Constitution and Dislocation: Jacques Derrida and the Linguistic Turn

Abstract

This paper analyzes Jacques Derrida’s arguments against Husserl’s phenomenology and in support of the main thesis of the linguistic turn, namely: there is no possible thinking without language. Next the paper shows that Derrida’s dissolution of subjectivity in language is not a consequence of the linguistic turn as such, but of Saussure’s structuralist language model which Derrida adopts and radicalizes. Finally, following some arguments of Ricoeur the paper states that the omission of the pragmatic dimension of language is the main root of Derrida’s paradoxical theses about meaning, reference and subjectivity.