Phenomenology vs structuralism debate (1959)

In the early 1960s, Derrida began speaking and writing publicly, addressing the most topical
debates at the time. One of these was the new and increasingly fashionable movement of
structuralism, which was being widely favoured as the successor to the phenomenology
approach, the latter having been started by Husserl sixty years earlier. Derrida's
countercurrent takes on the issue, at a prominent international conference, was so influential
that it reframed the discussion from a celebration of the triumph of structuralism to a
"phenomenology vs structuralism debate."

Phenomenology, as envisioned by Husserl, is a method of philosophical inquiry that rejects the

rationalist bias that has dominated Western thought since Plato in favor of a method of
reflective attentiveness that discloses the individual's "lived experience;" for those with a more
phenomenological bent, the goal was to understand experience by comprehending and
describing its genesis, the process of its emergence from an origin or event. For the
structuralists, this was a false problem, and the "depth" of experience could in fact only be an
effect of structures which are not themselves experiential.

In that context, in 1959, Derrida asked the question: Must not structure have a genesis, and
must not the origin, the point of genesis, be already structured, in order to be the genesis of
something?[69] In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history,
and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis.[70] At the same
time, in order that there be movement or potential, the origin cannot be some pure unity or
simplicity, but must already be articulated—complex—such that from it a "diachronic" process
can emerge. This original complexity must not be understood as an original positing, but more
like a default of origin, which Derrida refers to as iterability, inscription, or textuality.[71] It is
this thought of originary complexity that sets Derrida's work in motion, and from which all of
its terms are derived, including "deconstruction".[72]

Derrida's method consisted in demonstrating the forms and varieties of this originary
complexity, and their multiple consequences in many fields. He achieved this by conducting
thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of philosophical and literary
texts, to determine what aspects of those texts run counter to their apparent systematicity
(structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). By demonstrating the aporias and
ellipses of thought, Derrida hoped to show the infinitely subtle ways in which this originary
complexity, which by definition cannot ever be completely known, works its structuring and
destructuring effects.