The gift in Derrida's deconstruction

affirming the gift through denegation

pp. 179-199

in: Jason Alvis, Marion and Derrida on the gift and desire, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

If the gift in fact is central to deconstruction, then it is at work even when Derrida doesn't write explicitly about it. This chapter turns to Derrida's essay "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," and demonstrates how within it the gift can be contextualized in his deconstruction more generally. The gift is considered in relation to negation/affirmation ("denegation"), Being, khora, and economy. "Denegation" (Verneinung, or denial) is a psychoanalytic principle that insists that whatever a subject most forcefully rejects is in fact that which the subject most innately desires to affirm. Affirmation is here called "de-negation" and any rejection of the gift from coming into phenomenal appearance can have an affirmative function. Next, the gift is conceived as the progressive "displacer" of Being and "the transcendental horizon that belonged to it." Third, since deconstruction is aligned with Khōra, a central concept in Derrida's œuvre, the gift can be conceived in relation to it as that which takes from phenomenal experience in such a way as to draw attention to what is absent. Fourthly, one might associate the gift with that which deformalizes understanding in consciousness. Overall, this essay of Derrida's is significant for it's being an early response to the work of younger Marion who was outspoken about concerns that deconstruction was an apophatic negation and deceptive sophism.