Always Already

Always Already

I am especially curious about this term on the context of deconstruction. As presented by Hassan in “Representing the Postmodern,” the modernist trend of ‘Creation/Totalization’ is compared to the postmodern trend of ‘Decreation/Deconstruction.’ However, from my understanding, considering the modernist creation as an opposite goal of postmodern deconstruction misses the point. As explained by Derrida:

“The very condition of a deconstruction may be at work in the work, within the system to be deconstructed. It may already be located there, already at work. Not at the center, but in an eccentric center, in a corner whose eccentricity assures the solid concentration of the system, participating in the construction of what it, at the same time, threatens to deconstruct. One might then be inclined to reach this conclusion: deconstruction is not an operation that supervenes afterwards, from the outside, one fine day. It is always already at work in the work. Since the destructive force of Deconstruction is always already contained within the very architecture of the work, all one would finally have to do to be able to deconstruct, given this always already, is to do memory work. Yet since I want neither to accept nor to reject a conclusion formulated in precisely these terms, let us leave this question suspended for the moment.”
JACQUES DERRIDA
MEMOIRES FOR PAUL DEMAN
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1986

Within this context, ‘always already’ suggests a tense that encompasses the entirety of a work and one’s experience with a work. As a work may be comprised of several components, knowledge and experiences, there is always a presence of the work’s total history already within the work.

I believe that Derrida’s statements address ‘always already’ in a postmodern context, but I will also copy here Wikipedia’s several offerings on the term:

In a typical instance, “always already” appeared in the narrative theory of Paul Ricoeur, in the argument that “human action can be narrated…because it is always already symbolically mediated” (by signs, rules, and norms).[1]

Another central idea behind the phrase “always already” is that once a certain place in time is achieved, the being of places in time earlier than that place is transient, problematic, or unthinkable. For example, after a person finishes reading Hamlet for the first time, we may say that they have “always already” read Hamlet, and that the time before the person had read Hamlet, being now past, was or is always past. Common extensions of this phrase might follow from this example: in our modern society, we might say that having always already readHamlet is the nature of contemporary intellect. Similarly, the modern subject has “always already” learned a language, so in a certain sense it is inconceivable to consider the pre-linguistic subject.

“Always already” is important in Heidegger‘s idea that Dasein anticipates or is “ahead of itself”. Heidegger’s terms, ideas, and constructions are central to deconstruction, more so than is Marxism. With the decline of Marxist critical theory after the 1960s, the phrase is still seen frequently in the discourse of literary theory,hermeneutics, and deconstruction/post-structuralism into which continental philosophy moves after Heidegger, for example in Derrida.

Please feel free to add to or correct my post, as I myself still have questions about this term. . .