What puzzled me in the presentation of the deconstruction was the often improper use of terms. The text defines the Post-Structuralism as a theory that “ departed so radically from the core assumptions of Structuralism.” That is true but if fails to tell us in which way. Things became more complicated for me when I realized I hardly can translate all these invented terms in Derrida’s theory and then in Heidegger’s philosophy. So what I had to do a lot of dictionary reading. So here are a few thoughts on what I understand is deconstruction. If the Structuralism works with binary oppositions, the Post- Structuralism operates with differences. At a first glance this does not seem such a radically different point of view. We have to keep in mind though that Structuralism exists inside the language only. Any opposition is something that always traces back to language. The Saussurian a non a approach is arguable only through its rapport to other language binaries. What makes the enormous step forward in the Post- Structuralist theory is the heideggerian late assumptions on language in Time and Being and also in Identity and Difference. This rapport a non a seems to be inexistent in Heidegger’s late thinking. For him what is different is what derives from a vertical actualization. Derrida’s differance would be, I think, in heideggerian terms the Being or precisely that concept that remains alway un- actualised or in other words the non-textual source of a text. Or this is exactly that something that can never be deconstructed. This non-textual source is what produces text. So the critique deconstruction brings upon Structuralism is the very origin of originality. How can we produce new texts, new ideas? Originality can not be produce still within language. It needs to originate in something different than itself, or in Humboldt terminology, this would be what generates difference. For Heidegger that is the Being, for Wittgenstein is Silence and for Derrida seems to be that something that can not be exposed. In that respect I really liked his graphic argumentation on the opposition difference/differance. So I assume the equivalent of Being or Silence, would be here differance : “ Already we have note tat differance is not, does not exist, and is not any sort of being-present (on) [...] It belongs to no category of being present or absent.” ( p. 282) But Derrida states very clearly that his differance is not onto- theological, it only somehow follows the same pattern of reasoning.
Month: September 2013
What puzzled me in the presentation of the deconstruction was the often improper use of terms. The text defines the Post-Structuralism as a theory that “ departed so radically from the core assumptions of Structuralism.” That is true but if fails to tell us in which way. Things became more complicated for me when I realized I hardly can translate all these invented terms in Derrida’s theory and then in Heidegger’s philosophy. So what I had to do a lot of dictionary reading. So here are a few thoughts on what I understand is deconstruction. If the Structuralism works with binary oppositions, the Post- Structuralism operates with differences. At a first glance this does not seem such a radically different point of view. We have to keep in mind though that Structuralism exists inside the language only. Any opposition is something that always traces back to language. The Saussurian a non a approach is arguable only through its rapport to other language binaries. What makes the enormous step forward in the Post- Structuralist theory is the heideggerian late assumptions on language in Time and Being and also in Identity and Difference. This rapport a non a seems to be inexistent in Heidegger’s late thinking. For him what is different is what derives from a vertical actualization. Derrida’s differance would be, I think, in heideggerian terms the Being or precisely that concept that remains alway un- actualised or in other words the non-textual source of a text. Or this is exactly that something that can never be deconstructed. This non-textual source is what produces text. So the critique deconstruction brings upon Structuralism is the very origin of originality. How can we produce new texts, new ideas? Originality can not be produce still within language. It needs to originate in something different than itself, or in Humboldt terminology, this would be what generates difference. For Heidegger that is the Being, for Wittgenstein is Silence and for Derrida seems to be that something that can not be exposed. In that respect I really liked his graphic argumentation on the opposition difference/differance. So I assume the equivalent of Being or Silence, would be here differance : “ Already we have note tat differance is not, does not exist, and is not any sort of being-present (on) [...] It belongs to no category of being present or absent.” ( p. 282) But Derrida states very clearly that his differance is not onto- theological, it only somehow follows the same pattern of reasoning.
Hello, I wanted to share a link to the book Lit. Theory an introduction by Eagleton, that I found online: I hope it helps:
Click to access literary-theory_an-introduction_terry-eagleton.pdf
Hello, I wanted to share a link to the book Lit. Theory an introduction by Eagleton, that I found online: I hope it helps:
http://mthoyibi.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/literary-theory_an-introduction_terry-eagleton.pdf
“this nonfortuitous conjonction of cybernetics and the “human sciences” of writing leads to a more profound reversal“
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology
At first, I thought I would write this article as a “handbook for the lost reader in the land of Derrida’s text”, but then I thought it would be presomptuous as I am not sure I found my way. But I may have found a few wooden sticks on the path, enough to sit down now, and gather my thoughts around an unfortunate, yet warm, campfire. As hard as the poetry of the critic is to decipher (because this is poetry, and ironically enough, I had to constantly relate the words with what they refered to and what they did not refer to, to understand it…one could call it “differencial reading”), I found the concept of differance, once understood, amazingly clear: we think through difference, or else, we see the world, put in shape in our minds in differenciating things. This start with the most basic perception: I know this is blue because this is not red, not because it is blue in itself. Color-blind people (very badly named indeed) will tell you this: most of the time, they still see different colours. Colours exists for them because they see a difference. What changes are the name they (or “we” , depending on the point of view) put on it. Once again, this “handicap” is not a problem in itself. The difference from the common perception is the problem.
“Sparkle, the fire is on”: our minds are just like computers: we write the world (“writing” being understood “not only the physical gestures of literal pictographic or ideographic inscription, but also the totality of what makes it possible) or the world is comprehended through our mind writing that acts as a computer: a + is not a -, a – is not a +, and the combination of those positive and negative signs creates the signification.
I tried to find examples to make it easier (that would be the grilled marshmallows to sweeten the Derrida’s hike experience). And I found this: translation…I am often struck (flabbergasted…I just love that word) with the fact that learning a new language, my students always look for the similarities, or else the equivalence of a word from French to English and vice-versa. And I tell them that I did the same, until I realized (was told probably) that if I wanted to understand English, I should not look for the same but for the difference : looking for a literal translation that would work, as if a word had an entity in itself that could be transferred from one language to another, would be a dream. It is an ideal indeed (remains of a the Platonician metaphysics?). But bound to fail. Whereas if one looks , first, at how an idiom in a language works differently from another in another language, second, at how the entire grammar is a system different from another grammar, third, at how this language comes from a different culture where one could find a lot of means of explanation, then we can understand and then we can translate…and learn. In that process, “differance” gives to a language its identity (French ≠ English ≠ Spanish) but only to let other differences appear inside of the language itself (verbs ≠ adjectives≠ nouns for example) and outside of it (latin-based languages ≠slavian-based languages)…and that is how we learn, and translate, the world, on multiple scales.
Ok…that is what I understood. Now I am going to eat my marshmallows…and maybe chocolate too, just to taste the difference.
Baudrillard’s article Simulacra and Simulations provides a rather grim analysis of the world: immaculately produced simulations have taken the place of reality, all reality is lost, all we have left is the hyperreal and the truth has been replaced by simulations that are impossible to determine as true or false.
This critique of the society of our times (Disneyland, Watergate, etc) rests on the nostalgia of a time when the real was represented instead of produced, nostalgia of ancient times. In his definition of the concept of simulation, Baudrillard uses a series of parallelism to show its opposition to the representations of reality that used to be: ” it no longer has to be rational, […] it is nothing more than operational. […] it is no longer enveloped by an imagery, it is no longer real at all. […] it is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself” (Baudrillard, 366).
This concept of simulation relies largely on the comparison to a time where signs and significations haven’t taken over, and that brings me back to Derrida and his analysis of non phonetic writing. According to Derrida in “Of Grammatology”, our society is experiencing an inflation of the sign “language” and hence an inflation of signs (which is echoed in Baudrillard’s critique of the proliferation of the signs of the real), and it is due to (if I understood correctly) the death of the speech – the signifier in Saussure’s term, and the dominance of the non-phonetic writing. Surprisingly, Derrida was also referring to ancient times, times of Socrates and Plato and the Middle Ages, to illustrate the importance of the signifier and its relation with truth. The sound or phonè of language is closely related to “the feelings of the mind, expressing things naturally” (Derrida, 307), and to the nature. And according to its relationship to the nature, the writing can also be divided into “natural and universal writing” which is united to the voice, and nonphonetic writing which betrays life by “sterilizing or immobilizing spiritual creation in the repetition of the letter, […] it is the principle of death and of difference in the becoming of being” (Derrida, 318). I was surprised to see a similar death of truth in nonphonetic writing as the death of real by Baudrillard, and a common nostalgia for a time where a natural connection between the real and its representations were valued.
(Image by Moebius)
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Nostalgia of the real, or the truth
Baudrillard’s article Simulacra and Simulations provides a rather grim analysis of the world: immaculately produced simulations have taken the place of reality, all reality is lost, all we have left is the hyperreal and the truth has been replaced by simulations that are impossible to determine as true or false. This critique of the society […]
The reading of Derrida left me with a lot of confusions. As he argues, differance is ¨neither a word nor a concept¨, but the ¨juncture rather than the summation¨(279), it is ¨a strategy without finality¨; ¨it no longer follows the line of logico-philosophical speech or that of its integral and symmetrical opposite, logico-empirical speech¨, but ¨beyond this opposition¨ and ¨designates the unity of chance and necessity in an endless calculus¨(282). So..can I say the world or the whole system of the world is a chaos? I tried to understand this complex of the differences and the non-identical ¨same¨, and of the meanings, it seems that the theory of Derrida almost deconstruct all of the canonic base, therefore everything loses the meaning.
Here it reminds me of a passage in the book of Milan Kundera The art of the novel, in its first pages it says:
El hombre desea un mundo en el cual sea posible distinguir con claridad el bien del mal porque en él existe el deseo, innato e indomable, y de juzgar antes que de comprender. En este deseo se han fundado religiones e ideologías. No pueden conciliarse con la novela sino traduciendo su lenguaje de relatividad y ambigüedad a un discurso apodíctico y dogmático. Exigen que alguien que tenga la razón-o bien Ana Karenina es víctima de un déspota de cortos alcances o bien Karenina es víctima de una mujer inmoral; o bien, inocente,..,o bien es culpable…En este ¨o bien-o bien¨ reside la incapacidad de soportar la relatividad esencial de las cosas humanas, la incapacidad de hacer frente a la ausencia de Juez supremo. (Kundera, 4)
Although today many people admit that there is a diversification of values, significance or virtues, that there may not just exist one absolute truth but a lot of truths that interact with each other, dose this tolerance make life easier, are we still trying to find a appropriate way to get rid of the grey zone in the middle or a ¨Juez supremo¨ to sentence? The theory of Derrida makes me more vulnerable dealing with the daily life…
One of the main reasons that I find reading Derrida’s work useful is that I find it to be a useful tool/way of thinking in navigating the many messages that we are confronted with in today’s world on a daily basis. At no previous time have we had the capacity to be bombarded with so many messages as we do today; just as I am writing this blog post I can hear CNN’s Outfront program in the background; the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen succinctly summarizes complex news stories from all around the world in phrases of just a few words; and I am just a few computer mouse clicks from a myriad of Internet sources should I want to find out about pretty much anything in the world (albeit the quality of such potential sources is also of a very varying spectrum). This is why I think the practice of deconstruction is very valuable in today’s world as well; listening to a president’s speech or any other text for that matter is an exercise that is greatly enhanced if you are able to deconstruct it and identify the implications of signification that exist in speech (especially speech that is of a political nature).
I also find Derrida’s notion of ‘difference’ both interesting and useful; I like the clarification on page 258 of ‘difference’ as the “simultaneous movement of temporal deferment and spatial difference” and the explanation that “ideas and things are like signs in language; there are no identities, only differences”. I also agree with the view that truth will always be incomplete as if all things are produced as identities by their differences from other things, then a complete determination of identity would require an endless inventory of relations to other terms in a potentially infinite network of differences. A little discouraging, perhaps, to think of truth as always incomplete, but I also think that it’s important to keep in mind that just because it may be incomplete, this does not equate truth to never existing – it cannot be simply something that we discard because it can never be completely captured. Perhaps it would be best to think of something that we have to strive to approximate as best as possible, while knowing that it does function as always incomplete. This is also a notion that I believe to be very important to keep in mind as we approach the many discourses that we are exposed to on a daily basis.