Analysis Of Jacques Derrida's Signature Event Context

Jacques Derrida wrote Signature Event Context as a response to J.L. Austin’s How to do things with words. While Derrida praises Austin challenging the Western school of thought, he critiques Austin on the grounds that he assumes a natural state in which language exists. In Signature Event Context, Derrida considers the use of language and its meanings. To do this Derrida adopts Saussure’s theory of signs. While the essay as a whole focuses more broadly on how language is used, in this particular extract Derrida explains the need for deconstruction in order to fight inequalities found in language.

At the start of this extract Derrida claims that ‘an opposition of metaphysical concepts is never the face-to-face of two terms’ but rather that it’s a ‘hierarchy and an order of subordination’. This means that opposing concepts can never exist on an equal plane, but rather one will always be superior to the other. This also reinforces the idea that language is defined in terms of binaries, as suggested by Saussure. To counter this Derrida proposes deconstruction, which is not intended to make the two sides of the binary equal, but to put the inferior term of the hierarchy into spotlight in order to make the terms exist side by side. With deconstruction, Derrida …show more content…
He talks about the importance of not only looking at two metaphysical oppositions and neutralising them, but deconstructing them in order to subvert the hierarchy in which they exist. Derrida writes ‘deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed immediately to a neutralization’ which means that for a hierarchy to be truly subverted one cannot simply neutralise the oppositions but must go through the entire action of deconstruction, as simply neutralising the oppositions isn’t enough. It is not enough for the oppositions to be neutralised, the entire hierarchal system on which the oppositions were based on must be