On Deconstruction and Struction

Abstract

This chapter explores the implications of biodeconstruction’s shift beyond the orbit of Husserlian phenomenology and the deconstruction of intentional consciousness and phenomenological presence. It poses the question of whether arche-writing, trace, or text when transposed onto the domain of the biological might entails what amount to ontological claims relating to the domain of the living in general and as such. This question is explored via Derrida’s own equivocal comments relating to the possibility of a ‘text’ of the living, Jean-Luc Nancy’s use of the term ‘struction’ and Derrida’s detour in La Vie la mort through the Nietzscean account of lived force and intensity.