Deconstruction and the Promise of Hospitality to the Other: Prolegomena to a Theory of Deconstruction

Abstract

Anyone who has read anything about, or from, Jacques Derrida, will probably have come into contact with his most known concept: deconstruction. Finding out what it really entails, however, is not as easy. Many describe deconstruction as, for example, a theory or method (often: of destruction), which Derrida himself strongly opposed. Due to the “logocentric condition” of western culture we are wound up with the (according to Derrida: deceptive) idea that language is an ultimate description of reality, and, thus, that we can define concepts unambiguously and clearly. How, then, are we supposed to give meaning to the word ‘deconstruction’––how can we properly present the meaning of a concept, when the “meaning” of this concept is exactly the incomprehensibility of meaning? However problematic it might seem if we want to find out what deconstruction entails, this incomprehensibility of meaning is precisely the problematic which Derrida wishes to highlight by means of deconstruction. Hoping to provide some clarification on the idea of deconstruction, we will follow Derrida’s deconstructions of three concepts important throughout his oeuvre: hospitality, the promise, and the other. I will conclude by proposing a “theory of deconstruction.” Not proposing the theory, but rather a theory of deconstruction––a suggestion of one of the (many) imaginable theories of deconstruction: a theory of deconstruction as the promise of hospitality to the other.