Linguistic Turn

The linguistic turn prompted another and more severe tactic, which was the textualist turn. In this literary/philosophical game of one-upmanship Derrida substituted the transcendent phenomenon of language by the visible presence of "writing," through which—or rather through the hyper-textualist device of "traces"—he attempts not only to operate in the "margins" of texts but also speak in the realm of the unspeakable and in effect to "get behind the back of language" (in Gadamer's terms) and of philosophical discourse. Taking writing as the condition of knowledge is itself a traditional move, as illustrated in the Renaissance preoccupation with littera (letter-atura) and scriptura and, more conspicuously, in the tradition of rabbinical (but also of Protestant) scholarship.

In this and other metalinguistic maneuvers of deconstruction, Derrida surpasses even Heidegger in claiming to be a "beginning thinker"—in the goal of transcending criticism or even, as in the notorious (non-)confrontation with Gadamer, dialogue. The very idea of situating Derrida's own writing in the history of philosophical thought, declares one devotee, "would amount to defusing its alterity and explosive potential." To be effective, it seems, cultural criticism, like philosophy, must be beyond the horizons of historical inquiry. Breaking with tradition is itself traditional in philosophical thought, as this Derridean adds, though without suggesting that the break and the "alterity" occur in the medium of rhetoric, or writing, rather than a transcendent tradition of thinking (in Derridean terms a transcendental state of "différance, née difference")—or an antitradition of deconstruction—that is itself set beyond language, criticism, and perhaps even history.

Foucault, too, sought to transcend language and "the history of historians," hoping, with the help of his episteme, to uncover the structures of society and relations of power underlying social practice and discourse, but historians have questioned the methods and especially his attitude toward historical evidence. For Foucault learning does not enjoy high priority; and whether or not he himself was, by intention or vocation, a historian, his opinion was that history was too important to leave to such. Foucault had more important things on his agenda. Criticisms of the concept of episteme (and of "practice" and "discourse") must be of the same order as criticisms of other such collective abstractions as spirit (Welt- or Volksgeist), Weltanschauung, mentalité, and other shorthand devices for grouping apparent homologies in various areas of behavior within a particular cultural horizon. Like Marxism, Freudianism, and Critical Theory, including the work of Jürgen Habermas, it is another effort of getting "behind the back of language," which had for centuries been the dream of "philosophy as a rigorous science."