Michel Foucault called for the decapitation of the head of the king in political theory. It seems that we have reached this beheading in reining logic that grounds all our either/ or thinking. The either/ or logic was given a death blow by quantum physics that studies the dynamics of the subatomic particles. It has been said that the best kept secret in physics is that the physicists have lost touch with reality. We can also trace a similar collapse of the either/ or logic in the work of Derrida. We shall try to deal with Derrida’s work here to make sense of the death of either/ or logic. His philosophy of deconstruction has opened us to alternate plural meanings rather than a singularized, fixated and privileged meaning of a text. This means the fecundity of the text to produce other meanings is let loose. Deconstruction, therefore, has opened the semantic closures to alternate meanings. Hence, the text is not bound by the limits of either/ or logic in deconstructive thinking. It is free to let other rival meanings appear and show themselves.
This thinking that deciphers other meanings other than the reigning meaning from the text appears to embrace the additive logic, ‘and/ both’ and reject the subtractive either/ or thinking. The ‘and/ both’ logic is still inadequate for deconstructive thinking. Deconstruction is not a sublation by the opposition of thesis and antithesis to reach a dialectical synthesis . Hence, the additive character of deconstructive thought takes us beyond ‘and/ both’ thinking of Hegel and takes us to a further level of additive thinking which can be described as a form of ‘between and beyond’ thinking. Hence, deconstructive thinking opens a text to plural meaning production. The closure of text that crucifies it to monosemy is opened to polysemy and no meaning is privileged over any other. This horizontalization or de-hierarchization of meanings takes deconstruction into the logic that we have described as a logic that thinks ‘between and beyond’.
The logic of deconstruction can be further elaborated with Derrida’s notions of spacing, trace and differrance. There is no pure self-presence ( logocentrism) for Derrida. Everything is haunted by a kind of absence. That is, being is not fixated and static but is in a dynamic play of becoming. The same is true of meaning. Meaning is ever coming to mean… pushing towards fullness… never really reaching closure/ fullness. This is why we have to admit that meaning stays ‘between and beyond’. Hence, we have to accept that we are left with nothing but the trace and the dance of traces that produce meaning. This means meaning is anachronic. Its arrival is untimely. It is always on arrival. but never really fully reaching. Derridá’s difference captures this delayed coming of meaning. It also captures the distance/ spacing along with time. This means the arriving of the meaning/ even the arrival of being ( becoming) is deferred in time and is completely different. These haunted aspects of all meaning and well as being are captured by Derrida term defferrance. The spacing of traces happens in spacetime . Thus, the dynamism of traces follows the logic of being ‘between and beyond’. Hence, the additional … alternative traces are always on the arrival. This means every point is open to become a nodal point for the traces to arrive from all the three sixty directions. When a single meaning trace (set of trace) reaches a kind of stability, it does replace other meanings/ traces but only displace them.
We find that the logic that we have described as thinking ‘between and beyond’ appears to be the Chora-logic that we have been discussing. It is additive and is based on the principle of coherence but is never fully closed. It always stays open to the arrival of alternate meanings. This is why we may have to understand the wasteful and playful self of the internet with the help of the logic that thinks ‘between and beyond’. It can explain how the playful self generates his/ her cosmologies as well as semiologies in the virtual world. Like everything in the virtual world, these cosmologies as well as semiologies remain ‘between and beyond’. This means everything in the internet remains the dynamic unstable Chora which is its substratum. Here we have to note that the Chora-logic that is additive and summits to the principle of coherence and correlation is also haunted and it cannot be fully self-present and has to stay on the arrival in the mode of becoming.
