Schoolwork: Derrida and Mr. Owl

Salvatore Brown

Junior English Theory

Final Essay

Prompt #2- Derrida and Mr. Owl

Arnold Lobel's "Owl" in the book “Owl at Home” fails in the same way Derrida describes Freud, Nietzsche, and Heidegger failing in “Structure, Sign, and Play”: by positing a new centered system to replace an old, de-centered one. After much exhaustive experimentation with the two-floor system of his home, Owl chooses to sit conclusively in the middle of the stairs because he's not content with taking on the role of the 'bricoleur' and simply experiencing separate floors of his house system individually. Like the metaphysical philosophers, Owl cannot cope with being without the comfort of a center in his system-- he too strongly desires “totalization,” a typically human need to exist within a system that can explain everything through a relation to a centralizing entity or idea. The analogy is as follows: Owl's entire house is his representative “system,” and the “upstairs” and “downstairs” are the different, arbitrary elements of the system. The “play” is Owl's movement in the house and sampling of the different floors. He has the potential to be a bricoleur, and starts to do so as he transitions between the floors, but eventually he cannot come to terms with the absence of a center and must create a false one for himself in the middle of the stairs.

Through the following analogy and Derridian analysis, we’ll see how Owl’s actions in Lobel's "Upstairs, Downstairs" exemplify the fruitless search for a 'transcendental signified' in all systems, a tendency characteristic of the metaphysical philosophers Derrida mentions. We’ll then go further and demonstrate how Owl’s eventual choice of response to the de-centering/deconstruction of his system is furthermore detrimental, useless, and impractical. This explication of the dangerous effects of Owl’s new centered system will hopefully shed light upon the possibility for the same dangers to threaten philosophers and others who adopt such an approach to the deconstruction of systems in the real world.

To prove Owl’s inclusion into the group of metaphysical philosophers whom Derrida criticizes, we’ll begin by detailing the analogy between Lobel and Derrida that we are going to work with. The analogical “structure” or “system” in question in Lobel’s story is Owl’s house. It is the structure with which Owl experiences the Derridian dilemma of coming to terms with the reality of a decentralized system. This house structure is comprised of two opposing elements which constitute a binary pair locked in “binary opposition.” A binary opposition for Derrida and Levi-Strauss was a pair of conflicting ideas that only achieve meaning through comparison or relation with one another. Each element or “floor” of Owl’s house entails a different experience for Owl, experiences which he signifies as “upstairs” and downstairs.” These opposing experiences can be recognized as forming a Derridian binary opposition because they effectively define each other only through Owl’s experiences of their individuality and relation. When Owl is upstairs, he recognizes that he is not downstairs. The experience of “downstairs” is therefore defined by its direct opposition to “upstairs”—Owl acknowledges upstairs by the fact that it is not downstairs, and vice versa. This realization of the individuality of the two elements of the house’s binary pair is in turn based upon Owl’s experience of the reality of absence and presence.

When Owl is downstairs he realizes that he is absent upstairs, so he hurries up the stairs in an attempt to do away with that absence. But this action only creates another absence where he was downstairs only moments before. He recognizes this new absence, and begins the cycle again to fill the new absence, frantically refilling a sequence of vacuums that he himself is perpetuating. According to Derrida, the disruption of “presence” constitutes play, or the movement of elements within a system. Thusly, because the disruption of “presence” is absence, absence must logically constitute “play.” So Owl’s movement between the binary elements “downstairs” and “upstairs” hinges on this idea of absence, as we’ve already seen in the way he defines the two conflicting elements in the binary pair (upstairs is defined as “not-downstairs”). But something is limiting this play in Owl’s system. He cannot achieve that which he desires, which is to be upstairs and downstairs simultaneously. This limiting factor will be the most important part of our Derrida/Owl analogy: it is the center of Owl’s house structure.

Despite its importance to the analogy, the exact center of Owl’s system is debatable and its specific designation necessarily irrelevant to our greater understanding of his experience as a Derridian analogy. Owl himself could be the center, or the entire house could very well be the center. The exact distinction does not matter, as long as we understand that the “freeplay” in Owl’s system is being limited by its tethers to a central focus. Owl cannot achieve his goal of simultaneous experience of the upstairs and downstairs elements of his system because the center will not physically allow it. If the center is Owl, then he acts as the limiting force because he is unable to exist in two places at once. If the house is the center, then it too can function as the limiting force by virtue of its disjointed form—it has disparate elements which simply cannot be experienced simultaneously. Either way, the center of Owl’s system remains of paramount importance as the element of Owl’s house system that dictates his frustrating, limited experience of “freeplay”-- or absence and presence-- in his system. This center of Owl’s small universe will also prove most important in our discussion of Owl’s story as a foil for Derrida’s “metaphysical philosophers” because it will eventually prove insufficient for Owl and be abandoned and replaced by a new, even more limiting center—in the exact same pattern of centered-structure substitution Derrida so laments in the progression of philosophy, and which he condemns the metaphysical philosophers for perpetuating. 

Now that we’ve envisioned a comprehensive Derridian analogical portrait of Owl and his house, we can now begin to analyze the progression of Owl’s actions and his eventual, conclusive decision from a Derridian point of view. As aforementioned, while traversing the staircase Owl begins to understand (through experimentation) the nature of the binary pair (upstairs and downstairs) in his system. From a Derridian perspective, this transformative realization of the limits of play within his system instigates the major development in Owl’s story: when he finally realizes that he simply cannot be both upstairs and downstairs at the same time. This realization fits neatly into our Derrida/Owl analogy as one of Derrida’s “scandals,” or a rupturing of a system caused by an element or rule of the system that exists in both polarities of the system’s binary opposition. For Owl, the rupture is caused by the rule of presence and absence he discovers which acts in exactly the same manner upstairs as it does downstairs, and blocks him from experiencing both floors simultaneously.

Owl’s realization of the “scandal” effectively deconstructs his system; it is a deconstruction that evolved out Owl’s experimentation within the false parameters of his flawed, centered system. By moving within his theoretical system, Owl has discovered the failure of that system and its limiting effects on his “freeplay” within it.

But Owl, like Derrida’s metaphysical philosophers, desires totalization so strongly that he refuses to accept a de-centered system. He feels the need to have a system of belief that explains everything through relation to a center, and he will not be content with anything else. Below we’ll investigate two typical routes which Derrida describes as following such a de-centering, structure-dismantling “scandal.” We’ll see how Owl, just like the metaphysical philosophers Derrida criticizes, will choose a variation of the latter route.

The first option Derrida sees as possibly following a scandal is “bricolage”, or a continuation of experience with a system that one knows is inherently flawed and has been deconstructed and de-centered. A “bricoleur” uses disparate elements of deconstructed systems to his or her advantage, while understanding that the systems the elements belong to are de-centered. Owl did attempt some form of bricolage in his original experimentation, sampling separately the disparate elements of his de-centered system as he ran back and forth from upstairs to downstairs. But his final decision discounts that brief bricolage.

            The second option which Derrida describes is the one most like Owl’s choice, and the one which Derrida says the metaphysical philosophers and theorists Freud, Heidegger and Nietzsche choose. This option entails substituting the old centered system with a new centered system. Derrida sees the progression of the history of philosophy as following such a pattern. Owl chooses to sit in the middle of his stairs, creating an impermanent, physical “center” between the two elements of his system’s binary pair. This new center in the middle of the stairs provides a false sense of accomplishment that Owl has finally been able to exist simultaneously upstairs and downstairs (at least technically).

However, Owl’s choice is dangerously more restrictive than his original system—a fact which certainly does not bode well for his analogical counterparts, the metaphysical philosophers. Owl’s willingness to devise an extravagant and ridiculous new centered system in order to stretch his universe so that it may still retain some semblance of totalization is not only unnecessary, but it is completely immobilizing, fragile, and impractical. To achieve his goal of simultaneous existence in both ends of his binary pair, Owl has restricted himself to a static position in the middle of the stairs. If he moves but one step, his new system will instantly shatter. This new system frighteningly binds Owl to only one mode of immobile experience in between the two floors. If the new, centered system Owl has devised for himself is so completely immobilizing and limits his freeplay and movement in the real world to a minute fraction of what it was in his original system, what does this say about the dangers of this center-substituting cycle when it translates back through our analogy into the realm of humanity and philosophy? It need not even be mentioned that the Owl analogy makes a bold statement against the trend of metaphysical philosophy and the post-deconstruction choice to supplant new centered systems as described by Derrida.

Works Cited

Derrida, Jacques. "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." Lecture. Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978. 247-72. Print.

Lobel, Arnold. "Upstairs and Downstairs." Owl at Home. HarperCollins, 2007. 41-49. Print.