The Condition of Minimal Consensus

Derrida on the Logic of Telecommunication

Abstract

What new possibilities of communication are contained in Derridean deconstruction, which so severely dismisses the theory of communication as we have known it, especially from Habermas and Apel? Is there really any "serious" approach to the notion of communication for such a thought that radically calls into question the idealization and theorization of communication? The aim of this study is to examine and recast Derrida's critique of the theory of communication by incorporating the following insights: (1) Derrida's argument is based upon his own discovery of the necessity of what could be called "telecommunication"; (2) it is constitutive of an immanent criticism in that it disputes the idealizing assumptions of communication (the ideas of univocality, transparency, publicity, etc.) not from an empiricist standpoint (which clings to a diversity of everyday realities in communication) but from the very logic which makes possible the idealization of communication; (3) these arguments set out the precondition for communication to take place as event in a strict sense, and it is from this point of departure that one can search for the "minimal consensus." By taking these steps, this study attempts to characterize Derrida's thought of language as the "logic of telecommunication."