstruction.

So what, then, can be said about deconstruction? This question does notsit happily with the problems relating to metaphysical language that Derridahighlights. Indeed it is precisely the ontological move which describes onething as another that Derrida wants to resist. ‘All sentences of the type“deconstruction is X” or “deconstruction is not X” a priori miss the point’(Derrida, 1983/1991, p. 275). A better way of describing deconstructionwould be as a critical orientation towards asking ‘what is X?’ This leavesadherents of Derridean deconstruction open to charges of incoherence andlack of foundations from which to claim anything. But this is the point—thewhole project of looking for truth and origins, for some bottom-line reality,is something that deconstruction asks us to relinquish.

Deconstruction can be read as the name given to the strategies and tacticswhich highlight potential disruptions already contained within the text. Eachtext already contains within it the seeds of its own subversion, and thereforeits own emancipation from transcendental signifiers, and its own potentialreconstruction; to be able to highlight the ways in which a text closes offthese possibilities is important for any critical endeavour, including criticalpsychology. Deconstruction may be particularly apposite for critical projectswithin psychology because of its development of the sense in which subjectsare inscribed in language (see, e.g., Sampson, 1989), becoming ‘a functionof the play of signs’ (Percesepe, 1988, p. 18).

The first half of this paper divides into three sections: the initial sectionexamines Derrida’s deconstructive reading of Saussure’s work; the secondtackles Derrida’s development of the terms ‘logocentrism’ and ‘phonocen-trism’; and the third focuses on the issue of how meanings are brought aboutthrough a discussion of Austin’s philosophy of language and Derrida’sdevelopment of ‘undecidables’ such as differance, the trace and supple-mentarity. The second half of the paper divides into two sections: the firstexamines ab/uses of deconstruction in critical psychological writing, while

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the second discusses developments in discursive psychology from a decon-structive perspective. A concluding section then highlights key areas ofdeconstructive work which can contribute to the development of critical anddiscursive psychologies.

Derrida’s Writing

This first part of the paper provides an overview of Derrida’s writing,highlighting aspects which are of particular interest to critical and discursivepsychologies, with their focus on language and meaning and their role in theconstruction of subjectivities and realities. The aim is to illustrate thecomplexities of Derrida’s development of deconstruction, while at the sametime making this work accessible, thereby providing the reader with a novelset of overlays with which to make sense of the issues and debates withincritical and discursive psychologies.

Saussure and Structuralism, Derrida and Post-structuralism

Derrida’s work is best set in the context of Saussure’s ‘semiology’, whichchallenges the representational view of meaning as something that emergesfrom between objects in the world and the signs that describe them.Saussure, generally acknowledged as one of the foremost structuralistthinkers, simply replaced objects in the world with signs, and divided thesign into sound-image, or signifier, and concept, or signified. An importantinsight which Saussure gives us is that the relation between signified andsignifier is arbitrary—every language is free to produce its own relationshipsbetween sound-images and ideas. The identity of a sign, its meaning, isdetermined not by its essential properties, but by the differences thatdistinguish it from every other sign.

This can be confusing for those of us who are used to thinking of identityin terms of a presence of meaning—if a sign has no identity of its own, howdo we distinguish it as a sign? Culler (1979) explains that the arbitrarynature of the sign

. . . maintains, on the one hand, that no terms of the system are ever simplyand wholly present, for differences can never be present. And, on the otherhand, it defines identity in terms of common assumptions rather than interms of presence. Identity, which is the cornerstone of any metaphysics, ismade purely relational. (p. 166)

Notwithstanding Culler’s rather unexplicated appeal to ‘common assump-tions’, we nonetheless have the seeds of a powerful critique of the wholetradition of western metaphysical thought, which has often taken the identityof the sign as an unproblematic ‘given’—a critique which can have profoundimplications for the analytic focus of psychology.


Derrida agrees with the structuralist view that meanings are worked up bythe system of signs which surrounds us. The only way of securing meaningis as relative to something else: each word or concept carries within it allother words and concepts that are different from it. However, Derrida takesthings a step further with his realization that in order to reify a meaning—toposit it as some superior representation of reality through the logic andstructure of metaphysics—the different concepts that help shape its meaningare going to be subordinated. This subordination of certain terms gives theappearance of some originary meaning or logos: the ‘presence’ or centre isprivileged by hierarchical binary oppositions. One side of an opposition doesnot exist in its own right, although the binary structure and logic create thisillusion, obscuring the reliance of each term on its opposite. For example,freedom does not make sense in a particular context without, say, beingrelated to oppression (or in a different context it might be determinism,imprisonment, and so on). Each word differs from, is evaluated against, andalso incorporates its opposite in a fluid and contextual sense, and thisrealization marks one of the major differences between Saussure andDerrida, between structuralism and post-structuralism.

Although Saussure treats the relationship between signifier and signifiedas arbitrary, he also treats that relationship as stable: it is where meaning canbe made present. For Derrida, this fails to acknowledge the ‘play’ betweensignifiers, and he suggests that in order to escape the closures of meta-physical language we should think of language in terms of its function—referring to an endless play of sign-substitutions—rather than its merepresence. Derrida also treats Saussure’s argument (and similarly the wholeof western philosophy) as organized by the binary opposition speech/writing, in which speech is given a positive evaluation due to its superiorability to reflect some inner reality. This privileging of speech over writingis termed ‘phonocentrism’ by Derrida, a particular type of logocentrismwhich has organized philosophy’s metaphysical assumptions, such thatspeech is considered to carry the full presence of meaning, whereas writingdepends upon absence, and is therefore subordinated by metaphysicalthought. Foundationalism—the seeking of foundations for knowledge—isaccomplished through the operation of this kind of binary opposition—speech/writing, presence/absence, and so on.

According to Derrida, history and knowledge have traditionally beenthought of in terms of a search whose end product is some self-present truth.This kind of logic operates to ensure that one of the great unquestionedassumptions of western theorizing, especially in philosophy, is that thespoken word is somehow more authentic, that it gives a more direct accessto some inner true way of being than writing ever could. Because thisemphasis on ‘inner life’ is one of the organizing principles of psychology, amore detailed examination of these issues will be relevant to the project ofdeconstructing psychological texts.


Logocentrism, Phonocentrism and the Speech/Writing Argument

Logocentrism. Derrida’s deconstructions are a way of disrupting logocen-trism. The term derives from the Greek word logos, where this denotes anykind of transcendental signifier such as logic, reason, God, and so on—abottom-line reality which transcends human judgement, which is available tous as a resource for making our ‘flawed’ judgements legitimate. Logocen-trism is the impulse to invoke some such ultimate authority as a foundationfor all thought, language and action. It is through the operation of binaryoppositions in hierarchical relation (e.g. God/man, spiritual/physical, male/female) that this authority can be invoked and the foundations for knowledgeestablished. This is because one term (e.g. God, male) is grounded in thelogos and so has clearer access to the truth, to the full presence of meaning,whereas the other is seen as lacking or corrupting of the truth as organizedby the logos. The problem is that logocentric thought is so pervasive as to beimpossible to escape completely:

The quality and fecundity of a discourse are perhaps measured by thecritical rigor with which this relation to the history of metaphysics and toinherited concepts is thought. Here it is a question both of the criticalrelation to the language of the social sciences and a critical responsibilityof the discourse itself. It is a question of explicitly and systematicallyposing the problem of the status of a discourse which borrows from aheritage the resources necessary for the deconstruction of that heritageitself. (Derrida, 1976, p. 289)

The quotation embodies one of Derrida’s major insights—that in order todeconstruct a heritage we must borrow the necessary ideas and terms fromthe heritage itself. We cannot simply escape from the system of signs whichsurrounds us, so we must develop a greater sensitivity to the way these signsare constructing our reality and truth—as well as our mind, our humanness,the physical world itself. It is not a question of simply identifying hier-archies and overturning them, or imposing some external emancipatoryframework on our texts. Instead we need to look for disruptions anduncertainties, for variability and undecidability already contained in thelogocentric texts which organize our lives. A particular type of logocentrismwhich relates to Derrida’s deconstruction of the speech/writing binary isphonocentrism (Derrida, 1976).

Phonocentrism. The dominant discourses shaping what we take to beknowledge and meaning have traditionally constructed language as themedium for thought and reality. From this traditional paradigm, languagemust be as transparent as possible to ensure that we do not become infectedby the signifier’s structure. This rejection of the signifier has taken the formof a rejection of writing in philosophy, and gives rise to the search forfoundations: ‘Logocentrism would thus support the determination of thebeing of the entity as presence’ (Derrida, 1976, p. 12). Because in opposi-


tions the superior term belongs to the logos, it seems appropriate inanalytical work to proceed from origins towards derivation, complication,and so on. Origins depend on the value of presence—the self-evidentpresence of sensation and perception, the presence of ultimate truths to ourinner consciousness.

Because we have a distinction between inside and outside, between theworld and our ideas about the world, it seems to us that when we speak wehave more direct access to this presence of meaning. There is no gapbetween seeing the word and understanding it, as there is with writing—wecan see written words without necessarily understanding them. We don’tseem to first hear and then understand our voices; rather hearing andunderstanding ourselves seem to be the same thing. Derrida (1976, p. 7) callsthis the system of s’entendre parler, to hear/understand oneself speak.Signifiers do not seem to be external to us when we speak, so one’s speechcan be viewed as the point where signified and signifier appear fused, alongwith inside/outside, individual/society, mind/body.

This moment of spoken clarity serves as a fixed reference point whichallows us to posit distinctions, and by referring to this moment, we can treatthese distinctions as hierarchical oppositions, one term reflecting the logos,as phone (speech) or presence, the other denoting writing or absence. Speech‘is the unique experience of the signified producing itself spontaneously,from within the self’ (Derrida, 1976, p. 20). We therefore have the illusionof constant meaning through the direct presence of a thought expressed inspeech.

For Saussure, the existence of this moment of s’entendre parler meansthat writing is secondary to the full presence of meaning in speech. If thespeaker isn’t present to tell us what she or he really meant, we must awaitthe fullness of presence of meaning in her or his speech. Saussure (1966)wants an ‘inner system’ of language which is expressed in speech. It seemsthat having transcended western metaphysics, in that concepts are no longerthought to lead a life independent from their expression, Saussure descendsback into it with his conceptualization of the distinction between speech, thesignified, and writing, the signifier, and suddenly the relation betweenthe two is no longer arbitrary. Speech becomes the reality which writingrepresents.

Derrida’s deconstruction of the speech/writing hierarchy therefore re-verses the initial hierarchy, making writing the condition of the possibility ofspeech, while at the same time reinscribing the newly privileged term—i.e.writing. However, we are not simply left with this reversal:‘Even before it islinked . . . to a signifier referring in general to a signifier signified by it, theconcept of the graphie . . . implies the framework of the instituted trace, asthe possibility common to all forms of signification’ (Derrida, 1976, p. 46).This displacement of writing relies on the notion of the trace, discussed inthe next section.

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For Derrida then, there is a sense in which Saussure’s text, like all textsdogged by logocentrism, already contains within it the tools for its owndeconstruction, tools such as ‘the absence of positive terms and the action ofdifference’ (Gane, 1989, p. 69). To posit a natural subordination of writingto speech, as Saussure does, contradicts his original notion of the arbitraryrelations between signified and signifier, and simply repeats metaphysicalexclusions. However, if one attempts to impose an external set of criteria onthese exclusions, one repeats the violence inherent in metaphysics (Beards-worth, 1996, p. 11). Instead we need to elaborate the violence of theseexclusions from within Saussure’s discourse. As such, deconstruction is nota preformulated technique or method which can be applied to texts; rather ithighlights aspects of the text such as the ‘undecidables’—the supplement,differance, the trace, and so on—which a logocentric system forgets, andwhich therefore disrupt its order and logic when introduced.

In summary, for Saussure and structuralism meaning is an effect of alinguistic system of differences, and this presents two main problems. First,there is an appeal to presence—the need to treat some meanings as given orpresent, which is antithetical to Saussure’s own thesis on the arbitrariness ofthe sign. Second, to describe meaning as simply emerging from linguisticrelations in an utterance does not account for the function of language: thesame utterance with the same linguistic differences can nevertheless bedoing several different things. However, if meaning varies from case to case,what makes it possible for a speaker to mean several things with oneutterance? Do we need to bring back the intentions of the speaker in order toaccount for these differences? Do we then need to go back to sayingsomething about meaning as the source of language rather than its product?Again these are questions which Derrida addresses, particularly in ‘Sig-nature Event Context’ (1982b), which provides a deconstructive reading ofJohn Austin’s work. The relative familiarity of Austin’s work to psycholo-gists, compared to Derrida’s other philosophical targets such as Rousseau orHusserl, provides a relatively accessible pathway into Derrida’s notions ofmeaning and undecidability.

Meaning and Undecidability

In How to Do Things with Words, Austin (1962) suggests that to account forthe meaning of utterances we must consider the ‘illocutionary force’ withwhich they are uttered, and the conventional speech act possibilities that areavailable. Austin denies that we can explain meaning with reference to whatthe speaker has in mind. What allows an utterance to perform some action isthe conventional rules (‘felicity conditions’) involving features of context.We can say ‘I promise to pay you tomorrow’ and it is still an act governedby conventions, irrespective of whether we do actually intend to pay up ornot.


For Austin, this is an example of a performative utterance, as opposed toconstative utterances which ‘describe a state of affairs and are true or false’(Culler, 1983, p. 112). Performative utterances cannot be true or false; theymerely perform action. However, the problem for this distinction is that onecould replace the words ‘promise to’ with ‘will’, and the statement wouldthen be true or false as well as performative. This breakdown fascinated bothAustin and Derrida, and provides an illustration of Derrida’s deconstructiveinsights, in that it illustrates Derrida’s logic of supplementarity at work—thedeconstructive move of reversing the constative/performative binary leads toa recognition that an utterance can be both constative and performative. Trueor false statements were originally treated as the norm of language, whileother utterances like performatives were seen as supplementary. By in-vestigating these marginal forms, Austin begins to deconstruct the hierarchy,and rather than seeing performative as flawed constative, he sees constativeas a special case of performative.

However, as with Saussure’s work, Derrida extends the initial reversal ofterms, disrupting their order. He goes on to suggest that performativeutterances require iterable or repeatable procedures in order to be recogniz-able repetitions of conventional practices. Culler (1983) illustrates this pointsuccinctly: ‘Imitation is not an accident that befalls an original but itscondition of possibility’ (p. 120)—the imitation–original binary is disruptedby the insight that origins cannot exist without repetitions. Derrida (1982b)calls for a ‘typology of forms of iteration’ in which the category of intentiondoes not disappear: ‘it will have its place, but from this place it will nolonger be able to govern the entire scene and the entire system of utterances’(p. 326). Hence conventional procedures for doing things with words can beidentified and used as a way of disrupting presumed originality, identity,singularity, intentionality, presence of meaning, and so on—this is animportant point shared by deconstruction and discursive analysis, and willbe returned to on pp. 655–660 below.

It is impossible to exhaust the contextual possibilities on which meaningdepends, and therefore impossible to control the effects of signification byappeal to individual factors such as intentions, contexts, and so on. Attemptsto make signification masterable involve defining what escapes one’s theoryas marginal—Derrida (1982b) shows that Austin ends up privileging the roleof intentions and the spoken word. It is therefore not enough to simplyreverse the constative–performative binary—the whole system of significa-tion needs to be radically disrupted and subverted.

Supplementarity. Derrida develops structuralism further by replacing whatwas originally fixed or central with a signifier, making that signifier asupplement to some original absence. The term ‘supplement’ is taken fromRousseau, who saw it as an ‘inessential extra added to something completein itself’ (Arnason, 1997, p. 3). Yet the supplement somehow exposes a lack


of completeness. A signifier’s supplementary character is therefore ‘theresult of a lack which must be supplemented’ (Derrida, 1978, p. 290). Ifthere is no centre or fixed point, then we are left with continual movement,a play between signifiers. Again there is an emphasis on the function oflanguage, rather than what it is assumed to represent. This is somethingwhich structuralism could not deal with, stuck between seeing meaningemerging merely through a sign’s differences from other signs, or throughthe reader’s understanding in making the text coherent.

Supplementarity means both to add to and to replace, and this type ofdouble meaning is characteristic of Derrida’s ‘undecidables’. This strategyof duplicity (Arnason, 1997, p. 1) invokes a kind of double movementwhereby it is possible to operate within logocentrism, since there is noescape, while laying traps for it which it cannot deal with. Differance, forexample, incorporates both difference and deferral, again alluding to thesignifier’s representation of presence in its absence. To oversimplify,the principle of undecidability is embraced, in that either/or binary logic isreplaced by the ‘logic of supplementarity’ (Derrida, 1976) which has a both/and, neither/nor construction: differance refers to both conceptuality and thepossibility of non-conceptuality. ‘The supplement is neither a presence noran absence. No ontology can think its operation’ (Derrida, 1976, p. 314). Itthen becomes possible to develop an understanding of the supplementarycharacter of things assumed to be already complete.

Differance. Differance is another of Derrida’s undecidable terms, and assuch resists our attempts to say what it ‘is’. This ontological move of statingwhat something ‘is’ is not how meaning comes about for Derrida; rather it isin the movement by which signs defer to one another. Every meaningcontains traces of other meanings, and differance describes this infinite playof differing and deferring. We learn in Derrida’s (1982a) essay ‘Differance’that every sign is the sign of a presence which has differed from itself, andtherefore can only gain its meaning by that which it is not.

Ordinarily a difference implies two positive terms between which differ-ence occurs. But in language there are only differences without positiveterms, as the previous discussion on structuralism showed. The signifiedconcept is therefore never present itself, but refers to other concepts in asystematic play of differences, or ‘differance’. Hence differance is notallowed to be a concept, but rather signals the possibility of conceptualitywhile simultaneously disrupting it. Differance resists the metaphysicalpresence/absence duality in a way that Saussure’s reliance on difference didnot; it is (does) a movement of non-presence. It is this location ofotherness—both a differing and deferring, or differance—which allowsmeaning to take place. Another term which has this undecidable quality isthe trace.


The trace. In Writing and Difference Derrida (1978) uses and argues againstFreud’s ‘mystic writing pad’, which is a metaphor for our psychic apparatusincorporating the dual requirement of openness to new material whilerecording permanent traces in its deeper layers. (It is important to stress thatFreud is not being used by Derrida for his psychological interest, but ratherfor the utility of his metaphor.) While top layers remain open and freshproviding they are erased, the bottom wax layer records imprints aspermanent traces. The surface therefore represents consciousness, the waxlayer the unconscious. Derrida would argue that Freud is operating with alogocentric illusion when he assumes that all memory is retained on themystic writing pad (the unconscious) and that consequently the true self canin principle be recovered. Instead the importance of this metaphor forDerrida is that the erasure of presence is essential to our continuingawareness of it, and also that the trace, the underlying wax layer, is essentialto consciousness—not until an impression has been formed on the trace canwe be conscious of it, so what is said to be in the present is always alreadyin the past.

Derrida shows that all metaphysical terms which assume some constantpresence or origin—e.g. God, man, the Cartesian cogito, etc.—are alwaysalready dependent on non-presence—the movement of differance.

The trace is not only the disappearance of origin—within the discourse thatwe sustain and according to the path that we follow it means that the origindid not even disappear, that it was never constituted except reciprocally bya nonorigin, the trace, which thus becomes the origin of the origin.(Derrida, 1976, p. 61)

But this is not to claim presence or primacy for the trace in any metaphysicalsense, for claiming that the trace is the origin of sense ‘amounts to sayingonce again that there is no absolute origin of sense’ (Derrida, 1976, p. 65,emphasis in original). This is a subtle point but is one worth stressing: inintroducing undecidables, Derrida provides us with a way of thinking,accounting for and disrupting metaphysical foundations, without puttingother foundations in their place. We therefore have a powerful tool indeconstruction—a way of undermining claims to truth without ourselveshaving to argue from some fixed position.

Derrida wants to avoid the centred modes of thinking—such as phonocen-trism and logocentrism—which arise from operating with metaphysicalcertainties. The critique of these two areas of thought seems to be the centralproject of deconstruction. Deconstruction of phonocentrism provides acritique of truth as centred within autonomous individuals, as evidenced bythe speech/writing argument outlined above, so it is especially relevant tothe development of understanding in critical and discursive psychologies.This arises from the wider project of the deconstruction of logocentrism,


which provides a critique of Enlightenment rationality and the universalpolitical principles which arise from it.

Logocentrism organizes an inescapable positing of foundations and cer-tainties. Treating deconstruction as a relativist position in which ‘anythinggoes’ will therefore not account for deconstruction as a response to theendless positing of foundations. We are unable to escape or stand outsidelogocentric thought from some privileged position. Recognizing this, decon-struction urges us to develop a greater sensitivity to the ways that reality andtruth—in psychology concerning the mind, or humanness, or the physicalworld—become constructed. It is not simply a question of identifyinghierarchies and overturning them. However, much of the theorizing incritical psychology is characterized by the practice of overturning hier-archies and the labelling of a Derridean deconstruction as relativist, and soapolitical. This is the topic I now turn to.

Ab/uses of Deconstruction in Critical and DiscursivePsychologies

The second half of this paper examines existing ab/uses of deconstruction incritical psychology. Its central aim is to identify and explore aspects ofdeconstruction which have been overlooked, repressed or ignored. Theseomissions have led to contradictory accounts of the utility of deconstruction.Indeed critical psychologists have typically fluctuated between positionswhich are deconstructive and anti-deconstructive, or, more broadly, post-structuralist and realist/materialist. Addressing this work’s relation to decon-struction is therefore a rather convoluted operation. One of the mosttroubling issues within critical psychology has been the relation of decon-struction to political commitment. A separate subsection therefore highlightspolitical moments in Derrida’s thought. The final subsection of the paperfocuses on the relationship between discursive psychology and deconstruc-tion. It highlights deconstructive themes in discursive psychology as well asshowing how deconstruction can help identify difficulties with discursivepsychology.

Deconstruction and Critical Psychology

This section focuses on existing ab/uses of deconstruction by criticalpsychologists. It should not be read as a critique in the traditional meta-physical and oppositional sense. Rather the aim is to highlight the omissionsof a range of deconstructive notions (which are sometimes deliberate andwell flagged, e.g. Parker et al., 1995), and to illustrate the value of certainsidelined features of deconstructive practice.

The general argument is that most critical accounts stick with a polarized


version of deconstruction that omits the subversive ‘undecidability’ dis-cussed earlier. The importance of taking a deeply committed critical stancetowards oppressive uses of psychology is not being contested here; rather theproblem is with criticisms of deconstruction using undeconstructed andpolarized terms. Ian Parker (1988) begins his ‘deconstruction’ of an extractof script from The Archers radio soap opera in promising vein—with adisruption of the speech–writing polarity which organizes a preference for‘real’ conversation by many social researchers. However, he reinstates thissame polarity when he concludes that ‘the pity is that a deconstructionwould not necessarily lead to a progressive type of action research if it wasapplied to real explanations given by real people’ (p. 198).

Deconstruction is often positioned as the opposite of construction: it istaken simply to refer to ‘breaking things down’—the unravelling of a text’sassumptions and the overturning of hierarchies. For example, Parker andShotter (1990) claim in their introduction to Deconstructing Social Psycho-logy that a Derridean deconstruction exists ‘just to unravel hidden assump-tions and to uncover repressed meanings’ (p. 4). And even Edward Sampson(1989, 1990), who is widely supportive of the emancipatory possibilities ofdeconstruction, characterizes its aim as being to ‘deconstruct the prevailingconception of the person and so reveal its political underside’ (pp.118–119).

A related ab/use of a Derridean deconstruction builds upon this reading ofdeconstruction as merely overturning hierarchies or binaries. The claimedproblem is its inability to provide the grounding for a political position. Forexample, what Parker and Shotter (1990) call for are approaches such asfeminism and psychoanalysis, which ‘afford a space for the exploration ofan “other” in a more radical sense than a mere polar contrary’ (p. 4).Kenneth Gergen (1997) contrasts a deconstructive movement with some-thing that can provide a more ‘generative’ basis for change, again implyingthat deconstruction is useful for dismantling rather than regenerating texts.

2

What we see then is that a major area of Derridean deconstruction is leftunaddressed here, namely the critical and subversive impact of undecidableterms.

Erica Burman (1990) similarly omits major aspects of deconstructivepractice when she suggests that it is linked with the ‘identity politics’ of oneof the less sophisticated aspects of feminism, which leads to ‘an in-dividualisation and depoliticisation of experience with a corresponding shiftfrom questions of oppression to identity’ (p. 212). She also claims that‘deconstruction is fundamentally committed to a liberal pluralism which . . .paralyses political motivation’ (pp. 214–215). Again these claims about thepolitical implications of deconstruction rely on the mistaken idea that itsimply involves overturning hierarchies, and so merely invokes a kind ofliberal plurality of ‘anything goes’ types of interpretative analysis. Thispolarizes deconstruction: either it is something concrete, or it could be


anything, and if it is the latter we are paralysed in terms of our ability to actpolitically. This falls victim to the same kind of binary logic which aDerridean deconstruction was developed to disrupt.

Similar limitations beset Burman’s discussion of differance, where sheclaims that the ‘methodology’ of

. . . difference (with ‘differance’) . . . is to adopt the devalued term of theopposition it identifies to highlight the metaphysical dynamic of itsconstruction . . . the principal danger with deconstruction is that differencemay become a substitute rather than a starting point for resistance.(Burman, 1990, pp. 213–214)

Again deconstruction is treated merely as a focus on oppositions anddifferences, and so we need to impose our own ‘starting points’ orfoundations for political action. By leaving unread the complexities ofundecidable terms, Burman and other critical psychologists reject aspectsof deconstruction which could provide them with a powerful tool—a way ofsubverting metaphysical foundations without putting other foundations intheir place. To develop discourses less concerned with developing regimesof truth, more open and careful about their own modalities of writing, issurely a precondition for resistance.

Despite their reservations about these undecidable features, critical psy-chologists such as Parker and Burman propose the adoption of deconstruc-tion as a critical method. For example, Jonathan Potter and MargaretWetherell (1987) are censured for watering deconstruction down in order tofit it into the prevailing paradigms of ethnomethodology and linguistics.Burman (1990) suggests that they make it more difficult to ‘bring the fullforce of these [deconstructive] critiques to bear on the practice of psycho-logy’ (p. 216). The implication is that by focusing on language and what itachieves, rather than what it represents, Potter and Wetherell are making apolitical stance more difficult for critical psychology. I take an opposingview—that by rejecting the view of language as descriptive or representativeof some reality, we can develop critical psychology further. This point isdeveloped on pp. 656–657 below.

The key to understanding Burman’s acceptance/rejection of deconstruc-tion is to see that she is starting from a polarized and undeconstructedrepresentation/reality binary. She warns us not to ‘tackle the representationat the expense of engaging with the political reality . . . focusing on a politicsof subjectivity can lead to a celebration of difference rather than a galvanis-ing into action’ (Burman, 1990, p. 218). Again there is a polarizing of theissue into binaries of reality/representation. This introduces closure inthe sense that for Burman the ‘reality’ of political action cannot be achievedsimultaneously with the celebration of difference, which the unsettling andsubversion of a Derridean deconstruction instigates. So Burman’s position isthat deconstruction is fine up to a point, but as critical psychologists we are


presented with the simple choice of either becoming lost in an endless playof differences or galvanizing ourselves into action. It is simply legislated inthis kind of critical work that if we take deconstruction too far we will losesight of political ‘realities’. To reiterate, the problem is not Burman’semphasis on the importance of taking a deeply committed critical stancetowards oppressive uses of psychology, it is with criticisms of deconstruc-tion using undeconstructed and polarized terms.

Another important work in critical psychology has been DeconstructingPsychopathology, by Parker et al. (1995). Here deconstruction is referred toas ‘a process of reading which unravels the way insane categories are usedto suppress different perceptions and behaviours, and it overturns theopposition between, for example, illness and health’ (p. 4). Again decon-struction is glossed as overturning oppositions and hierarchies. The authorsargue, quite rightly, that they are using the term ‘deconstruction’ in a ‘lesspure’ sense than Derrida, but their rationale is that the identification ofconceptual oppositions is where they want to start, not where they want tofinish (p. 3). Again, this implies that for Derrida deconstruction begins andends with the identification of conceptual oppositions.

Parker et al. propose instead what they term a ‘practical deconstruction’,which attends to ‘politics and power’ in a way that a Derridean deconstruc-tion does not; they are interested in ‘the practices of power that holdtraditional oppositions in place’ (p. 3). A common theme in the adoption ofdeconstruction by these critical psychologists is that a Derridean deconstruc-tion does not allow the required commitment to political endeavours. IndeedParker (1989) suggests that ‘[b]y its very nature it is hostile to any attempt toconstruct conceptual or political priorities’ (p. 198). In the followingsubsection I attend to these critiques, and show some of the ways in whichdeconstruction can underpin political commitment.

Deconstruction and Political Commitment

As the previous subsection showed, critical psychologists’ appropriation ofthe term ‘deconstruction’ has up to now claimed that it can only beemancipatory if defined in technical ways and incorporated into a ‘com-mitted’ programme. Other writers, such as Sampson (1989) and, outsidecritical psychology, Critchley (1992) and Eagleton (1981), have seen decon-struction as emancipatory in itself. However, Sampson does not explicitlyaddress the question of political commitment. This subsection aims to showthat deconstruction and political commitment need not be antithetical.

To deconstruct is not merely to highlight one marginalized half of abinary; instead it should leave no clear line between one side and another. Itbecomes undecidable which ‘side’ is which. Indeed, the entire principle ofthe organization of texts through hierarchical oppositions is subverted. Sodeconstruction is not nihilistic; it is not denying the possibility of political


commitment. Instead it problematizes those areas where metaphysical as-sumptions carry their greatest power. Deconstruction can be about becominginvolved—taking responsibility for marginalization, clearing the way forcommitment.3 It has even been argued that deconstruction emerges in anethical sense as the ultimate in responsibility to the ‘other’ (Critchley, 1992).Deconstruction therefore offers profound critical and political possibilities,for it can raise new questions about hierarchies and how they are textuallyconstituted, about psychology and its metaphysical assumptions.

In his discussion of the political implications of Derrida’s work, RichardBeardsworth (1996) suggests that Derrida’s theoretical reflections are polit-ical practices in and of themselves. They certainly provide us with the basisfor deframing unquestioned assumptions about politics and democracy.Beardsworth warns against the reappropriation of the meanings of a textfrom ‘an external set of criteria’, which repeats the ‘violence inherent tometaphysics’ (pp. 10–11). By replicating such a violence, we lose sensitivityto the rules and principles contained in the text, including its own politicalviolence. This is similar to the point made earlier about the polaritiesorganizing many existing critical texts, and the way that these polar-ities replicate the same structures of exclusion that a deconstruction aims tohighlight.

Because deconstruction approaches textuality from its own rules offormation, rather than external models of thought, it becomes an eminentlydemocratic practice (Debrix, 1997, p. 2). While most modern democratictheories stress the necessity of judgement, for example the will of themajority, Derrida has redefined the political as the impossibility of judge-ment, by emphasizing the fundamental undecidability and paradoxical nature(‘aporia’) of questions of law and politics. Derrida’s point is not thatdemocracy should be countered by some other political system in whichjudgement is possible, but rather that the tensions and revisability of ourjudgements and choices are central to a richer, more sensitive democracy.

Deconstruction does not strive for a revolutionary inversion of hier-archies, in the manner of Marxist types of thinking (echoes of which can beheard in many critical psychology texts). However, Derrida’s Specters ofMarx (1993) can be seen as part of a more explicitly ‘ethical turn’ fordeconstruction. Derrida opposes both Marxist Communism and the NewRight neo-liberal democracies of the West, offering as he does so a strongindictment of global capitalism. Marx is metaphorically buried, but thenresurrected in ghostly form. Through this process there is a disengagementwith some Marxist reality knowable without the ‘specters’ or traces of itsown making. Derrida suggests that our duty must be ‘fidelity to the in-heritance of a certain Marxist spirit’ (p. 87)—far preferable to the alternativeof ‘singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalistmarket’ (p. 85), which he feels is linked to ‘violence, inequality, exclusion,


famine, and thus economic oppression’ (p. 85) which are affecting morehuman beings than ever before.

In an interview in Radical Philosophy, when questioned as to whetherdeconstruction entails an ‘ethico-political responsibility’, Derrida (1994)replies:

Asking oneself questions, including ones about the questions that areimposed on us or taught to us as being the ‘right’ questions to ask, evenquestioning the question form of critique, and not only questioning, butthinking through the commitment, the stake, through which a givenquestion is engaged: perhaps this is a prior responsibility, and a precondi-tion of commitment. On its own it is not enough of course; but it has neverimpeded or retarded commitment—quite the reverse. (p. 40)

In the face of an endless logocentric positing of foundations, Derridaclaims we should never be content to have reached some bottom-line truth orreality. One of the main themes running through the preceding discussion ofDerrida’s work has been the idea that one must work from within existinglogocentric language in order to deconstruct it. This requires us to attendclosely to the function of language and the way that realities are constructedas such, through the text’s own structure and logic. We also need to developways of thinking and accounting for metaphysical foundations withoutreplicating the violence of metaphysical exclusions. In this sense deconstruc-tion can have a profound effect on political thinking and decision-making.

Deconstruction can provide a resource (as opposed to a definitive answer)for critical psychology and constructionism, by showing how we can cometo uncritically recognize aspects of ourselves and our ‘realities’ as notconstructed—as simply providing their own grounds for legitimation—through the operation of transcendental signifiers. What follows is a discus-sion of possible ways for critical psychology to pursue this subversiveagenda through a development of the more deconstructive aspects ofdiscursive psychology.

Deconstruction and Discursive Psychology

In this subsection, first, selected developments in discursive psychology arebriefly reviewed, and, second, some problems with discursive psychologyfrom a deconstructive perspective are identified. The general argument willbe that insofar as discursive psychology sees psychological notions asparticipants’ resources rather than some inner reality, and also in the sensethat it prefers to identify the ‘iterable’ conversational structures which serveto construct realities, rather than seeking to ‘expose’ the ‘realities’ them-selves, it both follows a deconstructive line and can be usefully deployed aspart of the weaponry of a critical psychology.

One method of identifying the manner in which meanings become reified,in which realities are made to seem not constructed, is to look at the


discursive strategies employed in helping an account to appear transcendent,factual, taken-for-granted. Contrary to Kendall and Michael’s (1997) view,the postmodern turn in psychology has not neglected the techniques used inthe construction of truth—the post-structuralist focus on language, meaningand fact construction in talk is something which Derek Edwards andJonathan Potter (Edwards, 1997; Edwards & Potter, 1992; Potter, 1996)have worked towards in their development of discursive psychology.

Work on fact construction (e.g. Potter, 1996) treats realism and claims torealism as the product of historically developed familiarity with sets ofdiscursive resources and interpretative repertoires. When people are doingfactual accounting, representations become transparent and obvious and, forone reason or another, become an index of the real. Many ‘factual’discourses have become so familiar that they seem like obvious truths.Potter’s (1996) work in particular highlights a number of strategies andorganizational features of talk which make accounts appear real and factual,for example a ‘stake inoculation’—a phrase which is inserted into talk withthe aim of making the speaker appear unbiased, and so more objective andfactual.

Edwards (1997) suggests that the sequential organization of talk can beseen as a major feature of indexicality and reflexivity: indexicality in that thesense and reference of a word is relative to the context of its utterance;reflexivity in that talk is seen to contribute to its own contexts, or evenconstruct altogether the context by which it is understood. If this is the case,then it becomes important for the analyst of a text to look at the way talkcreates its own context, and to look at the way sequential organizationprovides a context by which the meaning of words and phrases can beunderstood, not in any literal one-to-one sense, but instead developing asensitivity to the way talk does particular things in particular contexts.

So how does this relate to deconstruction? Potter (1996) suggests thatDerrida’s ‘focus on absences and unstated oppositions can be fruitful, as cana concern with the central systems of metaphors and figures of speech thatare part of factual discourse’ (p. 85). However, he draws attention to aproblematic opposition in conversation analytic work, which discursivepsychology draws heavily from, namely the opposition between mundaneand institutional talk. Conversation analysts such as David Bogan (1992)have suggested that mundane talk is primary, while institutional talk isderivative from this. There is a further link with a problematic speech/writing binary in the sense that the study of this everyday speech providesthe focus for conversation analysis, although most analysts would not seespeech as emerging from the intentions of the speaker.

So by focusing on the function of talk, and by using the context created bya text rather than imposing our own (as far as possible); by challenging theauthority of texts by subverting their transcendental signifiers, or their extra-textual ways of being made legitimate, discursive psychology follows


aspects of a Derridean deconstruction as it has been interpreted in this paper.There are also parallels with Derrida’s (1982b) call for a ‘typology of formsof iteration’ in which the category of intention is no longer governing ‘theentire scene and system of utterances’ (p. 326).

For discursive psychologists the focus on intentionality is in terms ofidentifying it as something being done by participants—the hitherto ‘innerfurniture’, such as intentions and attitudes, becomes part of the focus ofanalysis, rather than being enrolled as some kind of explanatory framework.Offering a self as fixed in some way, as possessing particular intentions orattributes, does particular business, as does the suggestion of fixity in others.Discursive psychology shows us that it can be a way of doing blamings,justifications, and for psychologists it can be a way of ‘kicking away thetextual ladder’ (Edwards, Ashmore, & Potter, 1995), of replicating logo-centric transcendental signifiers. The problem is that as psychologists we areso used to using things like attitudes and intentions in an explanatory waythat we need strategies to overcome this.

For many of the more traditional approaches in psychology, ‘mentalstates’ such as intentionality have been extracted from their everydaycontexts, and are unreflexively reified into categories which provide thebasis and ‘evidence’ for various psychological theories of human sub-jectivity. For discursive psychology, terms such as ‘attitude’, ‘intention’,‘personality’, remain as practical resources available for speakers which theycan employ to good effect in their accounts.

So for discursive psychology, although claims to reality have the status ofa participants’ resource for dealing with claims to knowledge or fact, wecannot take this as some reflection of how people apprehend reality. Realismbecomes a participants’ resource for working up factual claims, rather thansome pre-discursive bottom-line argument about the way things are. Thisgoes some way towards achieving a deconstructive perspective, in which theauthority of a text can be challenged by subverting extra-textual or logo-centric claims. We can also capture a sense of the double movement referredto earlier, in that we are able to identify and use terms such as ‘attitude’. Todeconstruct does not mean we can no longer use the terminology oflogocentric metaphysics; however, because we have undergone a shift infocus we are no longer interested in seeing these words in their traditionalsense as a representation of some reality, for example an internal state of ourparticipants. Instead we are asking about the function of such terms, whatthey achieve in talk.

With discursive psychology, we therefore have more of a Derrideandeconstructive sense of psychological phenomena than critical psychologicalapproaches have allowed us hitherto. We have a way of undermining theoriginary nature of psychological phenomena, without needing to replacethem with our own theorized understanding of them—for example, ‘a theoryof the subject’ as called for most recently by Spears (1997) in his


introduction to Critical Social Psychology. Like deconstruction, discursivepsychology can be thought of as developed in response to the endlesspositing of psychological foundations, losing none of its radical potential byrefusing to replace these foundations with some of its own.

Despite these areas of synergy between deconstruction and discursivepsychology, there are various important tensions, although there is not spacehere to do justice to the kind of arguments that are possible between the two.Discursive psychology, although attending to the ways that claims are madefactual, does not have a theoretical basis for dealing with the binarystructures which can organize the construction of facticity in talk (for oneillustration of this organization, see Hepburn, 1997). It is therefore able tomake clear the supplementary structure of ‘factual’ objects of knowledge,without making two things explicit: first, the structures of exclusion whichoperate prior to a deconstructive move; and, second, the sense in which astructuralist system differs from a post-structuralist system. These pointswill be explored in turn.

Discursive psychology is an explicitly relativist position. The realism/relativism issue is a thorny one for critical psychologists, as evidenced inarguments between the various contributors to Ibanez and Iniguez’s (1997)recent collection. The realist position typically characterizes relativist re-search as ‘apolitical’ (e.g. Parker, 1997), and calls for various ‘groundings’,notably a ‘theory of the subject’ (e.g. Spears, 1997). There are parallels herewith critical psychologists’ dismissal of the ‘undecidable’ aspects of decon-struction discussed earlier.

Edwards et al. (1995) conduct a defence of a relativist position, anddiscuss bottom-line arguments against relativism. In deconstructive terms,they provide a lively assertion of the need to overturn the realism/relativismbinary. However, as with any position which does not apply the morecomplex deconstructive insights, there is a possibility of reliance on existingstructures as determinants of meaning. In merely reversing the realism/relativism binary one simply reappropriates the same philosophical logos,which then replicates the same structures of exclusion which have put theneed for relativism into play. So the ‘either realism or relativism’ structure isleft intact. This can result in the same arguments being continually rehashedbetween realist and relativist camps, as both positions remain polarized. It istherefore possible to interpret the appeal to a ‘strong relativist position’ asrhetorically problematic.

The appeal to relativism is also a problem in the sense that if truth ismerely posited as relative, the criteria for knowing what truth ‘is’ becomehow far it can be justified, or factually constructed as such. From adeconstructive position this appeal to some normative consensus for know-ing what truth is/is not can lead to a certain complacency, in that all we needto do is identify common features of talk to discover ‘what’s really goingon’—discursive psychologists do sometimes claim to be ‘understanding


the way the world works’ or ‘discovering common-sense practices’ (cf.Edwards, 1997). They do, however, highlight the sense in which these kindof claims retain their status as stories, rather than as timeless, factualaccounts, drawing on Malcolm Ashmore’s (1989) work on reflexivity.

So the danger critically and politically is that consensus and common-alitites in talk can be produced through acts of exclusion and margin-alization, and a more thoroughgoing deconstructive perspective would allowus a greater sensitivity to this. For example, we might want to examine morethan the iterable procedures of talk identified by discursive psychologists,seeking further textual clues as to what makes the particular rhetoricalstrategies identified by discursive psychologists so successful. Moreover,there might be wider unexamined normative and oppositional structures ofmeaning and humanity organizing the requirement that we appear objectiveand factual—hence the requirement for the kind of rhetorical strategiesdiscursive psychologists focus on. This brings us to the second relatedpoint.

The difference between a structuralist position and a post-structuralistposition is not sufficiently theorized in discursive work. In a post-structuralist system, typified by Derrida’s work, the inversion of origins andcauses leads to the further realization that all causes are constituted byeffects. Effects become the cause of the cause, talk becomes the cause offeelings, yet the meaning of cause has shifted—it no longer fits into theoriginal cause–effect binary structure. Similarly we can still operate withwords such as ‘feelings’ and ‘talk’, but we are no longer dealing with thesame kind of system, so original meanings will be disrupted. The non-originary origin of talk is something which the former system cannotcomprehend, and it therefore provides a disruption of that system. Thisdisruption is characteristic of Derrida’s development of ‘undecidable’ terms.From this perspective it could be suggested that the analyst’s understandingof terms such as ‘personality’ is different from the participants’, in that theanalyst sees personality as a resource, while most participants’ use of it as aresource relies on its traditional psychological use as something residingwithin the individual. From a deconstructive perspective, then, discursivepsychology does not embrace a social critique of terms such as ‘personality’(which can be understood as organized by the undeconstructed individual–society binary) when that term is used in its mundane context by partici-pants. This could be another deconstructively informed area for criticalpsychologists to further develop current work in discursive psychology.

Deconstruction in the Derridean sense therefore allows a more compre-hensive reflection on these processes of marginalization and exclusion. Byexplicitly adopting a relativist position—a term usually polarized negativelyby its opposite, realism—the critical and political implications of currentwork in discursive psychology are not as clear as they could be. Despite this,


the discursive emphasis on the function of talk, rather than the presence ofmeanings, side-steps many of the problems organized by logocentrism.

For the discursive psychologist, deconstruction is thus perhaps bestemployed as a means of clarifying and making explicit the ways in whichdiscursive psychology can be further developed, for example by tracing theimplications of discursive psychology’s acceptance of the fluidity of mean-ings for critical and constructionist work in psychology, and for futureanalytical developments.

The identification of strategies and practices whereby subjects understandthemselves and their worlds as not textually constituted is part of the projectof discursive psychology as well as one of the key features of a Derrideandeconstruction. Both can be used for emancipatory political projects, forexample those related to critical psychology, in that they can open up aspace for considering and tolerating other ways of relating to ourselves andothers around us, allowing greater flexibility and adaptation to the endlessplay of shifting ‘realities’ which we face.

Conclusion: Summaries and Implications

The first part of this paper highlighted aspects of Derrida’s writing whichallow some insights into the complexities of his work, but which also speak(or write) to the concerns of critical and discursive psychologists. Thisinvolved first setting Derrida’s work in the context of Saussure’s, high-lighting differences and tensions between structuralism and post-structuralism. Again the focus on the role of language and meaning inconstructing realities is particularly salient for critical and discursive work inpsychology.

An important breakthrough which Saussure made involves the realizationthat the identity or meaning of a sign comes about through the differencesthat distinguish it from every other sign, rather than through the identifica-tion of its essential properties. If this is thought solely from within alogocentric paradigm, then it seems that relativism is an appropriate positionto adopt—that a sign’s meaning and value are only decidable relative toother signs around it, or to some consensus. However, Derrida’s develop-ment of deconstruction provides us with a way of disrupting logocentricthought, showing us ways in which meanings become reified to create alogos—some originary meaning—by subordination of the signs around itthat help shape its meaning. This can occur through a binary structure andlogic which encourage the forgetting of the reliance of a term on itsopposite. The pervasive use of these techniques is characteristic of logocen-trism, and the deconstruction of logocentrism involves challenging theauthority of meanings which are reified in this way.

This led the way to a discussion of phonocentrism, primarily organized by


the speech/writing binary, the tendency in western thought to assume thatspeech gives us more direct access to some ‘inner life’ or true meaning thanwriting does. This again relates to how meaning is generally assumed to bebrought about through individual intention or the reflection of reality. Likediscursive psychology, deconstruction shares a distaste for relying onspeakers’ intentions as a gauge for the accuracy of meanings; this leadsdiscursive psychologists to focus on the identification of conventionalprocedures for doing things with words, as a way of disrupting the presenceof meaning organized by logocentrism.

For Derrida, categories like ‘intention’ need to be simultaneously usedand disabled. This disruptive focus is something that critical psychologyneeds to take more seriously. We need to emphasize the supplementarynature of psychological phenomena—to recognize that they are not completein themselves, that their presence is characterized by an absence, that theyare always already dependent on non-presence—the movement of differ-ance. Psychological phenomena have no origins; they are constituted by anon-origin—the trace.

It is therefore necessary for critical psychologies to theorize the supple-mentary character of knowable truths, to think through differance as thecondition of possibility of meaning—referring to the systematic play ofdifferences which Saussure first developed, as well as deferring the presenceof meaning which comes about by thinking through the complexities ofdeconstruction. A further subverting move relates to a recognition of a non-origin, the trace, as the origin of any origin.

Having selected and interpreted features of Derrida’s work, the secondhalf of this paper went on to explore ab/uses of deconstruction in criticalpsychology. Here it was found that deconstruction was typically seen as anoverturning of oppositions and hierarchies, and not surprisingly theoristswere left with little to go on as the basis for a political stance. This misses animportant point: what we cannot escape in logocentrism is an endlesspositing of foundations and realities, and if we cannot escape it then our onlyoption is to work within it, to attend closely to the function of language andthe ways in which violations and exclusions are brought about through theconstruction of realities.

Problems related to discursive psychology from a deconstructive per-spective revolved around the idea that because deconstructive moves are notmade explicit, the structures of exclusion which operate prior to a decon-structive move can be missed. This also relates to the differences betweenstructuralism and post-structuralism—the sense in which meanings shiftwhen the authority and hence marginalizing power of a discourse issubverted by ‘undecidable’ terms which the former logocentric systemcannot comprehend. For the discursive psychologist as analyst, the presenceof meaning of psychological terms is disrupted by the identification ofpsychological phenomena as participants’ resources, rather than as evidence


of underlying mental states. But what are we to make of the issue ofparticipants themselves—as opposed to simply psychologists—orienting topsychological phenomena as mental states? This is an area which discursivepsychologists would not want to engage with, as there is ever-present dangerof reading too much into participants’ accounts. However, this paper arguesthat, from a deconstructive perspective, discursive psychology’s legislationsabout what participants may or may not be orienting to can occlude thepotentially oppressive cultural meanings and logocentric oppositions inwhich their talk can be set. This would be an interesting area of developmentfor critical psychology.

However, it is also argued that discursive psychology’s movement to-wards the supplementary nature of all psychological phenomena could beone of the emancipatory features of deconstruction which has been missedby critical psychologists hitherto. Although critical psychology takes on amore explicit anti-oppressive stance than discursive psychology, by notengaging with undecidability and the supplementary nature of psychologicalphenomena, a sharp critical edge is lost. A deconstructive reading cantherefore contribute to the development of both critical and discursive workin psychology by fostering a greater sensitivity to the structures of exclusionand reification organizing both cultural and psychological discourses.

In general, deconstruction requires that we use language itself as a way ofquestioning its own basis of meaning. If we see language as having materialsubstance, the problems we perceive will be like those of the cartooncharacter who stands on the area he is sawing around, removing thefoundations needed to support him. If instead we reject this view, and seelanguage as discourse, if we can cease constructing language in terms ofpresence, and see it rather in terms of its function—as a play betweensignifiers rather than the representation of the signified—then problemsorganized by the realism/representation duality dissolve. We can then seelanguage in terms of what it does, what it achieves, and see meaning asshifting its function for particular purposes. This focus on language and thesubversion of transcendental signifiers also entails that deconstruction neednot be confined to classical philosophical texts, but can be introduced intomore mundane contexts and discursive practices, for example in areas likecritical psychology which are focused on reform—of prisons, education,health care, and so on.

The implication for the ‘subject’ of psychology’s analysis is that theindividual is seen not as the interpreter of the play of signs in a language, butas a function of the play of signifiers. This means that a strong focus forcritical psychology can be the identification of the ways in which persons,identities, subjectivities, and other psychological ‘realities’, are constructedin order to be recognizable as not constructed. If deconstruction can help usto identify the horizons of thinking which produce demarcations about


‘reality’ or what it is to be a person, then we have a powerful resource forchallenging such essentialist constructions.

Deconstruction also allows the development of discourses which are morereflexive about their own modalities of writing. It is therefore an importantcontributor to the development of discursive and critical psychologies.

Notes

1. Further complexities relate to differences between the trace and the instituted orarche-trace. Gasche (1994) elaborates on this theme.

2. In earlier work, however, Gergen displays more comprehensive insights intoDerrida’s work—see, for example, his discussion of the ‘supplementary action’necessary for an utterance to gain meaning (Gergen, 1994, pp. 264–267).

3. It is necessary to emphasize that this is not the first step in a prescribed sequencein the mode of Parker’s ‘practical deconstruction’, which retains the polarizedconceptualization of deconstruction that this paper has attempted to disrupt.

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Acknowledgements. I would like to thank Jonathan Potter, Paul Stennerand two anonymous reviewers for detailed and much valued feedback, andDuncan Hepburn for some grammatical improvements.

Alexa Hepburn is Lecturer in Critical Psychology at StaffordshireUniversity. Recent publications have focused on the management of powerin talk about school bullying, and the application of theoretical andphilosophical insights for critical and analytical developments in psy-chology. She is currently preparing a book on approaches to criticalpsychology. Address: Psychology Division, Staffordshire University,College Road, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire ST4 2DE, UK. [email:[email protected]]


Derrida and Psychology: Deconstruction and its Ab/uses in Critical and Discursive Psychologies

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