Gunkel’s Deconstruction: Between the Fetish and the Need for a Dialectical Renewal

• Authors: Stanisław Chankowski

Abstracts

EN

The purpose of the essay is to critically analyze the influence of J. Derrida’s deconstruction on David J. Gunkel’s book Deconstruction (MIT Press 2021). Gunkel’s handbook is aimed at making deconstruction a tool of critical thinking accessible to non-professionals. It turns out that accomplishing this task comes at the expense of precisely the critical potential of deconstruction itself. Gunkel is well aware that his arguments are sometimes superficial and overlook deeper problems that should be addressed. Such a failure takes the form of a fetishistic denial, which in psychoanalysis is summarized by the formula “I know well, but all the same.” In turn, deconstruction itself, insofar as it is separated from Kant’s transcendental philosophy and Hegel’s dialectics, becomes an academic ideology. Restoring its proper subversive potential can only be done by returning to a philosophy of reflection, in which the thinker himself must ultimately consider his own position as an author and bring it under criticism. This is the path that Gunkel avoids, because he could then no longer be the author of a handbook on deconstruction, rather than someone who practices deconstruction.

Keywords

EN

deconstruction; dialectics; fetish; subject; reflection

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego w Warszawie
• Journal: Studia Philosophiae Christianae
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 58
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 109-128

Dates

published

2022

Contributors

author

Stanisław Chankowski

• Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii -

• https://orcid.org/0000000181609923

References

• Derrida, J. (1967). Writing and Difference. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
• Descombes, V. (1980). Modern French Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gunkel, D. (2008). Žižek and the Real Hegel. International Journal of Žižek Studies, 2(2). (https://zizekstudies.org/index.php/IJZS/article/view/105/105).
• Gunkel, D. (2021). Deconstruction. Cambridge (MA) – London: The MIT Press.
• Kowalska, M. (2000). Dialektyka poza dialektyką. Warszawa: Fundacja Aletheia.
• Malabou, C. (2005). The Future of Hegel. London: Routledge.
• Mannoni, O. (2003). I Know Well, but All the Same… . In: M. Rothenberg, D. Foster, S. Žižek (ed.), Perversion and the Social Relation, 68-92. Durham and London: Duke University Press. (https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822384724-004).
• Ruda, F. (2011). Hegel’s Rabble: An Investigation into Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’. London: Continuum.
• Žižek, S. (2008). For They not Know What They Do. Enjoyment as a Political Factor. London: Verso.
• Žižek, S. (2021). Less than Nothing. Hegel and the Shadow od Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso.

Identifiers

DOI

10.21697/spch.2022.58.A.13

Biblioteka Nauki

22769626