Book Review: The deconstruction of time

There is some irony in reviewing a book about deconstruction in a journal of existential analysis. It consists in the fact that deconstruction begins with an explicit and critical departure from, among other things, both existentialism and psychologistic forms of psychoanalysis. Its concern is more with the structure of existence than its phenomenology, its 'conditions of possibility' rather than its forms in the world. It analyses the logic of psychoanalysis, particularly in the texts of Freud as they are pulled this way and that by philosophical and supra-philosophical forces beyond their control, falling short of reflections upon the 'psyche' as this term might be understood in a therapeutic sense.

The antagonism is clear. But if one accepts that David Wood's book, The deconstruction of time falls squarely within deconstructive limits, and has little bearing on either 'existentialism' or 'analysis' as these terms combine in the phrase 'existential analysis', then one is ready to appreciate its merits. It is clear, rigorous, balanced and sticks tenaciously to its theme. The theme is that concepts of time are gravely re-written by Derida, who in a sense 'completes' the deconstruction of time begun by Husserl and Heidegger. Where time has, almost without exception, always been treated in relation to

presence, it is possible, indeed necessary, to conceive a time anew - as the staving-off of presence, per se.

One cannot summarise here the arguments in favour of this view: suffice it to say they are formidable and convincing. One of the consequences for 'existentialism', one can intimate straight away, is that the existential subject, the 'human being', is never quite as fully 'in the world' as it might believe since its presence there will have been impeded at this 'structural' level where presence is an impossibility. The self-presence of human beings, their relation to themselves, would at best be an illusion, and at worst an unwitting capitulation to ideologies of the individual. And 'existentialism' is an ideology of the individual if ever there was one.

Robert Smith, All Souls, Oxford.