Derridean textualism denies not extradiscursive objects but knowledge of them

Evidence

The difficulty with Derridean textualism is not so much that, like traditional idealism, it involves the denial of the existence of objects independently of thought - or rather, in this case, discourse. In this sense Derrida’s celebrated declaration that *[t]here is no outside-text’ is misleading. In the light of his conception of différance, as Frank Lentricchia observes, ‘[i]l n’y a pas de hors-texte must mean, then, questioning not only the authority of presence but also “its simple and symmetrical contrary, absence or lack”. Il n’y a pas de hors-texte must not be read as positing an ontological “nothing” outside the text.’ But if textualism does not deny the existence of extradiscursive objects, it does deny our ability to know these objects. For such knowledge would seem to require some reliable mode of access to that object. But for Derrida the notion of such access is an instance of the metaphysics of presence, involving the idea of some direct, unmediated contact with a reality outside the play of signifiers. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 314

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies what ‘there is no outside-text’ actually claims — epistemological, not ontological — correcting the standard misreading.
• QUESTION: The Kant analogy at the end is cut off; the comparison of différance-unknowability to things-in-themselves is worth pursuing — is Derrida really a covert transcendentalist?