Essay Under Erasure?

Sarah Hamilton

Can continental and analytic philosophy achieve anything beyond muffled misunderstandings of the concepts central to the opposite discipline? Or must continental and analytic philosophy fundamentally speak past each other? In comparing the work of Jacques Derrida to that of logical positivist Rudolf Carnap, I implicitly confront this question. "Essay ['Essay' has a strike through it] Under Erasure" is an examination of Derrida's _Of Grammatology_ which admits the limitations that, as Derrida points out, are inherent within any philosophical work, thus rendering both his own work and that of any commentator upon his work paradoxical; these paradoxes appear more pronounced when some of the basic concepts from Carnap's work are juxtaposed against them. Both Derrida and Carnap decry traditional 'metaphysics', posit 'frameworks' from which it is impossible to escape within philosophical projects, undertake detailed examinations of the misconceptions that everyday language seems to render inevitable, address the question of 'metalanguage', and seek to reconceive philosophy as a science. However, this comparative analysis of the two authors is undermined from the outset by the projects of both, and presents a difficulty for the commentator: how is it possible to relate Derrida to Carnap without implicitly 'washing out' the project of one in setting it against the project of the other? The very framework employed (that of comparison) presumes a centrality to the work of both authors and a duality between them, which is an enactment of the philosophical concepts that Derrida considers fundamentally misconceived. Like any philosophical work examined from a Derridean standpoint, the essay implicitly deconstructs (in the passive sense; to actively 'deconstruct' makes no sense for Derrida) even as it constructs. How is the analysis to be undertaken, then? The essay must be written 'under erasure'.