Identity and Play: Derrida contra Heidegger and Lacan

This article contends that Derrida makes the wrong decision when radicalizing Heidegger’s critique of the metaphysics or presence into a critique of identity tout court. Quite aside from the philosophical problems inherent in any rejection of classical identity (as noted from Aristotle forward), such a step also interprets the direction of Heideggerian philosophy incorrectly. When Heidegger says in Identity and Difference that identity requires mediation, this has much less in common with a Derridean critique of identity than with the Lacanian model of the split subject. Thus Lacan was also wrong when he claimed, during a dinner at the famous 1966 Johns Hopkins University conference, that Derrida had taken his critique of the self-identical subject from Lacan. In fact, the two critiques are altogether different. In closing, the article points to a harmful stylistic consequence of the Derridean notion of “play” as non-identity: namely, the overly hesitant and non-committal style that Derrida celebrates in Positions.