（试译）雅克·德里达：给日本朋友的一封信
作者/Jacque Derrida
翻译/君士坦丁堡不相信眼泪
校对/读者诸君
前言：德里达在这封写给井筒俊彦的信中精炼地解释了他思想中最为关键的概念——“解构”（ Déconstruction）。在信中，通过对于源头（对于西方形而上学的考察）和流变（美国耶鲁学派对于其的误读）的进一步说明与辨析，德里达指明了解构这个词于其思想的意义和正确的理解方向，并回应了外界对于他的误解和攻击。可以说，这封信对于深入了解德里达“解构”思想是最不可无视的文本。 本文主要依据英文版本与日文版本进行翻译，少数片段求教大佬（鉴于笔者婴儿级的法语水平）参照对比了法文原版。本文已有周荣胜教授翻译的版本，只不过在译文的开头周教授就将筒井翻译成了五十铃（两个词在日文的假名罗马音中有“细微的”差别：井筒“Izutsu”和五十鈴“Isuzu”），故而译者对于该译文版本的准确性持略微的怀疑态度。译者并非专业译者，如有失当之处望您见谅并指出。怡情小译，如侵速晓。
"Letter to a Japanese Friend"
Jacques Derrida
10 July 1983
Dear Professor Izutsu,
At our last meeting I promised you some schematic and preliminary reflections on the word "deconstruction". What we discussed were prolegomena to a possible translation of this word into Japanese, one which would at least try to avoid, if possible, a negative determination of its significations or connotations. The question would be therefore what deconstruction is not, or rather ought not to be. I underline these words "possible" and "ought". For if the difficulties of translation can be anticipated (and the question of deconstruction is also through and through the question of translation, and of the language of concepts, of the conceptual corpus of so-called "western" metaphysics), one should not begin by naively believing that the word "deconstruction" corresponds in French to some clear and univocal signification. There is already in "my" language a serious [sombre] problem of translation between what here or there can be envisaged for the word, and the usage itself, the reserves of the word. And it is already clear that even in French, things change from one context to another. More so in the German, English, and especially American contexts, where the same word is already attached to very different connotations, inflections, and emotional or affective values. Their analysis would be interesting and warrants a study of its own.
1983年7月10日
亲爱的井筒教授，
在我们的上一次会面时，我答应给你一些关于 "解构 "这个词的方案和初步的思考。我们的讨论或许为其翻译到日语拉开了可能性的序幕。如果可以的话，至少要尽量避免对其意义或内涵的负面判断。因此，这个问题将是解构主义不是什么，或者说不应该是什么。我强调了 "可能 "和 "应该 "这两个词。因为如果可以预见翻译的困难（而解构的问题也是贯穿于翻译的问题，以及概念的语言和所谓的 "西方 "形而上学的概念库的问题），我们就不应该一开始天真地认为 "解构 "这个词在法语中对应于某种明确的和统一的符号。在 "我的 "语言中，任何可以为这个词所设想的东西与这个词的用法本身，即这个词所储存的意义之间，已经存在着一个严重（sombre）的翻译问题。而且早已清楚的是，即使在法语中，事情在不同的语境中也会发生变化。而在德语、英语，尤其是美国语境中则更是如此，在那里，同一个词已经被附加了非常不同的内涵、语气和情感或情绪价值。他们的分析将是有趣且必要的。
When I chose the word, or when it imposed itself on me - I think it was in *Of Grammatology* - I little thought it would be credited with such a central role in the discourse that interested me at the time. Among other things I wished to translate and adapt to my own ends the Heidggerian word Destruktion or Abbau. Each signified in this context an operation bearing on the structure or traditional architecture of the fundamental concepts of ontology or of Western metaphysics. But in French "destruction" too obviously implied an annihilation or a negative reduction much closer perhaps to Nietzschean "demolition" than to the Heideggerian interpretation or to the type of reading that I proposed. So I ruled that out. I remember having looked to see if the word "deconstruction" (which came to me it seemed quite spontaneously) was good French. I found it in the Littré. The grammatical, linguistic, or rhetorical senses [portees] were found bound up with a "mechanical" sense [portee "machinique"]. This association appeared very fortunate, and fortunately adapted to what I wanted at least to suggest. Perhaps I could cite some of the entries from the Littré.
当我选择这个词时，或者当它强加给我时-——我想是在《论文字学》（Of Grammatology）*中——我没有想到它在当时使我感兴趣的论述中会被赋予如此重要的作用。在其他方面，我希望将海德格尔的Destruktion或Abbau这个词翻译出来并适应我自己的目的。在这种情况下，每个词都意味着对本体论或西方形而上学的基本概念的结构或传统架构的操作。但在法语中，"distraction"显然意味着一种湮灭或消极的减少，其也许更接近于尼采的 "拆除"（demolition），而不是海德格尔的解释或我提出的那种阅读方式。所以我排除了这一点。我记得我曾追寻过 "解构 "这个词（它似乎很自然地出现在我面前）是否是合适的法语。我在《Littré》中找到了它。语法、语言或修辞的意义（portees）被发现与 "机械 "的意义（portee "machinique"）结合起来。这种联系显得非常幸运，并且幸运地适应了我至少想要建议的内容。也许我可以引用《Littré》中的一些条目。
"Deconstruction: action of deconstructing. Grammatical term. Disarranging the construction of words in a sentence. 'Of deconstruction, common way of saying construction', Lemare, De la maniére d'apprendre les langues, ch.17, in *Cours de langue Latine*. Deconstruire: 1. To disassemble the parts of a whole. To deconstruct a machine to transport it elsewhere. 2. Grammatical term... To deconstruct verse, rendering it, by the suppression of meter, similar to prose. Absolutely. ('In the system of prenotional sentences, one also starts with translation and one of its advantages is never needing to deconstruct,' Lemare, ibid.)3. Se deconstruire [to deconstruct itself] ... to lose its construction. 'Modern scholarship has shown us that in a region of the timeless East, a language reaching its own state ofperfection is deconstructed [s'est deconstruite] and altered fromwithin itself according to the single law of change, natural to the human mind,' Villemain, *Preface du Dictionaire de l'Academie*." Naturally it will be necessary to translate all of this into Japanese but that only postpones the problem. It goes without saying that if all the significations enumerated by the Littré interested me because of their affinity with what I "meant" [voulais-dire], they concerned, metaphorically, so to say, only models or regions of meaning and not the totality of what deconstruction aspires to at its most ambitious. This is not limited to a linguistico-grammatical model, let alone a mechanical model. These models themselves ought to be submitted to a deconstructive questioning. It is true then that these "models" have been behind a number of misunderstandings about the concept and word of "deconstruction" because of the temptation to reduce it to these models.
"解构(Deconstruction)：解构（deconstructing）的行动。语法学术语。扰乱句子中词语的结构。关于解构，结构的常用说法"，Lemare, De la maniére d'apprendre les langues, ch.17, in *Cours de langue Latine*。 解构（Deconstruire）：1. 将一个整体的各个部分分解开来。分解一台机器，把它运到别的地方。2. 语法学术语... 解构诗词，通过压制韵律，使其与散文相似。绝对的。('在前概念句子系统中，人们也是从翻译开始的，其优点之一是永远不需要解构，'Lemare，同上。)3.Se deconstruire（解构自身)......失去其结构。现代学术研究向我们表明，在永恒的东方的一个地区，达到其自身完美状态的语言被解构（s'est deconstruite），并根据人类思想自然的单一变化规律从其内部进行改变，'Villemain，*Preface du Dictionaire de l'Academie*。" 自然，有必要将所有这些内容翻译成日语，但这只是推迟了问题的解决。不言而喻，如果Littré列举的所有符号都因为与我的 "意思"（voulais-dire）相近而使我感兴趣，那么，从隐喻上来讲，它们只涉及意义的模型或区域，而不是解构主义最雄心勃勃的全部。其（野心）并不限于语言-语法模型，更不用说机械模型了。而这些模式本身应该受到解构主义的质疑。这些 "模式 "确实是于对 "解构 "的概念和词的一些误解的背后，因为这里存在把它简化为这些模式的诱惑。
It must also be said that the word was rarely used and was largely unknown in France. It had to be reconstructed in someway, and its use value had been determined by the discourse that was then being attempted around and on the basis of *Of Grammatology*. It is to this value that I am now going to try to give some precision and not some primitive meaning or etymology sheltered from or outside of any contextual strategy. A few more words on the subject of "the context". At that time structuralism was dominant. "Deconstruction" seemed to be going in the same direction since the word signified a certain attention to structures (which themselves were neither simply ideas, nor forms, nor syntheses, nor systems). To deconstruct was also a structuralist gesture or in any case a gesture that assumed a certain need for the structuralist problematic. But it was also an antistructuralist gesture, and its fortune rests in part on this ambiguity. Structures were to be undone, decomposed, desedimented (all types of structures, linguistic, "logocentric", "phonocentric" - structuralism being especially at that time dominated by linguistic models and by a so-called structural linguistics that was also called Saussurian - socio-institutional, political, cultural, and above all and from the start philosophical.) This is why, especially in the United States, the motif of deconstruction has been associated with "poststructuralism" (a word unknown in France until its "return" from the States). But the undoing, decomposing, and desedimenting of structures, in a certain sense more historical than the structuralist movement it called into question, was not a negative operation. Rather than destroying, it was also necessary to understand how an "ensemble" was constituted and to reconstruct it to this end. However, the negative appearance was and remains much more difficult to efface than is suggested by the grammaar of the word (de-), even though it can designate a genealogical restoration [remonter] rather than a demolition. That is why the word, at least on its own, has never appeared satisfactory to me (but what word is), and must always be girded by an entire discourse. It isdifficult to effect it afterward because, in the work of deconstruction, I have had to, as I have to here, multiply the cautionary indicators and put aside all the traditional philosophical concepts, while reaffirming the necessity of returning to them, at least under erasure. Hence, this has been called, precipitately, a type of negative theology (this was neither true nor false but I shall not enter into the debate here). All the same, and in spite of appearances, deconstruction is neither an analysis nor a critique and its translation would have to take that into consideration. It is not an analysis in particular because the dismantling of a structure is not a regression toward a simple element, toward an indissoluble origin. These values, like that of analysis, are themselves philosophemes subject to deconstruction. No more is it a critique, in a general sense or in Kantian sense. The instance of krinein or of krisis (decision, choice, judgment, discernment) is itself, as is all the apparatus of transcendental critique, one of the essential "themes" or "objects" of deconstruction.
还必须说的是，这个词在法国很少使用，而且基本上不为人知。它必须以某种方式被重建，而它的使用价值已经被当时围绕和基于《论文字学》*所尝试的话语所决定。我现在要做的就是对这一价值给予一定的精确性，而不是在任何语境策略之外庇护一些原始的意义或词源。关于 "语境 "的问题，再多说几句。在那个时候，结构主义占主导地位。"解构 "似乎也在朝这个方向发展，因为这个词意味着对结构的某种关注（这些结构本身既不是简单的思想，也不是形式，更不是综合，也不是系统）。解构也是一种结构主义的姿态，或者在任何情况下都是一种假定对结构主义问题的某种需要的姿态。但它也是一种反结构主义的姿态，它的部分地依赖于这种模糊性。结构将被取消、分解、消解（所有类型的结构，语言的，"logocentric"，"语音中心"——结构主义在当时尤其被语言学模式和所谓的结构语言学所主导，这种语言学也被称为索绪尔式的——社会、体制、政治、文化，最重要的是，从一开始就是哲学的。） 这就是为什么，特别是在美国，解构的主题一直与 "后结构主义"（这个词在法国不为人知，直到它从美国 "回归"）联系在一起。但结构的撤销、分解和去污，在某种意义上比它所质疑的结构主义运动更具历史性，并不是一种消极的操作。与其说是破坏，还不如说是理解一个 "组合 "是如何构成的，并为此目的而重建它。然而，负面的外观过去和现在都比这个词（de-）的语法所暗示的要难得多，尽管它可以指定一个谱系的恢复[remonter]而不是拆除。这就是为什么这个词，至少就其本身而言，在我看来从未令人满意（但什么词是），而且必须始终被整个话语所束缚。它之所困难是因为在解构的工作中，我不得不，就像我在这里所做的那样，增加警戒性的指标，把所有传统的哲学概念放在一边，同时重申回到这些概念的必要性，至少在抹杀之下。因此，这被仓促地称为一种否定神学（这既不是真的，也不是假的，但我将不在此进行辩论）。尽管如此，尽管表面上看，解构主义既不是一种分析，也不是一种批判，其翻译必须考虑到这一点。它不是一种分析，特别是因为结构的拆解并不是向着一个简单的元素，向着一个独立的元素倒退。一个简单的元素，走向一个不可分割的起源。这些价值，就像分析的价值一样，本身就是受到解构的哲学。它不再是一般意义上的批判，也不是康德意义上的批判。krinein或krisis（决定、选择、判断、辨别）的例子本身，就像所有超越性批判的装置一样，是解构的基本 "主题 "或 "对象 "之一。
I would say the same about method. Deconstruction is not a method and cannot be tranformed into one. Especially if the technical and procedural significations of the word are stressed. It is true that in certain circles (university or cultural, especially in the United States) the technical and methodological "metaphor" that seems necessarily attached to the very word deconstruction has been able to seduce or lead astray. Hence the debate that has developed in these circles: Can deconstruction become a methodology for reading and for interpretation? Can it thus be allowed to be reappropriated and domesticated by academic institutions?
我会对方法也有同样的看法。解构不是一种方法，也不能被转化为方法。尤其是如果强调这个词的技术和程序性意义。诚然，在某些圈子（尤其是在美国的大学或文化领域），似乎必然与"解构"这个词紧密相连的技术和方法论式的“隐喻”已经能够将其诱惑或引入歧途。因此在这些圈子中出现了这样的辩论：解构是否可以成为阅读和解释的方法？它是否可以被学术机构重新拥有和驯化？
It is not enough to say that deconstruction could not be reduced to some methodological instrumentality or to a set of rules and transposable procedures. Nor will it do to claim that each deconstructive "event" remains singular or, in any case, as close as possible to something like an idiom or a signature. It must also be made clear that deconstruction is not even an act or an operation. Not only because there would be something "patient" or "passive" about it (as Blanchot says, more passive than passivity, than the passivity that is opposed to activity). Not only because it does not return to an individual or collective subject who would take the initiative and apply it to an object, a text, a theme, etc.
仅仅说解构不能被还原为某种方法论工具或一组规则和可转移的程序是不够的。也不能声称每个解构的“事件”都保持独特，或者无论如何都尽可能接近类似成语或签名的东西。还必须明确指出，解构甚至不是一种行为或操作。这不仅是因为它可能具有某种“被动”的性质（如布朗肖所说，比被动更被动，比与活动相对立的被动更被动）。也不仅因为它不回归到一个个体或集体主体，后者会采取主动，将其应用于对象、文本、主题等等。
Deconstruction takes place, it is an event that does not await the deliberation, consciousness, or organization of a subject, or even of modernity. It deconstructs itself. It can be deconstructed. [Ça se deconstruit.] The "it" [ça] is not here an impersonal thing that is opposed to some egological subjectivity. It is in deconstruction (the Littré says, "to deconstruct itself [se deconstruire]... to lose its construction"). And the "se" of "se deconstruire," which is not the reflexivity of an ego or of a consciousness, bears the whole enigma. I recognize, my dear driend, that in trying to make a word clearer so as to assist its translation, I am only thereby increasing the difficulties: "the impossible task of the translator" (Benjamin). This too is meant by "deconstructs".If deconstruction takes place everywhere it [ça] takes place, where there is something (and is not therefore limited to meaning or to the text in the current and bookish sense of the word), we still have to think through what is happening in our world, in modernity, at the time when deconstruction is becoming a motif, with its word, its privileged themes, its mobile strategy, etc. I have no simple and formalizable response to this question. All my essays are attempts to have it out with this formidable question. They are modest symptoms of it, quite as much as tentative interpretations. I would not even dare to say, following a Heideggerian schema, that we are in an "epoch" of being-indeconstruction, of a being-in-deconstruction that would manifest or dissimulate itself at one and the same time in other "epochs".
解构发生，它是一个事件，不等待主体的审议、意识或组织，甚至不等待现代性的出现。它自我解构。它可以被解构。"Ça se deconstruit." 这里的 "ça" 并不是一个与某种自我主观性对立的无人称的事物。它就在解构中（Littré说，“自我解构 [se deconstruire]... 失去了它自己的构造”）。而"se"在 "se deconstruire" 中，并不是自我或意识的反身性，它承载着整个谜团。我承认，亲爱的朋友，当我试图让一个词变得更清晰，以帮助它的翻译时，我只是增加了困难："翻译者的不可能任务"（本雅明）。这也是 "deconstructs" 所意味着的。
如果解构无处不在，它就发生在那里，存在于某种事物（因此并不仅限于意义或以当前和书本意义为词的文本）的地方，我们仍然必须思考在我们的世界中，现代性中发生了什么，就在解构成为一个主题的时候，伴随着它的词，它的特权主题，它的移动策略等等。
对于这个问题，我没有简单和可形式化的回应。我所有的论文都是与这个强大问题较量的尝试。它们只是它的些许症状，同样也是尝试性的解释。我甚至不敢像海德格尔的措施一样，说我们正处于一个"此在于解构之中的时代"，一个在其他"时代"中也会同时显现或隐藏的"此在于解构中的时代"式的“此在”。
This thought of "epochs" and especially that of a gathering of the destiny of being and of the unity of its destination or its dispersions (Schicken, Geschick) will never be very convincing. To be very schematic I would say that the difficulty of defining an therefore also of translating the word "deconstruction" stems from the fact that all the predicates, all the defining concepts, all the lexical significations, and even the syntactic articulations, which seem at one moment to lend themselves to this definition or to that translation, are also deconstructed or deconstructible, directly or otherwise, etc. And that goes for the word deconstruction, as for every word. *Of Grammatology* questioned the unity "word" and all the privileges with which is was credited, especially in its nominal form. It is therefore only a discourse or rather a writing that can make up for the incapacity of the word to be equal to a "thought". All sentences of the type "deconstruction is X" or "deconstruction is not X" a priori miss the point, which is to say that they are at least false. As you know, one of the principal things at stake in what is called in my texts "deconstruction" is precisely the delimiting of ontology and above all of the third person present indicative: S is P.
这关于“时代”的思想，尤其是关于存在的命运和其命运的统一性或分散性（Schicken，Geschick）的聚集，将永远不会令人非常信服。为了严谨起见，我会说，定义一个词的困难，因此也是翻译“解构”这个词的困难，源于一个事实：所有的谓词，所有的定义概念，所有的词汇意义，甚至句法结构，在某一刻似乎倾向于适用于这个定义或那个翻译的情况下，也都是被解构或可被解构的，会是直接地或间接地等等。这对于“解构”这个词，以及对于每个词都是如此。《论文字学》对“词语”的统一性提出了质疑，以及它被赋予的所有特权，尤其是在名词形式中。因此，只有一个言论，或者更准确地说，一种书写，能够弥补词语无法等同于“思想”的无能。所有类型的句子，比如“解构是X”或“解构不是X”，从一开始就忽略了要点，也就是说，它们至少是错误的。正如你所知，我在我的文本中所谓的“解构”所涉及的主要问题之一，恰恰是界定本体论，尤其是第三人称现在时陈述句的范围：S是P。
The word "deconstruction", like all other words, acquires its value only from its inscription in a chain of possible substitutions, in what is too blithely called a "context". For me, for what I have tried and still try to write, the word has interest only within a certain context, where it replaces and lets itself be determined by such other words as "ecriture", "trace", "differance", "supplement", "hymen", "pharmakon", "marge", "entame", "parergon", etc. By definition, the list can never be closed, and I have cited only names, which is inadequate and done only for reasons of economy. In fact I should have cited the sentences and the interlinking of sentences which in their turn determine these names in some of my texts.
像所有其他词语一样，“解构”这个词只有在可能的替换链中被书写时才获得其价值，也可以说，在过于轻率地称之为“语境”的东西中。对于我来说，对于我所尝试写作的内容，这个词只有在特定的上下文中才是我对其有兴趣，在这个上下文中，它替代并被诸如“书写”、“痕迹”、“差异”、“补充”、“连接”、“药物”、“边缘”、“切入”、“外部”等其他词所确定。根据定义，这个列表永远不可能被关闭，而我只引用了一些名称，这是不足的，也只是出于经济的考虑。实际上，我应该引述句子和句子之间的相互链接，而同时，这些句子反过来在我的一些文本中确定了这些名称。
What deconstruction is not? everything of course!
What is deconstruction nothing of course!
I do not think, for all these reasons, that it is a good word [un bon mot]. It is certainly not elegant [beau]. It has definitely been of service in a highly determined situation. In order to know what has been imposed upon it in a chain of possible substitutions, despite its essential imperfection, this "highly determined situation" will need to be analyzed and deconstructed. This is difficult and I am not going to do it here. One final word to conclude this letter, which is alread too long. I do not believe that translation is a secondary and derived event in relation to an original languag or text. And as "deconstruction" is a word, as I have just said, that is essentially replaceable in a chain of substitution, then that can also be done from one language to another. The chance, first of all the chance of (the) "deconstruction", would be that another word (the same word and an other) can be found in Japanese to say the same thing (the same and an other), to speak of deconstruction, and to lead elsewhere to its being written and transcribed, in a word which will also be more beautiful. When I speak of this writing of the other which will be more beautiful, I clearly understand translation as involving the same risk and chance as the poem. How to translate "poem"? a "poem"?...
解构不是什么？当然是一切！
什么是解构？当然什么也不是！
基于所有这些理由，我不认为它是一个好词。它显然不够优雅。在一个高度确定的情境中，它确实发挥了作用。为了知道在可能的替换链中它所承载的内容，尽管它本质上不完美，需要对这个“高度确定的情境”进行分析和解构。这是困难的，我在这里不打算详述。最后一句话来结束这封已经太长的信。我不相信翻译是相对于原始语言或文本的一种次要和衍生的事件。而且正如我刚才所说，“解构”是一个基本上可以在替换链中被替代的词，所以这也可以从一种语言翻译成另一种语言。首先，“解构”的机遇在于，在日语中可能会找到另一个词（相同的词或其他词）来表达相同的事物（相同的事物或其他事物），来谈论解构，并引导其在别处被书写和转录，用一个同样更美的词。当我谈论将用更美的方式写下的这种他者的写作时，我清楚地理解翻译涉及与诗歌相同的风险和机会。如何翻译“诗歌”？一首“诗歌”？……
