| J. Derrida from Journal of Radical Philosophy no. 68 (autumn) 1994, 28-41. And finally - as I just mentioned - the necessary deconstruction of artifactuality should never be allowed to turn into an alibi or an excuse. It must not create an inflation of the image, or be used to neutralise every danger by means of what might be called the trap of the trap, the delusion of delusion: a denial of events, by which everything - even violence and suffering, war and death - is said to be constructed and fictive, and constituted by and for the media, so that nothing really ever happens, only images, simulacra, and delusions. The deconstruction of artifactuality should be carried as far as possible, but we must also take every precaution against this kind of critical neo-idealism. We must bear in mind not only that any coherent deconstruction is about singularity, about events, and about what is ultimately irreducible in them, but also that 'news' or 'information' is a contradictory and heterogeneous process. Information can transform and strengthen knowledge, truth and the cause of future democracy, with all the problems associated with them, and it must do so, just as it often has done in the past. However artificial and manipulative it may be, we have to hope that artifactuality will bend itself or lend itself to the coming of what is on its way, to the outcome which carries it along and towards which it is moving. And to which it is going to have to bear witness, whether it wants or not. |