Plus ça change: A Response to Toril Moi’s and Catherine Malabou’s Critiques of Derrida

Authors

  • Adam Husain University of Oxford

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25180/lj.v27i1.381

Keywords:

Jacques Derrida, Catherine Malabou, Toril Moi, Grammatology, Deconstruction

Abstract

This article argues that, despite their differences as thinkers, Toril Moi and Catherine Malabou offer surprisingly similar critiques of Derrida. Both doubt the political utility of Derridean thought. Both have also expressed reservations about the coherence and ongoing interest of his philosophy. By describing the unacknowledged similarities in their arguments, and by contextualizing them, this article tries to uncover what is and is not original in these "new" critiques. Ultimately, grappling with these challenges provides a useful means of rediscovering what remains unthought and exciting about Derrida.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Aristotle. 2016. Metaphysics. Translated by David Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Bennington, Geoff, and Robert Young. 1987. "Introduction: Posing the Question." In Post-Structuralism and the Question of History, edited by Derek Attridge, Geoffrey Bennington, and Robert Young, 1–9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cornell, Drucilla. 1991. Beyond Accommodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction, and the Law. New York: Routledge.

Critchley, Simon. 1992. The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas. Oxford: Blackwell.

Culler, Jonathan. 1983. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Davies, Byron. 2018. "Revolution of the Ordinary Literary Studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell by Toril Moi (review)." MLN, Modern Language Notes 133 (5): 1416–19.

De Man, Paul. 1979. Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 1981a. Positions. Translated by Alan Bass. London: Athlone Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 1981b. Dissemination. Translated by Barbara Johnson. London: Athlone Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 1982. Margins of Philosophy. Translated by Alan Bass. Brighton: Harvester.

Derrida, Jacques. 1988. "Signature Event Context." In Limited Inc, 1–23. Translated by Jef-frey Mehlman and Samuel Weber. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 1989. "Psyche: Inventions of the Other." Translated by Catherine Porter. In Reading De Man Reading, edited by Lindsay Waters and Wlad Godzich, 25–65. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 1992. "This Strange Institution Called Literature." Translated by Geof-frey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. In Acts of Literature, edited by Derek Attridge, 33–75. London: Routledge.

Derrida, Jacques. 1997. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 1998. Resistances of Psychoanalysis. Translated by Peggy Kamuf, Pascale-Anne Brault, and Michael Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 2022. "Letter to a Japanese Friend." Translated by David Wood and Andrew Benjamin. In Literary Theories: A Reader and Guide, edited by Julian Wolfreys, 282–87. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Derrida, Jacques, and Christie V. McDonald. 1982. "Interview: Choreographies: Jacques Derrida and Christie V. McDonald." Translated by Christie V. McDonald. Diacritics 12 (2): 66–76.

Derrida, Jacques, James Creech, Peggy Kamuf, and Jane Todd. 1985. "Deconstruction in America: An Interview with Jacques Derrida." Translated by James Creech. Critical Exchange 17: 1–32.

Deutscher, Penelope. 1997. Yielding Gender: Feminism, Deconstruction, and the History of Philosophy. London: Routledge.

Di Leo, Jeffrey, ed. 2016. Dead Theory: Derrida, Death, and the Afterlife of Theory. Lon-don: Bloomsbury.

Ellis, John. 1989. Against Deconstruction. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Fischer, Michael. 1985. Does Deconstruction Make Any Difference? Poststructuralism and the Defense of Poetry in Modern Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Fischer, Michael. 2018. "MOI, TORIL. Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2017. Book Reviews." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76 (3): 371–75.

Gasché, Rodolphe. 1979. "Deconstruction as Criticism." Glyph 6: 177–215.

Jagger, Gill. 1996. "Dancing with Derrida: Anti‐essentialism and the politics of female subjectivity." Journal of Gender Studies 5 (2): 191–99.

Johnson, Barbara. 1980. The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Johnson, Barbara. 1987. A World of Difference. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Johnson, Barbara. 2020. "Nothing Fails Like Success." In The Barbara Johnson Reader, edited by Melissa Feuerstein, Bill González, Lili Porten, and Keja Valens, 327–33. Durham: Duke University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 2004. "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Mat-ters of Concern." Critical Inquiry 30 (2): 225–48.

Maclachlan, Ian. 2012. Marking Time: Derrida, Blanchot, Beckett, des Forêts, Klossowski, Laporte. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Malabou, Catherine. 2007. "The End of Writing? Grammatology and Plasticity." The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 12 (4): 431–41.

Malabou, Catherine. 2010. Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction. Translated by Carolyn Shread. New York: Columbia University Press.

Malabou, Catherine. 2011. Changing Difference: The Feminine and the Question of Philosophy. Translated by Carolyn Shread. Cambridge: Polity.

Malabou, Catherine, and Jacques Derrida. 2004. Counterpath: Traveling with Jacques Der-rida. Translated by David Wills. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Malabou, Catherine, and Noëlle Vahanian. 2008. "A Conversation with Catherine Mala-bou." Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 9 (1): 1–13.

Michaels, Walter Benn. 2004. The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Moi, Toril. 1999. What is a Woman? And Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Moi, Toril. 2009. "Barbara Johnson from a Distance." http://torilmoi.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Barbara-Johnson-from-a-distance.pdf.

Moi, Toril. 2017. Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Nealon, Jeffrey. 1992. "The Discipline of Deconstruction." PMLA, Publications of the Modern Languages Association of America 107 (5): 1266–79.

Neuhann, Esther. 2023. "Toril Moi's Phenomenological Account of ‘Woman' and Questions of Trans Inclusivity." Hypatia 38 (2): 251–74.

Niall, Lucy. 2001. "Derivations: From Derrida to Empson." In Beyond Semiotics: Text, Culture, and Technology, 97–115. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Norris, Christopher. 1982. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. London: Methuen.

O'Keeffe, Brian. 2018. "Revolution of the Ordinary. Literary Studies After Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell by Toril Moi (review)." The Comparatist 42 (1): 368–84.

Pippin, Robert. 2019. "Toril Moi. Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell." Critical Inquiry 45 (2): 567–69.

Rose, Jacqueline. 1986. Sexuality in the Field of Vision. London: Verso.

Spivak, Gayatri. 1983. "Displacement and the Discourse of Woman." In Displacement: Derrida and After, edited by Mark Krupnick, 169-75. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Stan, Marius. 2022. "Phoronomy: Space, Construction, and Mathematizing Motion." In Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science: A Critical Guide, edited by Michael McNulty, 80–97. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Vinten, Robert. 2018. "Review of Revolution of the Ordinary by Toril Moi." Nordic Witt-genstein Review 6 (2): 99–103.

Downloads

Published

21.09.2025

How to Cite

Husain, A. (2025). Plus ça change: A Response to Toril Moi’s and Catherine Malabou’s Critiques of Derrida. Labyrinth, 27(1), 140–163. https://doi.org/10.25180/lj.v27i1.381

Issue

Section

The Critical Perspectives and Legacies of Deconstruction