As If, As Such: On Derrida, Husserl, and Literature

Headnote

Abstract

"As If, As Such" reads Derrida's understanding of the institution of literature as both the most interesting thing in the world and "perhaps" more interesting than the world in relation to his remark that the noema remains one of the most difficult and problematic concepts in Husserl's phenomenological toolbox. By focusing on the noema as the objective side of consciousness and thus as what does not properly belong to consciousness, hence as the site of the tension between form and matter, the following essay also explains why Derrida claimed that the "as" was always the target of deconstruction. Ultimately, "As If, As Such" seeks to elaborate what Derrida called the "power of literature" as that which is at work in the possibility of life.

Keywords

acques Derrida - Edmund Husserl - literature - fiction - noema - form - matter - as if

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)

La possibilité de la fiction ne se dérive pas.

JACQUES DERRIDA, Limited, Inc.

What about literature interests Derrida? The answer is complicated, but it begins with Derrida's recognition that "there is no text that is literary in itself."1 For Derrida, "Literarity is not a natural essence, an intrinsic property of the text" (AL, 44). Because literature has no essence, the literary space can accommodate any statement: "one can always reinscribe in the literary space any statement-whether a newspaper article, a scientific theorem, a snatch of a conversation" (AL, 45)2-without compromising the institution of literature. Although literature may include scientific, philosophical, or conversational discourses, "it will never be scientific, philosophical, or conversational" (AL, 47). On the one hand, there is no self-identity or essence of the literary text; there is no "intrinsic property" that identifies it as such, which means literature depends on what Derrida calls "nonliterary powers [des pouvoirs non littéraires],"3 thus on context and conventions, on laws and safeguards without which literature-the modern institution of literature-would not have been possible. On the other hand, the incorporation of statements that originate in other discursive formations does not compromise the literary text. Literature names an institution the laws of which permit it to say everything in any way,4 on the condition that whatever it says be "literature," that is, that it can be dismissed...