ABSTRACT
One of the most persistent and damaging allegations made against poststructuralism is that it effectively destroys the grounds of any ethical enquiry or action. Christopher Norris speaks for many in describing the ‘decentring of the subject’ as having disastrous ethical consequences: ‘By “decentring” the subject to the point of non-existence – reducing it to a mere position within discourse or a figment of the humanist Imaginary – post-structuralism has removed the very possibility of reasoned, reflective, and principled ethical choice.’2 On the other hand, it has been argued that ethics has been one of the abiding concerns of poststructuralist thinkers. Lacan’s seminar on ‘L’Ethique de la psychanalyse’ was held in 1959-60, though not published until 1986. Derrida’s engagement with the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas extends from one of his earliest essays, ‘Violence et métaphysique’ (1964), through a second long article published in 1980 (‘En ce moment même dans cet ouvrage me voici’) and to Adieu à Emmanuel Levinas (1997), which contains a funeral oration delivered after Levinas’s death in 1995 and a conference paper given a year later.3 Other thinkers’ concern for ethics is confirmed by titles such as Nancy’s Impératif catégorique (1983), Irigaray’s Ethique de la différence sexuelle (1984), or Lyotard’s Moralités postmodernes (1993). With some exasperation Alain Badiou described ethics in 1993 as ‘the principal philosophical “tendency” of the moment’ (la ‘tendance’ philosophique principale du moment).4 Ethics, it seems, was the word on everyone’s lips, and increasingly, poststructuralism has been depicted by critics sympathetic to it as centrally and urgently concerned with ethics;
for example, Simon Critchley argued in his important study The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (1992) that ‘Derridian deconstruction can, and indeed should, be understood as an ethical demand, provided that ethics is understood in the particular sense given to it in the work of Emmanuel Levinas’.5
