Derrida's deconstruction of Husserl and Phenomenology
Superstructuralism builds on a key field of language theory. Husserl is an 'I' philosopher. He's after an especially 'true' level of language from an 'I' philosophers point of view, he says it is necessarily and exclusively human and draws an absolute distinction between human signs and natural signs. True language then to Husserl is in terms of expression, where meaning is willed and intended by the utterer. Derrida, on Husserls behalf says -
Expression...is conscious through and through, and intentional.
Meaning thus understood is not just meaning in the sense that words mean, but in the sense that someone means them to mean. This orientation towards 'expression' tilts Husserl's theory of language inevitably towards the use of Voice. But what could have caused the idea that anyone else has a mind in the first place, if not their words, their signifiers?
It is because of these inter-subjective problems in Husserl, that he relegates person-to-person speech to secondary status and discovers 'expression' most purely present in the intra-subjective use of Voice, in interior monologue. When one talks to themselves, they understand perfectly and directly the intention that animates the words.
My words are "alive" because they don't seem to leave me: not to fall outside me, outside my breath, at a visible distance; not to cease to belong to me, to be at my disposition "without further props".
The inward voice takes place in time, but does not take place in space.
Husserl even admits that what is required for his conception of interior monologue is that one already knows everything one is going to say to oneself before starting to say it. Language has in effect been reduced to a mere appendage and has no real reason for continuing to exist at all.
Husserl's insistence on all 'true' language is necessarily and exclusively human has enabled him to dissolve the existence of objective verbal signs entirely in favour of subjective human ideas. This is good for an 'I' philosopher, but highly unsatisfactory from the viewpoint of anyone who wants to consider language as an important reality in its own right.
Derrida and writing
Derrida wants to do exactly that. For Derrida, 'true' language is not language at its most human but language at its most language-y, language at its most self-sufficient - even to the extent of being independent of human beings.
The structure peculiar to language alone, which allows it to function entirely by itself when its intention is cut off from intuition.
Husserl points to an extreme interior monologue of Voice, Derrida tilts all language towards the opposite extreme of Writing.
Writing is language at its most self-sufficient because it is language at its most spatial, writing exists, not insubstantially in the mind, nor briefly and transparently in sound-waves of the air, but solidly and enduringly in marks upon a page. Such marks do not need to be propped up by the presence of their marker; on the contrary, their marker is always essentially absent, and may even be dead. Writing is orphaned and seperated at birth from the assistance of its father.
Writing represents the passage of thought out of consciousness. Derrida has to turn the common-sense way of looking at the world completely upside-down.
Derrida does not deny that the use of speech comes before the use of language for every human. He denies the assumption that we ordinarily make without even thinking about it: the assumption that the original form of a thing is somehow its 'truest form'. Thus we tend to assume that we could finally explain language if we could only rediscover its most rudimentary beginnings in primitive communication. This assumption comes very naturally to us.
Derrida proposes a radical seperation of historical and conceptual priority. The fact of writing follows from the fact of speech, but he non the less asserts that the idea of speech depends upon the idea of writing. Or to put it another way - writing is the logically fundamental condition to which language has always aspired.
No doubt this is a difficult position to grasp. Consider this analogy-
A tree rises and flourishes by virtue of some deep and inwardly hidden source of life. We tend to imagine a single essential center which was there from the earliest stages of growth. But a tree lives on the outside, by the circulation which flows through its green bark and sapwood, and its center is mere dead heartwood, endlessly supplanted and left behind.
We could consider the language of mathematics too, that if we trace all later developments back to counting with sticks or stones or beads or whatever, we will arrive at the purest and truest form of mathematics as a language. But these have all been supplanted and left behind in the real world in modern times. The square root of minus one does not exist in real world terms at all. Rules have to be made up in order for that to exist at all. In a sense, mathematics reveals its 'truest' form in its 'unnatural' and most supplementary developments.
The logic of supplements
This is a new centrifugalist way of looking at the world.
The strange structure of the supplement appears...by delayed reaction, a possibility produces that to which it is said to be added on.
Structuralists vision of superstructures, is that culture has become so fundamental to human existence, that there is no possibility of delving down under it. Culture can predominate over a nature which existed before it.
Derrida goes all the way with the seperation between historical and conceptual priority, he overturns our assumptions about origins and culture no less than our assumptions about origins in nature. The logic of supplements also applies to thinking about language itself, as we shall see shortly, but also applies to our way of thinking about meaning within language.
What is in the writers mind has no special priority over the meaning of his words. The writer discovers the meaning of his words upon writing them. The written sign is not only sent it is also received, even the writer is just another reader. There is a surplus of meaning with written words.
Philosophical zombies
Can a something have two meanings at once that make it contradictory? A philosophical zombie is a term or concept that is both dead and alive, it is an undecidable - the Greek word 'Pharmakon' means both 'remedy' and 'posion', for example. According to Derrida, the Greek language is saying two quite different things about Plato's text, two very divergent things about writing, simultaneously and undecidably. He finds many more remote meanings with this word, such as perfume, dye and even a scapegoat for the good of the community! The centrifugal movement of meaning within language could not be more plainly demonstrated.
For Derrida, the centrifugal movement of any single word ultimately spreads out across every other word in the whole language.
Derrida refuses to allow any meanings in any mind at all. He gives a very simple answer to a philosophical problem that goes like this -
When we try to look at the meaning of a word in our minds, we never seem to encounter any decisive mental content or image but only absence and emptiness.
Derrida's answer is - the signified does not exist.
This is very much like David Hume's statement -
“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception…. If any one, upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.”
The signified is merely an illusion that human beings have invented because they feared to face up to the consequences of a materialist conception of language.
There is no movement from signifier to signified, but there is movement from signifier to signifier. Signifiying is signifiers in motion. What's more - the movement is unstoppable. In the ordinary conception of meaning - the signifiers points away from itself but the signified does not, the signfied represents a terminus where meaning grinds to a halt. In Derrida's conception - one signifier points to another and another and another ad infinitum.
Dissemination
Derrida describes this state of language as dissemination, no rich harvest of meaning, but rather spillage and waste, endless loss. Language manages to avoid social responsibility and individual irresponsibility, it's anarchic and unpredictable level of functioning subversive of all rigid proper meanings on the ordinarily socially controllled level. This is the Post-Structuralist mode of language - the mode of the Sign's real being.
Différance
Derrida dispenses with a simultaneous totality of a system of language (as if langauge fell from the skies ready-made) by saying words are not self-identical or fixed in the same place. It's endlessly unbalanced and out of equilibrium. Derrida's theory of language still works with differentiation - with a difference, or to be more precise - with différance.
On the one hand, différer indicates difference as distinction, inequality, or discernability: on the other, it expresses the interpretation of delay, the interval of a spacing and temporalising that puts off until 'later' what is presently denied.
Différer in this sense approximates to the English verb 'to defer', and like the English verb, it brings into play the notion of an action in time.
Oppostions of words do not exist by virtue of their opposition, but rather by the virtue of deferring of the meaning. The meaning is put off only for the present, it still impends, still awaits and in time the meaning that defers will have to flow over into it.
That concludes this introduction to Derrida's Theory of Language as Writing for now, we will venture into his General Theory of Writing in another thread.
Derrida | Language as Writing
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kFoyauextlH
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Re: Derrida | Language as Writing
This seemed very relevant to me, what I've been claiming about the way in which my threads are meant to function, and a number of things brought up just recently in posts. This was beautifully written, and I enjoyed reading it so much, again now, and will finally write something here also to bring it to the attention of others.
You wrote:
"
It is because of these inter-subjective problems in Husserl, that he relegates person-to-person speech to secondary status and discovers 'expression' most purely present in the intra-subjective use of Voice, in interior monologue. When one talks to themselves, they understand perfectly and directly the intention that animates the words.
"
You also wrote:
"
the Greek word 'Pharmakon' means both 'remedy' and 'posion', for example. According to Derrida, the Greek language is saying two quite different things about Plato's text, two very divergent things about writing, simultaneously and undecidably. He finds many more remote meanings with this word, such as perfume, dye and even a scapegoat for the good of the community! The centrifugal movement of meaning within language could not be more plainly demonstrated.
"
So, I would say that something still ties together all those examples for the word, and that would seem to me to be something physical which causes an effect upon something else and changes some factor about it.
A remedy in the case of pharmakon is taken and is meant to influence and change the state of a person.
Poison does the same. Yeah, those two may seem to a modern reader, or mis-reader, to be opposite, but I don't think that the Greek language was overtly taken as intending to have totally contradictory words or meanings, that is not something intuitive or natural to most human beings and would appear to create unecessary difficulties. So what one should maybe look for is what these meanings that developed and which a word came to also mean may have in common, and the differences can also be of interest but in my opinion could never be how people are in unison deciding to use a word and then change the meaning to something with no relation or history with a concept that is repeatedly coming up through the use of a word.
Pharmakon is also used of magic and sorcery, and to me this word is not talking about wildly different things in any of the examples or the extra things it also is used to refer to, derived by explanations and context and we suppose that it was intended or assumed to be understood by the audiences, but later generations are much more remote from these people even if they are a classicist and immersed in the writing, though it even kind of brings up some trauma for me to see well regarded people doing what I see also among some ordinary people, and seemingly not giving a thing a chance in order to make a point, like this for me at least is my first approach, I don't just stop exploring what the heck was perhaps trying to be said in some ancient texts to get a closer idea of the thorough line connecting a word and why it was chosen in order to say "behold! They were just uttering the same combination of sounds for totally unconnected things and even exact opposites!", because I don't think so, and it seems to me to even rub me the wrong way in as simply scoffing at the ancient goofs rather than trying to see how it is the people now, coming from new and different ways of using and understanding different words in different languages, looking at a word used in many different contexts in remaining texts during a long period of time, and making a claim about it because of what might be our understanding and not anything so difficult for the intended audiences or people much closer in time.
In other cases, we can distort the meaning of words for our benefit or to give different instructions, even if a less fruitful meaning may have been intended by another user of the word.
That isn't to say that all this is also besides the point, and I loved the theory presented by Derrida, even though people might sadly end up swallowing up the idea that the Greek language was to be understood in the way that this person was suggesting, and who knows, maybe it was, but I fanatically and violently do not think so, it is offensive to me that this was what was portrayed and accepted, even if it is true or really the case, it remains to me a basic impiety to approach an understanding in a ham-handed fashion get people to skip even trying to make it make sense in some other way. If people understood my writing without trying to find the common thread and all the connections and layers, they would be at a total loss, but I assume that they are at a total loss because they "don't got time for that sh*t" and we never get to see comprehension at any level because it remains read only by me mainly, which is who deserves to read it most since I am in the habit of trying to derive as much as I can out of whatever I can that can benefit me in as many ways as possible, a kindness to myself but also a kind way of looking at other things in my opinion, since nothing should be or should want to be without any benefit or good use, but more importantly than even a good use, there remains the necessity of particular uses, explicable uses. If anyone suggests all things are equal and the same, even though in some sense or fashion they may be, it is an attempt also to lie and make judgment and navigation and interpretation senseless and stupid, and I don't like idiots really, even if they are dressed as priests or scholars, or especially perhaps in those cases, because those appearances are to heighten their influence and the authority people will think they have and allow themselves to be dominated by the dressed up, and even if it starts as play, the person may be handing over more of their brain than they ought to, "the person standing there, with the big stick who comes with the barking things, we hear and we obey".
"
the Greek word 'Pharmakon' means:
both 'remedy' and 'posion',
perfume,
dye and
even a scapegoat for the good of the community!
"
If one weren't being hypnotized and stunned, and this perhaps is why it may even be alright to approach everything in a contrarian or oppositional fashion, at least "also", but such an extreme should not be necessary, couldn't it be seen how very closely together those supposed uses of the words are?
They all do the same thing, and that same thing that they do is what the word then is used to bring up, and the differences would necessarily be clarified by the context and further explanations. It isn't saying opposite stuff first or in front and ahead, it is bringing up the word which must have a different meaning than later people are taking it to mean or are explaining it with.
So Pharmakon seems to have the meaning of something that influences and changes something, which makes it a pretty appropriate word to be brought up in relation to meaning and people trying to convince people of theories or anything.
More specifically, each of those words share more similarities by having physical components involved typically, a substance, and if today people don't think of certain things as having a substance or materiality to it, that doesn't mean that the ancient thinkers were understanding concepts in the same way, even poetically. For example, light was supposedly thought to project from the eyes, but today we take it differently, and the word for "heart" was commonly used as the term for the place of reasoning and emotion rather than how "mind" may make a lot of people today think of their head and their brain, but the people in the past also seemed to have gathered an understanding that the head and the brain was also the place where people were thinking and more obviously seeing from, but they continued to use words that made reference to the heart and the chest and placing their hands on their chest too, and the heart is a major center of neurons but we don't expect that they knew that.
Modern people have been pressured in many ways to look back in two ways, one of the ways is fondly, maybe too fondly, and the other is by imagining everything, perhaps even somewhat realistically, as totally insane and broken sh*t. I don't think the day to day experience, especially if people end up doing similar things mostly, was ultimately all that different. These people were perhaps no better or worse than any of us, but at this point they are nothing but phantoms we ourselves have created, and how much more now that we have both hearts and brains making up things from sentimentality and rational calculations, reactions and "clear proof" trying to put aside looked down upon reactions.
Pharmakon to me means something and one thing, and isn't all that mysterious if people try to see what is common between all the examples and also the frequency of what it was most often being used for giving us a clue of what may have most commonly come to the mind of audiences accessing those examples. For all we know, there could have also been a special drink like modern Coca-Cola that was consumed by the people for a long time which was known among them as "Pharmakon", but which was never specifically mentioned by its popular branding in any text that the majority of people never read anyway, and the automatic slogan for such a drink might have been an understanding of a meaning of the word, that Pharmakon is a substance, a material thing or thing physically brought out and physically made or physically which is performed and thus manifest which when applied does something and makes a change, so if you are emotionally blue, take Pharmakon and change your blue to a new hue!
Sorry if this seems like belaboring the point. The overt meaning of what I am saying even here is just one aspect, I have chosen each thing that I've said to have other layers, perhaps inaccessible, but I don't mean for them to be. If they can't be accessed, is it my fault? It could be, but it could be shared, or just that of the reader, at the very least I've claimed, perhaps falsely, that there is more to explore even in this text by any willing reader, and one way to access those different and further paths and meanings is to try to see or read things again with different inflections and other possible ways of thinking about things and connecting ideas.
I'm also not saying, through all these different words, "everything whatsoever" repeatedly, and I'm saying specific things with a specific range, and making every word mean everything whatsoever is making every word pointlessly not worth saying as I could've just coughed and blown such a person's mind, like an Om or Aum Bomb or Balm.
All that was just from my slight disturbance with someone trying to suggest things are totally opposite which I don't think were meant to be, the word was being used in a less broad fashion as suggested if one tries to make sense of why the word was being used for all those things, they have more things in common and one thing very in common, which should then clarify what that word is, it is the thing that ties them all together.
I still loved and enjoyed what was written and even what that example was used for.
"
Oppostions of words do not exist by virtue of their opposition, but rather by the virtue of deferring of the meaning. The meaning is put off only for the present, it still impends, still awaits and in time the meaning that defers will have to flow over into it.
"
That is one way in which people could think about how I build up my collections, within posts, and then within threads. I do start with a purpose and continue with that purpose though, but more becomes clarified or it grows and can be revealed as much more grand and intricate as more is added and thought about and connected back to and thought about again with the new references that appear later.
So that the first things said get bigger and even more meaningful by the later things said, like the stuff on the edges is folding in and puffing up the insides and the whole thing.
I liked thinking about the idea of the inside being absent, inactive, or dead, and the life or activity being on the outside, like in the example of a tree. That same way of thinking about things can be applied to a lot beyond this topic, even just things like temporality in the case of historical events being considered both inaccessible as they were and inactive currently or history in the sense of historical understandings being contemporary and living now but not necessarily referring to anything real accurately.
People seem to do well enough expressing things to one another, triggering thoughts and emotions, and bonding, and so I think that one can look at and carefully examine what are the things that communication is used for by people, what does it seem to want to achieve, and how is it used in ways that are contrary seeming to achieving what it desires, or mutated or limiting in what it wants, which may clarify also more narrowly what a person might "really" want, if unconscious but not unintentional. So for example, politicization and inciting hatred, what are the people doing that trying for abd why? What could such a person, deep down inside if at least somewhat still normal or average and rational at their core, want?
I believe that people want the same things for the most part, and this may just be me hallucinating and projecting, but people want love in a variety of forms, and replication for that purpose, in various forms, and they have crafted language to achieve that. To get things to survive for love of life and living, and of themselves through which they live, and to get love and to be loved and all the extensions of love, and to grow it and create more chances for it.
That is what I'm up to anyway:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _camel.jpg
https://d_d_doom.artstation.com/projects/OmNDy8
The Master, particularly of Language, is the same Master of all Intercourse, exchange, replication, as well as opposition, and so is 2 and multiples of two, like 4, like 8, like 16, and so on. That is both Hermes and "PEITHO The goddess of persuasion whom Hermes took as his bride."
Hermaphrodite,
Kama and Rati,
Eros or Cupid and Psyche,
and however many more link ontologically related terms and ideas.
Communication seems to be about making sounds, even writing things, for the initial purpose of gaining and granting love, even if the initial things going on seem to be far away from that, it seems to be what the human is trying for, even the animals with their language.
The happiest person in the world, deluded or not, will feel that their needs are met, they wil not be suffering, and when they are past those visceral concerns, they will be the one who has a sense and an impression and an appreciation of what seems to them to be the fact that they are loved:
There are different strategies used, and then there are efforts meant to try to sabotage others and redirect the flow of this social resource and sense of value, along with all that comes with it including sometimes physical resources and credit in the firm of wealth and riches and what is then associated with that or derived from its use, to whatever one wants, often some form or extension associated with or somehow felt to represent oneself especially, so that somehow one can get a feeling that they or something they feel represents them or which they are linked to is loved, and so cared for, and helped, and so resources and opportunities are made more available to them and theirs in particular.
Platonic friendliness and empathy are universally praised in the majority of cases, but excesses and perversions can be considered destructive, or forms which end up hurting people or making people doubt it by spreading it too thinly so that it first becomes increasingly abstract and then altogether having no opacity, completely thinned to the point of being invisible, non-existent, irrelevant, just like any suggestion that any sound or sound combination should stretch to everything and signifying nothing at all and directing nothing anywhere. That is even to say, love is and can only be what people sometimes consider it the opposite of being, intelligent and intelligible.
That means that in order to extract and derive out of whatever seems to be able to provide it and to get the creature comforts that come with it, even just the sense that it is there abd being given without much else overall, it needs to be narrowed and directed specifically, since if it is directed in certain ways too broadly, it can seem arbitrary overall, like the air that we take for granted until we might be losing it altogether. If it is saying nothing to no one in particular, and not even apparent benefit can be claimed, then what is it? It may even start to be an irritant or an obstruction or some distraction from what we are likely hardwired to naturally pursue.
This is the entirety of life and the human dilemma.
What seemed to rub me the wrong way also was the suggestion or implication that really I have not been saying anything, and no one ever has, that nothing has ever been said, which by itself may not be so terrible if we're only talking about words, but is downright offensive if we are saying that all these people trying are not to be acknowledged and acknowledging them and their expressed sentiments is not really them reaching us, like in that case shut up (not you, but the derider), because I have faith that even though it might not not be provable, I at the very least am experiencing things that include other people and trusting that I know what they are saying or trying to say.
I went to the thrift store on the last day and the last hour, and I listened to people in the store and looked at them too. There were some extremely obnoxious and loud nerds who entered and were very loudly going on and on about something with their annoying nerd accents, but they too wanted what any of us did as we scrounged through possibly dead people's giveaways.
Do you see the significance? As I wrote this post all day today, there was a police incident outside my window where there was yelling and then someone was seemingly down on the other side of a vehicle and I couldn't see them, and they had more and more police, including plainly dressed undercover police who ran across the street, and the whole street became full of supposed authority figures surrounding this unseen thing on the other side of the white vehicle, and I never saw who any of this was about, but I trust there was someone there.
I saw a constant attempt online yo make everything cutesy, to make serious things silly or childish, to make spirituality a joke, to defame things that one even claims they like, so that they go "awww, so cute", turning spirits and Gods into chibi things to make them more palatable to those who must hate fear.
I've repeatedly felt so sad about that store passing. At the end, I stayed past their closing in order to get the personal email of the lady I had seen for a decade working there. I had purchased from her at the last moment a Chinese Classical Instrument that she told me she can play. Does this m*therf*cker Derrida
As I wrote that, the loudest thing occurred, right in the same general area where so much has occurred, the center of the crossroads right outside my window. A car was violently spinning and spinning and spinning right there, where coyotes circle and howl, and to say that center is dead must be a joke, because nowhere isn't the center and everywhere is, but seemingly especially right there. The sound of the vehicle was like rage and violence and even related to and inducing fear.
So I'll continue, as these things which I interpret as spiritual are occurring at a frantic rate:
think that these things are saying nothing? Then are they to blame or be accused of vacuity or him, who is seemingly closed to accepting that even he has spent his entire existence doing what everyone has been doing and which isn't all that absurd amidst the absurdity and the absurd origins of such?
There is a complete and simple logic to my minding that store closing and my relationship to that store and the change in interactions and opportunities for interactions with that person who I would see there.
Here is a portion of my correspondence, after the parts where I provided them with my full contact information on detail so that they don't lose touch:
"
Hi! I'm just about to go to sleep and I hope everything went smoothly for the final closing, but I wanted to make sure my email gets through as promised. Just for your personal notes, here is more contact information:
___
When I wasn't around for a little while, I was all the way across the country and stuck there during Covid, and my address across the country is all the way in Prince Edward Island:
___
The number at the bottom is my phone number, both ___ and I have Hawaii phone numbers, ___ number is:
I've bought so much from that store that it isn't leaving Marpole but is all in my apartment at this point.
If and moreso when I learn how to play these instruments I've purchased from the store (I'm a musician, among other things, and I have a collection of unique instruments now), I'll see if I can send you a recording or a video or something!
Here is a piece of music I made, hopefully it will play for you and isn't too irritating sounding, that might use some similar instruments.
Do you know what I should type to look up this instrument? I will then look up the name and tutorials and I might even purchase some books that may help me to learn. It is interesting to me also that so many stringed instruments have suddenly come my way rather than wind instruments or even things like a keyboard piano.
If you don't mind, here is a video of an instrument I purchased some years ago which I'm also learning:
There are very similar instruments used in Chinese Classical music, but they are usually much larger, though I'd very much like to have access to those some day also.
In the music I attached to this email, I just sampled some instruments which then repeat to create the layers of sounds that seem to change by combining more elements.
Please let me know if this email has reached you, and thank you for allowing us to keep in touch, I appreciate it a lot and it helps to make me feel a little better since it isn't like such a sudden and total loss of all contact, which was actually pretty scary for me and bothered me a lot to think about, even though it might seem silly. So we're still around, you know where we are, and feel free to email us at any time about anything, we are always happy to hear from you, and we're not busy or anything! If I find the other bus pass or order a new one then maybe ___ and I will take you and your family for a dinner at a restaurant that you might like to try, all expenses paid for by the frogs!
NM1 - T1 - Tulgu.mp3
"
I was replied to with the following:
"
___ & ___
Good morning,
I am so happy for your email.
The name of chinese instrument "Erhu" , in chinese “二胡“， it's very traditional chinese insrumant. When I was little, my parent send me to learn some of traditional instruments. I stoped learnng when I was in high school, because a lot of homework. Now in China a lot of retried people play traditional chinese instrument.
The frog's meaning is rich and harvest, a lot of chinese love it, usually they put it near the door and face to outside, and much better let the frog sit in water. Even you can see some chinese business or restaurants in Vancouver.
yesterday is last day for our store, I am very said because I am working hard for our store to meet our budgets, and learned a lot of things, our co-work like familys, also a lot of customers are very nice to us, and my home is near by. But now they send me to work in West Vancouver, is quite far for me.
I watched you video that you send to me, is very interestind, for me it's totally different culture.
And so appreciate that you offer me dinne someday. So far I am in emotion that closeing of our store, some times, life is very hard, but we have accept, some day we'll talk.
Thank you so much for your email, and have a good day,
Shirley
"
Here is another email I received just now:
"
"
Hola!
Cómo estás? Perdón por responderte tan tarde, había perdido esta cuenta y ahora la recuperé.
Me encantaría conocer a la chica, envíale mi contacto, por favor.
Cómo han estado ustedes, tanto tiempo sin hablar.
Te comento que en enero viajé a Aruba y Curazao, fue un viaje increíble. Nadar en el mar, hacer snorkel, descansar en la arena. No son los típicos viajes que realizo y la verdad es que me gustó mucho y me gustaría seguir viajando por el caribe.
El otro día me acorde de la bebida que probé en Vancouver antes de venirme, fue realmente asquerosa....lo siento.
Cada vez que me sobra mucha comida, recuerdo todas las veces que compartimos allá en Vancouver.
Espero no perder el contacto.
Saludos a ___.
Gaby
"
That was from a language teacher, speaking Spanish, reminding us of the love we shared. What kind of a sick bastard would suggest that nothing is being referred to at all, even though I don't speak Spanish and can't understand what was communicated by all that gobbledygook?
"
Hello!
How are you? Sorry for replying so late. I lost this account and just got it back.
I'd love to meet the girl. Please send her my contact information.
How have you all been? It's been so long, no talk.
I'd like to tell you that in January I traveled to Aruba and Curaçao. It was an incredible trip. Swimming in the ocean, snorkeling, relaxing on the sand. These aren't the typical trips I take, and I really enjoyed it and would like to continue traveling in the Caribbean.
The other day I remembered the drink I tried in Vancouver before coming here. It was really disgusting...sorry.
Every time I have a lot of food left over, I remember all the times we shared together back in Vancouver.
I hope I don't lose touch.
Best regards to ___.
Gaby
"
This is love, this is communication, I feel that these people have something inside them that enjoyed seeing me and feeling what I was giving them through everything.
Haha, and I haven't f*cked anyone at all!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agape
"
The verb form goes as far back as Homer, translated literally as affection, as in "greet with affection" and "show affection for the dead".[2] Other ancient authors have used forms of the word to denote love of a spouse or family, or affection for a particular activity, in contrast to eros (an affection of a sexual nature).
"
Is the Buddha the good guy or this place we call Hell und Earth?
Point being?
https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/rebooti ... s-placebo/
"
This year is very important academically-wise, and, believe me, the grade improvements are obvious. I kept asking stupid questions in class, but now I am among the best. My teachers thought I was a complete idiot. Can’t wait to get out of the flatline and really enjoy the benefits (even in the flatline, I’m happier than 1 year ago). Mood swings are still here, sometimes I question my nofap effort and think of relapse, but sometimes my life feels so awesome that I’d live it forever.
Keep going guys! Good times ahead!
"
Ah yes, academic achievements:
"My teachers (who couldn't care less if I live or die, give me the impression that they) think I'm smart!"
https://www.businessinsider.com/long-te ... -ai-2025-2
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/econom ... rcna224482
"I'm also not yanking a certain appendage!"
"
@negie78000
13 years ago
Most people think that to be a Christian you have to be weak and submissive, but actually it is the other way around. Plus I think this talks David fighting Amalekites, "Sneak attack" on Negev and Ziklag
"
"
Yeah, see, Christianity is like, going and k*lling random civilians and stuff, yeah!
"
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Anti-Love_forces
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philophobia_(fear)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise
"
Noise is sound, chiefly unwanted, unintentional, or harmful sound considered unpleasant, loud, or disruptive to mental or hearing faculties. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arises when the brain receives and perceives a sound.[1][2] Acoustic noise is any sound in the acoustic domain, either deliberate (e.g., music or speech) or unintended.
"
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/
"
Derrida was born on July 15, 1930 in El-Biar (a suburb of Algiers), Algeria (then a part of France), into a Sephardic J*w*sh family.
"
https://thecreativecavern.wordpress.com ... esistible/
"
1. It is impossible to tell someone what you really mean: Derrida was deeply concerned with the failure of language. Language is all we have to express how we ‘feel’, yet it is also the very thing that fails to express this ‘feeling’ adequately. Derrida suggests that when attempting to describe a feeling to others the subject will always fail to capture meaning, they will be merely engaging in the process of what he calls differing. What is being described is not being defined by what it is, but by difference. So, to put it simply (if it is possible) when you are describing meaning you are only ever referring to other signs, you are merely free falling down the slippery linguistic system.
For example: you want to tell someone you love them, so, as is procedure, you utter the words “I love you”. However, the moment these words become phonic, they are taken from the real in which they were conceived and placed into the imaginary. I suppose the easiest way to get your head around the concept is to consider the idea that to every single person love surely does not meet the same definition? The meaning of “I love you” is so uniquely arbitrary to everyone, therefore, love has multiple meanings. Every time someone says “I love you” they temporarily become the author of the sentence, they attach to it a new meaning, then, someone else says “I love you” and once again, the words fall into slipperiness and meaning is redefined. So basically, whoever you fall in love with will never actually know, because you will fail to put whatever ‘love’ is into words. See, language is slippery and deceptive, it’s trying to ruin your relationship (okay, the last few sentences are not valid Derridean points, just me, trying to be funny, but hours of reading Derrida does that to you)
2. Words just refer to other words and not thoughts or feelings: to Derrida, nothing escapes this endless play of meaning, and the endless differing that takes place. The concept of ‘play’ is key here. Play refers to how language is right in our grasp and slipping away from us all at once! Look at the word play as a perfect example, play could refer to performance, to action, or to escaping language, for you need no words to play in some circumstances. The multiple meanings of ‘play’ in itself is an example of not only how words refer to other words, but of Derrida’s rejection of a text only ever having one meaning. Leading on to the next point….
3. “There is nothing outside of the text” (NATC 1692) Derrida rejects the idea of an assumed universal truth. For this idealises the idea of something having a centre, and subsequently, something fixed, meaning, fixed. Derrida favours de-centring. He urges a mode of thought that considers the idea of a text having an original presence as elusive. (getting metaphysical now) the very concept of ‘presence’ is reliant upon reconstruction and interpretation and is defined by what is absent, it gets its definition by it’s other, which is exemplary of Derrida’s point that the linguistic system is slippery and based upon differing in space and time, fixed definition is impossible in such a system. Another way to think of the concepts of ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ is the idea that if words refer to other words then how can there be a point of origin? Maybe there never has been, and never can be a ‘present’?
Of course, these key concepts I have constructed are only a very basic attempts to make sense of Derrida and deconstructive theories; spring boards into post structuralism. Derrida’s attack plunged right into the depths of meaning, truth, identity, and philosophy. What I have written is individual understanding and interpretation! I suppose this is okay, because (cue Derridean mode of thought) in essence surely everything is interpretation? In the giant web of meaning where our language habituates if every signifier points to another signifier then the meaning and authorship of words will always be arbitrary?
Suggestions
1. For further reading Derrida’s book Of Grammatology (http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/O ... ZyM7vujG0C) a very short video of Derrida discussing deconstruction (
2. In order not to lose all of your sanity… go for a long, leisurely walk and think about everything but Derrida for a while!
"
Weird how it keeps coming down to "love".
https://adrianblau.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... it-part-1/
https://adrianblau.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... it-part-2/
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/ ... chley.html
"
the way Derrida ‘misreads the texts, in careless and often intentionally flippant ways, inventing meanings, lifting passages out of context, misunderstanding philosophical arguments, and on and on’.
"
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/ ... a_ind.html
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/ ... rrida.html
You wrote:
"
It is because of these inter-subjective problems in Husserl, that he relegates person-to-person speech to secondary status and discovers 'expression' most purely present in the intra-subjective use of Voice, in interior monologue. When one talks to themselves, they understand perfectly and directly the intention that animates the words.
"
You also wrote:
"
the Greek word 'Pharmakon' means both 'remedy' and 'posion', for example. According to Derrida, the Greek language is saying two quite different things about Plato's text, two very divergent things about writing, simultaneously and undecidably. He finds many more remote meanings with this word, such as perfume, dye and even a scapegoat for the good of the community! The centrifugal movement of meaning within language could not be more plainly demonstrated.
"
So, I would say that something still ties together all those examples for the word, and that would seem to me to be something physical which causes an effect upon something else and changes some factor about it.
A remedy in the case of pharmakon is taken and is meant to influence and change the state of a person.
Poison does the same. Yeah, those two may seem to a modern reader, or mis-reader, to be opposite, but I don't think that the Greek language was overtly taken as intending to have totally contradictory words or meanings, that is not something intuitive or natural to most human beings and would appear to create unecessary difficulties. So what one should maybe look for is what these meanings that developed and which a word came to also mean may have in common, and the differences can also be of interest but in my opinion could never be how people are in unison deciding to use a word and then change the meaning to something with no relation or history with a concept that is repeatedly coming up through the use of a word.
Pharmakon is also used of magic and sorcery, and to me this word is not talking about wildly different things in any of the examples or the extra things it also is used to refer to, derived by explanations and context and we suppose that it was intended or assumed to be understood by the audiences, but later generations are much more remote from these people even if they are a classicist and immersed in the writing, though it even kind of brings up some trauma for me to see well regarded people doing what I see also among some ordinary people, and seemingly not giving a thing a chance in order to make a point, like this for me at least is my first approach, I don't just stop exploring what the heck was perhaps trying to be said in some ancient texts to get a closer idea of the thorough line connecting a word and why it was chosen in order to say "behold! They were just uttering the same combination of sounds for totally unconnected things and even exact opposites!", because I don't think so, and it seems to me to even rub me the wrong way in as simply scoffing at the ancient goofs rather than trying to see how it is the people now, coming from new and different ways of using and understanding different words in different languages, looking at a word used in many different contexts in remaining texts during a long period of time, and making a claim about it because of what might be our understanding and not anything so difficult for the intended audiences or people much closer in time.
In other cases, we can distort the meaning of words for our benefit or to give different instructions, even if a less fruitful meaning may have been intended by another user of the word.
That isn't to say that all this is also besides the point, and I loved the theory presented by Derrida, even though people might sadly end up swallowing up the idea that the Greek language was to be understood in the way that this person was suggesting, and who knows, maybe it was, but I fanatically and violently do not think so, it is offensive to me that this was what was portrayed and accepted, even if it is true or really the case, it remains to me a basic impiety to approach an understanding in a ham-handed fashion get people to skip even trying to make it make sense in some other way. If people understood my writing without trying to find the common thread and all the connections and layers, they would be at a total loss, but I assume that they are at a total loss because they "don't got time for that sh*t" and we never get to see comprehension at any level because it remains read only by me mainly, which is who deserves to read it most since I am in the habit of trying to derive as much as I can out of whatever I can that can benefit me in as many ways as possible, a kindness to myself but also a kind way of looking at other things in my opinion, since nothing should be or should want to be without any benefit or good use, but more importantly than even a good use, there remains the necessity of particular uses, explicable uses. If anyone suggests all things are equal and the same, even though in some sense or fashion they may be, it is an attempt also to lie and make judgment and navigation and interpretation senseless and stupid, and I don't like idiots really, even if they are dressed as priests or scholars, or especially perhaps in those cases, because those appearances are to heighten their influence and the authority people will think they have and allow themselves to be dominated by the dressed up, and even if it starts as play, the person may be handing over more of their brain than they ought to, "the person standing there, with the big stick who comes with the barking things, we hear and we obey".
"
the Greek word 'Pharmakon' means:
both 'remedy' and 'posion',
perfume,
dye and
even a scapegoat for the good of the community!
"
If one weren't being hypnotized and stunned, and this perhaps is why it may even be alright to approach everything in a contrarian or oppositional fashion, at least "also", but such an extreme should not be necessary, couldn't it be seen how very closely together those supposed uses of the words are?
They all do the same thing, and that same thing that they do is what the word then is used to bring up, and the differences would necessarily be clarified by the context and further explanations. It isn't saying opposite stuff first or in front and ahead, it is bringing up the word which must have a different meaning than later people are taking it to mean or are explaining it with.
So Pharmakon seems to have the meaning of something that influences and changes something, which makes it a pretty appropriate word to be brought up in relation to meaning and people trying to convince people of theories or anything.
More specifically, each of those words share more similarities by having physical components involved typically, a substance, and if today people don't think of certain things as having a substance or materiality to it, that doesn't mean that the ancient thinkers were understanding concepts in the same way, even poetically. For example, light was supposedly thought to project from the eyes, but today we take it differently, and the word for "heart" was commonly used as the term for the place of reasoning and emotion rather than how "mind" may make a lot of people today think of their head and their brain, but the people in the past also seemed to have gathered an understanding that the head and the brain was also the place where people were thinking and more obviously seeing from, but they continued to use words that made reference to the heart and the chest and placing their hands on their chest too, and the heart is a major center of neurons but we don't expect that they knew that.
Modern people have been pressured in many ways to look back in two ways, one of the ways is fondly, maybe too fondly, and the other is by imagining everything, perhaps even somewhat realistically, as totally insane and broken sh*t. I don't think the day to day experience, especially if people end up doing similar things mostly, was ultimately all that different. These people were perhaps no better or worse than any of us, but at this point they are nothing but phantoms we ourselves have created, and how much more now that we have both hearts and brains making up things from sentimentality and rational calculations, reactions and "clear proof" trying to put aside looked down upon reactions.
Pharmakon to me means something and one thing, and isn't all that mysterious if people try to see what is common between all the examples and also the frequency of what it was most often being used for giving us a clue of what may have most commonly come to the mind of audiences accessing those examples. For all we know, there could have also been a special drink like modern Coca-Cola that was consumed by the people for a long time which was known among them as "Pharmakon", but which was never specifically mentioned by its popular branding in any text that the majority of people never read anyway, and the automatic slogan for such a drink might have been an understanding of a meaning of the word, that Pharmakon is a substance, a material thing or thing physically brought out and physically made or physically which is performed and thus manifest which when applied does something and makes a change, so if you are emotionally blue, take Pharmakon and change your blue to a new hue!
Sorry if this seems like belaboring the point. The overt meaning of what I am saying even here is just one aspect, I have chosen each thing that I've said to have other layers, perhaps inaccessible, but I don't mean for them to be. If they can't be accessed, is it my fault? It could be, but it could be shared, or just that of the reader, at the very least I've claimed, perhaps falsely, that there is more to explore even in this text by any willing reader, and one way to access those different and further paths and meanings is to try to see or read things again with different inflections and other possible ways of thinking about things and connecting ideas.
I'm also not saying, through all these different words, "everything whatsoever" repeatedly, and I'm saying specific things with a specific range, and making every word mean everything whatsoever is making every word pointlessly not worth saying as I could've just coughed and blown such a person's mind, like an Om or Aum Bomb or Balm.
All that was just from my slight disturbance with someone trying to suggest things are totally opposite which I don't think were meant to be, the word was being used in a less broad fashion as suggested if one tries to make sense of why the word was being used for all those things, they have more things in common and one thing very in common, which should then clarify what that word is, it is the thing that ties them all together.
I still loved and enjoyed what was written and even what that example was used for.
"
Oppostions of words do not exist by virtue of their opposition, but rather by the virtue of deferring of the meaning. The meaning is put off only for the present, it still impends, still awaits and in time the meaning that defers will have to flow over into it.
"
That is one way in which people could think about how I build up my collections, within posts, and then within threads. I do start with a purpose and continue with that purpose though, but more becomes clarified or it grows and can be revealed as much more grand and intricate as more is added and thought about and connected back to and thought about again with the new references that appear later.
So that the first things said get bigger and even more meaningful by the later things said, like the stuff on the edges is folding in and puffing up the insides and the whole thing.
I liked thinking about the idea of the inside being absent, inactive, or dead, and the life or activity being on the outside, like in the example of a tree. That same way of thinking about things can be applied to a lot beyond this topic, even just things like temporality in the case of historical events being considered both inaccessible as they were and inactive currently or history in the sense of historical understandings being contemporary and living now but not necessarily referring to anything real accurately.
People seem to do well enough expressing things to one another, triggering thoughts and emotions, and bonding, and so I think that one can look at and carefully examine what are the things that communication is used for by people, what does it seem to want to achieve, and how is it used in ways that are contrary seeming to achieving what it desires, or mutated or limiting in what it wants, which may clarify also more narrowly what a person might "really" want, if unconscious but not unintentional. So for example, politicization and inciting hatred, what are the people doing that trying for abd why? What could such a person, deep down inside if at least somewhat still normal or average and rational at their core, want?
I believe that people want the same things for the most part, and this may just be me hallucinating and projecting, but people want love in a variety of forms, and replication for that purpose, in various forms, and they have crafted language to achieve that. To get things to survive for love of life and living, and of themselves through which they live, and to get love and to be loved and all the extensions of love, and to grow it and create more chances for it.
That is what I'm up to anyway:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _camel.jpg
https://d_d_doom.artstation.com/projects/OmNDy8
The Master, particularly of Language, is the same Master of all Intercourse, exchange, replication, as well as opposition, and so is 2 and multiples of two, like 4, like 8, like 16, and so on. That is both Hermes and "PEITHO The goddess of persuasion whom Hermes took as his bride."
Hermaphrodite,
Kama and Rati,
Eros or Cupid and Psyche,
and however many more link ontologically related terms and ideas.
Communication seems to be about making sounds, even writing things, for the initial purpose of gaining and granting love, even if the initial things going on seem to be far away from that, it seems to be what the human is trying for, even the animals with their language.
The happiest person in the world, deluded or not, will feel that their needs are met, they wil not be suffering, and when they are past those visceral concerns, they will be the one who has a sense and an impression and an appreciation of what seems to them to be the fact that they are loved:
There are different strategies used, and then there are efforts meant to try to sabotage others and redirect the flow of this social resource and sense of value, along with all that comes with it including sometimes physical resources and credit in the firm of wealth and riches and what is then associated with that or derived from its use, to whatever one wants, often some form or extension associated with or somehow felt to represent oneself especially, so that somehow one can get a feeling that they or something they feel represents them or which they are linked to is loved, and so cared for, and helped, and so resources and opportunities are made more available to them and theirs in particular.
Platonic friendliness and empathy are universally praised in the majority of cases, but excesses and perversions can be considered destructive, or forms which end up hurting people or making people doubt it by spreading it too thinly so that it first becomes increasingly abstract and then altogether having no opacity, completely thinned to the point of being invisible, non-existent, irrelevant, just like any suggestion that any sound or sound combination should stretch to everything and signifying nothing at all and directing nothing anywhere. That is even to say, love is and can only be what people sometimes consider it the opposite of being, intelligent and intelligible.
That means that in order to extract and derive out of whatever seems to be able to provide it and to get the creature comforts that come with it, even just the sense that it is there abd being given without much else overall, it needs to be narrowed and directed specifically, since if it is directed in certain ways too broadly, it can seem arbitrary overall, like the air that we take for granted until we might be losing it altogether. If it is saying nothing to no one in particular, and not even apparent benefit can be claimed, then what is it? It may even start to be an irritant or an obstruction or some distraction from what we are likely hardwired to naturally pursue.
This is the entirety of life and the human dilemma.
What seemed to rub me the wrong way also was the suggestion or implication that really I have not been saying anything, and no one ever has, that nothing has ever been said, which by itself may not be so terrible if we're only talking about words, but is downright offensive if we are saying that all these people trying are not to be acknowledged and acknowledging them and their expressed sentiments is not really them reaching us, like in that case shut up (not you, but the derider), because I have faith that even though it might not not be provable, I at the very least am experiencing things that include other people and trusting that I know what they are saying or trying to say.
I went to the thrift store on the last day and the last hour, and I listened to people in the store and looked at them too. There were some extremely obnoxious and loud nerds who entered and were very loudly going on and on about something with their annoying nerd accents, but they too wanted what any of us did as we scrounged through possibly dead people's giveaways.
Do you see the significance? As I wrote this post all day today, there was a police incident outside my window where there was yelling and then someone was seemingly down on the other side of a vehicle and I couldn't see them, and they had more and more police, including plainly dressed undercover police who ran across the street, and the whole street became full of supposed authority figures surrounding this unseen thing on the other side of the white vehicle, and I never saw who any of this was about, but I trust there was someone there.
I saw a constant attempt online yo make everything cutesy, to make serious things silly or childish, to make spirituality a joke, to defame things that one even claims they like, so that they go "awww, so cute", turning spirits and Gods into chibi things to make them more palatable to those who must hate fear.
I've repeatedly felt so sad about that store passing. At the end, I stayed past their closing in order to get the personal email of the lady I had seen for a decade working there. I had purchased from her at the last moment a Chinese Classical Instrument that she told me she can play. Does this m*therf*cker Derrida
As I wrote that, the loudest thing occurred, right in the same general area where so much has occurred, the center of the crossroads right outside my window. A car was violently spinning and spinning and spinning right there, where coyotes circle and howl, and to say that center is dead must be a joke, because nowhere isn't the center and everywhere is, but seemingly especially right there. The sound of the vehicle was like rage and violence and even related to and inducing fear.
So I'll continue, as these things which I interpret as spiritual are occurring at a frantic rate:
think that these things are saying nothing? Then are they to blame or be accused of vacuity or him, who is seemingly closed to accepting that even he has spent his entire existence doing what everyone has been doing and which isn't all that absurd amidst the absurdity and the absurd origins of such?
There is a complete and simple logic to my minding that store closing and my relationship to that store and the change in interactions and opportunities for interactions with that person who I would see there.
Here is a portion of my correspondence, after the parts where I provided them with my full contact information on detail so that they don't lose touch:
"
Hi! I'm just about to go to sleep and I hope everything went smoothly for the final closing, but I wanted to make sure my email gets through as promised. Just for your personal notes, here is more contact information:
___
When I wasn't around for a little while, I was all the way across the country and stuck there during Covid, and my address across the country is all the way in Prince Edward Island:
___
The number at the bottom is my phone number, both ___ and I have Hawaii phone numbers, ___ number is:
I've bought so much from that store that it isn't leaving Marpole but is all in my apartment at this point.
If and moreso when I learn how to play these instruments I've purchased from the store (I'm a musician, among other things, and I have a collection of unique instruments now), I'll see if I can send you a recording or a video or something!
Here is a piece of music I made, hopefully it will play for you and isn't too irritating sounding, that might use some similar instruments.
Do you know what I should type to look up this instrument? I will then look up the name and tutorials and I might even purchase some books that may help me to learn. It is interesting to me also that so many stringed instruments have suddenly come my way rather than wind instruments or even things like a keyboard piano.
If you don't mind, here is a video of an instrument I purchased some years ago which I'm also learning:
There are very similar instruments used in Chinese Classical music, but they are usually much larger, though I'd very much like to have access to those some day also.
In the music I attached to this email, I just sampled some instruments which then repeat to create the layers of sounds that seem to change by combining more elements.
Please let me know if this email has reached you, and thank you for allowing us to keep in touch, I appreciate it a lot and it helps to make me feel a little better since it isn't like such a sudden and total loss of all contact, which was actually pretty scary for me and bothered me a lot to think about, even though it might seem silly. So we're still around, you know where we are, and feel free to email us at any time about anything, we are always happy to hear from you, and we're not busy or anything! If I find the other bus pass or order a new one then maybe ___ and I will take you and your family for a dinner at a restaurant that you might like to try, all expenses paid for by the frogs!
NM1 - T1 - Tulgu.mp3
"
I was replied to with the following:
"
___ & ___
Good morning,
I am so happy for your email.
The name of chinese instrument "Erhu" , in chinese “二胡“， it's very traditional chinese insrumant. When I was little, my parent send me to learn some of traditional instruments. I stoped learnng when I was in high school, because a lot of homework. Now in China a lot of retried people play traditional chinese instrument.
The frog's meaning is rich and harvest, a lot of chinese love it, usually they put it near the door and face to outside, and much better let the frog sit in water. Even you can see some chinese business or restaurants in Vancouver.
yesterday is last day for our store, I am very said because I am working hard for our store to meet our budgets, and learned a lot of things, our co-work like familys, also a lot of customers are very nice to us, and my home is near by. But now they send me to work in West Vancouver, is quite far for me.
I watched you video that you send to me, is very interestind, for me it's totally different culture.
And so appreciate that you offer me dinne someday. So far I am in emotion that closeing of our store, some times, life is very hard, but we have accept, some day we'll talk.
Thank you so much for your email, and have a good day,
Shirley
"
Here is another email I received just now:
"
"
Hola!
Cómo estás? Perdón por responderte tan tarde, había perdido esta cuenta y ahora la recuperé.
Me encantaría conocer a la chica, envíale mi contacto, por favor.
Cómo han estado ustedes, tanto tiempo sin hablar.
Te comento que en enero viajé a Aruba y Curazao, fue un viaje increíble. Nadar en el mar, hacer snorkel, descansar en la arena. No son los típicos viajes que realizo y la verdad es que me gustó mucho y me gustaría seguir viajando por el caribe.
El otro día me acorde de la bebida que probé en Vancouver antes de venirme, fue realmente asquerosa....lo siento.
Cada vez que me sobra mucha comida, recuerdo todas las veces que compartimos allá en Vancouver.
Espero no perder el contacto.
Saludos a ___.
Gaby
"
That was from a language teacher, speaking Spanish, reminding us of the love we shared. What kind of a sick bastard would suggest that nothing is being referred to at all, even though I don't speak Spanish and can't understand what was communicated by all that gobbledygook?
"
Hello!
How are you? Sorry for replying so late. I lost this account and just got it back.
I'd love to meet the girl. Please send her my contact information.
How have you all been? It's been so long, no talk.
I'd like to tell you that in January I traveled to Aruba and Curaçao. It was an incredible trip. Swimming in the ocean, snorkeling, relaxing on the sand. These aren't the typical trips I take, and I really enjoyed it and would like to continue traveling in the Caribbean.
The other day I remembered the drink I tried in Vancouver before coming here. It was really disgusting...sorry.
Every time I have a lot of food left over, I remember all the times we shared together back in Vancouver.
I hope I don't lose touch.
Best regards to ___.
Gaby
"
This is love, this is communication, I feel that these people have something inside them that enjoyed seeing me and feeling what I was giving them through everything.
Haha, and I haven't f*cked anyone at all!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agape
"
The verb form goes as far back as Homer, translated literally as affection, as in "greet with affection" and "show affection for the dead".[2] Other ancient authors have used forms of the word to denote love of a spouse or family, or affection for a particular activity, in contrast to eros (an affection of a sexual nature).
"
Is the Buddha the good guy or this place we call Hell und Earth?
Point being?
https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/rebooti ... s-placebo/
"
This year is very important academically-wise, and, believe me, the grade improvements are obvious. I kept asking stupid questions in class, but now I am among the best. My teachers thought I was a complete idiot. Can’t wait to get out of the flatline and really enjoy the benefits (even in the flatline, I’m happier than 1 year ago). Mood swings are still here, sometimes I question my nofap effort and think of relapse, but sometimes my life feels so awesome that I’d live it forever.
Keep going guys! Good times ahead!
"
Ah yes, academic achievements:
"My teachers (who couldn't care less if I live or die, give me the impression that they) think I'm smart!"
https://www.businessinsider.com/long-te ... -ai-2025-2
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/econom ... rcna224482
"I'm also not yanking a certain appendage!"
"
@negie78000
13 years ago
Most people think that to be a Christian you have to be weak and submissive, but actually it is the other way around. Plus I think this talks David fighting Amalekites, "Sneak attack" on Negev and Ziklag
"
"
Yeah, see, Christianity is like, going and k*lling random civilians and stuff, yeah!
"
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Anti-Love_forces
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philophobia_(fear)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise
"
Noise is sound, chiefly unwanted, unintentional, or harmful sound considered unpleasant, loud, or disruptive to mental or hearing faculties. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arises when the brain receives and perceives a sound.[1][2] Acoustic noise is any sound in the acoustic domain, either deliberate (e.g., music or speech) or unintended.
"
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/
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Derrida was born on July 15, 1930 in El-Biar (a suburb of Algiers), Algeria (then a part of France), into a Sephardic J*w*sh family.
"
https://thecreativecavern.wordpress.com ... esistible/
"
1. It is impossible to tell someone what you really mean: Derrida was deeply concerned with the failure of language. Language is all we have to express how we ‘feel’, yet it is also the very thing that fails to express this ‘feeling’ adequately. Derrida suggests that when attempting to describe a feeling to others the subject will always fail to capture meaning, they will be merely engaging in the process of what he calls differing. What is being described is not being defined by what it is, but by difference. So, to put it simply (if it is possible) when you are describing meaning you are only ever referring to other signs, you are merely free falling down the slippery linguistic system.
For example: you want to tell someone you love them, so, as is procedure, you utter the words “I love you”. However, the moment these words become phonic, they are taken from the real in which they were conceived and placed into the imaginary. I suppose the easiest way to get your head around the concept is to consider the idea that to every single person love surely does not meet the same definition? The meaning of “I love you” is so uniquely arbitrary to everyone, therefore, love has multiple meanings. Every time someone says “I love you” they temporarily become the author of the sentence, they attach to it a new meaning, then, someone else says “I love you” and once again, the words fall into slipperiness and meaning is redefined. So basically, whoever you fall in love with will never actually know, because you will fail to put whatever ‘love’ is into words. See, language is slippery and deceptive, it’s trying to ruin your relationship (okay, the last few sentences are not valid Derridean points, just me, trying to be funny, but hours of reading Derrida does that to you)
2. Words just refer to other words and not thoughts or feelings: to Derrida, nothing escapes this endless play of meaning, and the endless differing that takes place. The concept of ‘play’ is key here. Play refers to how language is right in our grasp and slipping away from us all at once! Look at the word play as a perfect example, play could refer to performance, to action, or to escaping language, for you need no words to play in some circumstances. The multiple meanings of ‘play’ in itself is an example of not only how words refer to other words, but of Derrida’s rejection of a text only ever having one meaning. Leading on to the next point….
3. “There is nothing outside of the text” (NATC 1692) Derrida rejects the idea of an assumed universal truth. For this idealises the idea of something having a centre, and subsequently, something fixed, meaning, fixed. Derrida favours de-centring. He urges a mode of thought that considers the idea of a text having an original presence as elusive. (getting metaphysical now) the very concept of ‘presence’ is reliant upon reconstruction and interpretation and is defined by what is absent, it gets its definition by it’s other, which is exemplary of Derrida’s point that the linguistic system is slippery and based upon differing in space and time, fixed definition is impossible in such a system. Another way to think of the concepts of ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ is the idea that if words refer to other words then how can there be a point of origin? Maybe there never has been, and never can be a ‘present’?
Of course, these key concepts I have constructed are only a very basic attempts to make sense of Derrida and deconstructive theories; spring boards into post structuralism. Derrida’s attack plunged right into the depths of meaning, truth, identity, and philosophy. What I have written is individual understanding and interpretation! I suppose this is okay, because (cue Derridean mode of thought) in essence surely everything is interpretation? In the giant web of meaning where our language habituates if every signifier points to another signifier then the meaning and authorship of words will always be arbitrary?
Suggestions
1. For further reading Derrida’s book Of Grammatology (http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/O ... ZyM7vujG0C) a very short video of Derrida discussing deconstruction (
2. In order not to lose all of your sanity… go for a long, leisurely walk and think about everything but Derrida for a while!
"
Weird how it keeps coming down to "love".
https://adrianblau.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... it-part-1/
https://adrianblau.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... it-part-2/
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/ ... chley.html
"
the way Derrida ‘misreads the texts, in careless and often intentionally flippant ways, inventing meanings, lifting passages out of context, misunderstanding philosophical arguments, and on and on’.
"
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/ ... a_ind.html
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/ ... rrida.html
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kFoyauextlH
- Posts: 661
- Joined: Sun Jun 15, 2025 3:53 pm
Re: Derrida | Language as Writing
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Politics, philosophy, history . . . thinking, writing, teaching . . . the blog of Adrian Blau
Is Derrida full of bullshit? Part 2
Part 1 outlined two notions of bullshit: Harry Frankfurt’s notion of bullshit as phoniness or indifference to truth, and Jerry Cohen’s notion of bullshit as unclarifiable clarity.
We saw too that Cohen claimed – very naughtily, without references – that there is a lot of bullshit in Derrida. Such sentiments are quite widespread.
I’m only going to look at one passage by Derrida which has been called bullshit by Brian Leiter, a prominent philosopher who is bitingly critical of Derrida on his excellent blog, Leiter Reports. Leiter has a deliciously acerbic approach to ‘frauds and intellectual voyeurs who dabble in a lot of stuff they plainly don’t understand’. Leiter is a Nietzsche expert who reserves special vitriol for Derrida’s ‘preposterously stupid writings on Nietzsche’, the way Derrida ‘misreads the texts, in careless and often intentionally flippant ways, inventing meanings, lifting passages out of context, misunderstanding philosophical arguments, and on and on’.
I’ll focus solely on Leiter’s 2003 blog entry, ‘Derrida and Bullshit’, which attacks the ‘ridiculousness’ of Derrida’s comments on 9/11. This came from an interview with Derrida in October 2001. Here is an abbreviated version; you can see the full thing on p. 85 onwards of this book.
… this act of naming: a date and nothing more. … [T]he index pointing toward this date, the bare act, the minimal deictic, the minimalist aim of this dating, also marks something else. Namely, the fact that we perhaps have no concept and no meaning available to us to name in any other way this ‘thing’ that has just happened … But this very thing … remains ineffable, like an intuition without concept, like a unicity with no generality on the horizon or with no horizon at all, out of range for a language that admits its powerlessness and so is reduced to pronouncing mechanically a date, repeating it endlessly, as a kind of ritual incantation, a conjuring poem, a journalistic litany or rhetorical refrain that admits to not knowing what it’s talking about.
9/11 turned the world upside down. Or at least 45 degrees to the side.
9/11 turned the world upside down.
Or at least 45 degrees to the side.
So, is this bullshit, on the Frankfurt and/or the Cohen notions of bullshit? I would say no. I take Derrida to be saying the following.
Advertisement
We often repeat the name ‘9/11’ without thinking much about it. But the words we use can be very revealing. Why do we try to reduce this complex event to such a simple term? Because the event is so complex we cannot capture it properly. Precisely by talking about it in such a simple way, we admit that we don’t really understand it.
If I have understood Derrida – tell me if I haven’t – this explanation is surely wrong. I’d guess that in most cases we call such events by a name, usually a place or a thing. For example:
Pearl Harbor, the Somme, Gallipoli, the Korean War
the Great Fire of London, Hurricane Katrina
Watergate, the execution of Charles I, the storming of the Bastille
Chernobyl, Bhopal, Exxon Valdez
My guess is that we are most likely to use a date where we cannot restrict an event to a place or name:
Arab Spring
(May) 1968 riots
the 1960s
Black Tuesday, Black Wednesday
But my guess is that such names are rarer: places or things are usually more identifiable.
Advertisement
So, why was 9/11 called ‘9/11’, ‘September the 11th’? My guess is that it would usually have been called ‘the attack on the Twin Towers’ except for the fact that there were two other locations: an attack on the Pentagon, and a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. I’m also guessing that ‘9/11’ had a ring to it because of the shop ‘7/11’. If the attack had happened in just one location on February 9th, we’d simply refer to the place.
I might be wrong. Other explanations will be gratefully received. But if I’m right, it suggests that Derrida’s explanation is a bit pompous, and probably wrong, but it is not Frankfurt-bullshit, because it is not attempting to deceive anyone, and it is not Cohen-bullshit, because it is not unclarifiably unclear.
There’s a deeper point here, about method. Philosophers and literary theorists often ask questions which are essentially empirical. Derrida’s question is empirical: what explains the name ‘9-11’? To answer empirical questions, it is best to use a scientific approach – for example, looking at more than just one possible explanation. In the fortnight that BlauBlog has been active, this is a point I’ve already made several hundred and fifty times.
Advertisement
Derrida, however, does not think like a social scientist. As a result, his explanation only seems plausible because he has not considered the alternatives.
In short, what Derrida said is crap, but not bullshit.
Advertisement
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AlanF's avatarAlanF on May 28, 2013 at 17:01
Derrida is indeed saying more than your re-presentation includes.
He points out – when given the name “9/11” by the interviewer – that it is a ‘citation’ (and this is an fundamental concept in Derrida’s philosophy). That is, it is a name that he – Derrida – did not give to the event of 9/11 and using that name (he thinks) makes us also use a much larger way of thinking and talking about it. What is more, that name works because it is itself a kind of citation of other names (as you show in your list of names of events) and its use designates 9/11 as a ‘thing of that sort’ – it might even make it a thing of that sort (the first move in endless war on terror for example).
Derrida wants to pause and note all of that and not just close off the careful philosophical and ethical reflection he thinks should precede pronouncements of the sort that Habermas delivers in the same book (and remember, it is a book about Philosophy and that period not about foreign policy analysis).
Derrida knows perfectly well that he can’t just talk about things in some other way he happens to choose and that he can’t ignore the already existing way of talking about it. The reason Derrida often writes in a way some find infuriating is because he doesn’t want to rush into what has already been declared to be ‘clarity’ but make us pause and think about the often unnoticed effects of our words and concepts before we even use them. Incidentally, this is not that different to what Socrates does when he stops his interlocutors and makes them think about a term they have hitherto used with ease and without thought.
Whatever one thinks about Derrida overall it is interesting that what Leiter, Cohen, Frankfurt and yourself are keen to do is attach an evaluative name to what he says – bullshit or crap – and have that name do all the interpretive and argumentative work for you. You name before reading (perhaps instead of reading) and this is exactly what Derrida, speaking in November of 2001, was worried by in relation to 9/11 – that we would name it and file it along with other things with similar names so that we could then get on with doing something about it rather than stop long enough to think about and reflect upon its enormity.
Derrida himself proposed a philosophical method requiring intense and patient attention to what is said and written by philosophers and sought to develop an ethics rooted in that sort of ongoing engagement rather than one built out of naming and categorising things.
That is never going to please the social scientist (and you are right, Derrida does not think like a social scientist). Giving things their right name, assigning them to categories, demonstrating that individual things or events are expressions of the laws of social science or should be given this or that name invented by social scientists (structure, agent, free rider, utility, interest etc.) – and in so doing making things thinkable for the governments or other agents that want to act on those things and fund our research so that we can help them -is what social scientists are often for. It is not necessarily a bad thing to do. But I am not clear that it would better if the philosophers and ethicists who give us pause and invite us to ask ourselves what we are doing were banished on the grounds that what they say does not make sense to us at a first casual glance. Twelve years later, a lot of people might agree that some people should have taken more time to think about how their way of quickly apprehending events might get them enmeshed in events beyond their control.
Reply
Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on May 28, 2013 at 18:13
Thanks Alan for your incisive comments. Actually, I suspect we agree more than you imply.
I didn’t realise that ‘citation’ is a technical Derridean term – apologies for my ignorance. It shows the dangers of dipping into an author like I have done.
That said, I don’t yet see how it differs from standard debates that we often have about the names. You don’t need to be Derrida, for example, to recognise that ‘female circumcision’ sounds more acceptable than ‘female genital mutilation’ or ‘female genital cutting’.
Indeed, many people challenge categories and tease out presuppositions. For Brian Barry, what we call ‘power’ is sometimes better called ‘luck’. Habermas now prefers ‘unlimited communication community’ to ‘ideal speech situation’ because the latter has misleading connotations. Hobbes constantly complains that his opponents use ideas which, on reflection, are self-contradictory. There’s a huge literature on the presuppositions of ‘corruption’ (Mark Warren, Dennis Thompson, Mark Philp, etc.). And so on.
I like your comparison of Derrida to Socrates. I see him in the same way – and Derrideans like Maja Zehfuss, who seek to uncover presuppositions and challenge how we often talk and think. I’m completely in agreement with this; I just think that it is more mainstream than Derrideans often imply. But please say if I am simplifying Derrida or Derridean approaches here!
That said, I haven’t changed my mind about Derrida’s flawed explanation of why so many people use the term ‘9/11’. Looking at other options might have shown him that his explanation wasn’t too plausible. Most people who ask empirical questions don’t think of themselves as doing social science, but that is a shame: social scientists, like natural scientists, have developed ways of thinking about empirical questions which help us avoid common fallacies. For another example, see my post on Leo Strauss.
I’m keen to learn more, so please tell me if you disagree further with this and/or with my characterisation of Derrida.
Reply
Philip's avatarPhilip on June 7, 2013 at 15:35
I interpret his basic point here to be that no signifier is a pure denotator; therefore no signifier, regarded critically, is innocent, transparent or simple. Every denotation carries connotations along with it — denotation and connotation are ultimately inseparable. ‘9/11’ is probably the best possible example of this fact. It doesn’t just signify a series of events occurring on a particular day; it’s a ‘master signifier’ drawing together whole clouds of meaning, whole swarms of intensely ideological presupposition. A dictionary might define it in the neutral, limited, literal terms of a series of events but dictionaries are apt to miss the point. ‘9/11’ is about as potent a political symbol as exists in American political discourse and its use delimits and prescribes the parameters of conversation. That is, in fact, its purpose.
So, we must permit ourselves to linger on such terms and to consider our socio-linguistic predicament before delving headlong into conversation. By taking ‘9/11’ as our starting point we are not starting from neutral ground, rather our first steps are pre-determined. By uncritically accepting this terminology as a starting point we are constrained, or at least influenced, in what we go on to discuss. It’s not that the term, the starting point, is necessarily bad — it’s that it’s not necessarily anything, so we’d better think about where we’re treading.
In short, terminology makes a difference and this difference is worth noting in cases such as this. Signifiers take on lives of their own to a degree proportional to their usage; and some, thereby, become largely abstracted from what they supposedly denote, doing things that their literal description completely fails to capture. Ignoring these facts doesn’t make them go away, it just makes us ignorant.
Derrida speaks in a deliberately complicated and convoluted fashion but I don’t find his argument to be especially difficult or objectionable. Aren’t these really socio-linguistic truisms? Maybe they seem inadequate and preliminary from a social scientific point of view but that isn’t much of a criticism. Philosophy should inform and interrogate science, it can’t do science’s work for it, nor should we lament this fact. Take it as an intervention into an ongoing conversation, not as a mouth-shutting pronouncement from on high. Perhaps, stripped of its verbiage, there isn’t that much remarkable underneath but bear in mind that such ideas have gradually seeped into social science over the past four decades or so and have been appropriated to greater or lesser degrees. So, if it all seems obvious perhaps that is a mark of the success of Derrida and others, not their failure.
The problem with Derrida, I find, is not so much the basic ideas themselves as the excruciating detail with which he demonstrates them and his infuriatingly verbose, self-indulgent style. All in all I’m not much of a fan — I avoid him as far as life permits me — but I do feel compelled to defend him against lazy, ill informed accusations of irrationalism, bullshit, etc. Far more people have denounced him than have read him, even cursorily. Indeed, the ‘Derrida’ signified in most offhand, reactionary drive-by denunciations doesn’t always have much to do with the Derrida who wrote books and essays and gave interviews.
And this surely bears out the general point he was making in discussing ‘9/11’! — ‘Derrida’ is no more of an innocent, referential signifier than anything else. To take but one example, when Simon Conway Morris offhandedly refers to “the poisonous ideas of such individuals as Derrida” for no apparent reason in the middle of a book that had nothing to do with him and without giving any indication or description of what these ideas are exactly, this isn’t Derrida the philosopher he’s really referring to but Derrida the spectre, Derrida the monstrous French irrationalist, Derrida the mythical horned beast who needn’t actually be read or encountered in any substantial way in order to be understood to be unconditionally awful. Derrida the byword for all that is bad and unholy.
And such an attack is, in fact, an attack on ALL philosophers because, while Derrida may be among the philosophy’s more irritating sons, this kind of argument can be and often is levelled at philosophy in general by know-it-all-know-nothings (as my grandmother might put it). When people don’t understand things they are wont to dismiss them as meaningless, stupid, obviously wrong or heretical. It’s understandable insofar as most philosophical arguments sound ridiculous when you sketch them haphazardly, misleadingly and without context. Philosophical arguments are largely incomprehensible without a firm grasp of the problems to which they are responding — and most people approach the answers without understanding the questions.
This is why philosophers of all sorts are so often treated respond with incredulity, derision and scorn and why ‘drive-by’ denunciations of any philosopher should be subject to a kind of common defence pact, a NATO of philosophers (PTO? well, that could get confusing!). The mindless naysaying of any philosopher, whoever it is, is equivalent to the mindless naysaying of philosophy in general. An attack on one is an attack on all — ‘either criticise what they actually said in at least a semi-informed fashion or shut up!’ Surely his critics will say that this doesn’t apply to Derrida he isn’t really a philosopher because he doesn’t believe in truth, etc. etc. Well, they’re splitters and fools who don’t understand the problems that HE was responding to!
Of course, you can’t blame people for being uncomprehending when a text is so incomprehensible. Derrida must take a large part of the blame for being such an unnecessarily elusive, irritating and generally crappy prosaist (for all his attempts to ape Heidegger who was in turn aping the poetry of Hölderlin, this is what he was).
And I should add, finally, that the above post does level criticism at Derrida in an informed and reasonable fashion; it’s not a ‘drive-by’ at all! Very interesting, in fact.
Reply
Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 7, 2013 at 17:00
Thanks for these thoughtful comments, Philip. I’m glad you recognise that I’m not doing a ‘drive-by’ attack on Derrida (nice phrase! – I may have to borrow that!). I’m also not attacking him for incomprehensibility: I think this passage is reasonably comprehensible.
I’m particularly interested in your fourth paragraph (the one beginning ‘Derrida speaks’). Yes, some of these ideas are now truisms, e.g. words have connotations, these things can take on a life of their own, language is not neutral, etc. And you say that it is partly thanks to Derrida that these things have become truisms, accepted by many social scientists and analytic philosophers. This may well be true. I wonder if you, or other readers of this post, can point me to a good history of science or a good history of analytic philosophy which charts the development of these ideas, and in particular, the extent to which they developed due to the arguments of Derrida and other postpositivists/poststructuralists?
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Politics, philosophy, history . . . thinking, writing, teaching . . . the blog of Adrian Blau
Is Derrida full of bullshit? Part 2
Part 1 outlined two notions of bullshit: Harry Frankfurt’s notion of bullshit as phoniness or indifference to truth, and Jerry Cohen’s notion of bullshit as unclarifiable clarity.
We saw too that Cohen claimed – very naughtily, without references – that there is a lot of bullshit in Derrida. Such sentiments are quite widespread.
I’m only going to look at one passage by Derrida which has been called bullshit by Brian Leiter, a prominent philosopher who is bitingly critical of Derrida on his excellent blog, Leiter Reports. Leiter has a deliciously acerbic approach to ‘frauds and intellectual voyeurs who dabble in a lot of stuff they plainly don’t understand’. Leiter is a Nietzsche expert who reserves special vitriol for Derrida’s ‘preposterously stupid writings on Nietzsche’, the way Derrida ‘misreads the texts, in careless and often intentionally flippant ways, inventing meanings, lifting passages out of context, misunderstanding philosophical arguments, and on and on’.
I’ll focus solely on Leiter’s 2003 blog entry, ‘Derrida and Bullshit’, which attacks the ‘ridiculousness’ of Derrida’s comments on 9/11. This came from an interview with Derrida in October 2001. Here is an abbreviated version; you can see the full thing on p. 85 onwards of this book.
… this act of naming: a date and nothing more. … [T]he index pointing toward this date, the bare act, the minimal deictic, the minimalist aim of this dating, also marks something else. Namely, the fact that we perhaps have no concept and no meaning available to us to name in any other way this ‘thing’ that has just happened … But this very thing … remains ineffable, like an intuition without concept, like a unicity with no generality on the horizon or with no horizon at all, out of range for a language that admits its powerlessness and so is reduced to pronouncing mechanically a date, repeating it endlessly, as a kind of ritual incantation, a conjuring poem, a journalistic litany or rhetorical refrain that admits to not knowing what it’s talking about.
9/11 turned the world upside down. Or at least 45 degrees to the side.
9/11 turned the world upside down.
Or at least 45 degrees to the side.
So, is this bullshit, on the Frankfurt and/or the Cohen notions of bullshit? I would say no. I take Derrida to be saying the following.
Advertisement
We often repeat the name ‘9/11’ without thinking much about it. But the words we use can be very revealing. Why do we try to reduce this complex event to such a simple term? Because the event is so complex we cannot capture it properly. Precisely by talking about it in such a simple way, we admit that we don’t really understand it.
If I have understood Derrida – tell me if I haven’t – this explanation is surely wrong. I’d guess that in most cases we call such events by a name, usually a place or a thing. For example:
Pearl Harbor, the Somme, Gallipoli, the Korean War
the Great Fire of London, Hurricane Katrina
Watergate, the execution of Charles I, the storming of the Bastille
Chernobyl, Bhopal, Exxon Valdez
My guess is that we are most likely to use a date where we cannot restrict an event to a place or name:
Arab Spring
(May) 1968 riots
the 1960s
Black Tuesday, Black Wednesday
But my guess is that such names are rarer: places or things are usually more identifiable.
Advertisement
So, why was 9/11 called ‘9/11’, ‘September the 11th’? My guess is that it would usually have been called ‘the attack on the Twin Towers’ except for the fact that there were two other locations: an attack on the Pentagon, and a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. I’m also guessing that ‘9/11’ had a ring to it because of the shop ‘7/11’. If the attack had happened in just one location on February 9th, we’d simply refer to the place.
I might be wrong. Other explanations will be gratefully received. But if I’m right, it suggests that Derrida’s explanation is a bit pompous, and probably wrong, but it is not Frankfurt-bullshit, because it is not attempting to deceive anyone, and it is not Cohen-bullshit, because it is not unclarifiably unclear.
There’s a deeper point here, about method. Philosophers and literary theorists often ask questions which are essentially empirical. Derrida’s question is empirical: what explains the name ‘9-11’? To answer empirical questions, it is best to use a scientific approach – for example, looking at more than just one possible explanation. In the fortnight that BlauBlog has been active, this is a point I’ve already made several hundred and fifty times.
Advertisement
Derrida, however, does not think like a social scientist. As a result, his explanation only seems plausible because he has not considered the alternatives.
In short, what Derrida said is crap, but not bullshit.
Advertisement
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Related
Is Derrida full of bullshit? Part 1
May 11, 2013
In "biases/errors/fallacies"
TV bullshit and its effect on clear thinking
June 13, 2013
In "bullshit"
‘Big Thinkers’ event at KCL tomorrow (13 November 2014)
November 12, 2014
In "interpretation"
May 26, 201347 Replies
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Leave a comment
Write a comment...
Comment
Pingback: Is Derrida full of bullshit? Part 1 | BlauBlog
AlanF's avatarAlanF on May 28, 2013 at 17:01
Derrida is indeed saying more than your re-presentation includes.
He points out – when given the name “9/11” by the interviewer – that it is a ‘citation’ (and this is an fundamental concept in Derrida’s philosophy). That is, it is a name that he – Derrida – did not give to the event of 9/11 and using that name (he thinks) makes us also use a much larger way of thinking and talking about it. What is more, that name works because it is itself a kind of citation of other names (as you show in your list of names of events) and its use designates 9/11 as a ‘thing of that sort’ – it might even make it a thing of that sort (the first move in endless war on terror for example).
Derrida wants to pause and note all of that and not just close off the careful philosophical and ethical reflection he thinks should precede pronouncements of the sort that Habermas delivers in the same book (and remember, it is a book about Philosophy and that period not about foreign policy analysis).
Derrida knows perfectly well that he can’t just talk about things in some other way he happens to choose and that he can’t ignore the already existing way of talking about it. The reason Derrida often writes in a way some find infuriating is because he doesn’t want to rush into what has already been declared to be ‘clarity’ but make us pause and think about the often unnoticed effects of our words and concepts before we even use them. Incidentally, this is not that different to what Socrates does when he stops his interlocutors and makes them think about a term they have hitherto used with ease and without thought.
Whatever one thinks about Derrida overall it is interesting that what Leiter, Cohen, Frankfurt and yourself are keen to do is attach an evaluative name to what he says – bullshit or crap – and have that name do all the interpretive and argumentative work for you. You name before reading (perhaps instead of reading) and this is exactly what Derrida, speaking in November of 2001, was worried by in relation to 9/11 – that we would name it and file it along with other things with similar names so that we could then get on with doing something about it rather than stop long enough to think about and reflect upon its enormity.
Derrida himself proposed a philosophical method requiring intense and patient attention to what is said and written by philosophers and sought to develop an ethics rooted in that sort of ongoing engagement rather than one built out of naming and categorising things.
That is never going to please the social scientist (and you are right, Derrida does not think like a social scientist). Giving things their right name, assigning them to categories, demonstrating that individual things or events are expressions of the laws of social science or should be given this or that name invented by social scientists (structure, agent, free rider, utility, interest etc.) – and in so doing making things thinkable for the governments or other agents that want to act on those things and fund our research so that we can help them -is what social scientists are often for. It is not necessarily a bad thing to do. But I am not clear that it would better if the philosophers and ethicists who give us pause and invite us to ask ourselves what we are doing were banished on the grounds that what they say does not make sense to us at a first casual glance. Twelve years later, a lot of people might agree that some people should have taken more time to think about how their way of quickly apprehending events might get them enmeshed in events beyond their control.
Reply
Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on May 28, 2013 at 18:13
Thanks Alan for your incisive comments. Actually, I suspect we agree more than you imply.
I didn’t realise that ‘citation’ is a technical Derridean term – apologies for my ignorance. It shows the dangers of dipping into an author like I have done.
That said, I don’t yet see how it differs from standard debates that we often have about the names. You don’t need to be Derrida, for example, to recognise that ‘female circumcision’ sounds more acceptable than ‘female genital mutilation’ or ‘female genital cutting’.
Indeed, many people challenge categories and tease out presuppositions. For Brian Barry, what we call ‘power’ is sometimes better called ‘luck’. Habermas now prefers ‘unlimited communication community’ to ‘ideal speech situation’ because the latter has misleading connotations. Hobbes constantly complains that his opponents use ideas which, on reflection, are self-contradictory. There’s a huge literature on the presuppositions of ‘corruption’ (Mark Warren, Dennis Thompson, Mark Philp, etc.). And so on.
I like your comparison of Derrida to Socrates. I see him in the same way – and Derrideans like Maja Zehfuss, who seek to uncover presuppositions and challenge how we often talk and think. I’m completely in agreement with this; I just think that it is more mainstream than Derrideans often imply. But please say if I am simplifying Derrida or Derridean approaches here!
That said, I haven’t changed my mind about Derrida’s flawed explanation of why so many people use the term ‘9/11’. Looking at other options might have shown him that his explanation wasn’t too plausible. Most people who ask empirical questions don’t think of themselves as doing social science, but that is a shame: social scientists, like natural scientists, have developed ways of thinking about empirical questions which help us avoid common fallacies. For another example, see my post on Leo Strauss.
I’m keen to learn more, so please tell me if you disagree further with this and/or with my characterisation of Derrida.
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Philip's avatarPhilip on June 7, 2013 at 15:35
I interpret his basic point here to be that no signifier is a pure denotator; therefore no signifier, regarded critically, is innocent, transparent or simple. Every denotation carries connotations along with it — denotation and connotation are ultimately inseparable. ‘9/11’ is probably the best possible example of this fact. It doesn’t just signify a series of events occurring on a particular day; it’s a ‘master signifier’ drawing together whole clouds of meaning, whole swarms of intensely ideological presupposition. A dictionary might define it in the neutral, limited, literal terms of a series of events but dictionaries are apt to miss the point. ‘9/11’ is about as potent a political symbol as exists in American political discourse and its use delimits and prescribes the parameters of conversation. That is, in fact, its purpose.
So, we must permit ourselves to linger on such terms and to consider our socio-linguistic predicament before delving headlong into conversation. By taking ‘9/11’ as our starting point we are not starting from neutral ground, rather our first steps are pre-determined. By uncritically accepting this terminology as a starting point we are constrained, or at least influenced, in what we go on to discuss. It’s not that the term, the starting point, is necessarily bad — it’s that it’s not necessarily anything, so we’d better think about where we’re treading.
In short, terminology makes a difference and this difference is worth noting in cases such as this. Signifiers take on lives of their own to a degree proportional to their usage; and some, thereby, become largely abstracted from what they supposedly denote, doing things that their literal description completely fails to capture. Ignoring these facts doesn’t make them go away, it just makes us ignorant.
Derrida speaks in a deliberately complicated and convoluted fashion but I don’t find his argument to be especially difficult or objectionable. Aren’t these really socio-linguistic truisms? Maybe they seem inadequate and preliminary from a social scientific point of view but that isn’t much of a criticism. Philosophy should inform and interrogate science, it can’t do science’s work for it, nor should we lament this fact. Take it as an intervention into an ongoing conversation, not as a mouth-shutting pronouncement from on high. Perhaps, stripped of its verbiage, there isn’t that much remarkable underneath but bear in mind that such ideas have gradually seeped into social science over the past four decades or so and have been appropriated to greater or lesser degrees. So, if it all seems obvious perhaps that is a mark of the success of Derrida and others, not their failure.
The problem with Derrida, I find, is not so much the basic ideas themselves as the excruciating detail with which he demonstrates them and his infuriatingly verbose, self-indulgent style. All in all I’m not much of a fan — I avoid him as far as life permits me — but I do feel compelled to defend him against lazy, ill informed accusations of irrationalism, bullshit, etc. Far more people have denounced him than have read him, even cursorily. Indeed, the ‘Derrida’ signified in most offhand, reactionary drive-by denunciations doesn’t always have much to do with the Derrida who wrote books and essays and gave interviews.
And this surely bears out the general point he was making in discussing ‘9/11’! — ‘Derrida’ is no more of an innocent, referential signifier than anything else. To take but one example, when Simon Conway Morris offhandedly refers to “the poisonous ideas of such individuals as Derrida” for no apparent reason in the middle of a book that had nothing to do with him and without giving any indication or description of what these ideas are exactly, this isn’t Derrida the philosopher he’s really referring to but Derrida the spectre, Derrida the monstrous French irrationalist, Derrida the mythical horned beast who needn’t actually be read or encountered in any substantial way in order to be understood to be unconditionally awful. Derrida the byword for all that is bad and unholy.
And such an attack is, in fact, an attack on ALL philosophers because, while Derrida may be among the philosophy’s more irritating sons, this kind of argument can be and often is levelled at philosophy in general by know-it-all-know-nothings (as my grandmother might put it). When people don’t understand things they are wont to dismiss them as meaningless, stupid, obviously wrong or heretical. It’s understandable insofar as most philosophical arguments sound ridiculous when you sketch them haphazardly, misleadingly and without context. Philosophical arguments are largely incomprehensible without a firm grasp of the problems to which they are responding — and most people approach the answers without understanding the questions.
This is why philosophers of all sorts are so often treated respond with incredulity, derision and scorn and why ‘drive-by’ denunciations of any philosopher should be subject to a kind of common defence pact, a NATO of philosophers (PTO? well, that could get confusing!). The mindless naysaying of any philosopher, whoever it is, is equivalent to the mindless naysaying of philosophy in general. An attack on one is an attack on all — ‘either criticise what they actually said in at least a semi-informed fashion or shut up!’ Surely his critics will say that this doesn’t apply to Derrida he isn’t really a philosopher because he doesn’t believe in truth, etc. etc. Well, they’re splitters and fools who don’t understand the problems that HE was responding to!
Of course, you can’t blame people for being uncomprehending when a text is so incomprehensible. Derrida must take a large part of the blame for being such an unnecessarily elusive, irritating and generally crappy prosaist (for all his attempts to ape Heidegger who was in turn aping the poetry of Hölderlin, this is what he was).
And I should add, finally, that the above post does level criticism at Derrida in an informed and reasonable fashion; it’s not a ‘drive-by’ at all! Very interesting, in fact.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 7, 2013 at 17:00
Thanks for these thoughtful comments, Philip. I’m glad you recognise that I’m not doing a ‘drive-by’ attack on Derrida (nice phrase! – I may have to borrow that!). I’m also not attacking him for incomprehensibility: I think this passage is reasonably comprehensible.
I’m particularly interested in your fourth paragraph (the one beginning ‘Derrida speaks’). Yes, some of these ideas are now truisms, e.g. words have connotations, these things can take on a life of their own, language is not neutral, etc. And you say that it is partly thanks to Derrida that these things have become truisms, accepted by many social scientists and analytic philosophers. This may well be true. I wonder if you, or other readers of this post, can point me to a good history of science or a good history of analytic philosophy which charts the development of these ideas, and in particular, the extent to which they developed due to the arguments of Derrida and other postpositivists/poststructuralists?
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Lelord K's avatarLelord K on September 8, 2013 at 18:13
The historical text that you are seeking doesn’t exist because the event that you are describing never took place. Derrida was tilting at windmills and Phillip above is continuing that tradition. When Derrida started his career as a professional obscurantist no contemporary linguist or philosopher subscribed to a naive referential theory of language–which is essentially what Derrida was critiquing. In simple terms, the referential theory of language is “[t]he idea…that linguistic expressions have the meanings they do because they stand for things; what they mean is what they stand
for.” (Lycan 2000, p.4) Wittgenstein’s “Philosophical Investigations”–which was published in 1953–contains a critique of the referential theory of language. Desilet tells us in his eulogy for Derrida, “when I met with Derrida at UC Irvine in 1993, he told me that he had read nothing of Wittgenstein”. Desilet proceeds to provide an apologetic for Derrida’s negligence but it is untenable; such an egregious neglect of due diligence is unforgivable. I have several introductiory and intermediate texts on the philosophy of language (Lycan 2000; Morris 2007; Miller 1998; Searle 1971; Devitt & Sterelny 1999) and Derrida’s name does not appear in any of them. Derrida has no impact on the philosophy of language. Similarly, Derrida’s attacks on foundationalism were also irrelevant because Dewey and Wittgenstein had also provided criticism of this matter well before Derrida did so. Derrida was fighting ghosts. In his “Of Grammatology” he used Rousseau’s “Essay on the Origin of Languages” from 1781 as a source text to critique Western philosophy of language. That is akin to writing a critque on modern medicine using Galen’s “De motu musculorum”. To the extent that Derrida had no knowledge of Wittgenstein or of Dewey when he began his pseudo-heroic, pseudo-revolutionary project his work is bullshit in the Frankfurtian sense. Someone genuinely interested in advancing human understanding in a fieeld of inquiry would not disregard the prior work that had been performed in that field. I think this meets Frankfurt’s criterion “lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are”. A specific example of such bullshit would be Derrida’s argument in “Of Grammatology” that writing precedes speech. His devout expositors (e.g. Norris) struggle to reconcile this grand pronouncement with reality–and that is somewhat amusing to read–but these efforts have the effect of just heaping more bullshit upon Derrida’s bullshit. An apologetic for bullshit inevitably turns out to be just more bullshit.
A fine example of Frankfurtian bullshit appears in a Q&A after Derrida delivered “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences” at a 1966 international symposium hosted by the Johns Hopkins University. This is noteworthy because both parties to the dialogue are exchanging Frankfurtian bullshit. Usually it is only one party that provides the Frankfurtian bullshit but in this case we see a dialogic form of mutual bullshitting:
JEAN HYPPOLITE: I should simply like to ask Derrida, whose presentation and discussion I have admired, for some explanation of what is, no doubt, the technical point of departure of the presentation. That is, a question of the concept of the center of structure, or what a center might mean. When I take, for example, the structure of
certain algebraic constructions [ensembles], where is the center? Is the center the knowledge of general rules which, after a fashion, allow us to understand the interplay of the elements? Or is the center certain elements which enjoy a particular privilege within the ensemble? My question is, I think, relevant since one cannot think of the structure without the center, and the center itself is “destructured,” is it not the center is not structured. I think we have a great deal to learn as we study the sciences of man; we have much to learn from the natural sciences. They are like an image of the problems which we, in turn, put to ourselves. With Einstein, for example, we see the end of a kind of privilege of empiric evidence. And in that connection we see a constant appear, a constant which is a combination of space-time, which does not belong to any of the experiments who live the experience, but which, in a way, dominates the whole construct; and this notion of the constantis this the center? But natural science has gone much further. It no longer searches for the constant. It considers that there are events, somehow improbable, which bring about for a while a structure and an invariability. Is it that everything happens as though certain mutations, which don’t come from any author or any hand, and which are, like the poor reading of a manuscript, realized [only] as a defect of a structure, simply exist as mutations? Is this the case? Is it a question of a structure which is in the nature of a genotype produced by chance from an improbable happening, of a meeting which involved a series of chemical molecules and which organized them in a certain way, creating a genotype which will be realized, and whose origin is lost in a mutation? Is that what you are tending toward? Because, for my part, I feel that I am going in that direction and that I find there the example even when we are talking about a kind of end of history of the integration of the historic; under the form of event, so long as it is improbable, at the very center of the realization of the structure, but a history which no longer has anything to do with eschatological history, a history which loses itself always in its own pursuit, since the origin is perpetually displaced. And you know that the language we are speaking today, à propos of language, is spoken about genotypes, and about information theory. Can this sign without sense, this perpetual turning back, be understood in the light of a kind of philosophy of nature in which nature will not only have realized a mutation, but will have realized a perpetual mutant: man? That is, a kind of error of transmission or of malformation would have created a being which is always malformed, whose adaptation is a perpetual aberration, and the problem of man would become part of a much larger field in which what you want to do, what you are in the process of doing, that is, the loss of the centerthe fact that there is no privileged or original structurecould be seen under this very form to which man would be restored. Is this what you wanted to say, or were you getting at something else? That is my last question, and I apologize for having held the floor so long.
JACQUES DERRIDA: With the last part of your remarks, I can say that I agree fully but you were asking a question. I was wondering myself if I know where I am going. So I would answer you by saying, first, that I am trying, precisely, to put myself at a point so that I do not know any longer where I am going. And, as to this loss of the center, I refuse to approach an idea of the “non-center” which would no longer be the tragedy of the loss of the center this sadness is classical. And I don’t mean to say that I thought of approaching an idea by which this loss of the center would be an affirmation. As to what you said about the nature and the situation of man in the products of nature, I think that we have already discussed this together. I will assume entirely with you this partiality which you expressed with the exception of your [choice of] words, and here the words are more than mere words, as always. That is to say, I cannot accept your precise formulation, although I am not prepared to offer a precise alternative. So, it being understood that I do not know where I am going, that the words which we are
using do not satisfy me, with these reservations in mind, I am entirely in agreement with you. Concerning the first part of your question, the Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability it is, finally, the concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of some thingof a center starting from which an observer could master the fieldbut the very concept of the game which, after all, I was trying to elaborate.
HYPPOLITE: It is a constant in the game?
DERRIDA: It is the constant of the game. . .
HYPPOLITE: It is the rule of the game.
Mutual bullshitting is unusual in that the usual motives for bullshitting are absent. Is the above dialogue a performance intended for the consumption of the audience? Is it more like mutual masturbation, a mutual indulgence of the other’s bullshitting for some sort of gratification? In any event it is impressive in the commitment to bullshitting that Derrida and Hyppolite show. Derrida shows an ambition that culminates in ” the Einsteinian constant is not a constant”–certainly the crowning glory of his heap of bullshit.
But it would be unfair to characterise all of Derrida’s work as Frankfurtian bullshit–indeed some of it is–but Derrida exhibited a certain virtuosity in relation to promoting unclear thinking, bad writing and ignorance that extends well beyond Frankfurtian bullshit. As far as I know there is no Cohenian bullshit–unclarifiable unclairty–in Derrida’s work. Derrida’s voluminous writings are resolvable into lucid and compact prose. The problem is that the end product–of the clarification–is tautology, truism, banality, false dichotomy or just plain falsity. The extract on 9/11 is an exemplar of this and I would say that Philip’s apologetic is Frankfurtian bullshit. Derrida’s pompous rambling resolves into a truism, a banality–something which Saussure described and explained in the early 1900s. But Derrida does not understand Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics” either and most of Derrida’s expositors blindly repeat Derrida’s misunderstanding of Saussure.
Derrida’s greatest skill was his ability to take a banality, locate outdated texts to use as a basis for attacking that banality as if it represented a current problem in philosophy, dressing-up that banality in the most pretentious, affected, rambling and tortuous prose and present it to philosophically naive audiences as revolutionary work. Derrida’s greatest impact has been in aesthetic disciplines (e.g. architecture, fashion, sculpting, painting etc.). Derrida has had little if any influence on the syllabi of philosophy departments in the Aglosphere or in continental Europe (see for example Ian James’ “The New French Philosophy” and look at the syllabi of French universities via their web pages).
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on September 15, 2013 at 10:51
Thanks Lelord for these thoughts.
I’m partly in agreement but I think you overstate your case in a few respects.
“When Derrida started his career as a professional obscurantist” – this is unfair and too all-or-nothing. Derrida says many things which are unclear, and maybe he sometimes does so intentionally; but there is a good deal of evidence that a lot of what he says make sense (and you imply as such later in your comments) and is sincerely meant; so at worst he may tilt towards obscurantism in places but this does not constitute a “career as a professional obscurantist” (nice though that phrase is!).
The Hyppolite/Derrida conversation: maybe, but we need to take care to consider (a) if something is lost in translation, (b) if there is technical jargon here which we are missing, or (c) if off-the-cuff verbal comments should be treated in the same way as edited written text. But I agree, this conversation smells a bit brown.
“Someone genuinely interested in advancing human understanding in a fieeld of inquiry would not disregard the prior work that had been performed in that field.” – I don’t think this is fair or that it amounts to Frankfurtian bullshit: there are many analytical philosophers who ignore important work done in the area, to greater or lesser extents. We might chide this habit, but it doesn’t mean they are being disingenuous or phony.
“Philip’s apologetic [in the above comment] is Frankfurtian bullshit” – I don’t agree. It struck me as a sincere contribution to the debate.
But thank you very much for a detailed and instructive contribution; I’m particularly struck by the alleged conversational bullshit.
ericritic's avatarericritic on August 2, 2014 at 06:15
THIS is bullshit!!!
Unknown's avatarAnonymous on June 7, 2013 at 16:48
Interesting, seems to me that the shorthand date reduces the attack to a movie spectacular to go along with the spectacular nature of the attack; many films are advertised this way..
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cameron's avatarcameron on June 7, 2013 at 19:11
The name “9/11” stuck as a term in the US to some degree because in that country 911 is the number you dial for emergency services. It’s like 999 in the UK.
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diegovela's avatardiegovela on June 8, 2013 at 00:47
Repeating the phrases “9/11”, and “the terrorists” becomes a license not to think.
“for a language that admits its powerlessness and so is reduced to pronouncing mechanically a date, repeating it endlessly, as a kind of ritual incantation, a conjuring poem, a journalistic litany or rhetorical refrain that admits to not knowing what it’s talking about.”
Have you been to the US at any time over the past 12 years?
Derrida was saucing up the obvious. That it wasn’t obvious to you is telling.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 8, 2013 at 08:35
Thanks Diego, but that is indeed the point I was trying to make!
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diegovela's avatardiegovela on June 8, 2013 at 17:34
You said he was wrong. He was’t. But I should have been clearer. His warning was obvious, but it was also obvious that it would be ignored.
Your response is to quibble about names, when he is arguing the distinction between naming and description. Being a philosopher he’s partial to naming things, but he loads the process up with anxiious poetic fluff to soften the ideologizing and artificial ridgidity. But in the end it always returns to names: 9/11, The Bush Era, The Homeland, The Terrorists, The Heroes, etc. Naming is atemporal, expieience is time. Derrida’s comments were obvious to any historian or writer, but not to philosophers. Their blindness is more of a problem than his fluff, though both are equally symptomatic.
All this goes to explain why althouh you may write about the idea of politics, you will never have much to say about politics itself.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 8, 2013 at 18:40
Ah, I see where we disagree now.
I wasn’t trying to quibble about names. I was trying to say that Derrida’s explanation is simplistic. If (if) I read him rightly, he is giving an explanation for this ‘minimalist’ name – ‘a date and nothing more’. I think his explanation is naive: ‘we perhaps have no concept and no meaning available to us to name IN ANY OTHER WAY this “thing” that has just happened’ (emphasis added). Surely not.
When we make empirical claims, we should think like a social scientist, which sometimes involves comparing explanations. Here, I believe there are more plausible explanations than Derrida’s. Two other contributors to this thread (Anonymous, and Cameron) have added other explanations to mine.
So you may be right that I ‘will never have much to say about politics’ – most of my students have far more to say about politics than I do! – but this blog is more about how we think about politics, and I believe that Derrida makes a common mistake here from which we can all learn.
I’m not immune to this error either: my original post says that Derrida ‘does not think like a social scientist’. Do I really know that? Might he have thought like a social scientist, ruled out these alternative explanations, but not shown us why? I doubt it, but it’s possible.
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diegovela's avatardiegovela on June 8, 2013 at 18:45
Sorry, you didn’t say he was wrong, you said he was crap.
“To answer empirical questions, it is best to use a scientific approach”.
The study of history is empiricism but not science. The attempt at a scientific history failed disastrously. The formal arrangement of ideas and names don’t model the world very well, and a fondness for naming is just that. The sciences of politics and economics fail for the same reasons.
Derrida’s writing is mannered and “artsy”. If you want to understand his arguments look to the history of mannerism and the periods precedes them. If you want to understand contemporary claims for political “science” do the same.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 8, 2013 at 18:54
If I claim that the Iraq War happened for humanitarian reasons, and you tell me that it was about oil, and I say “no it isn’t”, and you ask for my evidence, and I say “oh it came to me in a dream”, that is not a good justification!
This is why it is sensible to consider different explanations. That’s the point I’m making about science. There’s lots of criticisms of scientific approaches like the ones you make, but the simple view I am putting forward is that when we put forward empirical claims we should (if possible) consider different explanations and try to give a sense of how strong we think the evidence is for one explanation over another.
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diegovela's avatardiegovela on June 8, 2013 at 20:48
The two poles you use -humanitarianism/oil- fall within the scope of normative debate in the US. Debates elsewhere -Spain, Sweden, Lebanon, Iran, Nigeria- over the same US policies follow other lines. If you want to understand US policies it helps to understand how “humanitarianism/oil”, messianism and self-interest, are united in the American imagination. Americans always say “But we’re here to help” and believe it. Others will demur.
http://wemeantwell.com
I am not going to give more weight regarding Palestinian politics to the opinions of an Israeli political scientist, based solely on on his expertise, than to the opinions of a Palestinian taxi driver. That we now have something called “feminism” doesn’t mean that the feminism of men and of women are equivalent. Saying “I’m a feminist” means no more than sitting in a cafe and proclaiming yourself a revolutionary. That’s the absurdity behind the McGinn fiasco. Rationalists rationalize, and the self-blindness can become comic or tragic depending on the result or your point of view. “Pretentious, Moi?”
Self-awareness cannot be naturalized. Politics without self-awareness is error. And the idea of self-awareness is not self-awareness. Absent an acceptance of hard determinism there’s no way to resolve the conflict as a “science”
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Unknown's avatarJacques derrida on June 8, 2013 at 15:47
Letter a nietzsche expert? This is funny
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Aaron Jacob Willman's avatarAaron Jacob Willman on June 8, 2013 at 22:52
“there were two other locations: an attack on the Pentagon, and a plane that crashed in Philadelphia” the fourth plane, UA Flight 93, actually crashed in Western Pennsylvania, in Somerset County. The Crash was closer to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, than it was to Philadelphia. i remember this well, as i was in attending school in Pittsburgh at the time, and i will never forget the people who were panicking when they heard reports that a plane was headed for Downtown Pittsburgh. just wanted to point that out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 9, 2013 at 10:06
Thanks for correcting me, Aaron – I’ve edited the post accordingly.
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Unknown's avatarAnonymous on June 10, 2013 at 15:42
There’s also the 4th of July. I also noticed when I lived in Italy that they have a tendency to talk of dates rather than events–via 20th September, for instance, among many other date-oriented events. As an empirical matter–which you rightly direct our attention to–9/11 used to be called “the tragic events of September 11”, then it got shortened, largely I would guess out of ease (though we’d have to do the research on this). To counter the crap point, and insist on Bullshit, Americans thought they understood this event just fine, it wasn’t ineffable at all. That was the problem, I think.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 10, 2013 at 16:12
Interesting point about Italy. This could become an interesting empirical project: what explains the naming of ‘events’ and how does this differ in different countries and at different times?
On your crap/bullshit point, I’ve got some sympathy with Derrida on this – there was and is a lot of parroting of names and ignoring the complexities.
But more to the point, on the two notions of bullshit which I discussed in Part 1 (Harry Frankfurt’s and Jerry Cohen’s), Derrida could only be talking bullshit if his comments were phony or unclarifiably unclear, respectively. I don’t think either applies here, though. So, even if I’m wrong about ignoring the complexities – which I might be – that still makes Derrida’s comment crap, not bullshit!
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John Casey's avatarJohn Casey on June 10, 2013 at 17:49
Good points Adrian.
My sense is that he’s talking out his arse by ignoring (1) the obvious counterexamples that would occur to any reasonably well-informed person and (2) the easily checkable history of the phrase. For that reason, I think he’s speaking with a superficial disregard for whether what he says is true. It’s calculated to look deep, when in fact, it’s just not. It seems the BS designation requires one diagnose *the intention* of the speaker, rather than the simple truth or falsity of the proposition.
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C's avatarC on June 10, 2013 at 19:51
“I believe always in the necessity of being attentive first of all to this phenomenon of language, naming, and dating, to this repetition compulsion (at once rhetorical, magical, and poetic). To what this compulsion signifies, translates, or betrays. Not in order to isolate ourselves in language, as people in too much of a rush would like us to believe, but on the contrary, in order to try to understand what is going on precisely *beyond* language and what is pushing us to repeat endlessly and without knowing what we are talking about, precisely there where language and the concept come up against their limits: “September 11, September 11, le 11 septembre, 9/11.”
“But we can and, I believe, must (and this duty is at once philosophical and political) distinguish between the supposedly brute fact, the “impression” and the interpretation. It is of course just about impossible, I realize, to distinguish the “brute” fact from the system that produces the “information” about it. But it is necessary to push the analysis as far as possible.”
Seems to me that the particular point Derrida is making is neither bullshit nor crap. At worst it is belabored, but if such is a sin. . ..
The problem he is trying to explore is clearly indicated: it is the problem of thinking the singular, the event, etc. In this case, it is the problem of thinking *that* 9/11 is a singular event, that it somehow erupted from nowhere and without explanation. This is a persistent problem in continental philosophy and one which many anglo-american philosophers have relegated to the status of a pseudo-problem. This may have to do with the persistence of a certain Kantian set of assumptions in c.p. But it certainly has to do with a critique of the blithely unreflective use of concepts that can be traced back to Socrates as earlier commenters have said.
But nevertheless I take D. to be pointing out that naming the event itself is neither metaphysically nor ethically-politically innocent. And as a good philosopher he wants to start by unpacking assumptions rather than just jumping in and pontificating about the meaning of the event. He doesn’t want to offer an explanation of some sociological or historical fact (why “9/11” rather than “day of doom”?) and so the contrasts with other “singular” events seems rather beside the point. He isn’t really interested in the peculiarity of this name (a date). He is interested in what is being obscured by the naming, by the production of this instantaneous memorializing, what is being assumed or forgotten.
Perhaps he could speak more concisely, perhaps he could just get on with being a public intellectual and telling us something that we want to hear (yes 9/11 is singular, no 9/11 is not singular). But, casting the issue in the context of crap-bullshit tells us more about how you think than how D. thinks. Because Derrida of course knows that philosophers (or better thinkers, since philosophy often fails to think) are more interested in the question than the answer. Not “is Derrida crap or bullshit?” but “what does it mean to ask, as you have done, whether Derrida is crap or bullshit?” The latter is the philosopher’s work, the former. . .well, we might ask Blogoshite or Bleitershite just as reasonably?
The philosopher or the thinker should start with the presumptions of the very question itself. The sociologist just wants the answer. about the condition of the blogosphere that explains asking such a question.
So I would invert the opposition, and say that we should be thankful that D. does not just replace the work of thinking with the empirical answers that you desire, that’s why he is a philosopher and not a sociologist.
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John Casey's avatarJohn Casey on June 10, 2013 at 20:31
C.,
You write:
“But, casting the issue in the context of crap-bullshit tells us more about how you think than how D. thinks.”
Oh, come now. I think the point has been made above that Derrida’s observation was (1) not really factually accurate and (or) (2) not particularly original or interesting. In light of this allegation, Adrian wondered what sort of failure this was. Some call bullshit, others just crap. Other answers are possible, but they haven’t been under discussion. You don’t think it’s a failure. But that’s a different thing from accusing others of falsely dichotomizing.
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C's avatarC on June 10, 2013 at 21:54
Well, no, John. I do not accuse of false dichotomiziing (I presume a third alternative is at least conceptually entertained, “neither”). Nonetheless, there are assumptions built into the choice of the question–assumptions that might remain occluded and after which one might ask.
If I were to accuse, it might be of a hasty or even sloppy reading that produces the very answer to one’s own question in advance. And then I might wonder what it is about the very question itself–crap or bullshit–that might incline a reader to such a hasty reading that goes against the very intentions expressed by the text. And even, how the very terms chosen indicate a sort of cavalier sensibility that has already perhaps judged the text and knows what it must find in it and so accuses the author of doing crappy sociology rather than what the author suggests is his aim. (Which isn’t to say that such an author might not aim to do philosophy and end up doing crappy sociology–the death of the author and all of that. . . .).
“in order to try to understand what is going on precisely *beyond* language and what is pushing us to repeat endlessly and without knowing what we are talking about”
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John Casey's avatarJohn Casey on June 10, 2013 at 22:21
C.,
Let’s try this again. You write: “If I were to accuse, it might be of a hasty or even sloppy reading that produces the very answer to one’s own question in advance. And then I might wonder what it is about the very question itself–crap or bullshit–that might incline a reader to such a hasty reading that goes against the very intentions expressed by the text.”
Now in addition to the presumption of false dichotomy (which you accuse of, but obviously do not hold, as you point out), you accuse the critics of circularity. I don’t think this is really correct.
Here’s how the discussion has gone, I think. Derrida said x. People said, “hey, I think that is wrong for reasons x and y.” Then, in addition to that, some (Adrian) said “and I think to say x, in light of A and B, is just crap.” Others said, “no, I think it’s bullshitting.” These aren’t the only two that exist, and no one seems to have presumed or entertained that. Perhaps there are others, perhaps these are wrong. But your disagreement is not with that, but with the initial negative evaluation (i.e., it’s wrong for reasons x and y).
You apparently think what he said was insightful and not wrong. So obviously you don’t proceed to step two of the evaluation.
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C.'s avatarC. on June 10, 2013 at 22:48
Sure–please do try this again. But, it’s not a tricky point–to accuse person x of saying something crap or bullshit when what you think s/he says is not a plausible way of reading the text is something close to a straw –f you prefer the language of informal logic. (It’s not really a straw man, I’d say, but illustrates a type of rational-communicative-intellectual failure of which straw men are instances as well).
Though, I would argue that D. is saying that philosophically we should begin by thinking about the assumptions and the decisions that condition such a reading or such a question. That’s fairly clearly what D. seems to be saying in his introduction to the interview from which the passage is taken–we must start by thinking through the assumptions of the question and not too hastily acceding to them (a matter of philosophical and political duty in fact). The irony, of course, that apparently I didn’t make explicit enough is that this a lesson that we might learn from D. in the case of asking a question like–crap or bullshit? The negative evaluation might at least wait until we have understood and explicated what he says and why he says it. A few paragraphs later D even says we are just “preparing ourselves to say something about it.” He hasn’t done anything other than begin a sort of preliminary consideration of what is being assumed by the name he is being asked to think about–remember it is his interviewer who asks him whether he thinks “9/11 is a major event.” He is beginning a response to that question by asking what is even being assumed by that question. Not much more. But who needs the rest of the interview or think about context to judge what he is saying as bullshit or crap?
“The bullshitter may or may not deceive us, or intend to deceive us, about the alleged facts. ‘What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise.’ In short, the essence of Frankfurt-bullshit is phoniness, indifference to truth.”
Indeed.
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John Casey's avatarJohn Casey on June 10, 2013 at 23:59
C.,
Right. I think I understand what Derrida is saying just fine and I think it’s a very plausible way of reading the text. The disagreement is about whether Derrida said anything worthwhile or true. Some think not. I concur with them. Then the question is what sort of thing might be said about that. The second is a different question.
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joblow2000@yahoo.com's avatarjoblow2000@yahoo.com on June 11, 2013 at 09:56
RIP Derrida
this man is DEAD. RIP
Dead people cannot speak from the grave. Let this man be in peace at the cemetary..
Humanities will be gone gone by 2020.. Humanities will be obsolete by internet by 2020
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Pat's avatarPat on June 11, 2013 at 16:26
Adrian (and others),
I’d like to offer something. I often use this example from Derrida when I teach informal logic, and while I don’t claim to comprehend Derrida’s philosophy, I think I understand one of his points regarding 9/11.
I discuss this example while discussing why things and events are named as they are, and the power that such names can have over our ability to think critically about them. Other names in my discussion include, for example, “The Death Tax” instead of “The Estate Tax,” the “War on Terror” instead of the “War in Iraq,” the way that corporate names overpower the thing itself (Kleenex for tissue, Xerox for copies), etc. The first two are largely attributable to Frank Luntz, a GOP strategist and wordsmith, hired to sway public opinion on critical issues in virtue of renaming them. (Sidenote: George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Elizabeth Wehling are good at diagnosing this kind of thing, whether or not one agrees with the underlying cog sci or their tactics.)
So, what about Derrida and 9/11? I ask my students (one you alluded to above), when did Pearl Harbor happen? Most don’t know; a few, usually with ties to the military, know it was December 7, 1941. I then ask them, when did 9/11 happen? And they see the absurdity in asking the question, though, again, some of them don’t know the year.
I think this is part – and only part – of Derrida’s point. “A date and nothing more… a kind of ritual incantation…” The name inscribes the event into the very nature of time in a particular way. It marks the event as akin to a holiday, something that we have to go through every year, whether we want to remember it or not. (Think of how the political phrase “Never Forget” is tied into this naming of the event – of course we cannot forget if it happens annually.) Not so with Pearl Harbor, nor May ’68, etc. One of the effects of naming the event this way is that it annually reintroduces the threat of terror.
One of your objections matches one offered by my students. We don’t just call it “The Attack on the Twin Towers” because of the attack on the Pentagon and the crashed plane in PA. But I don’t think that’s enough. I want to say that, generally speaking, when people bring up 9/11, most people think of New York before those other two (with obvious exceptions for those geographically near the other two or who had close family members or friends near the other two). The more likely explanation is that naming 9/11 “9/11” was a concerted effort, one created by an echo chamber between politicians and mainstream media. Such echo chambers are well documented.
Sorry this is long, but a few last things. You suggest that Derrida’s ‘explanation’ of the name 9/11 fails because there are alternative explanations; likewise, you suggest we need to look for help from social scientists here. I don’t think Derrida is trying to explain the name 9/11; rather, he’s trying to help us understand the effects of naming it 9/11. Some of those include us not thinking very hard about the name, how it’s ‘unique’, what it does, etc. And there are surely other points, alluded to by others above, about ‘citation’ and Derrida’s method.
Second, someone might suggest my reading of Derrida is wrong. I’m fine with that. I think it’s nonetheless productive for thinking about the name ‘9/11’ differently for what it does. Most of my students, and many adults and friends I’ve told this to, say they’ve never thought about it this way. And it stems from reading Derrida and commentary on him. In other words, if I’m wrong, misreadings can be productive.
Lastly, I have no idea whether Derrida’s prose here falls into bullshit or crap, on the views under consideration.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 11, 2013 at 16:44
Thanks Pat, that is an exceptionally useful contribution, so as a thankyou, let me point people towards your blog: http://denehy.blogspot.com.
(1) I am very attracted to your idea that the term ‘9/11’ leads to an annual remembrance, unlike ‘the Twin Towers attack’, say, as described in your paragraph starting ‘One of your objections’.
I’d need more evidence that this was a concerted effort between politicians and the media – but I haven’t provided much evidence for my own claims, either, so I don’t mean that critically. And I’m certainly open to your argument.
(2) However, I am not convinced about the explanation/effect claim, in your third-from-last paragraph. As I read Derrida, he is saying or at least implying that this does explain why 9/11 was called 9/11 – hence words he uses like ‘marks’ and ‘admits’. To me that sounds like an explanation. I might be wrong, and/or something might have been lost in translation.
For what it’s worth, I do believe Derrida can be very perceptive at spotting the presuppositions of terms we use, but in the passage I quote above he does seem to me to be primarily talking about why we use these terms.
But I am far from certain about this, and I am extremely grateful to you for presenting a different intepretation like this, which I take very seriously; in Hobbes scholarship, which is my primary field, we regularly read and re-read passages with different interpretations in mind, to see what ‘fits’ best.
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diegovela's avatardiegovela on June 14, 2013 at 21:06
I’m amazed.
Pat: “I discuss this example while discussing why things and events are named as they are, and the power that such names can have over our ability to think critically about them.”
Diegov: “Repeating the phrases “9/11″, and “the terrorists” becomes a license not to think.”
Pat:”Other names in my discussion include, for example, ‘The Death Tax’ instead of ‘The Estate Tax,’ the ‘War on Terror’ instead of the ‘War in Iraq,’ ”
Diegov: “9/11, The Bush Era, The Homeland, The Terrorists, The Heroes, etc.”
I really thought I was being clear. “Us” and “Them” are simple names. People who divide the world into those binary categories choose not to think.
And stil no discussion of issues in the world.
As I said: amazing.
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Maria Snyman's avatarMaria Snyman on August 9, 2015 at 02:23
Derrida basically talks about what is called “name-calling” – he tried to demonstrate its power to position bodies, to reduce meaning … Derrida deals with things at a very basic level, at a level where the very simplicity of it makes it enigmatic – he plays on a monstrous scale, not many people can take such enormous (serious) play:
name-calling
noun
abusive language or insults.
“the party’s internal bickering and name-calling”
https://www.google.co.za/webhp?sourceid ... me-calling
Read Jensen’s Gradiva, and see if you get it.
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Adam Woodhouse's avatarAdam Woodhouse on January 19, 2016 at 19:10
I enjoyed this a lot Adrian! I would call bullshit on Derrida here, in the sense of packaging quite a simple and even trite idea in flowery, obfuscating language. It seems quite obvious that the reasons why we choose to use certain terms to designate key historical events are worthy of study; whether Derrida helps us much is less clear… Of course, a label of this sort cannot capture the full complexity of a profoundly important historical moment, but the fact that such a label is being used doesn’t mean that we can’t interrogate what lies behind it.
And let me add ‘The Ides of March’. Any proper study of this kind of naming in the West would have to go back at least to Greco-Roman antiquity: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... id_Mar.jpg
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on January 20, 2016 at 18:48
Thanks for the kind words, Adam. However, I don’t agree that we should call something “bullshit” if it involves what you accuse Derrida of (“packaging quite a simple and even trite idea in flowery, obfuscating language”). For me, and indeed for Harry Frankfurt and Gerry Cohen, that’s not best called bullshit.
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Adam Woodhouse's avatarAdam Woodhouse on January 19, 2016 at 19:19
To be clear, I think the passage of Derrida you cite is both bullshit and crap; bullshit in that it dresses up a simple argument, and crap in that the argument is incorrect, or at least so undercooked that it doesn’t carry much weight.
And ‘9/11’ gained currency in part because of how the Americans call the police. In the UK we still say ‘September the 11th’, right?
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rogerglewis's avatarrogerglewis on May 3, 2017 at 09:39
Reblogged this on MUSO MUSINGS ON FATHERHOOD THEORY AND STUFF and commented:
A satisfying Part 2 on Bull Shit. A disappointing absence of Freudian Psychoanalysis.
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David Ashton's avatarDavid Ashton on December 3, 2017 at 22:13
911 is the emergency call number like 999 in the UK.
This just one tiny detail in the Triple Towers Demolition Inside Job Conspiracy Theories
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william reichert's avatarwilliam reichert on March 15, 2018 at 18:42
I believe Derrida writes in such an unclear way so as to make his ideas clear only to him. In this way ,with his ideas interpreted by others according to their own prejudices and not clearly understood to mean something concrete, his ideas are not subject to refutation or criticism.
Not subject to understanding, therefore unassailable.His ideas will eventually mean something different to everyone. Kind of like God’s will. Maybe this is the point.
There is no author to question. To each his own.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on March 15, 2018 at 19:17
Do you have evidence for this, William? Or do you mean “suspect” or “wonder if”, rather than “believe”?
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william reichert's avatarwilliam reichert on March 15, 2018 at 20:43
As a post modern reader I am permitted to interpret a piece of writing using my own criteria. And I think this is what Derrida is doing in line with h
is idea of the death of the author .
In other words, “there are words on the page, make up your own meaning”.
This is the way I interpret it. Asking for “evidence” is so rational, so modern, so logical. So
scientific. Not so Derrida.
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Wordsmakesensepeopledont's avatarWordsmakesensepeopledont on April 4, 2019 at 11:36
I watched his doc and had to shut it off. As pointed out in your comments, he takes a lot of ideas already well in circulation and common sense, then tries to associate it as his. Takes rebellion renames it by adding De to construction- “Philosopher”. The above comment makes me cringe…This is exactly the reason our society is stupid…Words are all already “defined” “they all” “already” have “precise definitions” for a “reason”, they have direct meanings that are easily accessible. Con artists like to think we are here to define words our self, you will notice if you do research most frauds depend on you not checking the etymology or basic dictionary and cover their redefinition tracks by selling you on we are here to interpret things our self…no we are not. I have busted so many liars/frauds just by using a basic dictionary, and of coarse they use the excuse as above, trying to make it seem like using words correctly is part of some ideology or inartistic. Derrida, Freud, Jung, all these guys are BS, how you know is they never answer questions, (watch Derrida’s doc) like silence means they are above such a low question (they can’t answer) they just spout their own ideas like all cons, say a few true things that open your mind then go full in on horse behind loading…It’s sad no one today can do any critical thinking, every person I know thinks if a guy has a philosophy title or a so called psychology book that means some part of it, or everything they write and say is truth? Just like religion; this is exactly the same mistake religious followers made/make. All we have done is rename a bible a book, a simple label switch, still trialing “the way” religion paved out…and you can see above examples of new age religious believers. Number one way to tell someone isn’t intellectual is they name drop, Jung said, Freud said, Hagel said, Mathew chapter 6, John chapter 9 verse 4; same old followers thinking they are smart for repeating what is sold as truth…What about what you think? Let me check my phone. If you don’t have your own ideas you are not intellectual. Own ideas pertains to- there is enough truth to go around for everyone to discover- you won’t find it in some guys book, and you won’t find it believing you are here to redefine terms and words, you find it by discovering the flaw in those minds who thought they were thinking before you…I’m really disappointed everywhere I turn to try and find real thinkers all I find is people with there heads up some cons ass- and yes I have a book coming which has nothing but Diction references in the bibliography, full of new and original provable ideas, not one single he/she said…so I expect nothing less from people I read…and who teaches us we have to put he/she said in everything “SCHOOL” if everyone is wrong then you can see the problem of doing that. They are forcing you into lies, narrative, being a follower and a con like them…real thinkers only use he/she said in referencing something they disagree with…in school you are not even allowed to do that you must have “supporting he/she said”…and this is why art sucks and no one can think for themselves…plagiarism in your own words(what a joke) and redefining the already defined…do not make up your own meaning instead go to the dictionaries for it and see how intelligent you become…
"
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Lelord K's avatarLelord K on September 8, 2013 at 18:13
The historical text that you are seeking doesn’t exist because the event that you are describing never took place. Derrida was tilting at windmills and Phillip above is continuing that tradition. When Derrida started his career as a professional obscurantist no contemporary linguist or philosopher subscribed to a naive referential theory of language–which is essentially what Derrida was critiquing. In simple terms, the referential theory of language is “[t]he idea…that linguistic expressions have the meanings they do because they stand for things; what they mean is what they stand
for.” (Lycan 2000, p.4) Wittgenstein’s “Philosophical Investigations”–which was published in 1953–contains a critique of the referential theory of language. Desilet tells us in his eulogy for Derrida, “when I met with Derrida at UC Irvine in 1993, he told me that he had read nothing of Wittgenstein”. Desilet proceeds to provide an apologetic for Derrida’s negligence but it is untenable; such an egregious neglect of due diligence is unforgivable. I have several introductiory and intermediate texts on the philosophy of language (Lycan 2000; Morris 2007; Miller 1998; Searle 1971; Devitt & Sterelny 1999) and Derrida’s name does not appear in any of them. Derrida has no impact on the philosophy of language. Similarly, Derrida’s attacks on foundationalism were also irrelevant because Dewey and Wittgenstein had also provided criticism of this matter well before Derrida did so. Derrida was fighting ghosts. In his “Of Grammatology” he used Rousseau’s “Essay on the Origin of Languages” from 1781 as a source text to critique Western philosophy of language. That is akin to writing a critque on modern medicine using Galen’s “De motu musculorum”. To the extent that Derrida had no knowledge of Wittgenstein or of Dewey when he began his pseudo-heroic, pseudo-revolutionary project his work is bullshit in the Frankfurtian sense. Someone genuinely interested in advancing human understanding in a fieeld of inquiry would not disregard the prior work that had been performed in that field. I think this meets Frankfurt’s criterion “lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are”. A specific example of such bullshit would be Derrida’s argument in “Of Grammatology” that writing precedes speech. His devout expositors (e.g. Norris) struggle to reconcile this grand pronouncement with reality–and that is somewhat amusing to read–but these efforts have the effect of just heaping more bullshit upon Derrida’s bullshit. An apologetic for bullshit inevitably turns out to be just more bullshit.
A fine example of Frankfurtian bullshit appears in a Q&A after Derrida delivered “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences” at a 1966 international symposium hosted by the Johns Hopkins University. This is noteworthy because both parties to the dialogue are exchanging Frankfurtian bullshit. Usually it is only one party that provides the Frankfurtian bullshit but in this case we see a dialogic form of mutual bullshitting:
JEAN HYPPOLITE: I should simply like to ask Derrida, whose presentation and discussion I have admired, for some explanation of what is, no doubt, the technical point of departure of the presentation. That is, a question of the concept of the center of structure, or what a center might mean. When I take, for example, the structure of
certain algebraic constructions [ensembles], where is the center? Is the center the knowledge of general rules which, after a fashion, allow us to understand the interplay of the elements? Or is the center certain elements which enjoy a particular privilege within the ensemble? My question is, I think, relevant since one cannot think of the structure without the center, and the center itself is “destructured,” is it not the center is not structured. I think we have a great deal to learn as we study the sciences of man; we have much to learn from the natural sciences. They are like an image of the problems which we, in turn, put to ourselves. With Einstein, for example, we see the end of a kind of privilege of empiric evidence. And in that connection we see a constant appear, a constant which is a combination of space-time, which does not belong to any of the experiments who live the experience, but which, in a way, dominates the whole construct; and this notion of the constantis this the center? But natural science has gone much further. It no longer searches for the constant. It considers that there are events, somehow improbable, which bring about for a while a structure and an invariability. Is it that everything happens as though certain mutations, which don’t come from any author or any hand, and which are, like the poor reading of a manuscript, realized [only] as a defect of a structure, simply exist as mutations? Is this the case? Is it a question of a structure which is in the nature of a genotype produced by chance from an improbable happening, of a meeting which involved a series of chemical molecules and which organized them in a certain way, creating a genotype which will be realized, and whose origin is lost in a mutation? Is that what you are tending toward? Because, for my part, I feel that I am going in that direction and that I find there the example even when we are talking about a kind of end of history of the integration of the historic; under the form of event, so long as it is improbable, at the very center of the realization of the structure, but a history which no longer has anything to do with eschatological history, a history which loses itself always in its own pursuit, since the origin is perpetually displaced. And you know that the language we are speaking today, à propos of language, is spoken about genotypes, and about information theory. Can this sign without sense, this perpetual turning back, be understood in the light of a kind of philosophy of nature in which nature will not only have realized a mutation, but will have realized a perpetual mutant: man? That is, a kind of error of transmission or of malformation would have created a being which is always malformed, whose adaptation is a perpetual aberration, and the problem of man would become part of a much larger field in which what you want to do, what you are in the process of doing, that is, the loss of the centerthe fact that there is no privileged or original structurecould be seen under this very form to which man would be restored. Is this what you wanted to say, or were you getting at something else? That is my last question, and I apologize for having held the floor so long.
JACQUES DERRIDA: With the last part of your remarks, I can say that I agree fully but you were asking a question. I was wondering myself if I know where I am going. So I would answer you by saying, first, that I am trying, precisely, to put myself at a point so that I do not know any longer where I am going. And, as to this loss of the center, I refuse to approach an idea of the “non-center” which would no longer be the tragedy of the loss of the center this sadness is classical. And I don’t mean to say that I thought of approaching an idea by which this loss of the center would be an affirmation. As to what you said about the nature and the situation of man in the products of nature, I think that we have already discussed this together. I will assume entirely with you this partiality which you expressed with the exception of your [choice of] words, and here the words are more than mere words, as always. That is to say, I cannot accept your precise formulation, although I am not prepared to offer a precise alternative. So, it being understood that I do not know where I am going, that the words which we are
using do not satisfy me, with these reservations in mind, I am entirely in agreement with you. Concerning the first part of your question, the Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability it is, finally, the concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of some thingof a center starting from which an observer could master the fieldbut the very concept of the game which, after all, I was trying to elaborate.
HYPPOLITE: It is a constant in the game?
DERRIDA: It is the constant of the game. . .
HYPPOLITE: It is the rule of the game.
Mutual bullshitting is unusual in that the usual motives for bullshitting are absent. Is the above dialogue a performance intended for the consumption of the audience? Is it more like mutual masturbation, a mutual indulgence of the other’s bullshitting for some sort of gratification? In any event it is impressive in the commitment to bullshitting that Derrida and Hyppolite show. Derrida shows an ambition that culminates in ” the Einsteinian constant is not a constant”–certainly the crowning glory of his heap of bullshit.
But it would be unfair to characterise all of Derrida’s work as Frankfurtian bullshit–indeed some of it is–but Derrida exhibited a certain virtuosity in relation to promoting unclear thinking, bad writing and ignorance that extends well beyond Frankfurtian bullshit. As far as I know there is no Cohenian bullshit–unclarifiable unclairty–in Derrida’s work. Derrida’s voluminous writings are resolvable into lucid and compact prose. The problem is that the end product–of the clarification–is tautology, truism, banality, false dichotomy or just plain falsity. The extract on 9/11 is an exemplar of this and I would say that Philip’s apologetic is Frankfurtian bullshit. Derrida’s pompous rambling resolves into a truism, a banality–something which Saussure described and explained in the early 1900s. But Derrida does not understand Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics” either and most of Derrida’s expositors blindly repeat Derrida’s misunderstanding of Saussure.
Derrida’s greatest skill was his ability to take a banality, locate outdated texts to use as a basis for attacking that banality as if it represented a current problem in philosophy, dressing-up that banality in the most pretentious, affected, rambling and tortuous prose and present it to philosophically naive audiences as revolutionary work. Derrida’s greatest impact has been in aesthetic disciplines (e.g. architecture, fashion, sculpting, painting etc.). Derrida has had little if any influence on the syllabi of philosophy departments in the Aglosphere or in continental Europe (see for example Ian James’ “The New French Philosophy” and look at the syllabi of French universities via their web pages).
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on September 15, 2013 at 10:51
Thanks Lelord for these thoughts.
I’m partly in agreement but I think you overstate your case in a few respects.
“When Derrida started his career as a professional obscurantist” – this is unfair and too all-or-nothing. Derrida says many things which are unclear, and maybe he sometimes does so intentionally; but there is a good deal of evidence that a lot of what he says make sense (and you imply as such later in your comments) and is sincerely meant; so at worst he may tilt towards obscurantism in places but this does not constitute a “career as a professional obscurantist” (nice though that phrase is!).
The Hyppolite/Derrida conversation: maybe, but we need to take care to consider (a) if something is lost in translation, (b) if there is technical jargon here which we are missing, or (c) if off-the-cuff verbal comments should be treated in the same way as edited written text. But I agree, this conversation smells a bit brown.
“Someone genuinely interested in advancing human understanding in a fieeld of inquiry would not disregard the prior work that had been performed in that field.” – I don’t think this is fair or that it amounts to Frankfurtian bullshit: there are many analytical philosophers who ignore important work done in the area, to greater or lesser extents. We might chide this habit, but it doesn’t mean they are being disingenuous or phony.
“Philip’s apologetic [in the above comment] is Frankfurtian bullshit” – I don’t agree. It struck me as a sincere contribution to the debate.
But thank you very much for a detailed and instructive contribution; I’m particularly struck by the alleged conversational bullshit.
ericritic's avatarericritic on August 2, 2014 at 06:15
THIS is bullshit!!!
Unknown's avatarAnonymous on June 7, 2013 at 16:48
Interesting, seems to me that the shorthand date reduces the attack to a movie spectacular to go along with the spectacular nature of the attack; many films are advertised this way..
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cameron's avatarcameron on June 7, 2013 at 19:11
The name “9/11” stuck as a term in the US to some degree because in that country 911 is the number you dial for emergency services. It’s like 999 in the UK.
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diegovela's avatardiegovela on June 8, 2013 at 00:47
Repeating the phrases “9/11”, and “the terrorists” becomes a license not to think.
“for a language that admits its powerlessness and so is reduced to pronouncing mechanically a date, repeating it endlessly, as a kind of ritual incantation, a conjuring poem, a journalistic litany or rhetorical refrain that admits to not knowing what it’s talking about.”
Have you been to the US at any time over the past 12 years?
Derrida was saucing up the obvious. That it wasn’t obvious to you is telling.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 8, 2013 at 08:35
Thanks Diego, but that is indeed the point I was trying to make!
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diegovela's avatardiegovela on June 8, 2013 at 17:34
You said he was wrong. He was’t. But I should have been clearer. His warning was obvious, but it was also obvious that it would be ignored.
Your response is to quibble about names, when he is arguing the distinction between naming and description. Being a philosopher he’s partial to naming things, but he loads the process up with anxiious poetic fluff to soften the ideologizing and artificial ridgidity. But in the end it always returns to names: 9/11, The Bush Era, The Homeland, The Terrorists, The Heroes, etc. Naming is atemporal, expieience is time. Derrida’s comments were obvious to any historian or writer, but not to philosophers. Their blindness is more of a problem than his fluff, though both are equally symptomatic.
All this goes to explain why althouh you may write about the idea of politics, you will never have much to say about politics itself.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 8, 2013 at 18:40
Ah, I see where we disagree now.
I wasn’t trying to quibble about names. I was trying to say that Derrida’s explanation is simplistic. If (if) I read him rightly, he is giving an explanation for this ‘minimalist’ name – ‘a date and nothing more’. I think his explanation is naive: ‘we perhaps have no concept and no meaning available to us to name IN ANY OTHER WAY this “thing” that has just happened’ (emphasis added). Surely not.
When we make empirical claims, we should think like a social scientist, which sometimes involves comparing explanations. Here, I believe there are more plausible explanations than Derrida’s. Two other contributors to this thread (Anonymous, and Cameron) have added other explanations to mine.
So you may be right that I ‘will never have much to say about politics’ – most of my students have far more to say about politics than I do! – but this blog is more about how we think about politics, and I believe that Derrida makes a common mistake here from which we can all learn.
I’m not immune to this error either: my original post says that Derrida ‘does not think like a social scientist’. Do I really know that? Might he have thought like a social scientist, ruled out these alternative explanations, but not shown us why? I doubt it, but it’s possible.
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diegovela's avatardiegovela on June 8, 2013 at 18:45
Sorry, you didn’t say he was wrong, you said he was crap.
“To answer empirical questions, it is best to use a scientific approach”.
The study of history is empiricism but not science. The attempt at a scientific history failed disastrously. The formal arrangement of ideas and names don’t model the world very well, and a fondness for naming is just that. The sciences of politics and economics fail for the same reasons.
Derrida’s writing is mannered and “artsy”. If you want to understand his arguments look to the history of mannerism and the periods precedes them. If you want to understand contemporary claims for political “science” do the same.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 8, 2013 at 18:54
If I claim that the Iraq War happened for humanitarian reasons, and you tell me that it was about oil, and I say “no it isn’t”, and you ask for my evidence, and I say “oh it came to me in a dream”, that is not a good justification!
This is why it is sensible to consider different explanations. That’s the point I’m making about science. There’s lots of criticisms of scientific approaches like the ones you make, but the simple view I am putting forward is that when we put forward empirical claims we should (if possible) consider different explanations and try to give a sense of how strong we think the evidence is for one explanation over another.
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diegovela's avatardiegovela on June 8, 2013 at 20:48
The two poles you use -humanitarianism/oil- fall within the scope of normative debate in the US. Debates elsewhere -Spain, Sweden, Lebanon, Iran, Nigeria- over the same US policies follow other lines. If you want to understand US policies it helps to understand how “humanitarianism/oil”, messianism and self-interest, are united in the American imagination. Americans always say “But we’re here to help” and believe it. Others will demur.
http://wemeantwell.com
I am not going to give more weight regarding Palestinian politics to the opinions of an Israeli political scientist, based solely on on his expertise, than to the opinions of a Palestinian taxi driver. That we now have something called “feminism” doesn’t mean that the feminism of men and of women are equivalent. Saying “I’m a feminist” means no more than sitting in a cafe and proclaiming yourself a revolutionary. That’s the absurdity behind the McGinn fiasco. Rationalists rationalize, and the self-blindness can become comic or tragic depending on the result or your point of view. “Pretentious, Moi?”
Self-awareness cannot be naturalized. Politics without self-awareness is error. And the idea of self-awareness is not self-awareness. Absent an acceptance of hard determinism there’s no way to resolve the conflict as a “science”
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Unknown's avatarJacques derrida on June 8, 2013 at 15:47
Letter a nietzsche expert? This is funny
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Aaron Jacob Willman's avatarAaron Jacob Willman on June 8, 2013 at 22:52
“there were two other locations: an attack on the Pentagon, and a plane that crashed in Philadelphia” the fourth plane, UA Flight 93, actually crashed in Western Pennsylvania, in Somerset County. The Crash was closer to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, than it was to Philadelphia. i remember this well, as i was in attending school in Pittsburgh at the time, and i will never forget the people who were panicking when they heard reports that a plane was headed for Downtown Pittsburgh. just wanted to point that out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 9, 2013 at 10:06
Thanks for correcting me, Aaron – I’ve edited the post accordingly.
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Unknown's avatarAnonymous on June 10, 2013 at 15:42
There’s also the 4th of July. I also noticed when I lived in Italy that they have a tendency to talk of dates rather than events–via 20th September, for instance, among many other date-oriented events. As an empirical matter–which you rightly direct our attention to–9/11 used to be called “the tragic events of September 11”, then it got shortened, largely I would guess out of ease (though we’d have to do the research on this). To counter the crap point, and insist on Bullshit, Americans thought they understood this event just fine, it wasn’t ineffable at all. That was the problem, I think.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 10, 2013 at 16:12
Interesting point about Italy. This could become an interesting empirical project: what explains the naming of ‘events’ and how does this differ in different countries and at different times?
On your crap/bullshit point, I’ve got some sympathy with Derrida on this – there was and is a lot of parroting of names and ignoring the complexities.
But more to the point, on the two notions of bullshit which I discussed in Part 1 (Harry Frankfurt’s and Jerry Cohen’s), Derrida could only be talking bullshit if his comments were phony or unclarifiably unclear, respectively. I don’t think either applies here, though. So, even if I’m wrong about ignoring the complexities – which I might be – that still makes Derrida’s comment crap, not bullshit!
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John Casey's avatarJohn Casey on June 10, 2013 at 17:49
Good points Adrian.
My sense is that he’s talking out his arse by ignoring (1) the obvious counterexamples that would occur to any reasonably well-informed person and (2) the easily checkable history of the phrase. For that reason, I think he’s speaking with a superficial disregard for whether what he says is true. It’s calculated to look deep, when in fact, it’s just not. It seems the BS designation requires one diagnose *the intention* of the speaker, rather than the simple truth or falsity of the proposition.
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C's avatarC on June 10, 2013 at 19:51
“I believe always in the necessity of being attentive first of all to this phenomenon of language, naming, and dating, to this repetition compulsion (at once rhetorical, magical, and poetic). To what this compulsion signifies, translates, or betrays. Not in order to isolate ourselves in language, as people in too much of a rush would like us to believe, but on the contrary, in order to try to understand what is going on precisely *beyond* language and what is pushing us to repeat endlessly and without knowing what we are talking about, precisely there where language and the concept come up against their limits: “September 11, September 11, le 11 septembre, 9/11.”
“But we can and, I believe, must (and this duty is at once philosophical and political) distinguish between the supposedly brute fact, the “impression” and the interpretation. It is of course just about impossible, I realize, to distinguish the “brute” fact from the system that produces the “information” about it. But it is necessary to push the analysis as far as possible.”
Seems to me that the particular point Derrida is making is neither bullshit nor crap. At worst it is belabored, but if such is a sin. . ..
The problem he is trying to explore is clearly indicated: it is the problem of thinking the singular, the event, etc. In this case, it is the problem of thinking *that* 9/11 is a singular event, that it somehow erupted from nowhere and without explanation. This is a persistent problem in continental philosophy and one which many anglo-american philosophers have relegated to the status of a pseudo-problem. This may have to do with the persistence of a certain Kantian set of assumptions in c.p. But it certainly has to do with a critique of the blithely unreflective use of concepts that can be traced back to Socrates as earlier commenters have said.
But nevertheless I take D. to be pointing out that naming the event itself is neither metaphysically nor ethically-politically innocent. And as a good philosopher he wants to start by unpacking assumptions rather than just jumping in and pontificating about the meaning of the event. He doesn’t want to offer an explanation of some sociological or historical fact (why “9/11” rather than “day of doom”?) and so the contrasts with other “singular” events seems rather beside the point. He isn’t really interested in the peculiarity of this name (a date). He is interested in what is being obscured by the naming, by the production of this instantaneous memorializing, what is being assumed or forgotten.
Perhaps he could speak more concisely, perhaps he could just get on with being a public intellectual and telling us something that we want to hear (yes 9/11 is singular, no 9/11 is not singular). But, casting the issue in the context of crap-bullshit tells us more about how you think than how D. thinks. Because Derrida of course knows that philosophers (or better thinkers, since philosophy often fails to think) are more interested in the question than the answer. Not “is Derrida crap or bullshit?” but “what does it mean to ask, as you have done, whether Derrida is crap or bullshit?” The latter is the philosopher’s work, the former. . .well, we might ask Blogoshite or Bleitershite just as reasonably?
The philosopher or the thinker should start with the presumptions of the very question itself. The sociologist just wants the answer. about the condition of the blogosphere that explains asking such a question.So I would invert the opposition, and say that we should be thankful that D. does not just replace the work of thinking with the empirical answers that you desire, that’s why he is a philosopher and not a sociologist.
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John Casey's avatarJohn Casey on June 10, 2013 at 20:31
C.,
You write:
“But, casting the issue in the context of crap-bullshit tells us more about how you think than how D. thinks.”
Oh, come now. I think the point has been made above that Derrida’s observation was (1) not really factually accurate and (or) (2) not particularly original or interesting. In light of this allegation, Adrian wondered what sort of failure this was. Some call bullshit, others just crap. Other answers are possible, but they haven’t been under discussion. You don’t think it’s a failure. But that’s a different thing from accusing others of falsely dichotomizing.
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C's avatarC on June 10, 2013 at 21:54
Well, no, John. I do not accuse of false dichotomiziing (I presume a third alternative is at least conceptually entertained, “neither”). Nonetheless, there are assumptions built into the choice of the question–assumptions that might remain occluded and after which one might ask.
If I were to accuse, it might be of a hasty or even sloppy reading that produces the very answer to one’s own question in advance. And then I might wonder what it is about the very question itself–crap or bullshit–that might incline a reader to such a hasty reading that goes against the very intentions expressed by the text. And even, how the very terms chosen indicate a sort of cavalier sensibility that has already perhaps judged the text and knows what it must find in it and so accuses the author of doing crappy sociology rather than what the author suggests is his aim. (Which isn’t to say that such an author might not aim to do philosophy and end up doing crappy sociology–the death of the author and all of that. . . .).
“in order to try to understand what is going on precisely *beyond* language and what is pushing us to repeat endlessly and without knowing what we are talking about”
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John Casey's avatarJohn Casey on June 10, 2013 at 22:21
C.,
Let’s try this again. You write: “If I were to accuse, it might be of a hasty or even sloppy reading that produces the very answer to one’s own question in advance. And then I might wonder what it is about the very question itself–crap or bullshit–that might incline a reader to such a hasty reading that goes against the very intentions expressed by the text.”
Now in addition to the presumption of false dichotomy (which you accuse of, but obviously do not hold, as you point out), you accuse the critics of circularity. I don’t think this is really correct.
Here’s how the discussion has gone, I think. Derrida said x. People said, “hey, I think that is wrong for reasons x and y.” Then, in addition to that, some (Adrian) said “and I think to say x, in light of A and B, is just crap.” Others said, “no, I think it’s bullshitting.” These aren’t the only two that exist, and no one seems to have presumed or entertained that. Perhaps there are others, perhaps these are wrong. But your disagreement is not with that, but with the initial negative evaluation (i.e., it’s wrong for reasons x and y).
You apparently think what he said was insightful and not wrong. So obviously you don’t proceed to step two of the evaluation.
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C.'s avatarC. on June 10, 2013 at 22:48
Sure–please do try this again. But, it’s not a tricky point–to accuse person x of saying something crap or bullshit when what you think s/he says is not a plausible way of reading the text is something close to a straw –f you prefer the language of informal logic. (It’s not really a straw man, I’d say, but illustrates a type of rational-communicative-intellectual failure of which straw men are instances as well).
Though, I would argue that D. is saying that philosophically we should begin by thinking about the assumptions and the decisions that condition such a reading or such a question. That’s fairly clearly what D. seems to be saying in his introduction to the interview from which the passage is taken–we must start by thinking through the assumptions of the question and not too hastily acceding to them (a matter of philosophical and political duty in fact). The irony, of course, that apparently I didn’t make explicit enough is that this a lesson that we might learn from D. in the case of asking a question like–crap or bullshit? The negative evaluation might at least wait until we have understood and explicated what he says and why he says it. A few paragraphs later D even says we are just “preparing ourselves to say something about it.” He hasn’t done anything other than begin a sort of preliminary consideration of what is being assumed by the name he is being asked to think about–remember it is his interviewer who asks him whether he thinks “9/11 is a major event.” He is beginning a response to that question by asking what is even being assumed by that question. Not much more. But who needs the rest of the interview or think about context to judge what he is saying as bullshit or crap?
“The bullshitter may or may not deceive us, or intend to deceive us, about the alleged facts. ‘What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise.’ In short, the essence of Frankfurt-bullshit is phoniness, indifference to truth.”
Indeed.
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John Casey's avatarJohn Casey on June 10, 2013 at 23:59
C.,
Right. I think I understand what Derrida is saying just fine and I think it’s a very plausible way of reading the text. The disagreement is about whether Derrida said anything worthwhile or true. Some think not. I concur with them. Then the question is what sort of thing might be said about that. The second is a different question.
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joblow2000@yahoo.com's avatarjoblow2000@yahoo.com on June 11, 2013 at 09:56
RIP Derrida
this man is DEAD. RIP
Dead people cannot speak from the grave. Let this man be in peace at the cemetary..
Humanities will be gone gone by 2020.. Humanities will be obsolete by internet by 2020
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Pat's avatarPat on June 11, 2013 at 16:26
Adrian (and others),
I’d like to offer something. I often use this example from Derrida when I teach informal logic, and while I don’t claim to comprehend Derrida’s philosophy, I think I understand one of his points regarding 9/11.
I discuss this example while discussing why things and events are named as they are, and the power that such names can have over our ability to think critically about them. Other names in my discussion include, for example, “The Death Tax” instead of “The Estate Tax,” the “War on Terror” instead of the “War in Iraq,” the way that corporate names overpower the thing itself (Kleenex for tissue, Xerox for copies), etc. The first two are largely attributable to Frank Luntz, a GOP strategist and wordsmith, hired to sway public opinion on critical issues in virtue of renaming them. (Sidenote: George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Elizabeth Wehling are good at diagnosing this kind of thing, whether or not one agrees with the underlying cog sci or their tactics.)
So, what about Derrida and 9/11? I ask my students (one you alluded to above), when did Pearl Harbor happen? Most don’t know; a few, usually with ties to the military, know it was December 7, 1941. I then ask them, when did 9/11 happen? And they see the absurdity in asking the question, though, again, some of them don’t know the year.
I think this is part – and only part – of Derrida’s point. “A date and nothing more… a kind of ritual incantation…” The name inscribes the event into the very nature of time in a particular way. It marks the event as akin to a holiday, something that we have to go through every year, whether we want to remember it or not. (Think of how the political phrase “Never Forget” is tied into this naming of the event – of course we cannot forget if it happens annually.) Not so with Pearl Harbor, nor May ’68, etc. One of the effects of naming the event this way is that it annually reintroduces the threat of terror.
One of your objections matches one offered by my students. We don’t just call it “The Attack on the Twin Towers” because of the attack on the Pentagon and the crashed plane in PA. But I don’t think that’s enough. I want to say that, generally speaking, when people bring up 9/11, most people think of New York before those other two (with obvious exceptions for those geographically near the other two or who had close family members or friends near the other two). The more likely explanation is that naming 9/11 “9/11” was a concerted effort, one created by an echo chamber between politicians and mainstream media. Such echo chambers are well documented.
Sorry this is long, but a few last things. You suggest that Derrida’s ‘explanation’ of the name 9/11 fails because there are alternative explanations; likewise, you suggest we need to look for help from social scientists here. I don’t think Derrida is trying to explain the name 9/11; rather, he’s trying to help us understand the effects of naming it 9/11. Some of those include us not thinking very hard about the name, how it’s ‘unique’, what it does, etc. And there are surely other points, alluded to by others above, about ‘citation’ and Derrida’s method.
Second, someone might suggest my reading of Derrida is wrong. I’m fine with that. I think it’s nonetheless productive for thinking about the name ‘9/11’ differently for what it does. Most of my students, and many adults and friends I’ve told this to, say they’ve never thought about it this way. And it stems from reading Derrida and commentary on him. In other words, if I’m wrong, misreadings can be productive.
Lastly, I have no idea whether Derrida’s prose here falls into bullshit or crap, on the views under consideration.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on June 11, 2013 at 16:44
Thanks Pat, that is an exceptionally useful contribution, so as a thankyou, let me point people towards your blog: http://denehy.blogspot.com.
(1) I am very attracted to your idea that the term ‘9/11’ leads to an annual remembrance, unlike ‘the Twin Towers attack’, say, as described in your paragraph starting ‘One of your objections’.
I’d need more evidence that this was a concerted effort between politicians and the media – but I haven’t provided much evidence for my own claims, either, so I don’t mean that critically. And I’m certainly open to your argument.
(2) However, I am not convinced about the explanation/effect claim, in your third-from-last paragraph. As I read Derrida, he is saying or at least implying that this does explain why 9/11 was called 9/11 – hence words he uses like ‘marks’ and ‘admits’. To me that sounds like an explanation. I might be wrong, and/or something might have been lost in translation.
For what it’s worth, I do believe Derrida can be very perceptive at spotting the presuppositions of terms we use, but in the passage I quote above he does seem to me to be primarily talking about why we use these terms.
But I am far from certain about this, and I am extremely grateful to you for presenting a different intepretation like this, which I take very seriously; in Hobbes scholarship, which is my primary field, we regularly read and re-read passages with different interpretations in mind, to see what ‘fits’ best.
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diegovela's avatardiegovela on June 14, 2013 at 21:06
I’m amazed.
Pat: “I discuss this example while discussing why things and events are named as they are, and the power that such names can have over our ability to think critically about them.”
Diegov: “Repeating the phrases “9/11″, and “the terrorists” becomes a license not to think.”
Pat:”Other names in my discussion include, for example, ‘The Death Tax’ instead of ‘The Estate Tax,’ the ‘War on Terror’ instead of the ‘War in Iraq,’ ”
Diegov: “9/11, The Bush Era, The Homeland, The Terrorists, The Heroes, etc.”
I really thought I was being clear. “Us” and “Them” are simple names. People who divide the world into those binary categories choose not to think.
And stil no discussion of issues in the world.
As I said: amazing.
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Maria Snyman's avatarMaria Snyman on August 9, 2015 at 02:23
Derrida basically talks about what is called “name-calling” – he tried to demonstrate its power to position bodies, to reduce meaning … Derrida deals with things at a very basic level, at a level where the very simplicity of it makes it enigmatic – he plays on a monstrous scale, not many people can take such enormous (serious) play:
name-calling
noun
abusive language or insults.
“the party’s internal bickering and name-calling”
https://www.google.co.za/webhp?sourceid ... me-calling
Read Jensen’s Gradiva, and see if you get it.
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Adam Woodhouse's avatarAdam Woodhouse on January 19, 2016 at 19:10
I enjoyed this a lot Adrian! I would call bullshit on Derrida here, in the sense of packaging quite a simple and even trite idea in flowery, obfuscating language. It seems quite obvious that the reasons why we choose to use certain terms to designate key historical events are worthy of study; whether Derrida helps us much is less clear… Of course, a label of this sort cannot capture the full complexity of a profoundly important historical moment, but the fact that such a label is being used doesn’t mean that we can’t interrogate what lies behind it.
And let me add ‘The Ides of March’. Any proper study of this kind of naming in the West would have to go back at least to Greco-Roman antiquity: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... id_Mar.jpg
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on January 20, 2016 at 18:48
Thanks for the kind words, Adam. However, I don’t agree that we should call something “bullshit” if it involves what you accuse Derrida of (“packaging quite a simple and even trite idea in flowery, obfuscating language”). For me, and indeed for Harry Frankfurt and Gerry Cohen, that’s not best called bullshit.
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Adam Woodhouse's avatarAdam Woodhouse on January 19, 2016 at 19:19
To be clear, I think the passage of Derrida you cite is both bullshit and crap; bullshit in that it dresses up a simple argument, and crap in that the argument is incorrect, or at least so undercooked that it doesn’t carry much weight.
And ‘9/11’ gained currency in part because of how the Americans call the police. In the UK we still say ‘September the 11th’, right?
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rogerglewis's avatarrogerglewis on May 3, 2017 at 09:39
Reblogged this on MUSO MUSINGS ON FATHERHOOD THEORY AND STUFF and commented:
A satisfying Part 2 on Bull Shit. A disappointing absence of Freudian Psychoanalysis.
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David Ashton's avatarDavid Ashton on December 3, 2017 at 22:13
911 is the emergency call number like 999 in the UK.
This just one tiny detail in the Triple Towers Demolition Inside Job Conspiracy Theories
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william reichert's avatarwilliam reichert on March 15, 2018 at 18:42
I believe Derrida writes in such an unclear way so as to make his ideas clear only to him. In this way ,with his ideas interpreted by others according to their own prejudices and not clearly understood to mean something concrete, his ideas are not subject to refutation or criticism.
Not subject to understanding, therefore unassailable.His ideas will eventually mean something different to everyone. Kind of like God’s will. Maybe this is the point.
There is no author to question. To each his own.
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Adrian Blau's avatarAdrian Blau on March 15, 2018 at 19:17
Do you have evidence for this, William? Or do you mean “suspect” or “wonder if”, rather than “believe”?
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william reichert's avatarwilliam reichert on March 15, 2018 at 20:43
As a post modern reader I am permitted to interpret a piece of writing using my own criteria. And I think this is what Derrida is doing in line with h
is idea of the death of the author .
In other words, “there are words on the page, make up your own meaning”.
This is the way I interpret it. Asking for “evidence” is so rational, so modern, so logical. So
scientific. Not so Derrida.
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Wordsmakesensepeopledont's avatarWordsmakesensepeopledont on April 4, 2019 at 11:36
I watched his doc and had to shut it off. As pointed out in your comments, he takes a lot of ideas already well in circulation and common sense, then tries to associate it as his. Takes rebellion renames it by adding De to construction- “Philosopher”. The above comment makes me cringe…This is exactly the reason our society is stupid…Words are all already “defined” “they all” “already” have “precise definitions” for a “reason”, they have direct meanings that are easily accessible. Con artists like to think we are here to define words our self, you will notice if you do research most frauds depend on you not checking the etymology or basic dictionary and cover their redefinition tracks by selling you on we are here to interpret things our self…no we are not. I have busted so many liars/frauds just by using a basic dictionary, and of coarse they use the excuse as above, trying to make it seem like using words correctly is part of some ideology or inartistic. Derrida, Freud, Jung, all these guys are BS, how you know is they never answer questions, (watch Derrida’s doc) like silence means they are above such a low question (they can’t answer) they just spout their own ideas like all cons, say a few true things that open your mind then go full in on horse behind loading…It’s sad no one today can do any critical thinking, every person I know thinks if a guy has a philosophy title or a so called psychology book that means some part of it, or everything they write and say is truth? Just like religion; this is exactly the same mistake religious followers made/make. All we have done is rename a bible a book, a simple label switch, still trialing “the way” religion paved out…and you can see above examples of new age religious believers. Number one way to tell someone isn’t intellectual is they name drop, Jung said, Freud said, Hagel said, Mathew chapter 6, John chapter 9 verse 4; same old followers thinking they are smart for repeating what is sold as truth…What about what you think? Let me check my phone. If you don’t have your own ideas you are not intellectual. Own ideas pertains to- there is enough truth to go around for everyone to discover- you won’t find it in some guys book, and you won’t find it believing you are here to redefine terms and words, you find it by discovering the flaw in those minds who thought they were thinking before you…I’m really disappointed everywhere I turn to try and find real thinkers all I find is people with there heads up some cons ass- and yes I have a book coming which has nothing but Diction references in the bibliography, full of new and original provable ideas, not one single he/she said…so I expect nothing less from people I read…and who teaches us we have to put he/she said in everything “SCHOOL” if everyone is wrong then you can see the problem of doing that. They are forcing you into lies, narrative, being a follower and a con like them…real thinkers only use he/she said in referencing something they disagree with…in school you are not even allowed to do that you must have “supporting he/she said”…and this is why art sucks and no one can think for themselves…plagiarism in your own words(what a joke) and redefining the already defined…do not make up your own meaning instead go to the dictionaries for it and see how intelligent you become…
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Re: Derrida | Language as Writing
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So was Derrida a pseudophilosopher or just a bad philosopher in the end? If I’m roughly on the right track with my account of pseudophilosophy, I think it’s fair to say he was probably both.
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No, but Derrida IS a Sophist. In this sense, Derrida rejects both the concept of the transcendental signifier and the tradition of Aristotelian or scientific logic as the prime mediators of rhetorical debate.
For me, three classical texts will get you up to speed on these issues: Plato’s Gorgias and his Phaedrus and Aristotle’s Rhetoric. These texts set out the classical rejection of false or Sophistical argumentation.
You can then read a text like Derrida’s Dissemination and understand why Derrida must advance the false idea that Plato himself is a Sophist.
For it is only by reducing all the participants in the Socratic dialogue to the same Sophistical status that Derrida (and his reader) can maintain that Socrates’ vision of a Judgement in the Afterlife is “just a tale”. And if a judgement in the Afterlife is just a tale, then Callicles, who believes that power triumphs over everything, must be right.
All Sophists—-Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida and others of their ilk—-believe that deception and trickery, false sophistication and endlessly allusive textual signaling—-is fair game. They are of the Devil’s party without knowing it.
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Terry Murphy at Yonsei.
http://www.thesourgrapevine.com/2017/11 ... g.html?m=0
http://www.thesourgrapevine.com/2014/04 ... x.html?m=1
https://iep.utm.edu/sophists/
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If one is so inclined, sophistry can thus be regarded, in a conceptual as well as historical sense, as the ‘other’ of philosophy.
Perhaps because of the interpretative difficulties mentioned above, the sophists have been many things to many people. For Hegel (1995/1840) the sophists were subjectivists whose sceptical reaction to the objective dogmatism of the presocratics was synthesised in the work of Plato and Aristotle. For the utilitarian English classicist George Grote (1904), the sophists were progressive thinkers who placed in question the prevailing morality of their time. More recent work by French theorists such as Jacques Derrida (1981) and Jean Francois-Lyotard (1985) suggests affinities between the sophists and postmodernism.
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Language and Reality
Understandably given their educational program, the sophists placed great emphasis upon the power of speech (logos). Logos is a notoriously difficult term to translate and can refer to thought and that about which we speak and think as well as rational speech or language. The sophists were interested in particular with the role of human discourse in the shaping of reality. Rhetoric was the centrepiece of the curriculum, but literary interpretation of the work of poets was also a staple of sophistic education. Some philosophical implications of the sophistic concern with speech are considered in section 4, but in the current section it is instructive to concentrate on Gorgias’ account of the power of rhetorical logos.
The extant fragments attributed to the historical Gorgias indicate not only scepticism towards essential being and our epistemic access to this putative realm, but an assertion of the omnipotence of persuasive logos to make the natural and practical world conform to human desires. Reporting upon Gorgias’ speech About the Nonexistent or on Nature, Sextus says that the rhetorician, while adopting a different approach from that of Protagoras, also eliminated the criterion (DK, 82B3). The elimination of the criterion refers to the rejection of a standard that would enable us to distinguish clearly between knowledge and opinion about being and nature. Whereas Protagoras asserted that man is the measure of all things, Gorgias concentrated upon the status of truth about being and nature as a discursive construction.
About the Nonexistent or on Nature transgresses the injunction of Parmenides that one cannot say of what is that it is not. Employing a series of conditional arguments in the manner of Zeno, Gorgias asserts that nothing exists, that if it did exist it could not be apprehended, and if it was apprehended it could not be articulated in logos. The elaborate parody displays the paradoxical character of attempts to disclose the true nature of beings through logos:
For that by which we reveal is logos, but logos is not substances and existing things. Therefore we do not reveal existing things to our comrades, but logos, which is something other than substances (DK, 82B3)
Even if knowledge of beings was possible, its transmission in logos would always be distorted by the rift between substances and our apprehension and communication of them. Gorgias also suggests, even more provocatively, that insofar as speech is the medium by which humans articulate their experience of the world, logos is not evocative of the external, but rather the external is what reveals logos. An understanding of logos about nature as constitutive rather than descriptive here supports the assertion of the omnipotence of rhetorical expertise. Gorgias’ account suggests there is no knowledge of nature sub specie aeternitatis and our grasp of reality is always mediated by discursive interpretations, which, in turn, implies that truth cannot be separated from human interests and power claims.
In the Encomium to Helen Gorgias refers to logos as a powerful master (DK, 82B11). If humans had knowledge of the past, present or future they would not be compelled to adopt unpredictable opinion as their counsellor. The endless contention of astronomers, politicians and philosophers is taken to demonstrate that no logos is definitive. Human ignorance about non-existent truth can thus be exploited by rhetorical persuasion insofar as humans desire the illusion of certainty imparted by the spoken word:
The effect of logos upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs over the nature of bodies. For just as different drugs dispel different secretions from the body, and some bring an end to disease and others to life, so also in the case of logoi, some distress, others delight, some cause fear, others make hearers bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of evil persuasion (DK, 82B11).
All who have persuaded people, Gorgias says, do so by moulding a false logos. While other forms of power require force, logos makes all its willing slave.
This account of the relation between persuasive speech, knowledge, opinion and reality is broadly consistent with Plato’s depiction of the rhetorician in the Gorgias. Both Protagoras’ relativism and Gorgias’ account of the omnipotence of logos are suggestive of what we moderns might call a deflationary epistemic anti-realism.
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4. The Distinction Between Philosophy and Sophistry
The distinction between philosophy and sophistry is in itself a difficult philosophical problem. This closing section examines the attempt of Plato to establish a clear line of demarcation between philosophy and sophistry.
As alluded to above, the terms ‘philosopher’ and ‘sophist’ were disputed in the fifth and fourth century B.C.E., the subject of contention between rival schools of thought. Histories of philosophy tend to begin with the Ionian ‘physicist’ Thales, but the presocratics referred to the activity they were engaged in as historia (inquiry) rather than philosophia and although it may have some validity as a historical projection, the notion that philosophy begins with Thales derives from the mid nineteenth century. It was Plato who first clearly and consistently refers to the activity of philosophia and much of what he has to say is best understood in terms of an explicit or implicit contrast with the rival schools of the sophists and Isocrates (who also claimed the title philosophia for his rhetorical educational program).
The related questions as to what a sophist is and how we can distinguish the philosopher from the sophist were taken very seriously by Plato. He also acknowledges the difficulty inherent in the pursuit of these questions and it is perhaps revealing that the dialogue dedicated to the task, Sophist, culminates in a discussion about the being of non-being. Socrates converses with sophists in Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Gorgias, Protagoras and the Republic and discusses sophists at length in the Apology, Sophist, Statesman and Theaetetus. It can thus be argued that the search for the sophist and distinction between philosophy and sophistry are not only central themes in the Platonic dialogues, but constitutive of the very idea and practice of philosophy, at least in its original sense as articulated by Plato.
This point has been recognised by recent poststructuralist thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Jean Francois-Lyotard in the context of their project to place in question central presuppositions of the Western philosophical tradition deriving from Plato. Derrida attacks the interminable trial prosecuted by Plato against the sophists with a view to exhuming ‘the conceptual monuments marking out the battle lines between philosophy and sophistry’ (1981, 106). Lyotard views the sophists as in possession of unique insight into the sense in which discourses about what is just cannot transcend the realm of opinion and pragmatic language games (1985, 73-83).
The prospects for establishing a clear methodological divide between philosophy and sophistry are poor. Apart from the considerations mentioned in section 1, it would be misleading to say that the sophists were unconcerned with truth or genuine theoretical investigation and Socrates is clearly guilty of fallacious reasoning in many of the Platonic dialogues. In the Sophist, in fact, Plato implies that the Socratic technique of dialectical refutation represents a kind of ‘noble sophistry’ (Sophist, 231b).
This in large part explains why contemporary scholarship on the distinction between philosophy and sophistry has tended to focus on a difference in moral character. Nehamas, for example, has argued that ‘Socrates did not differ from the sophists in method but in overall purpose’ (1990, 13). Nehamas relates this overall purpose to the Socratic elenchus, suggesting that Socrates’ disavowal of knowledge and of the capacity to teach aretē distances him from the sophists. However, this way of demarcating Socrates’ practice from that of his sophistic counterparts, Nehamas argues, cannot justify the later Platonic distinction between philosophy and sophistry, insofar as Plato forfeited the right to uphold the distinction once he developed a substantive philosophical teaching, that is, the theory of forms.
There is no doubt much truth in the claim that Plato and Aristotle depict the philosopher as pursuing a different way of life than the sophist, but to say that Plato defines the philosopher either through a difference in moral purpose, as in the case of Socrates, or a metaphysical presumption regarding the existence of transcendent forms, as in his later work, does not in itself adequately characterise Plato’s critique of his sophistic contemporaries. Once we attend to Plato’s own treatment of the distinction between philosophy and sophistry two themes quickly become clear: the mercenary character of the sophists and their overestimation of the power of speech. For Plato, at least, these two aspects of the sophistic education tell us something about the persona of the sophist as the embodiment of a distinctive attitude towards knowledge.
The fact that the sophists taught for profit may not seem objectionable to modern readers; most present-day university professors would be reluctant to teach pro bono. It is clearly a major issue for Plato, however. Plato can barely mention the sophists without contemptuous reference to the mercenary aspect of their trade: particularly revealing examples of Plato’s disdain for sophistic money-making and avarice are found at Apology 19d, Euthydemus 304b-c, Hippias Major 282b-e, Protagoras 312c-d and Sophist 222d-224d, and this is not an exhaustive list. Part of the issue here is no doubt Plato’s commitment to a way of life dedicated to knowledge and contemplation. It is significant that students in the Academy, arguably the first higher education institution, were not required to pay fees. This is only part of the story, however.
A good starting point is to consider the etymology of the term philosophia as suggested by the Phaedrus and Symposium. After completing his palinode in the Phaedrus, Socrates expresses the hope that he never be deprived of his ‘erotic’ art. Whereas the speechwriter Lysias presents erōs (desire, love) as an unseemly waste of expenditure (Phaedrus, 257a), in his later speech Socrates demonstrates how erōs impels the soul to rise towards the forms. The followers of Zeus, or philosophy, Socrates suggests, educate the object of their erōs to imitate and partake in the ways of the God. Similarly, in the Symposium, Socrates refers to an exception to his ignorance. Approving of the suggestion by Phaedrus that the drinking party eulogise erōs, Socrates states that ta erōtika (the erotic things) are the only subject concerning which he would claim to possess rigorous knowledge (Symposium, 177 d-e). When it is his turn to deliver a speech, Socrates laments his incapacity to compete with the Gorgias-influenced rhetoric of Agathon before delivering Diotima’s lessons on erōs, represented as a daimonion or semi-divine intermediary between the mortal and the divine. Erōs is thus presented as analogous to philosophy in its etymological sense, a striving after wisdom or completion that can only be temporarily fulfilled in this life by contemplation of the forms of the beautiful and the good (204a-b). The philosopher is someone who strives after wisdom – a friend or lover of wisdom – not someone who possesses wisdom as a finished product, as the sophists claimed to do and as their name suggests.
Plato’s emphasis upon philosophy as an ‘erotic’ activity of striving for wisdom, rather than as a finished state of completed wisdom, largely explains his distaste for sophistic money-making. The sophists, according to Plato, considered knowledge to be a ready-made product that could be sold without discrimination to all comers. The Theages, a Socratic dialogue whose authorship some scholars have disputed, but which expresses sentiments consistent with other Platonic dialogues, makes this point with particular clarity. The farmer Demodokos has brought his son, Theages, who is desirous of wisdom, to Socrates. As Socrates questions his potential pupil regarding what sort of wisdom he seeks, it becomes evident that Theages seeks power in the city and influence over other men. Since Theages is looking for political wisdom, Socrates refers him to the statesmen and the sophists. Disavowing his ability to compete with the expertise of Gorgias and Prodicus in this respect, Socrates nonetheless admits his knowledge of the erotic things, a subject about which he claims to know more than any man who has come before or indeed any of those to come (Theages, 128b). In response to the suggestion that he study with a sophist, Theages reveals his intention to become a pupil of Socrates. Perhaps reluctant to take on an unpromising pupil, Socrates insists that he must follow the commands of his daimonion, which will determine whether those associating with him are capable of making any progress (Theages, 129c). The dialogue ends with an agreement that all parties make trial of the daimonion to see whether it permits of the association.
One need only follow the suggestion of the Symposium that erōs is a daimonion to see that Socratic education, as presented by Plato, is concomitant with a kind of ‘erotic’ concern with the beautiful and the good, considered as natural in contrast to the purely conventional. Whereas the sophists accept pupils indiscriminately, provided they have the money to pay, Socrates is oriented by his desire to cultivate the beautiful and the good in promising natures. In short, the difference between Socrates and his sophistic contemporaries, as Xenophon suggests, is the difference between a lover and a prostitute. The sophists, for Xenophon’s Socrates, are prostitutes of wisdom because they sell their wares to anyone with the capacity to pay (Memorabilia, I.6.13). This – somewhat paradoxically – accounts for Socrates’ shamelessness in comparison with his sophistic contemporaries, his preparedness to follow the argument wherever it leads. By contrast, Protagoras and Gorgias are shown, in the dialogues that bear their names, as vulnerable to the conventional opinions of the paying fathers of their pupils, a weakness contributing to their refutation. The sophists are thus characterised by Plato as subordinating the pursuit of truth to worldly success, in a way that perhaps calls to mind the activities of contemporary advertising executives or management consultants.
The overestimation of the power of human speech is the other theme that emerges clearly from Plato’s (and Aristotle’s) critique of the sophists. In the Sophist, Plato says that dialectic – division and collection according to kinds – is the knowledge possessed by the free man or philosopher (Sophist, 253c). Here Plato reintroduces the difference between true and false rhetoric, alluded to in the Phaedrus, according to which the former presupposes the capacity to see the one in the many (Phaedrus, 266b). Plato’s claim is that the capacity to divide and synthesise in accordance with one form is required for the true expertise of logos. Whatever else one makes of Plato’s account of our knowledge of the forms, it clearly involves the apprehension of a higher level of being than sensory perception and speech. The philosopher, then, considers rational speech as oriented by a genuine understanding of being or nature. The sophist, by contrast, is said by Plato to occupy the realm of falsity, exploiting the difficulty of dialectic by producing discursive semblances, or phantasms, of true being (Sophist, 234c). The sophist uses the power of persuasive speech to construct or create images of the world and is thus a kind of ‘enchanter’ and imitator.
This aspect of Plato’s critique of sophistry seems particularly apposite in regard to Gorgias’ rhetoric, both as found in the Platonic dialogue and the extant fragments attributed to the historical Gorgias. In response to Socratic questioning, Gorgias asserts that rhetoric is an all-comprehending power that holds under itself all of the other activities and occupations (Gorgias, 456a). He later claims that it is concerned with the greatest good for man, namely those speeches that allow one to attain freedom and rule over others, especially, but not exclusively, in political settings (452d). As suggested above, in the context of Athenian public life the capacity to persuade was a precondition of political success. For present purposes, however, the key point is that freedom and rule over others are both forms of power: respectively power in the sense of liberty or capacity to do something, which suggests the absence of relevant constraints, and power in the sense of dominion over others. Gorgias is suggesting that rhetoric, as the expertise of persuasive speech, is the source of power in a quite comprehensive sense and that power is ‘the good’. What we have here is an assertion of the omnipotence of speech, at the very least in relation to the determination of human affairs.
The Socratic position, as becomes clear later in the discussion with Polus (466d-e), and is also suggested in Meno (88c-d) and Euthydemus (281d-e), is that power without knowledge of the good is not genuinely good. Without such knowledge not only ‘external’ goods, such as wealth and health, not only the areas of expertise that enable one to attain such so-called goods, but the very capacity to attain them is either of no value or harmful. This in large part explains the so-called Socratic paradox that virtue is knowledge.
Plato’s critique of the sophists’ overestimation of the power of speech should not be conflated with his commitment to the theory of the forms. For Plato, the sophist reduces thinking to a kind of making: by asserting the omnipotence of human speech the sophist pays insufficient regard to the natural limits upon human knowledge and our status as seekers rather than possessors of knowledge (Sophist, 233d). This critique of the sophists does perhaps require a minimal commitment to a distinction between appearance and reality, but it is an oversimplification to suggest that Plato’s distinction between philosophy and sophistry rests upon a substantive metaphysical theory, in large part because our knowledge of the forms for Plato is itself inherently ethical. Plato, like his Socrates, differentiates the philosopher from the sophist primarily through the virtues of the philosopher’s soul (McKoy, 2008). Socrates is an embodiment of the moral virtues, but love of the forms also has consequences for the philosopher’s character.
There is a further ethical and political aspect to the Platonic and Aristotelian critique of the sophists’ overestimation of the power of speech. In Book Ten of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle suggests that the sophists tended to reduce politics to rhetoric (1181a12-15) and overemphasised the role that could be played by rational persuasion in the political realm. Part of Aristotle’s point is that there is an element to living well that transcends speech. As Hadot eloquently puts it, citing Greek and Roman sources, ‘traditionally people who developed an apparently philosophical discourse without trying to live their lives in accordance with their discourse, and without their discourse emanating from their life experience, were called sophists’ (2004, 174).
The testimony of Xenophon, a Greek general and man of action, is instructive here. In his treatise on hunting, (Cynēgeticus, 13.1-9), Xenophon commends Socratic over sophistic education in aretē, not only on the grounds that the sophists hunt the young and rich and are deceptive, but also because they are men of words rather than action. The importance of consistency between one’s words and actions if one is to be truly virtuous is a commonplace of Greek thought, and this is one important respect in which the sophists, at least from the Platonic-Aristotelian perspective, fell short.
One might think that a denial of Plato’s demarcation between philosophy and sophistry remains well-motivated simply because the historical sophists made genuine contributions to philosophy. But this does not entail the illegitimacy of Plato’s distinction. Once we recognise that Plato is pointing primarily to a fundamental ethical orientation relating to the respective personas of the philosopher and sophist, rather than a methodological or purely theoretical distinction, the tension dissolves. This is not to deny that the ethical orientation of the sophist is likely to lead to a certain kind of philosophising, namely one which attempts to master nature, human and external, rather than understand it as it is.
Sophistry for Socrates, Plato and Aristotle represents a choice for a certain way of life, embodied in a particular attitude towards knowledge which views it as a finished product to be transmitted to all comers. Plato’s distinction between philosophy and sophistry is not simply an arbitrary viewpoint in a dispute over naming rights, but is rather based upon a fundamental difference in ethical orientation. Neither is this orientation reducible to concern with truth or the cogency of one’s theoretical constructs, although it is not unrelated to these. Where the philosopher differs from the sophist is in terms of the choice for a way of life that is oriented by the pursuit of knowledge as a good in itself while remaining cognisant of the necessarily provisional nature of this pursuit.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakos
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For instance, a deliberate unrepentant murderer would most likely be put to death.
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https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/part-i- ... ic-greece/
https://poisonhistory.wordpress.com/201 ... he-greeks/
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By the time that the Homeric texts were written down (perhaps circa 700 BCE), the related word pharmakon had emerged with a group of meanings subtly connected to this ancient rite of purification, but transposed from the community to the body: it could refer to medicinal drugs, intoxicants, and poisons or venoms. Indeed, it was even broader than this: pharmakoi also included dying agents and magical spells or enchantments, like the pharmakon Circe uses to change Odysseus’s crew into pigs.
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Perhaps the best overall definition of this strange word is “an agent of change.” Whether this change was bad or good is left ambiguous: in other words, there was no clear way of distinguishing between poisonous and medicinal drugs, or indeed between pharmaceuticals of any sort and spells.
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Lol, nice to be validated. I thought of all that stuff by myself because I'm not a roboto.
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Below are some extracts from Greek texts which mention pharmakoi. It’s worth noting here that I’m by no means an expert on the classics and that (as Ben Johnson famously said of Shakespeare) I possess small Latin and less Greek. But I think it’s important to understand the lineage of terms and concepts in history, and the passages below give a hint at the complex paths that lead from the Greek pharmakon to the contemporary pharmacy.
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The surgeon Machaon heals a wounded soldier with pharmaka in The Iliad:
And when they had come to where fairhaired Menelaus lay wounded, and around him were gathered in a circle all the chieftains, the godlike hero came and stood in their midst, and drew forth the arrow from the clasped belt; and as it was drawn forth the sharp barbs were broken backwards. And he loosed the flashing belt and the kilt beneath and the taslet that the coppersmiths fashioned. But when he saw the wound where the bitter arrow had lighted, he sucked out the blood, and with sure knowledge spread thereon soothing drugs [pharmaka], which in times past Cheiron had given to his father with kindly thought.
Pharmacy used by Herodotus to describe rituals used by Persian magi to cross a river in his Histories, Book 7, c. 450 BCE:
All this region about the Pangaean range is called Phyllis; it stretches westwards to the river Angites, which issues into the Strymon, and southwards to the Strymon itself; at this river the Magi sought good omens by sacrificing white horses. After using these enchantments [pharmaka] and many others besides on the river, they passed over it at the Nine Ways in Edonian country, by the bridges which they found thrown across the Strymon. When they learned that Nine Ways was the name of the place, they buried alive that number of boys and maidens, children of the local people.
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Pharmaka (translated as ‘drugs’) in Plato’s Phaedrus (370 BCE):
PHAEDRUS: But you, you amazing man, appear to be someone very much out of place! For as you say, you absolutely seem like some stranger on a guided tour and not one of the country. To such an extent do you not go away from horne, neither out of the town nor beyond the boundaries, and it seems to me you don’t go outside the wall at all.
SOCRATES: Forgive me, best of men. For I am a lover of learning. Now then, the country places and the trees are not willing to teach me any- thing, but the human beings in town are. But you in my opinion have found the drug for my trip out. For just as they lead hungry animals by holding out and shaking a young shoot or some fruit, so you, stretching out in front of me speeches in books, will evidently lead me around all of Attica” and anywhere else you wish. So now then, having arrived right here at present, it seems good to me to lie down; and you, in whatever posture you consider easiest to read, assume it and read.
SOCRATES: The manner of the medical art is the same, doubtless, as that of the rhetorical.
PHAEDRUS: How, then?
SOCRATES: In both one must divide up nature, that of the body in the one, of the soul in the other, if you are going, not only by routine and experience but by art, in the one case by applying drugs and nourishment to produce health and strength, and by applying with the other speeches and lawful practices to transmit whatever persuasion you wish and virtue.
PHAEDRUS: This is likely, at any rate, Socrates.
SOCRATES: At that time the king of all Egypt was Thamos, in the upper region’s great city, which the Greeks call Egyptian Thebes; and they call the god Ammon. Coming to him, Theuth [e.g. Thoth, Egyptian god of wisdom] displayed his arts and said they must be given out to the other Egyptians. He asked what benefit each art had, and as the other went through them, he expressed blame on the one hand, praise on the other, for what in his opinion the other spoke beautifully or not beautifully. Many things, then, about each art in both senses, it is said, did Thamos reveal to Theuth, to go through which would make a long speech. And when it carne to written letters, “This knowledge, king,” said Theuth, “will make the Egyptians wiser and provide them with better memory; for it has been found as a drug for memory and wisdom.”
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https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Tzeentch
https://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tzeentch
https://aeon.co/essays/why-jacques-derr ... jewishness
https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/article ... discovery/#
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/portrait- ... 231128254/
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-narcissist ... -community
https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjp ... 06mark.pdf
https://www.theyeshiva.net/jewish/item/ ... e-nazirite
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narciss ... y_disorder
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Dead_Three
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2698867/
https://www.haaretz.com/2013-11-26/ty-a ... cfa3e10000
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Isr**li and American scientists have discovered a gene among Ashkenazi J*ws that increases their chances of developing the mental disorder schizophrenia, as well schizoaffective disorder and manic depression. According to a study recently published in Nature Communications, the gene in question raises Ashkenazi J*ws’ chances of experiencing the disorders by roughly 40%, and by 15% in the general population.
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Schizophrenia in language:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2950318/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41537-022-00308-x
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4919257/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 1322000385
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ps ... 00971/full
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar_url%3 ... 3Dscholarr
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoanalysis
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becoming_(philosophy)
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A schizoanalyst cannot be considered a kind of deconstructionist; in Guattari's terms, they pass what is understood to be logos through a text-machine-subject having the status of a partial object to express praxis-enslavement by—in Deleuze and Guattari's French—puissance, and the experience of the process of machinic enslavement.[10][11] Schizoanalysis addresses ressentiment by leading the neurotic subject to a rhizomatic state of becoming.[12][13] Schizoanalysis uses psychosis as a figurative-philosophical diagrammatic model, creating abstract machines that go beyond a semiotic simulacrum, generating a reality not already present.[14][13] Contradistinct from the psychoanalytic axiom of lack generating the kernel at the core of the subject, schizoanalytic desiring-production of intensities decode "representational territories" by self-generating the subject-becoming-BwO as a multiplicity.[15][16] Desiring-production is a virtuality of becoming-intense, a becoming-Other.[17][18] Schizoanalysis deterritorializes-reterritorializes found assemblages through rhizomatic desiring-production.[19]
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_without_organs
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_of_immanence
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_apparatus
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_drive
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extension_(metaphysics)
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kFoyauextlH
- Posts: 661
- Joined: Sun Jun 15, 2025 3:53 pm
Re: Derrida | Language as Writing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiring-production
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Sense
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British philosopher and theorist Nick Land, whose critical work and experimental texts in the 1990s frequently cited Deleuze and Guattari, wrote that "schizoanalysis shares in the delicious irresponsibility of everything anarchic, inundating and harshly impersonal."[27] In his 1992 essay "Circuitries", Land described the practice of schizoanalysis as a prescient theory, writing that it "was only possible because we are hurtling into the first globally integrated insanity: politics is obsolete. Capitalism and Schizophrenia hacked into a future that programs it down to its punctuation, connecting with the imminent inevitability of viral revolution, soft fusion."[28] Land's later work in the 1990s, associated with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, also further reinterpreted and developed schizoanalysis alongside cybernetics, cyberpunk aesthetics and occultism, most prominently in his 1995 essay "Meltdown":
Machinic Synthesis. Deleuzoguattarian schizoanalysis comes from the future. It is already engaging with nonlinear nano-engineering runaway in 1972; differentiating molecular or neotropic machineries from molar or entropic aggregates of nonassembled particles; functional connectivity from antiproductive static. Philosophy has an affinity with despotism, due to its predilection for Platonic-fascist top-down solutions that always screw up viciously. Schizoanalysis works differently. It avoids Ideas, and sticks to diagrams: networking software for accessing bodies without organs. BwOs, machinic singularities, or tractor fields emerge through the combination of parts with (rather than into) their whole; arranging composite individuations in a virtual/actual circuit.[29]
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Swedish philosophers and futurologists Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist build from Deleuze & Guattari's schizoanalysis in their book The Body Machines (2009), the third and final installment of The Futurica Trilogy (2000–2009) with Lacan's empty signifier re-added as an extra +1 to a properly implemented 12+1 structure – developed in collaboration with Stockholm's Royal Institute of Art – as both the empty unifier of the psyche and the dissolution of social hierarchy. The authors argue the 12+1 model is a psychoanalytic improvement to the otherwise "Kantian all too Kantian" technique of compartmentalization in psychology. As cultural examples of 12+1 are cited the hour prior to and following the twelve hours of a clock, Christ as living present and dead absent in relation to the twelve Apostles in the New Testament, and the ace card as both superior to the king and inferior to two in a playing card series. In this sense, the socially constructed +1 is nothing but a subject's passport name, understanding capitalist subjectivity as multipolar (twelve being a random number) akin to the urban intersubjectivities explored in musical theatre pieces like Puccini's La bohème and Jonathan Larson's Rent.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-pe ... ed_States)
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AbjectJouissance
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4y ago
Signifiers are perhaps the basis of all psychoanalytic theory, so you definitely want to get to grips with them. If you aren't familiar with semiotics, I suggest picking up Introducing Semiotics: A Graphic Guide (I might be misremembering the title, but it's similar and part of the Graphic Guides series). This is a short and accessible book which you can read in about two days. Images and illustrations really help studying the concept of signifiers, and this book does a good job of teaching the basics.
To give you a very brief summary of the signifier:
In order to understand what a signifier is, you just begin with the sign. Now, a sign is something we use everyday in order to communicate. For example, words are signs. Let's take the word "TREE" as an example of a sign. All signs are constituted by two elements: 1) the signifier, 2) the signified. So, what is a signifier, and what is a signified, and how do they constitute the sign?
To answer these questions, let's look at the word TREE. The signifier is the linguistic unit, the written or spoken word, the letters you see on your screen right now. They are the particular squiggles of ink or soundwaves. The signified, on the other hand, is what the signifier refers to. So, the signifier TREE refers to the real-world wooden object with leaves. In this sense, one is the linguistic unit (signifier), and the other the material thing (signified). The signifier signifies the signified. When the signifier finds a signified, such as when we decide that the letters F, I, R, and E, will refer to the hot burning gas, with have a sign.
There's three things you should note:
The relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. There is no reason why the signifier DOG shouldn't refer to a type of plant.
All signifiers are defined negatively, by what they are not. Signifiers are defined differentially. That is, a signifier depends on other signifiers in order to define itself, it does not have any inherent or independent meaning. For example, if you travel to outer space and meet an alien civilization and you want to learn their language, you will immediately spot the interdependency of signifiers. You arrive on the alien planet and during your investigations, an alien comes up to you, points at a tree and says "KAZZPO! KAZZPO!". Now, he is evidently trying to help you connect the signifier KAZZPO to some thing, but what? Does KAZZPO mean "tree"? Or does it mean "nature", or plant, or green, of leaf, or wood, or does the alien mean woods or forest, or perhaps KAZZPO means "go there!". How do you determine the meaning of the signifier KAZZPO? In order to do so, you must know what kazzpo does not mean. Only once you have a whole web of signifiers can you finally determine the meaning of kazzpo.
To use an example of the English language, you know a cat is a cat precisely because you know it is not a not-cat; a spider isn't a cat because a spider is a not-cat. You know A is A because it isn't not-A; B is not A because it is a not-A. Only with this logic of difference can we determine the position of any signifier within the web of signifiers.
3) The relation between signifier and signified is never static or exact. There is always a slippage between signifier and signified. The signifier always "misses it's mark", so to say. As signifiers rely on all other signifiers in a relation difference, we are doomed to an endless chain of signification which never finds its last signifier (think of picking up a dictionary to look up a word, only to realise it uses other words in its definition, which themselves are explained by using more words, ad infinitum).
For Lacan, this endless chain of signification constitutes "the symbolic order", which in turn constitutes reality as we know it. After all, your experience of reality will be different according to how you organise the constellation of signs and signifiers. If you are bilingual, you'll know how two different languages are by no means parallel to each other, they aren't exact copies with different words. Each language offers a certain experience of the world and subjectivity. You'll often find difficulty explaining a certain cultural term to foreigners precisely because they lack that signifier.
Signifiers is how we know things. We literally cannot grasp anything which cannot be signified. Your entire reality is this constructed by a net of signifiers which is always being re-organised. That which escapes signification, that which resists assimilation into the symbolic order through the signifier, is understood by Lacan to be the Real. But that's a whole different thread entirely.
Hopefully this helps.
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TroldeAnsigt
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4y ago
I want to thank you for this reply. A thorough explanation of the concept and connecting it to Lacan. Thanks.
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u/trt13shell avatar
trt13shell
•
4y ago
Signifiers is how we know things. We literally cannot grasp anything which cannot be signified.
If I touch a hot handle and realize it is hot do I really need to translate that into words to understand? Or must it be simply able to be translated into words?
Sorry if this interpretation is crude. I am new
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u/AbjectJouissance avatar
AbjectJouissance
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4y ago
Good question. I'm not actually entirely sure, but I think, as strange as it sounds, yes. However, it doesn't necessarily have to be a "word", as signifiers can be anything (images, sounds, vague ideas, etc). But I think you're right, a signifier is what makes the burning feeling into something interpretable. The feeling of the pain itself, the excess, can lie outside the realm of signifiers, but I think you nevertheless experience the burning sensation in a certain way due to the signifier.
But I'm honestly just thinking out loud here. Don't take my word for it.
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u/Apexode-s avatar
Apexode-s
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5mo ago
You could say the sensation of hotness exists within the imaginary, but one makes sense of it through symbolic order. Importantly, the signifiers are not actual things, images, or sounds: one cannot represent the signifiers, they are inaccessible through these concrete descriptions of sensations, those belong to the imaginary. The signifiers are, like the subject, lacking, incomplete ("A signifier is that which represents a subject for another signifier"), defined through difference from other signifiers, and because of this, ever-changing with the introduction of new signifiers. Of course one cannot cleanly separate the symbolic from the imaginary in experience (how do you experience a 'pure' signifier? that's why the Borromean knot is, yknow, a knot), you really cannot be talking about hotness (or anything) without a symbolic order on which to stand.
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[deleted]
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4y ago
This is an amazing explanation!! I just have a passing interest in this and "the symbolic order" has always confused me, so thanks for explaining!
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CormacdeFaulkner
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4y ago
Thanks, I’ve heard of Barthes before with ‘Mythologies’ but never got around to reading him. I requested some books from the library. Cheers!
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u/Tasty_Organization14 avatar
Tasty_Organization14
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4y ago
Check out Dylan Evans’ intro dictionary on lacan — several helpful references on signifiers and the like.
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[deleted]
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4y ago
This is actually one of the simpler concepts Lacan deals in, although it can be hard to tell from his presentation. A signifier is basically a word. 'Tree', say. If 'tree' is the signifier, the signified would be our mental concept of a thing with branches and leaves. The signifier and signified together form the sign, which has a more or less tenuous relationship to actual trees in the real.
Signifiers are notoriously slipperty. What is a tree and what is a bush? If you start hacking away at a tree, at what point does it stop being a tree and stop being a stump? What does it mean when we use the term 'tree' to refer to certain types of diagrams or artificial physical structures? And so on. Signifiers are not rooted in anything solid, so they slide around and are impossible to nail down. Signfieds are only a little more substantial, but Lacan is not really interested in them.
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[deleted]
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3y ago
Signifiers defines the constellation of meaning behind symbols.
To be irresponsibly simplistic for a moment but gets to the point (sorta) signifiers are to symbols like the alphabet is to words
"
Let me know if anyone manages to catch up on any or all of this, who knows how long it could take to even be thorough regarding this.
https://themarginaliareview.com/violenc ... sacrilege/
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/maccabe ... omparison/
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dai ... -religion/
Oh, now they are f*cking curious? Kill em all and ask questions later?
https://reformjudaism.org/learning/tora ... eir-altars
"
Perhaps it was necessary in the infancy of our people’s religious life to tear down the altars and smash the images of other nearby religious expressions. But these commandments seem today to express a deep insecurity and immaturity of religious faith. The medieval Jews who retained their Jewish identity while living in the shadows of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals built as symbols of the Church triumphant, the 19th-century German Jews who resisted the blandishments of baptism as what the writer Heinrich Heine called the entry ticket to European culture, these are a more impressive model than the Israelites who had to be protected from exposure to any model of an alternative religious worldview by destroying the pagan shrines. Should we not be able to recognize the power and the beauty mdash; alongside the shortcomings and the failings — of our neighbors’ religions, while remaining uncompromisingly loyal to our own?
"
What was Derrida up to with rubbishing the core of gentile (meaning everyone else and the rest of the whole world's communicators) interactions?
https://dannybate.com/2022/04/27/a-dict ... our-words/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signified_and_signifier
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_reference
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_(semiotics)
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/empty_signifier
https://opentextbc.ca/mediastudies101/c ... ignifiers/
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/ ... ic-judaism
https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.co ... reverence/
Some propaganda from the New and Old N*z*s, the ones everyone knows and thinks of as Nazis, and whoever are variously accused of being N*z*-like, typically by J people, tend to always be in the middle, sandwiched between what they at least perceived, if and when they ever existed, as contrary threats and distasteful history and nightmarish projections into a future that could be termed the Anti-Pious, which is not only opposed but also a replacement of something trying to be held on to, namely some sense of restraint, decency, and autonomy:
https://aish.com/curing-jewish-ignorance/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impiety
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrilege
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asebeia
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/vie ... additional
https://academic.oup.com/book/12793/cha ... m=fulltext
More propaganda:
https://straighttruth.net/how-should-ch ... n-warfare/
https://www.premierchristianity.com/opi ... 02.article
https://capmin.org/the-bible-on-when-wa ... le-part-1/
https://forward.com/opinion/564799/what ... hamas-war/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religio ... rimination
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_bias
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_persecution
https://18doors.org/is-the-jewish-commu ... mean-girl/
"
Yes, it might stem from our own inner fears about our future, but the Jewish community can be the worst kind of mean kids. We can make others feel unaccepted, unimportant and unwelcome; and then we pretend it’s all in their minds.
Every day. Every year. We look at interfaith families and, sometimes purposefully and sometimes accidentally, with both verbal and nonverbal ques, we question their presence, their legitimacy and their worth.
"
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israelis- ... with-that/
Lol, people like this have then lost their rights by the natural and in-built seeming law of reciprocation and equity, which they have no sense of, and legalism makes even abominable unnatural things seem like "oh well, the rules (we made up) say:
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_ ... nt-142.htm
I bring this up because words are being treated with a similar seeming abandon as "other" and "worthless" because of it not coming from the self absorbed one who hasn't made anything of it and doesn't care who ever has it they don't have any use, they'll then set out to convince everyone it is total sh*t and that what they are saying isn't then somehow.
What has ot been except a project of sh*tting on everything according to these likely fantastical records?
So, Derrida appears to have likewise followed this long cultural project at continuous denial and "deconstruction", as people call it, which is destruction, an iconoclasm:
"
The term "pogrom" originates from the Russian word "погром" (pogrom), which is derived from the prefix **"по-" (po-) meaning "upon, against" and the verb "громить" (gromit') meaning "to destroy, wreck, demolish violently". Therefore, the word literally translates to "to wreak havoc" or "to destroy violently".
"
"No no no, that is impossible, only we can experience a pogrom, a holocaust, and (benefit from using the term) anti-s*m*tism"
"You others don't even have words"
https://www.emethatorah.com/blog/are-ge ... eally-dogs
https://biblehub.com/topical/ttt/t/the_ ... ntiles.htm
There is a layer here, one of many, but I'd like to remind anyone reading this that I'm still always referring to everything I've brought up, so please bring to mind the association of dogs to Hermes, communication, love, loyalty, s*x, aggression, the liminal, the afterlife, and cynicism, among other things, by various people.
https://www.jtsa.edu/torah/jews-gentile ... r-animals/
https://aish.com/what-does-judaism-real ... -non-jews/
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/articl ... raditions/
I'm suggesting that this may even be an element of the chosen direction of Derrida's deriding, an animosity towards the language he feels perhaps was used against him and to which he should be opposed, practically as a hereditary duty.
The may suggest his upbringing had no impact somehow, like he was in a vacuum, but I can pretty confidently guarantee that he likely would not have approached things the way in which he did with another story and a different experience and more integrated and accepted feeling or average upbringing in a different cultural group, what hostility would there need to be towards language and ultimately the culture it is used by? When someone is raised in what might be a disenfranchised and xenophobic, gatekept in-group, believing in a mutual hostility and then seeing clear seeming examples of it, are they in the right place to speak in an educated and heartfelt, caring manner about words from alien groups in the remote past? How can we trust their grasp on the French language and culture even?
Did he need to be more French? Probably not, but what he needed was something else if what we wanted wasn't what we got. Then again, biting and spitting can be a popular passtime.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Sense
"
British philosopher and theorist Nick Land, whose critical work and experimental texts in the 1990s frequently cited Deleuze and Guattari, wrote that "schizoanalysis shares in the delicious irresponsibility of everything anarchic, inundating and harshly impersonal."[27] In his 1992 essay "Circuitries", Land described the practice of schizoanalysis as a prescient theory, writing that it "was only possible because we are hurtling into the first globally integrated insanity: politics is obsolete. Capitalism and Schizophrenia hacked into a future that programs it down to its punctuation, connecting with the imminent inevitability of viral revolution, soft fusion."[28] Land's later work in the 1990s, associated with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, also further reinterpreted and developed schizoanalysis alongside cybernetics, cyberpunk aesthetics and occultism, most prominently in his 1995 essay "Meltdown":
Machinic Synthesis. Deleuzoguattarian schizoanalysis comes from the future. It is already engaging with nonlinear nano-engineering runaway in 1972; differentiating molecular or neotropic machineries from molar or entropic aggregates of nonassembled particles; functional connectivity from antiproductive static. Philosophy has an affinity with despotism, due to its predilection for Platonic-fascist top-down solutions that always screw up viciously. Schizoanalysis works differently. It avoids Ideas, and sticks to diagrams: networking software for accessing bodies without organs. BwOs, machinic singularities, or tractor fields emerge through the combination of parts with (rather than into) their whole; arranging composite individuations in a virtual/actual circuit.[29]
"
"
Swedish philosophers and futurologists Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist build from Deleuze & Guattari's schizoanalysis in their book The Body Machines (2009), the third and final installment of The Futurica Trilogy (2000–2009) with Lacan's empty signifier re-added as an extra +1 to a properly implemented 12+1 structure – developed in collaboration with Stockholm's Royal Institute of Art – as both the empty unifier of the psyche and the dissolution of social hierarchy. The authors argue the 12+1 model is a psychoanalytic improvement to the otherwise "Kantian all too Kantian" technique of compartmentalization in psychology. As cultural examples of 12+1 are cited the hour prior to and following the twelve hours of a clock, Christ as living present and dead absent in relation to the twelve Apostles in the New Testament, and the ace card as both superior to the king and inferior to two in a playing card series. In this sense, the socially constructed +1 is nothing but a subject's passport name, understanding capitalist subjectivity as multipolar (twelve being a random number) akin to the urban intersubjectivities explored in musical theatre pieces like Puccini's La bohème and Jonathan Larson's Rent.
"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-pe ... ed_States)
"
AbjectJouissance
•
4y ago
Signifiers are perhaps the basis of all psychoanalytic theory, so you definitely want to get to grips with them. If you aren't familiar with semiotics, I suggest picking up Introducing Semiotics: A Graphic Guide (I might be misremembering the title, but it's similar and part of the Graphic Guides series). This is a short and accessible book which you can read in about two days. Images and illustrations really help studying the concept of signifiers, and this book does a good job of teaching the basics.
To give you a very brief summary of the signifier:
In order to understand what a signifier is, you just begin with the sign. Now, a sign is something we use everyday in order to communicate. For example, words are signs. Let's take the word "TREE" as an example of a sign. All signs are constituted by two elements: 1) the signifier, 2) the signified. So, what is a signifier, and what is a signified, and how do they constitute the sign?
To answer these questions, let's look at the word TREE. The signifier is the linguistic unit, the written or spoken word, the letters you see on your screen right now. They are the particular squiggles of ink or soundwaves. The signified, on the other hand, is what the signifier refers to. So, the signifier TREE refers to the real-world wooden object with leaves. In this sense, one is the linguistic unit (signifier), and the other the material thing (signified). The signifier signifies the signified. When the signifier finds a signified, such as when we decide that the letters F, I, R, and E, will refer to the hot burning gas, with have a sign.
There's three things you should note:
The relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. There is no reason why the signifier DOG shouldn't refer to a type of plant.
All signifiers are defined negatively, by what they are not. Signifiers are defined differentially. That is, a signifier depends on other signifiers in order to define itself, it does not have any inherent or independent meaning. For example, if you travel to outer space and meet an alien civilization and you want to learn their language, you will immediately spot the interdependency of signifiers. You arrive on the alien planet and during your investigations, an alien comes up to you, points at a tree and says "KAZZPO! KAZZPO!". Now, he is evidently trying to help you connect the signifier KAZZPO to some thing, but what? Does KAZZPO mean "tree"? Or does it mean "nature", or plant, or green, of leaf, or wood, or does the alien mean woods or forest, or perhaps KAZZPO means "go there!". How do you determine the meaning of the signifier KAZZPO? In order to do so, you must know what kazzpo does not mean. Only once you have a whole web of signifiers can you finally determine the meaning of kazzpo.
To use an example of the English language, you know a cat is a cat precisely because you know it is not a not-cat; a spider isn't a cat because a spider is a not-cat. You know A is A because it isn't not-A; B is not A because it is a not-A. Only with this logic of difference can we determine the position of any signifier within the web of signifiers.
3) The relation between signifier and signified is never static or exact. There is always a slippage between signifier and signified. The signifier always "misses it's mark", so to say. As signifiers rely on all other signifiers in a relation difference, we are doomed to an endless chain of signification which never finds its last signifier (think of picking up a dictionary to look up a word, only to realise it uses other words in its definition, which themselves are explained by using more words, ad infinitum).
For Lacan, this endless chain of signification constitutes "the symbolic order", which in turn constitutes reality as we know it. After all, your experience of reality will be different according to how you organise the constellation of signs and signifiers. If you are bilingual, you'll know how two different languages are by no means parallel to each other, they aren't exact copies with different words. Each language offers a certain experience of the world and subjectivity. You'll often find difficulty explaining a certain cultural term to foreigners precisely because they lack that signifier.
Signifiers is how we know things. We literally cannot grasp anything which cannot be signified. Your entire reality is this constructed by a net of signifiers which is always being re-organised. That which escapes signification, that which resists assimilation into the symbolic order through the signifier, is understood by Lacan to be the Real. But that's a whole different thread entirely.
Hopefully this helps.
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TroldeAnsigt
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4y ago
I want to thank you for this reply. A thorough explanation of the concept and connecting it to Lacan. Thanks.
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u/trt13shell avatar
trt13shell
•
4y ago
Signifiers is how we know things. We literally cannot grasp anything which cannot be signified.
If I touch a hot handle and realize it is hot do I really need to translate that into words to understand? Or must it be simply able to be translated into words?
Sorry if this interpretation is crude. I am new
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u/AbjectJouissance avatar
AbjectJouissance
•
4y ago
Good question. I'm not actually entirely sure, but I think, as strange as it sounds, yes. However, it doesn't necessarily have to be a "word", as signifiers can be anything (images, sounds, vague ideas, etc). But I think you're right, a signifier is what makes the burning feeling into something interpretable. The feeling of the pain itself, the excess, can lie outside the realm of signifiers, but I think you nevertheless experience the burning sensation in a certain way due to the signifier.
But I'm honestly just thinking out loud here. Don't take my word for it.
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u/Apexode-s avatar
Apexode-s
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5mo ago
You could say the sensation of hotness exists within the imaginary, but one makes sense of it through symbolic order. Importantly, the signifiers are not actual things, images, or sounds: one cannot represent the signifiers, they are inaccessible through these concrete descriptions of sensations, those belong to the imaginary. The signifiers are, like the subject, lacking, incomplete ("A signifier is that which represents a subject for another signifier"), defined through difference from other signifiers, and because of this, ever-changing with the introduction of new signifiers. Of course one cannot cleanly separate the symbolic from the imaginary in experience (how do you experience a 'pure' signifier? that's why the Borromean knot is, yknow, a knot), you really cannot be talking about hotness (or anything) without a symbolic order on which to stand.
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[deleted]
•
4y ago
This is an amazing explanation!! I just have a passing interest in this and "the symbolic order" has always confused me, so thanks for explaining!
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[deleted]
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4y ago
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CormacdeFaulkner
OP
•
4y ago
Thanks, I’ve heard of Barthes before with ‘Mythologies’ but never got around to reading him. I requested some books from the library. Cheers!
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u/Tasty_Organization14 avatar
Tasty_Organization14
•
4y ago
Check out Dylan Evans’ intro dictionary on lacan — several helpful references on signifiers and the like.
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[deleted]
•
4y ago
This is actually one of the simpler concepts Lacan deals in, although it can be hard to tell from his presentation. A signifier is basically a word. 'Tree', say. If 'tree' is the signifier, the signified would be our mental concept of a thing with branches and leaves. The signifier and signified together form the sign, which has a more or less tenuous relationship to actual trees in the real.
Signifiers are notoriously slipperty. What is a tree and what is a bush? If you start hacking away at a tree, at what point does it stop being a tree and stop being a stump? What does it mean when we use the term 'tree' to refer to certain types of diagrams or artificial physical structures? And so on. Signifiers are not rooted in anything solid, so they slide around and are impossible to nail down. Signfieds are only a little more substantial, but Lacan is not really interested in them.
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[deleted]
•
3y ago
Signifiers defines the constellation of meaning behind symbols.
To be irresponsibly simplistic for a moment but gets to the point (sorta) signifiers are to symbols like the alphabet is to words
"
Let me know if anyone manages to catch up on any or all of this, who knows how long it could take to even be thorough regarding this.
https://themarginaliareview.com/violenc ... sacrilege/
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/maccabe ... omparison/
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dai ... -religion/
Oh, now they are f*cking curious? Kill em all and ask questions later?
https://reformjudaism.org/learning/tora ... eir-altars
"
Perhaps it was necessary in the infancy of our people’s religious life to tear down the altars and smash the images of other nearby religious expressions. But these commandments seem today to express a deep insecurity and immaturity of religious faith. The medieval Jews who retained their Jewish identity while living in the shadows of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals built as symbols of the Church triumphant, the 19th-century German Jews who resisted the blandishments of baptism as what the writer Heinrich Heine called the entry ticket to European culture, these are a more impressive model than the Israelites who had to be protected from exposure to any model of an alternative religious worldview by destroying the pagan shrines. Should we not be able to recognize the power and the beauty mdash; alongside the shortcomings and the failings — of our neighbors’ religions, while remaining uncompromisingly loyal to our own?
"
What was Derrida up to with rubbishing the core of gentile (meaning everyone else and the rest of the whole world's communicators) interactions?
https://dannybate.com/2022/04/27/a-dict ... our-words/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signified_and_signifier
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_reference
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_(semiotics)
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/empty_signifier
https://opentextbc.ca/mediastudies101/c ... ignifiers/
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/ ... ic-judaism
https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.co ... reverence/
Some propaganda from the New and Old N*z*s, the ones everyone knows and thinks of as Nazis, and whoever are variously accused of being N*z*-like, typically by J people, tend to always be in the middle, sandwiched between what they at least perceived, if and when they ever existed, as contrary threats and distasteful history and nightmarish projections into a future that could be termed the Anti-Pious, which is not only opposed but also a replacement of something trying to be held on to, namely some sense of restraint, decency, and autonomy:
https://aish.com/curing-jewish-ignorance/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impiety
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrilege
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asebeia
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/vie ... additional
https://academic.oup.com/book/12793/cha ... m=fulltext
More propaganda:
https://straighttruth.net/how-should-ch ... n-warfare/
https://www.premierchristianity.com/opi ... 02.article
https://capmin.org/the-bible-on-when-wa ... le-part-1/
https://forward.com/opinion/564799/what ... hamas-war/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religio ... rimination
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_bias
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_persecution
https://18doors.org/is-the-jewish-commu ... mean-girl/
"
Yes, it might stem from our own inner fears about our future, but the Jewish community can be the worst kind of mean kids. We can make others feel unaccepted, unimportant and unwelcome; and then we pretend it’s all in their minds.
Every day. Every year. We look at interfaith families and, sometimes purposefully and sometimes accidentally, with both verbal and nonverbal ques, we question their presence, their legitimacy and their worth.
"
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israelis- ... with-that/
Lol, people like this have then lost their rights by the natural and in-built seeming law of reciprocation and equity, which they have no sense of, and legalism makes even abominable unnatural things seem like "oh well, the rules (we made up) say:
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_ ... nt-142.htm
I bring this up because words are being treated with a similar seeming abandon as "other" and "worthless" because of it not coming from the self absorbed one who hasn't made anything of it and doesn't care who ever has it they don't have any use, they'll then set out to convince everyone it is total sh*t and that what they are saying isn't then somehow.
What has ot been except a project of sh*tting on everything according to these likely fantastical records?
So, Derrida appears to have likewise followed this long cultural project at continuous denial and "deconstruction", as people call it, which is destruction, an iconoclasm:
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The term "pogrom" originates from the Russian word "погром" (pogrom), which is derived from the prefix **"по-" (po-) meaning "upon, against" and the verb "громить" (gromit') meaning "to destroy, wreck, demolish violently". Therefore, the word literally translates to "to wreak havoc" or "to destroy violently".
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"No no no, that is impossible, only we can experience a pogrom, a holocaust, and (benefit from using the term) anti-s*m*tism"
"You others don't even have words"
https://www.emethatorah.com/blog/are-ge ... eally-dogs
https://biblehub.com/topical/ttt/t/the_ ... ntiles.htm
There is a layer here, one of many, but I'd like to remind anyone reading this that I'm still always referring to everything I've brought up, so please bring to mind the association of dogs to Hermes, communication, love, loyalty, s*x, aggression, the liminal, the afterlife, and cynicism, among other things, by various people.
https://www.jtsa.edu/torah/jews-gentile ... r-animals/
https://aish.com/what-does-judaism-real ... -non-jews/
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/articl ... raditions/
I'm suggesting that this may even be an element of the chosen direction of Derrida's deriding, an animosity towards the language he feels perhaps was used against him and to which he should be opposed, practically as a hereditary duty.
The may suggest his upbringing had no impact somehow, like he was in a vacuum, but I can pretty confidently guarantee that he likely would not have approached things the way in which he did with another story and a different experience and more integrated and accepted feeling or average upbringing in a different cultural group, what hostility would there need to be towards language and ultimately the culture it is used by? When someone is raised in what might be a disenfranchised and xenophobic, gatekept in-group, believing in a mutual hostility and then seeing clear seeming examples of it, are they in the right place to speak in an educated and heartfelt, caring manner about words from alien groups in the remote past? How can we trust their grasp on the French language and culture even?
Did he need to be more French? Probably not, but what he needed was something else if what we wanted wasn't what we got. Then again, biting and spitting can be a popular passtime.
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kFoyauextlH
- Posts: 661
- Joined: Sun Jun 15, 2025 3:53 pm
Re: Derrida | Language as Writing
https://s-usih.org/2015/12/jacques-derr ... n-a-makes/
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The process of how deconstruction takes place is, perhaps, more accessible. First, deconstruction is the deconstruction of a text. Deconstruction interlaces different layers of meaning: “the dominant interpretation” (the meaning of a text according to critical, academic scholarship) is re-examined in order to “open a text up to blind spots or ellipses within the dominant interpretation,” explains Critchley. [15] Deconstruction destroys the traditional understanding of boundaries, while residing entirely within the text, for as Derrida (in)famously explained, “There is no outside-text” [il n’y a pas de hors-texte]. [16] Within the text, deconstruction moves the reader to a place that is other to existing logocentrism, a place where the reader is then able to see beyond the intended meaning of a text. While many critics of Derrida have argued that deconstruction allows for any reading of a text, Derrida disagrees. While signs may not convey meaning in the manner intended by the author, Derrida chastised his critics: “one could indeed say just anything at all and I have never accepted saying, or being encouraged to say, just anything at all.” [17] Deconstruction was not limitless interpretation, even when labeled as such by critics.
Despite this admonition, deconstruction opens itself to somewhat obvious criticism. Many on the right rejected deconstruction outright, as Powell scathingly explains, “due to the frustration which conservative, authoritarian minds feel when they find that their ideals are truly real only because they insist that they are real, and that in fact they are spectral ideals for a half-present world.” [18] Since Derrida claims that “structures and systems on the subject of being are always faulty,” [19] it is understandable that structuralists would fundamentally disagree with Derrida’s break with metaphysics. At the same time, Derrida’s theories presented substantive concerns for many on the left. If signs do not convey the intended meaning of the author, then any study of signs (such as anthropology, literature, history, etc.) can be seen as meaningless. For others on the left, “deconstruction seemed to have a paralyzing effect,” as historian Andrew Hartman explains. [20] “By militating against the possibility of intelligible communication, it limited the prospects for justice, which demands agreed-upon conceptions of the good life. In short, deconstruction negated the utopian possibilities that had long inspired a universalist left.” [21]
The reputations of Derrida and deconstruction were also dealt serious blows in the wake of several scandals. In the late 1980s, deconstruction was drawn into the renewed debate over fascism. Derrida was called upon to explain his philosophical links to Heidegger and Hegel, whose works were linked to the ideology of the Nazi Party. Then, in 1988, literary critic and noted deconstructionist Paul de Man’s collaboration with the Nazi party in occupied Belgium was revealed posthumously. Derrida, and other deconstructionists, countered accusations that deconstruction was born from fascism and/or fashioned fascist ideology. As Hartman states, deconstructionists “argued that deconstruction was an implicit repudiation of fascism” that provided “a bulwark against the rigid ideologies that make totalitarianism possible.” [22] In 1992, Derrida would again be embroiled in controversy, when his nomination for an honorary degree from the University of Cambridge was publically contested in the media. [23] Deconstruction itself came under attack in the Sokal hoax of 1996. [24] By the late 1990s, opponents had painted Derrida as a nihilist with no ethics who was responsible for turning philosophy into a joke. [25] By the time of Derrida’s death in 2004, there was no shortage of critiques.
Despite a vast body of works that engage Derrida, there are large gaps in scholarship. As scholar Joshua Kates, whose work focuses on French poststructuralists explains, “not only is there no consensus about the validity of Derrida’s interpretations, but perhaps more gravely, no model, no paradigm for interpreting Derrida’s own thought is at present available that has even the potential to someday resolve this controversy.” [26] Nonetheless, Derrida’s work has permeated across the humanities, including history. For example, in the preface of Frontiers of the Historical Imagination Kerwin Klein thanks his advisor for convincing him that he could read Derrida “without leaving history behind.” [27] Klein’s analysis demonstrates how emphasizing different words within Fredrick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis results in significantly diverse conclusions. [28] Furthermore, Klein’s entire work is based on loosening (if not breaking down) binary understandings of frontier/civilization, enslavement/freedom, and happy/unhappy outcomes in our understanding of American frontier history.
Derrida’s insistence on giving voice to the other directly influenced post-colonial studies, legitimizing the study of colonialism from the perspective of the colonized and not just the colonizer. Here again, however, one sees the paradox of Derrida’s work: while deconstruction allows for an understanding of the other, deconstruction also infinitely displaces power structures. Once the traditional hierarchy has been “flipped” (in this sense, to view history from the perspective of the colonized), one must again displace the center (returning to the perspective of the colonized, however, with new insight which would generate an altered understanding). While post-colonial authors like Edward Said and Franz Fanon targeted specific colonial regimes in an attempt to influence change, Derrida’s critique is leveled at the metaphysics which places European colonizers at the center of discourse, in a preferred position of singularity and therefore power. As Derrida explains in Margins of Philosophy:
Metaphysics- the white mythology which reassembles and reflects the culture of the West: the white man takes his own mythology, Indo-European mythology, his own logos, that is, the mythos of his reason, for the universal form of that he must still wish to call Reason… White mythology – metaphysics has erased within itself the fabulous scene that has produced it, the scene that nevertheless remains active and stirring, inscribed in white ink, an invisible design covered over in the palimpsest. [29]
In the specific case of post-colonialism, différance has political significance. The spoken and written term possess both sameness (as homophones) and difference (in spelling). Post-colonial scholars like Robert J.C. Young contend that the term différance “perfectly describes the political condition of a minority group: a minority wants to make a claim that according to the classical account of identity is impossible, namely that it is the same and different.” [30]
Derrida’s work allowed for both a breaking of traditional binary oppositions and a reworking of group politics. As such, it provided a theoretical foundation for feminism as well as post-colonialism. The works of both Joan Wallach Scott and Judith Butler are heavily influenced by Derrida’s ideas. According to Scott, modern feminist analysis is based on the assumption that since “meanings of concepts are taken to be unstable, open to contest and redefinition, then they require vigilant repetition, reassertion, and implementation by those who have endorsed one or another definition… meanings are not fixed in a culture’s lexicon but are rather dynamic, always potentially influx.” [31] Scott goes onto to address binary opposites, succinctly detailing the basis of Butler’s later work:
Positive definitions rest always, in this [post-structuralist] view, on the negation or repression of something represented as antithetical to it… Although some opposition pairs seem to recur predictably in certain cultures, their specific meanings are conveyed through new combinations of contrasts and oppositions. Contests about meaning involve the introduction of new oppositions, the reversal of hierarchies, the attempt to expose repressed terms, to challenge the natural status of seemingly dichotomous pairs, and to expose their interdependence and their internal instability. [32]
For the entire field of feminist and gender studies, deconstruction offers a theoretical starting point for an analysis of gender in discourse. Derrida himself wrote several essays on feminism, including “At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am” in 1987. This latter part of the essay features a dialogue that deconstructs the phrase “He will have obligated” [Il aura obligé] to show the depth with which the masculine is favored over the feminine in the very structure of language. [33] As Butler proves, terms like “nature” and “sex” are not facts, as they are commonly understood, but concepts with histories, articulated through language, and therefore subject to multiple understandings throughout time. Sounding strikingly like Derrida, Scott explains, “If sex, gender, and sexual difference are effects – discursively and historically produced – then we cannot take them as points of origin for our analysis.” [34]
The use of deconstruction in politically charged fields like post-colonialism and feminism occurred at the same time that Derrida’s works themselves became increasingly political. Yet, in typical Derridean fashion, Derrida himself never wrote a work on political philosophy. [35] Derrida’s colleague and biographer Geoffrey Bennington contends that part of the reason that Derrida avoided an explicit analysis of politics was in itself “‘political’: a sense of political strategy and solidarity may have dictated prudence about criticizing the arguments of the Left.” [36] At the same time, since deconstruction targets existing hierarchies of power, deconstruction is inherently political. Beginning in the 1990s, Derrida openly opposed a range of issues: the death penalty, European racism, European immigration policy, apartheid, totalitarianism, censorship, and the political discourse in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. [37] Derrida’s later work focused on mourning, death, ethics and justice. As Butler explains in her obituary of Derrida, Derrida was clear that “as an ideal, it [justice] is that towards which we strive, without end. Not to strive for justice because it cannot by fully realised [sic] would be as mistaken as believing that one has already arrived at justice and that the only task is to arm oneself adequately to fortify its regime.”[38] Butler’s poignant obituary is a testament to Derrida’s legacy. As she so eloquently concludes, Derrida “not only taught us how to read, but gave the act of reading a new significance and a new promise.” [39]
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TaliesinMerlin
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4y ago
Derrida is so focused on the sign because he is responding to linguists and philosophers who put a lot of emphasis on the sign: Ferdinand de Saussure and Husserl, maybe with some J.L Austin mixed in.
Derrida is dense. One reason why sign matters is that scholars of the time sought to understand the basis for language meaning something (in the case of the sign) or doing something (in the case of speech acts). Their idea was to figure out how people use language to access meaning. If I recall correctly (and that's a big "if"), Derrida is analyzing these concepts and then applying structuralist ideas of language back on the very terminology that helps us understand it. In other words, there is no understanding of language, sign, or text that is outside language, sign, or text; there is no metaphysical logos outside of language. We make meaning within the system of language.
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u/rushmc1 avatar
rushmc1
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4y ago
Derrida is dense.
I think I'm interpreting your sign differently than you intended it.
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Xargom
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4y ago
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Edited 4y ago
No one does.
Speaking a little more seriously. A lot of Derrida parts from the principle that a "sign" (being it a written word, or a spoken one or even an image, anything that carries some form of meaning) can't be read 100% accurately, because the person that produced it charged it with a meaning constructed from his own experiences. The reader can understand or even share some of those, but not all of them in the exact same way as the one producing the sign. Thus "true meaning" is always unreachable.
It's been a long ass time since I read Derrida, but that's more or less what I got from it. I'm not using his exact terminology, but hopefully that can help you a bit.
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VictorChariot
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4y ago
I am afraid you have 180 degrees the wrong way round.
Your description suggest meaning resides in the understanding and intention of the sender and that the receiver cannot get access to it because they cannot reach the sender’s intention.
The point is in fact that meaning does not derive from any such link to an originary source, but derives from the signs position among other signs.
There is no ‘accurate’ meaning, not because of some communication failure, but because meaning does not stem from a sign’s reference to an original.
I studied D at University as part of a Lit degree. In fact though I think he not really a literary theorist, he is a philosopher. Most Lit student’s find him incomprehensible, because they come at him from a lit crit point of view instead of seeing him in a tradition of philosophy/phenomenology.
The result is that he is the only philosopher in this vein that they read. They then find him incomprehensible and conclude he is talking nonsense. Unfortunately, they would almost certainly find the same thing if they read Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, etc
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https://medium.com/paul-austin-murphys- ... dffd688578
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“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.”
It can be seen that Derrida simply and directly contradicted himself in the passage above — which he might very well have allowed himself to do!
He told us that deconstruction isn’t X, it isn’t not-X, and that it isn’t Y. And then he even warned us against stating what deconstruction is. Yet he then went straight ahead and told us… what deconstruction is!
So what did Derrida believe that deconstruction is — at least in this instance? This (to requote):
“[D]econstruction is precisely the delimiting of ontology and above all the third person present indicative: S is P.”
Now if that isn’t telling us what deconstruction is, then I don’t know what is. Of course, deconstruction may not only be “the delimiting of ontology”; but surely that delimiting is at least a part of what deconstruction is.
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What about truth?
Derrida — in the passage above — was also saying (outrightly!) that something is “false”. (Derrida used the words “they are at least false”.) So surely Derrida must have believed in truth in order to say that something is false.
So we can also ask if it true that the the third person present indicative is S is P? Yet Derrida would never have plainly and clearly said, “I believe in truth” or even anything like that.
It can also be asked exactly why it is that “All sentences of the type ‘Deconstruction is X’” manage to “miss the point”? Is it because they’re false? Is it because there is, in actual fact, something true — or even semantically determinate — about what deconstruction is? Or was Derrida just using words in any way he wished (i.e., playing with the sign or signifier) — perhaps for political, career, literary and/or emotional reasons?
Yet Derrida himself did believe in truth! And he — if only rarely — said so.
Take the following passage (in response to John Searle) from Limited Inc (1988) in which Derrida was explicit as could be:
“[H]ow can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple, this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that’s right: false, not true) and feeble: it supposes a bad (that’s right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mind, which therefore must be read or re-read.”
The thing here is that it took the American philosopher John Searle’s criticisms to drag a commitment to truth out of Derrida. And by selectively endorsing the notion of truth in this particular instance, this too can be seen as typical Derridean gameplaying and/or one-upmanship. And that’s because in large amounts of Derrida’s other work he explicitly carried out the deconstruction of the concept [truth] — and, indeed, of all other logocentric concepts.
The thing is, then, that Derrida did and he didn’t believe in truth.
He believed in truth in order to win one philosophical game and rejected it in order to win another.
The other way of putting this is that Derrida did believe in truth when it came to defending very particular political and philosophical causes and ideas. However, he didn’t believe in truth when he was attacking other very particular political and philosophical causes and ideas.
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So a version of the exact sort of double standards I brought up through other things?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_standard
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Double standards are believed to develop in people's minds for a multitude of possible reasons, including: finding an excuse for oneself, emotions clouding judgement, twisting facts to support beliefs (such as confirmation biases, cognitive biases, attraction biases, prejudices or the desire to be right). Human beings have a tendency to evaluate people's actions based on who did them.
In a study conducted in 2000, Dr. Martha Foschi observed the application of double standards in group competency tests. She concluded that status characteristics, such as gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic class, can provide a basis for the formation of double standards in which stricter standards are applied to people who are perceived to be of lower status. Dr. Foschi also noted the ways in which double standards can form based on other socially valued attributes such as beauty, morality, and mental health.[5]
Dr. Tristan Botelho and Dr. Mabel Abraham, Assistant Professors at the Yale School of Management and Columbia Business School, studied the effect that gender has on the way people rank others in financial markets. Their research showed that average-quality men were given the benefit of the doubt more than average-quality women, who were more often "penalized" in people's judgments. Botelho and Abraham also showed that women and men are similarly risk-loving, contrary to popular belief. Altogether, their research showed that double standards (at least in financial markets) do exist around gender. They encourage the adoption of controls to eliminate gender bias in application, hiring, and evaluation processes within organizations. Examples of such controls include using only initials on applications so that applicants' genders are not apparent, or auditioning musicians from behind a screen so that their skills, and not their gender, influence their acceptance or rejection into orchestras.[6] Practices like these are, according to Botelho and Abraham, already being implemented in a number of organizations.
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A double standard may arise if two or more groups who have equal legal rights are given different degrees of legal protection or representation. Such double standards are seen as unjustified because they violate a common maxim of modern legal jurisprudence - that all parties should stand equal before the law. Where judges are expected to be impartial, they must apply the same standards to all people, regardless of their own subjective biases or favoritism, based on: social class, rank, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age or other distinctions.
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A double standard arises in politics when the treatment of the same political matters between two or more parties (such as the response to a public crisis or the allocation of funding) is handled differently.[11]
Double standard policies can include situations when a country's or commentator's assessment of the same phenomenon, process or event in international relations depends on their relationship with or attitude to the parties involved.[12] In Harry's Game (1975), Gerald Seymour wrote: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".[13]
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Double standards exist when people are preferred or rejected on the basis of their ethnicity in situations in which ethnicity is not a relevant or justifiable factor for discrimination (as might be the case for a cultural performance or ethnic ceremony).
The intentional efforts of some people to counteract racism and ethnic double standards can sometimes be interpreted by others as actually perpetuating racism and double standards among ethnic groups. Writing for The American Conservative, Rod Dreher quotes the account published in Quillette by Coleman Hughes, a black student at Columbia University, who said he was given an opportunity to play in a backup band for Grammy Award-winning pop artist Rihanna at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards Show. According to Hughes, several of his friends were also invited; however, one of them was fired and replaced because, according to Hughes, his white Hispanic background did not suit the all-black aesthetic that Rihanna's team had chosen for her show. The team had decided that all performers on stage were to be black, aside from Rihanna's regular guitar player.[14] Hughes was uncertain about whether he believed this action was unethical, given that the show was racially themed to begin with. He observed what he believed to be a double standard in the entertainment industry, saying, "if a black musician had been fired in order to achieve an all-white aesthetic — it would have made front page headlines. It would have been seen as an unambiguous moral infraction."[14] Dreher argues that Hughes's observations highlight the difficulty in distinguishing between the exclusion of one ethnic group in order to celebrate another, and the exclusion of an ethnic group as the exercise of racism or a double standard. Dreher also discussed another incident, in which New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, who is J*w*sh, was heavily criticized for tweeting, "Immigrants: They get the job done", in a positive reference to Mirai Nagasu, a Japanese-American Olympic ice skater, who Weiss was trying to honor.[14] The public debate about ethnicity and double standards remains controversial and, by all appearances, will continue.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink
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Doublethink is a process of indoctrination in which subjects are expected to simultaneously accept two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with their own memory or sense of reality.[1] Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_ ... ity_debate
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_hypocrisy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quod_li ... licet_bovi
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recipro ... hilosophy)
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The social norm of reciprocity is the expectation that people will respond to each other in similar ways—responding to gifts and kindnesses from others with similar benevolence of their own, and responding to harmful, hurtful acts from others with either indifference or some form of retaliation. Such norms can be crude and mechanical, such as a literal reading of the eye-for-an-eye rule lex talionis, or they can be complex and sophisticated, such as a subtle understanding of how anonymous donations to an international organization can be a form of reciprocity for the receipt of very personal benefits, such as the love of a parent.
The norm of reciprocity varies widely in its details from situation to situation, and from society to society. Anthropologists and sociologists have often claimed, however, that having some version of the norm appears to be a social inevitability.[1] Reciprocity figures prominently in social exchange theory,[2] evolutionary psychology, social psychology,[3] cultural anthropology and rational choice theory.[4]
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_of_reciprocity
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_exchange_theory
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_model
http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw ... ence/1.pdf
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Derrida has provided many definitions of deconstruction. But three definitions are classical. The first is early, being found in the 1971 interview “Positions” and in the 1972 Preface to Dissemination: deconstruction consists in “two phases” (Positions, pp. 41–42, Dissemination, pp.4–6). At this stage of his career Derrida speaks of “metaphysics” as if the Western philosophical tradition was monolithic and homogeneous. At times he also speaks of “Platonism,” as Nietzsche did. Simply, deconstruction is a criticism of Platonism, which is defined by the belief that existence is structured in terms of oppositions (separate substances or forms) and that the oppositions are hierarchical, with one side of the opposition being more valuable than the other. The first phase of deconstruction attacks this belief by reversing the Platonistic hierarchies: the hierarchies between the invisible or intelligible and the visible or sensible; between essence and appearance; between the soul and body; between living memory and rote memory; between mnēmē and hypomnēsis; between voice and writing; between finally good and evil. In order to clarify deconstruction’s “two phases,” let us restrict ourselves to one specific opposition, the opposition between appearance and essence. Prior to Derrida, Nietzsche had also criticized this opposition, and it is criticized in a lot of Twentieth Century philosophy. So, in Platonism, essence is more valuable than appearance. In deconstruction however, we reverse this, making appearance more valuable than essence. How? Here we could resort to empiricist arguments (in Hume for example) that show that all knowledge of what we call essence depends on the experience of what appears. But then, this argumentation would imply that essence and appearance are not related to one another as separate oppositional poles. The argumentation in other words would show us that essence can be reduced down to a variation of appearances (involving the roles of memory and anticipation). The reduction is a reduction to what we can call “immanence,” which carries the sense of “within” or “in.” So, we would say that what we used to call essence is found in appearance, essence is mixed into appearance. Now, we can back track a bit in the history of Western metaphysics. On the basis of the reversal of the essence-appearance hierarchy and on the basis of the reduction to immanence, we can see that something like a decision (a perhaps impossible decision) must have been made at the beginning of the metaphysical tradition, a decision that instituted the hierarchy of essence-appearance and separated essence from appearance. This decision is what really defines Platonism or “metaphysics.” After this retrospection, we can turn now to a second step in the reversal-reduction of Platonism, which is the second “phase” of deconstruction. The previously inferior term must be re-inscribed as the “origin” or “resource” of the opposition and hierarchy itself. How would this re-inscription or redefinition of appearance work? Here we would have to return to the idea that every appearance or every experience is temporal. In the experience of the present, there is always a small difference between the moment of now-ness and the past and the future. (It is perhaps possible that Hume had already discovered this small difference when, in the Treatise, he speaks of the idea of relation.) In any case, this infinitesimal difference is not only a difference that is non-dualistic, but also it is a difference that is, as Derrida would say, “undecidable.” Although the minuscule difference is virtually unnoticeable in everyday common experience, when we in fact notice it, we cannot decide if we are experiencing a memory or a present perception, if we are experiencing a present perception or an anticipation. (Bergson makes a similar claim in his “Memory of the Present and False Recognition” [Mind-Energy, pp. 109–151] and Deleuze extends Bergson’s insight in his “The Actual and the Virtual” [Dialogues, pp. 148–152].) When we notice the difference, we are indeed experiencing the present, but the present is recognized as “contaminated” by the past and future. Insofar as the difference is undecidable (perception – what we see right now – contaminated with memory or the present contaminated with the past: the experienced difference is an experience of what Derrida would call the “trace”), the difference destabilizes the original decision that instituted the hierarchy. After the redefinition of the previously inferior term, Derrida usually changes the term’s orthography, for example, writing “différence” with an “a” as “différance” in order to indicate the change in its status. Différance (which is found in appearances when we recognize their temporal nature) then refers to the undecidable resource into which “metaphysics” “cut” in order to makes its decision. In “Positions,” Derrida calls names like “différance” “old names” or “paleonyms,” and there he also provides a list of these “old terms”: “pharmakon”; “supplement”; “trace”; “hymen”; “gram”; “spacing”; and “incision” (Positions, p. 43). These names are old because, like the word “appearance” or the word “difference,” they have been used for centuries in the history of Western philosophy to refer to the inferior position in hierarchies. But now, they are being used to refer to the resource that has never had a name in “metaphysics”; they are being used to refer to the resource that is indeed “older” than the metaphysical decision.
This first definition of deconstruction as two phases gives way to the refinement we find in the “Force of Law” (which dates from 1989–1990). This second definition is less metaphysical and more political. In “Force of Law,” Derrida says that deconstruction is practiced in two styles (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, p. 21). These “two styles” do not correspond to the “two phases” in the earlier definition of deconstruction. On the one hand, there is the genealogical style of deconstruction, which recalls the history of a concept or theme. Earlier in his career, in Of Grammatology, Derrida had laid out, for example, the history of the concept of writing. But now what is at issue is the history of justice. On the other hand, there is the more formalistic or structural style of deconstruction, which examines a-historical paradoxes or aporias. In “Force of Law,” Derrida lays out three aporias, although they all seem to be variants of one, an aporia concerning the unstable relation between law (the French term is “droit,” which also means “right”) and justice.
Derrida calls the first aporia, “the epoche of the rule” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 22–23). Our most common axiom in ethical or political thought is that to be just or unjust and to exercise justice, one must be free and responsible for one’s actions and decisions. Here Derrida in effect is asking: what is freedom. On the one hand, freedom consists in following a rule; but in the case of justice, we would say that a judgment that simply followed the law was only right, not just. For a decision to be just, not only must a judge follow a rule but also he or she must “re-institute” it, in a new judgment. Thus a decision aiming at justice (a free decision) is both regulated and unregulated. The law must be conserved and also destroyed or suspended, suspension being the meaning of the word “epoche.” Each case is other, each decision is different and requires an absolutely unique interpretation which no existing coded rule can or ought to guarantee. If a judge programmatically follows a code, he or she is a “calculating machine.” Strict calculation or arbitrariness, one or the other is unjust, but they are both involved; thus, in the present, we cannot say that a judgment, a decision is just, purely just. For Derrida, the “re-institution” of the law in a unique decision is a kind of violence since it does not conform perfectly to the instituted codes; the law is always, according to Derrida, founded in violence. The violent re-institution of the law means that justice is impossible. Derrida calls the second aporia “the ghost of the undecidable” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 24–26). A decision begins with the initiative to read, to interpret, and even to calculate. But to make such a decision, one must first of all experience what Derrida calls “undecidability.” One must experience that the case, being unique and singular, does not fit the established codes and therefore a decision about it seems to be impossible. The undecidable, for Derrida, is not mere oscillation between two significations. It is the experience of what, though foreign to the calculable and the rule, is still obligated. We are obligated – this is a kind of duty—to give oneself up to the impossible decision, while taking account of rules and law. As Derrida says, “A decision that did not go through the ordeal of the undecidable would not be a free decision, it would only be the programmable application or unfolding of a calculable process” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, p. 24). And once the ordeal is past (“if this ever happens,” as Derrida says), then the decision has again followed or given itself a rule and is no longer presently just. Justice therefore is always to come in the future, it is never present. There is apparently no moment during which a decision could be called presently and fully just. Either it has not followed a rule, hence it is unjust; or it has followed a rule, which has no foundation, which makes it again unjust; or if it did follow a rule, it was calculated and again unjust since it did not respect the singularity of the case. This relentless injustice is why the ordeal of the undecidable is never past. It keeps coming back like a “phantom,” which “deconstructs from the inside every assurance of presence, and thus every criteriology that would assure us of the justice of the decision” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 24–25). Even though justice is impossible and therefore always to come in or from the future, justice is not, for Derrida, a Kantian ideal, which brings us to the third aporia. The third is called “the urgency that obstructs the horizon of knowledge” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 26–28). Derrida stresses the Greek etymology of the word “horizon”: “As its Greek name suggests, a horizon is both the opening and limit that defines an infinite progress or a period of waiting.” Justice, however, even though it is un-presentable, does not wait. A just decision is always required immediately. It cannot furnish itself with unlimited knowledge. The moment of decision itself remains a finite moment of urgency and precipitation. The instant of decision is then the moment of madness, acting in the night of non-knowledge and non-rule. Once again we have a moment of irruptive violence. This urgency is why justice has no horizon of expectation (either regulative or messianic). Justice remains an event yet to come. Perhaps one must always say “can-be” (the French word for “perhaps” is “peut-être,” which literally means “can be”) for justice. This ability for justice aims however towards what is impossible.
Even later in Derrida’s career he will formalize, beyond these aporias, the nature of deconstruction. The third definition of deconstruction can be found in an essay from 2000 called “Et Cetera.” Here Derrida in fact presents the principle that defines deconstruction:
Each time that I say ‘deconstruction and X (regardless of the concept or the theme),’ this is the prelude to a very singular division that turns this X into, or rather makes appear in this X, an impossibility that becomes its proper and sole possibility, with the result that between the X as possible and the ‘same’ X as impossible, there is nothing but a relation of homonymy, a relation for which we have to provide an account…. For example, here referring myself to demonstrations I have already attempted …, gift, hospitality, death itself (and therefore so many other things) can be possible only as impossible, as the im-possible, that is, unconditionally (Deconstructions: a User’s Guide, p. 300, my emphasis).
Even though the word “deconstruction” has been bandied about, we can see now the kind of thinking in which deconstruction engages. It is a kind of thinking that never finds itself at the end. Justice – this is undeniable – is impossible (perhaps justice is the “impossible”) and therefore it is necessary to make justice possible in countless ways.
Finally, with the publication of the death penalty lectures, we have another definition of deconstruct, one also dating from 2000 (lecture dated March 1/8, 2000). Here is what Derrida says:
To deconstruct death, then, that is the subject, while recalling that we do not know what it is, if and when it happens, and to whom. ... The dream of deconstruction, a convulsive movement to have done with death itself. Not to put into question again the question, what is death? when and where does it take place? etc. What comes afterward? and so forth. But to deconstruct death. Final period. And with the same blow, to come to blows with death and put it out of action. No less than that. Death to death (The Death Penalty (Volume 1), pp. 240–241).
“No less than that. Death to death”: This shows us that perhaps even more than justice deconstruction values (if we can speak of a moral value) life more than anything else. But, this life is not unscathed; it is life in its irreducible connection to death. Thus what deconstruction values is survival.
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Significantly, Derrida also pointed out that structuralists elevate empiricism to the status of a logos or centering force. Structuralists believe science provides the tools for studying the structure, much like Christians believe the Bible provides the tool for studying God. Derrida, who wanted to smash all logos and particularly delighted in smashing the logos of people who claimed they have no logos, said empiricism is a major problem:
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https://philarchive.org/archive/ARAMOD
https://www.openculture.com/2013/07/jea ... sophy.html
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FreeHumanity
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10y ago
Here is Searle on Derrida's obscurantism. The general gist of the criticism is that Derrida is intentionally obtuse and difficult to read which makes it hard to know exactly what he's saying. Any criticism of Derrida is deflected with a "well, you just don't understand him." This makes it easy to reject all criticism as non-substantive and based on a poor reading of Derrida. It seems that Derrida himself used this tactic, which is probably why fans of his work sometimes do as well.
This whole criticism is sometimes mixed up in the analytic-continental debate. This debate is kind of boring, so I'm not going to bother saying much about it. If you are unfamiliar with it, there's been tons of discussion on it here. Whether or not this is a fair criticism of Derrida's theories, I'll leave to people more familiar with his works.
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ben_profane
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10y ago
I've studied three of Derrida's books (Of Grammatology, Margins of Philosophy, and Dissemination). For context, my training is roughly 60-70% analytic and 30-40% continental. It is very likely I am not the most sympathetic reader, but I think I'm sympathetic enough to give a fair(ish) assessment.
Attempting to extract and evaluate a Derrida argument is maddening. The obscurity of his writing isn't just whimsical; Derrida was suspicious of some really basic assumptions in the Western philosophical tradition, so his texts deploy an incredibly complicated philosophical vocabulary in an attempt to move "beyond" the limits of that tradition. That isn't really special about his work, though. Plenty of philosophers, marginal and otherwise, have created and continue to create new vocabularies because they are dissatisfied with the restrictions of their received vocabulary. However, I think the main interpretive problem most analytic folks have is with the way Derrida's vocabulary works. He consistently refuses to use "settled terms" for his concepts -- one concept plus several minuscule variations of it are expressed interchangeably by multiple terms.
Why is the way he uses his vocabulary a problem for analytic folks? Simple. We tend to think of philosophical writing as a vehicle for communicating philosophical ideas with other people. One consequence of this is that we want to extract and evaluate arguments; in doing so, we try to make our attempts at communicating ideas as engaged and productive as possible. We want to locate mistakes in our theories and talk them out in order to either improve the theories or demonstrate that the theories have irreconcilable flaws. We tend to get annoyed when our efforts at extracting and evaluating arguments are frustrated due to insurmountable language barriers because such frustrations undermine what we perceive to be the act of philosophizing. Since Derrida's vocabulary is not just complicated (difficult terms) but also slippery (multiple terms juggled for multiple concepts with minimal consistency), we tend to get extra annoyed with him. And, as u/FreeHumanity noted, when we express our annoyance or sheer bewilderment we get chastised for not being sympathetic or careful enough. But given the slipperiness of his vocabulary, someone defending his work can easily slide out of any criticism without thoughtful engagement. So trying to talk about Derrida becomes a futile exercise for some people and it creates really irritating argumentative habits in other people.
So is Derrida garbage? I'm not so sure. He's definitely a waste of time if your goal is to extract and evaluate arguments for a focused discussion. But I think carefully studying his writing can serve as an excellent interpretive exercise, one which many readers (especially readers who shy away from "hard" stuff) might find profitable.
Hope that was at least in part helpful.
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u/the_night_shift avatar
the_night_shift
OP
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10y ago
This does really help; I'm trying to begin Of Grammatology at the moment but it's almost futile (well, I find at least) without first thoroughly reading Gayatri Spivak's preface. Did you think she wrote a decent introduction to his work?
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u/ben_profane avatar
ben_profane
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10y ago
The preface is helpful, though it is more of a primer for his style than a clear exegesis of the book's content. Grammatology is going to be rough whether you read the preface or not.
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Khif
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2y ago
First, that's a bit of a poor translation. There is no outside-text doesn't really say there is nothing that is non-textual, or that any singular the text is a self-contained unit of meaning (it's the opposite!) but more that there is no outsideness in our relationship to textuality. (Note that to Derrida, texts are quite a bit more than pure, immediate writing.) What he's saying is that there is no interpretive process of texts that could leave an ultimately self-referential chain of interpretation as such. There is no transcendental signified, a provider of meaning outside language and context and interpretation. The God of the Bible is in the text.
There are two excellent responses in this thread. I'll quote the one by u/na4ez as supplement:
To say that Derrida is difficult to understand is an understatement, and every engagement with Derrida by the way of quotes should be considered carefully, as it is simple to fall into the trap of quoting him out of context and not fully understanding how the quote relates to his writing and "project" in a given text.
The quote "there is nothing outside the text" is a somewhat poor translation of the french "Il n'y pas hors-texte" and would be directly translated as "there is no outside-text" from the french hors-texte which means any part of french typography outside the main text such as illustrations and other figures.
This is the paragraph in its entirety:
Yet if reading must not be content with doubling the text, it cannot legitimately transgress the text toward something other than it, toward a referent (a reality that is metaphysical, historical, psychobiographical, etc.) or toward a signified outside the text whose content could take place, could have taken place outside of the language [langue], that is to say, in the sense that we give here to that word, outside of writing in general. That is why the methodological considerations that we risk applying here to an example are closely dependent on general propositions that we have elaborated above; as regards the absence of the referent or the transcendental signified. There is nothing outside of the text [there is no outside-text; il n’y a pas de horstexte]. And that is neither because Jean-Jacques’ life, or the existence of Mamma or Thérèse themselves, is not of interest to us in the first place, nor because we have access to their so-called “real” existence only in the text and we have neither any means of altering this, nor any right to neglect this limitation. All reasons of this type would already be sufficient, to be sure, but there are more radical reasons. What we have tried to show by following the guiding line of the “dangerous supplement,” is that in what one calls the real life of these existences “of flesh and bone,” beyond and behind what one believes can be circumscribed as Rousseau’s text, there has never been anything but writing; there has never been anything but supplements, substitutive significations which could only emerge in a chain of differential references, the “real” supervening, and adding itself only by taking on meaning from a trace and from an appeal to the supplement, etc. And thus to infinity, for we have read, in the text, that the absolute present, nature, that which words like “real mother” name, are always already hidden, have never existed; that what opens meaning and language [langage] is that writing as the disappearance of natural presence.
We see in the beginning of the quote what Derrida is aiming at in OG, that is try to show that any meaning-system that tries to get its meaning or relate its meaning towards a referent (a transcendental signified, a first principle, a genesis, a logos) or that any meaning found in words get their meaning from something outside itself, such that a tree gets its meaning from an actual tree in the world in the sense of: "tree" (word) -> tree (concept). Derrida is writing here about Rousseau, or rather has found in Rousseau a "singular situation" or "exemplary articulation" of the logocentric epoch which Derrida sketches from Plato through Descartes, Rousseau, Hegel and Heidegger. Rousseau and other thinkers which exemplifies the logocentric epoch (any metaphysics which tries to refer to logos as a first-principle or a transcendental signified) sees writing as a dangerous supplement, the supplement to speech, because for them meaning is hierarchical: the thought refers to thought itself and directly to concepts, and the voice refer to the thought. The voice is then a reference to a referent, but writing can only be a referent to a referent, and thus has no such direct-relationship to meaning.
The reason why writing is the "dangerous supplement" is because its existence threatens the idea that logos or the voice (phono which is greek, which is why Derrida also talks about a phonocentrism in the history of metaphysics) as directly related to logos as primary, as beginning, because if voice which directly relates to logos come before writing and was already split from the start, it threatens logos as primary because to speak of voice/writing as different from each other, we have to already operate with a concept of difference (which Derrida writes ad différance rather than différence (french for difference)). In short, writing is a dangerous supplement because it threatens logos as primary concept.
Another point is that if the voice relates directly to thought, to meaning, to logos, and thus is self-referential and complete, why is it in need of a supplement, when a supplement is the addition of something to something else that is not complete. Thus "there is nothing outside the text", there is no reference to a referent, no supplement to a beginning; there is only text/there are only supplements.
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Streetli
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2y ago
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Edited 2y ago
Well, if there is nothing outside the text, it's worth knowing what 'the text' is. And to know what a 'text' is, it's worth looking at the concept Derrida defines it against: 'the book'. The first chapter of Of Grammatology is titled: "The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing". And 'the text' is precisely what is associated with 'writing', over and against 'the book' - whose time is at an end!
Here is Derrida: "The idea of the book, which always refers to a natural totality, is profoundly alien to the sense of writing ... If I distinguish the text from the book, I shall say that the destruction of the book..." (OG,p. 18). So if the 'text' is distinguished from the 'book', what are the features of the book? You've already seen it: the book is defined by a 'natural totality': "The idea of the book is the idea of a totality, finite or infinite, of the signifier". By contrast then, 'the text' is what cannot be totalized: "this totality of the signifier cannot be a totality".
So the book stands for what can be treated as a whole, as a totality, while the text is what cannot be treated as such - it is 'untotalizable'. So on a rather straightforward first-pass reading, there is nothing outside the text because the text is not something that can be totalized, such that it could have an outside to begin with. There is nothing outside the text because, definitionally, that's the kind of thing a 'text' is: something that cannot be given a boundary which would allow for an outside.
The more interesting question though is why the text does not allow for an outside. What makes it untotalizable? Elsewhere in OG, Derrida speaks of the text as a 'fabric of signs' (p.14), and it is in the nature of the sign that one has to look for the reason. To condense it down alot, the problem of the sign is that it's 'value' is defined primarily by what it is not: its value is differential, defined by its relations to other signs. This means that no sign is 'self-sufficient': it must refer to another, which in turn must refer to another, and so on. This differential character of the sign, which in turn constitutes the 'text', is precisely what makes it untotalizable: the 'system' of signs - AKA the text - cannot be closed, without imposing on it a self-sufficiency which, by definition, it lacks.
From this follows all the stuff about logos and presence and the supplement and writing and the voice and so on and so forth by which Derrida will try and articulate this logic and draw out its deepest implications.
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bobthebobbest
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2y ago
Profile Badge for the Achievement Top 1% Commenter Top 1% Commenter
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https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2391 ... -democrats
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The process of how deconstruction takes place is, perhaps, more accessible. First, deconstruction is the deconstruction of a text. Deconstruction interlaces different layers of meaning: “the dominant interpretation” (the meaning of a text according to critical, academic scholarship) is re-examined in order to “open a text up to blind spots or ellipses within the dominant interpretation,” explains Critchley. [15] Deconstruction destroys the traditional understanding of boundaries, while residing entirely within the text, for as Derrida (in)famously explained, “There is no outside-text” [il n’y a pas de hors-texte]. [16] Within the text, deconstruction moves the reader to a place that is other to existing logocentrism, a place where the reader is then able to see beyond the intended meaning of a text. While many critics of Derrida have argued that deconstruction allows for any reading of a text, Derrida disagrees. While signs may not convey meaning in the manner intended by the author, Derrida chastised his critics: “one could indeed say just anything at all and I have never accepted saying, or being encouraged to say, just anything at all.” [17] Deconstruction was not limitless interpretation, even when labeled as such by critics.
Despite this admonition, deconstruction opens itself to somewhat obvious criticism. Many on the right rejected deconstruction outright, as Powell scathingly explains, “due to the frustration which conservative, authoritarian minds feel when they find that their ideals are truly real only because they insist that they are real, and that in fact they are spectral ideals for a half-present world.” [18] Since Derrida claims that “structures and systems on the subject of being are always faulty,” [19] it is understandable that structuralists would fundamentally disagree with Derrida’s break with metaphysics. At the same time, Derrida’s theories presented substantive concerns for many on the left. If signs do not convey the intended meaning of the author, then any study of signs (such as anthropology, literature, history, etc.) can be seen as meaningless. For others on the left, “deconstruction seemed to have a paralyzing effect,” as historian Andrew Hartman explains. [20] “By militating against the possibility of intelligible communication, it limited the prospects for justice, which demands agreed-upon conceptions of the good life. In short, deconstruction negated the utopian possibilities that had long inspired a universalist left.” [21]
The reputations of Derrida and deconstruction were also dealt serious blows in the wake of several scandals. In the late 1980s, deconstruction was drawn into the renewed debate over fascism. Derrida was called upon to explain his philosophical links to Heidegger and Hegel, whose works were linked to the ideology of the Nazi Party. Then, in 1988, literary critic and noted deconstructionist Paul de Man’s collaboration with the Nazi party in occupied Belgium was revealed posthumously. Derrida, and other deconstructionists, countered accusations that deconstruction was born from fascism and/or fashioned fascist ideology. As Hartman states, deconstructionists “argued that deconstruction was an implicit repudiation of fascism” that provided “a bulwark against the rigid ideologies that make totalitarianism possible.” [22] In 1992, Derrida would again be embroiled in controversy, when his nomination for an honorary degree from the University of Cambridge was publically contested in the media. [23] Deconstruction itself came under attack in the Sokal hoax of 1996. [24] By the late 1990s, opponents had painted Derrida as a nihilist with no ethics who was responsible for turning philosophy into a joke. [25] By the time of Derrida’s death in 2004, there was no shortage of critiques.
Despite a vast body of works that engage Derrida, there are large gaps in scholarship. As scholar Joshua Kates, whose work focuses on French poststructuralists explains, “not only is there no consensus about the validity of Derrida’s interpretations, but perhaps more gravely, no model, no paradigm for interpreting Derrida’s own thought is at present available that has even the potential to someday resolve this controversy.” [26] Nonetheless, Derrida’s work has permeated across the humanities, including history. For example, in the preface of Frontiers of the Historical Imagination Kerwin Klein thanks his advisor for convincing him that he could read Derrida “without leaving history behind.” [27] Klein’s analysis demonstrates how emphasizing different words within Fredrick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis results in significantly diverse conclusions. [28] Furthermore, Klein’s entire work is based on loosening (if not breaking down) binary understandings of frontier/civilization, enslavement/freedom, and happy/unhappy outcomes in our understanding of American frontier history.
Derrida’s insistence on giving voice to the other directly influenced post-colonial studies, legitimizing the study of colonialism from the perspective of the colonized and not just the colonizer. Here again, however, one sees the paradox of Derrida’s work: while deconstruction allows for an understanding of the other, deconstruction also infinitely displaces power structures. Once the traditional hierarchy has been “flipped” (in this sense, to view history from the perspective of the colonized), one must again displace the center (returning to the perspective of the colonized, however, with new insight which would generate an altered understanding). While post-colonial authors like Edward Said and Franz Fanon targeted specific colonial regimes in an attempt to influence change, Derrida’s critique is leveled at the metaphysics which places European colonizers at the center of discourse, in a preferred position of singularity and therefore power. As Derrida explains in Margins of Philosophy:
Metaphysics- the white mythology which reassembles and reflects the culture of the West: the white man takes his own mythology, Indo-European mythology, his own logos, that is, the mythos of his reason, for the universal form of that he must still wish to call Reason… White mythology – metaphysics has erased within itself the fabulous scene that has produced it, the scene that nevertheless remains active and stirring, inscribed in white ink, an invisible design covered over in the palimpsest. [29]
In the specific case of post-colonialism, différance has political significance. The spoken and written term possess both sameness (as homophones) and difference (in spelling). Post-colonial scholars like Robert J.C. Young contend that the term différance “perfectly describes the political condition of a minority group: a minority wants to make a claim that according to the classical account of identity is impossible, namely that it is the same and different.” [30]
Derrida’s work allowed for both a breaking of traditional binary oppositions and a reworking of group politics. As such, it provided a theoretical foundation for feminism as well as post-colonialism. The works of both Joan Wallach Scott and Judith Butler are heavily influenced by Derrida’s ideas. According to Scott, modern feminist analysis is based on the assumption that since “meanings of concepts are taken to be unstable, open to contest and redefinition, then they require vigilant repetition, reassertion, and implementation by those who have endorsed one or another definition… meanings are not fixed in a culture’s lexicon but are rather dynamic, always potentially influx.” [31] Scott goes onto to address binary opposites, succinctly detailing the basis of Butler’s later work:
Positive definitions rest always, in this [post-structuralist] view, on the negation or repression of something represented as antithetical to it… Although some opposition pairs seem to recur predictably in certain cultures, their specific meanings are conveyed through new combinations of contrasts and oppositions. Contests about meaning involve the introduction of new oppositions, the reversal of hierarchies, the attempt to expose repressed terms, to challenge the natural status of seemingly dichotomous pairs, and to expose their interdependence and their internal instability. [32]
For the entire field of feminist and gender studies, deconstruction offers a theoretical starting point for an analysis of gender in discourse. Derrida himself wrote several essays on feminism, including “At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am” in 1987. This latter part of the essay features a dialogue that deconstructs the phrase “He will have obligated” [Il aura obligé] to show the depth with which the masculine is favored over the feminine in the very structure of language. [33] As Butler proves, terms like “nature” and “sex” are not facts, as they are commonly understood, but concepts with histories, articulated through language, and therefore subject to multiple understandings throughout time. Sounding strikingly like Derrida, Scott explains, “If sex, gender, and sexual difference are effects – discursively and historically produced – then we cannot take them as points of origin for our analysis.” [34]
The use of deconstruction in politically charged fields like post-colonialism and feminism occurred at the same time that Derrida’s works themselves became increasingly political. Yet, in typical Derridean fashion, Derrida himself never wrote a work on political philosophy. [35] Derrida’s colleague and biographer Geoffrey Bennington contends that part of the reason that Derrida avoided an explicit analysis of politics was in itself “‘political’: a sense of political strategy and solidarity may have dictated prudence about criticizing the arguments of the Left.” [36] At the same time, since deconstruction targets existing hierarchies of power, deconstruction is inherently political. Beginning in the 1990s, Derrida openly opposed a range of issues: the death penalty, European racism, European immigration policy, apartheid, totalitarianism, censorship, and the political discourse in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. [37] Derrida’s later work focused on mourning, death, ethics and justice. As Butler explains in her obituary of Derrida, Derrida was clear that “as an ideal, it [justice] is that towards which we strive, without end. Not to strive for justice because it cannot by fully realised [sic] would be as mistaken as believing that one has already arrived at justice and that the only task is to arm oneself adequately to fortify its regime.”[38] Butler’s poignant obituary is a testament to Derrida’s legacy. As she so eloquently concludes, Derrida “not only taught us how to read, but gave the act of reading a new significance and a new promise.” [39]
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TaliesinMerlin
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4y ago
Derrida is so focused on the sign because he is responding to linguists and philosophers who put a lot of emphasis on the sign: Ferdinand de Saussure and Husserl, maybe with some J.L Austin mixed in.
Derrida is dense. One reason why sign matters is that scholars of the time sought to understand the basis for language meaning something (in the case of the sign) or doing something (in the case of speech acts). Their idea was to figure out how people use language to access meaning. If I recall correctly (and that's a big "if"), Derrida is analyzing these concepts and then applying structuralist ideas of language back on the very terminology that helps us understand it. In other words, there is no understanding of language, sign, or text that is outside language, sign, or text; there is no metaphysical logos outside of language. We make meaning within the system of language.
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u/rushmc1 avatar
rushmc1
•
4y ago
Derrida is dense.
I think I'm interpreting your sign differently than you intended it.
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Xargom
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4y ago
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Edited 4y ago
No one does.
Speaking a little more seriously. A lot of Derrida parts from the principle that a "sign" (being it a written word, or a spoken one or even an image, anything that carries some form of meaning) can't be read 100% accurately, because the person that produced it charged it with a meaning constructed from his own experiences. The reader can understand or even share some of those, but not all of them in the exact same way as the one producing the sign. Thus "true meaning" is always unreachable.
It's been a long ass time since I read Derrida, but that's more or less what I got from it. I'm not using his exact terminology, but hopefully that can help you a bit.
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VictorChariot
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4y ago
I am afraid you have 180 degrees the wrong way round.
Your description suggest meaning resides in the understanding and intention of the sender and that the receiver cannot get access to it because they cannot reach the sender’s intention.
The point is in fact that meaning does not derive from any such link to an originary source, but derives from the signs position among other signs.
There is no ‘accurate’ meaning, not because of some communication failure, but because meaning does not stem from a sign’s reference to an original.
I studied D at University as part of a Lit degree. In fact though I think he not really a literary theorist, he is a philosopher. Most Lit student’s find him incomprehensible, because they come at him from a lit crit point of view instead of seeing him in a tradition of philosophy/phenomenology.
The result is that he is the only philosopher in this vein that they read. They then find him incomprehensible and conclude he is talking nonsense. Unfortunately, they would almost certainly find the same thing if they read Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, etc
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https://medium.com/paul-austin-murphys- ... dffd688578
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“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.”
It can be seen that Derrida simply and directly contradicted himself in the passage above — which he might very well have allowed himself to do!
He told us that deconstruction isn’t X, it isn’t not-X, and that it isn’t Y. And then he even warned us against stating what deconstruction is. Yet he then went straight ahead and told us… what deconstruction is!
So what did Derrida believe that deconstruction is — at least in this instance? This (to requote):
“[D]econstruction is precisely the delimiting of ontology and above all the third person present indicative: S is P.”
Now if that isn’t telling us what deconstruction is, then I don’t know what is. Of course, deconstruction may not only be “the delimiting of ontology”; but surely that delimiting is at least a part of what deconstruction is.
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What about truth?
Derrida — in the passage above — was also saying (outrightly!) that something is “false”. (Derrida used the words “they are at least false”.) So surely Derrida must have believed in truth in order to say that something is false.
So we can also ask if it true that the the third person present indicative is S is P? Yet Derrida would never have plainly and clearly said, “I believe in truth” or even anything like that.
It can also be asked exactly why it is that “All sentences of the type ‘Deconstruction is X’” manage to “miss the point”? Is it because they’re false? Is it because there is, in actual fact, something true — or even semantically determinate — about what deconstruction is? Or was Derrida just using words in any way he wished (i.e., playing with the sign or signifier) — perhaps for political, career, literary and/or emotional reasons?
Yet Derrida himself did believe in truth! And he — if only rarely — said so.
Take the following passage (in response to John Searle) from Limited Inc (1988) in which Derrida was explicit as could be:
“[H]ow can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple, this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that’s right: false, not true) and feeble: it supposes a bad (that’s right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mind, which therefore must be read or re-read.”
The thing here is that it took the American philosopher John Searle’s criticisms to drag a commitment to truth out of Derrida. And by selectively endorsing the notion of truth in this particular instance, this too can be seen as typical Derridean gameplaying and/or one-upmanship. And that’s because in large amounts of Derrida’s other work he explicitly carried out the deconstruction of the concept [truth] — and, indeed, of all other logocentric concepts.
The thing is, then, that Derrida did and he didn’t believe in truth.
He believed in truth in order to win one philosophical game and rejected it in order to win another.
The other way of putting this is that Derrida did believe in truth when it came to defending very particular political and philosophical causes and ideas. However, he didn’t believe in truth when he was attacking other very particular political and philosophical causes and ideas.
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So a version of the exact sort of double standards I brought up through other things?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_standard
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Double standards are believed to develop in people's minds for a multitude of possible reasons, including: finding an excuse for oneself, emotions clouding judgement, twisting facts to support beliefs (such as confirmation biases, cognitive biases, attraction biases, prejudices or the desire to be right). Human beings have a tendency to evaluate people's actions based on who did them.
In a study conducted in 2000, Dr. Martha Foschi observed the application of double standards in group competency tests. She concluded that status characteristics, such as gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic class, can provide a basis for the formation of double standards in which stricter standards are applied to people who are perceived to be of lower status. Dr. Foschi also noted the ways in which double standards can form based on other socially valued attributes such as beauty, morality, and mental health.[5]
Dr. Tristan Botelho and Dr. Mabel Abraham, Assistant Professors at the Yale School of Management and Columbia Business School, studied the effect that gender has on the way people rank others in financial markets. Their research showed that average-quality men were given the benefit of the doubt more than average-quality women, who were more often "penalized" in people's judgments. Botelho and Abraham also showed that women and men are similarly risk-loving, contrary to popular belief. Altogether, their research showed that double standards (at least in financial markets) do exist around gender. They encourage the adoption of controls to eliminate gender bias in application, hiring, and evaluation processes within organizations. Examples of such controls include using only initials on applications so that applicants' genders are not apparent, or auditioning musicians from behind a screen so that their skills, and not their gender, influence their acceptance or rejection into orchestras.[6] Practices like these are, according to Botelho and Abraham, already being implemented in a number of organizations.
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A double standard may arise if two or more groups who have equal legal rights are given different degrees of legal protection or representation. Such double standards are seen as unjustified because they violate a common maxim of modern legal jurisprudence - that all parties should stand equal before the law. Where judges are expected to be impartial, they must apply the same standards to all people, regardless of their own subjective biases or favoritism, based on: social class, rank, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age or other distinctions.
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A double standard arises in politics when the treatment of the same political matters between two or more parties (such as the response to a public crisis or the allocation of funding) is handled differently.[11]
Double standard policies can include situations when a country's or commentator's assessment of the same phenomenon, process or event in international relations depends on their relationship with or attitude to the parties involved.[12] In Harry's Game (1975), Gerald Seymour wrote: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".[13]
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Double standards exist when people are preferred or rejected on the basis of their ethnicity in situations in which ethnicity is not a relevant or justifiable factor for discrimination (as might be the case for a cultural performance or ethnic ceremony).
The intentional efforts of some people to counteract racism and ethnic double standards can sometimes be interpreted by others as actually perpetuating racism and double standards among ethnic groups. Writing for The American Conservative, Rod Dreher quotes the account published in Quillette by Coleman Hughes, a black student at Columbia University, who said he was given an opportunity to play in a backup band for Grammy Award-winning pop artist Rihanna at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards Show. According to Hughes, several of his friends were also invited; however, one of them was fired and replaced because, according to Hughes, his white Hispanic background did not suit the all-black aesthetic that Rihanna's team had chosen for her show. The team had decided that all performers on stage were to be black, aside from Rihanna's regular guitar player.[14] Hughes was uncertain about whether he believed this action was unethical, given that the show was racially themed to begin with. He observed what he believed to be a double standard in the entertainment industry, saying, "if a black musician had been fired in order to achieve an all-white aesthetic — it would have made front page headlines. It would have been seen as an unambiguous moral infraction."[14] Dreher argues that Hughes's observations highlight the difficulty in distinguishing between the exclusion of one ethnic group in order to celebrate another, and the exclusion of an ethnic group as the exercise of racism or a double standard. Dreher also discussed another incident, in which New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, who is J*w*sh, was heavily criticized for tweeting, "Immigrants: They get the job done", in a positive reference to Mirai Nagasu, a Japanese-American Olympic ice skater, who Weiss was trying to honor.[14] The public debate about ethnicity and double standards remains controversial and, by all appearances, will continue.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink
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Doublethink is a process of indoctrination in which subjects are expected to simultaneously accept two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with their own memory or sense of reality.[1] Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_ ... ity_debate
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_hypocrisy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quod_li ... licet_bovi
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recipro ... hilosophy)
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The social norm of reciprocity is the expectation that people will respond to each other in similar ways—responding to gifts and kindnesses from others with similar benevolence of their own, and responding to harmful, hurtful acts from others with either indifference or some form of retaliation. Such norms can be crude and mechanical, such as a literal reading of the eye-for-an-eye rule lex talionis, or they can be complex and sophisticated, such as a subtle understanding of how anonymous donations to an international organization can be a form of reciprocity for the receipt of very personal benefits, such as the love of a parent.
The norm of reciprocity varies widely in its details from situation to situation, and from society to society. Anthropologists and sociologists have often claimed, however, that having some version of the norm appears to be a social inevitability.[1] Reciprocity figures prominently in social exchange theory,[2] evolutionary psychology, social psychology,[3] cultural anthropology and rational choice theory.[4]
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_of_reciprocity
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_exchange_theory
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_model
http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw ... ence/1.pdf
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Derrida has provided many definitions of deconstruction. But three definitions are classical. The first is early, being found in the 1971 interview “Positions” and in the 1972 Preface to Dissemination: deconstruction consists in “two phases” (Positions, pp. 41–42, Dissemination, pp.4–6). At this stage of his career Derrida speaks of “metaphysics” as if the Western philosophical tradition was monolithic and homogeneous. At times he also speaks of “Platonism,” as Nietzsche did. Simply, deconstruction is a criticism of Platonism, which is defined by the belief that existence is structured in terms of oppositions (separate substances or forms) and that the oppositions are hierarchical, with one side of the opposition being more valuable than the other. The first phase of deconstruction attacks this belief by reversing the Platonistic hierarchies: the hierarchies between the invisible or intelligible and the visible or sensible; between essence and appearance; between the soul and body; between living memory and rote memory; between mnēmē and hypomnēsis; between voice and writing; between finally good and evil. In order to clarify deconstruction’s “two phases,” let us restrict ourselves to one specific opposition, the opposition between appearance and essence. Prior to Derrida, Nietzsche had also criticized this opposition, and it is criticized in a lot of Twentieth Century philosophy. So, in Platonism, essence is more valuable than appearance. In deconstruction however, we reverse this, making appearance more valuable than essence. How? Here we could resort to empiricist arguments (in Hume for example) that show that all knowledge of what we call essence depends on the experience of what appears. But then, this argumentation would imply that essence and appearance are not related to one another as separate oppositional poles. The argumentation in other words would show us that essence can be reduced down to a variation of appearances (involving the roles of memory and anticipation). The reduction is a reduction to what we can call “immanence,” which carries the sense of “within” or “in.” So, we would say that what we used to call essence is found in appearance, essence is mixed into appearance. Now, we can back track a bit in the history of Western metaphysics. On the basis of the reversal of the essence-appearance hierarchy and on the basis of the reduction to immanence, we can see that something like a decision (a perhaps impossible decision) must have been made at the beginning of the metaphysical tradition, a decision that instituted the hierarchy of essence-appearance and separated essence from appearance. This decision is what really defines Platonism or “metaphysics.” After this retrospection, we can turn now to a second step in the reversal-reduction of Platonism, which is the second “phase” of deconstruction. The previously inferior term must be re-inscribed as the “origin” or “resource” of the opposition and hierarchy itself. How would this re-inscription or redefinition of appearance work? Here we would have to return to the idea that every appearance or every experience is temporal. In the experience of the present, there is always a small difference between the moment of now-ness and the past and the future. (It is perhaps possible that Hume had already discovered this small difference when, in the Treatise, he speaks of the idea of relation.) In any case, this infinitesimal difference is not only a difference that is non-dualistic, but also it is a difference that is, as Derrida would say, “undecidable.” Although the minuscule difference is virtually unnoticeable in everyday common experience, when we in fact notice it, we cannot decide if we are experiencing a memory or a present perception, if we are experiencing a present perception or an anticipation. (Bergson makes a similar claim in his “Memory of the Present and False Recognition” [Mind-Energy, pp. 109–151] and Deleuze extends Bergson’s insight in his “The Actual and the Virtual” [Dialogues, pp. 148–152].) When we notice the difference, we are indeed experiencing the present, but the present is recognized as “contaminated” by the past and future. Insofar as the difference is undecidable (perception – what we see right now – contaminated with memory or the present contaminated with the past: the experienced difference is an experience of what Derrida would call the “trace”), the difference destabilizes the original decision that instituted the hierarchy. After the redefinition of the previously inferior term, Derrida usually changes the term’s orthography, for example, writing “différence” with an “a” as “différance” in order to indicate the change in its status. Différance (which is found in appearances when we recognize their temporal nature) then refers to the undecidable resource into which “metaphysics” “cut” in order to makes its decision. In “Positions,” Derrida calls names like “différance” “old names” or “paleonyms,” and there he also provides a list of these “old terms”: “pharmakon”; “supplement”; “trace”; “hymen”; “gram”; “spacing”; and “incision” (Positions, p. 43). These names are old because, like the word “appearance” or the word “difference,” they have been used for centuries in the history of Western philosophy to refer to the inferior position in hierarchies. But now, they are being used to refer to the resource that has never had a name in “metaphysics”; they are being used to refer to the resource that is indeed “older” than the metaphysical decision.
This first definition of deconstruction as two phases gives way to the refinement we find in the “Force of Law” (which dates from 1989–1990). This second definition is less metaphysical and more political. In “Force of Law,” Derrida says that deconstruction is practiced in two styles (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, p. 21). These “two styles” do not correspond to the “two phases” in the earlier definition of deconstruction. On the one hand, there is the genealogical style of deconstruction, which recalls the history of a concept or theme. Earlier in his career, in Of Grammatology, Derrida had laid out, for example, the history of the concept of writing. But now what is at issue is the history of justice. On the other hand, there is the more formalistic or structural style of deconstruction, which examines a-historical paradoxes or aporias. In “Force of Law,” Derrida lays out three aporias, although they all seem to be variants of one, an aporia concerning the unstable relation between law (the French term is “droit,” which also means “right”) and justice.
Derrida calls the first aporia, “the epoche of the rule” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 22–23). Our most common axiom in ethical or political thought is that to be just or unjust and to exercise justice, one must be free and responsible for one’s actions and decisions. Here Derrida in effect is asking: what is freedom. On the one hand, freedom consists in following a rule; but in the case of justice, we would say that a judgment that simply followed the law was only right, not just. For a decision to be just, not only must a judge follow a rule but also he or she must “re-institute” it, in a new judgment. Thus a decision aiming at justice (a free decision) is both regulated and unregulated. The law must be conserved and also destroyed or suspended, suspension being the meaning of the word “epoche.” Each case is other, each decision is different and requires an absolutely unique interpretation which no existing coded rule can or ought to guarantee. If a judge programmatically follows a code, he or she is a “calculating machine.” Strict calculation or arbitrariness, one or the other is unjust, but they are both involved; thus, in the present, we cannot say that a judgment, a decision is just, purely just. For Derrida, the “re-institution” of the law in a unique decision is a kind of violence since it does not conform perfectly to the instituted codes; the law is always, according to Derrida, founded in violence. The violent re-institution of the law means that justice is impossible. Derrida calls the second aporia “the ghost of the undecidable” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 24–26). A decision begins with the initiative to read, to interpret, and even to calculate. But to make such a decision, one must first of all experience what Derrida calls “undecidability.” One must experience that the case, being unique and singular, does not fit the established codes and therefore a decision about it seems to be impossible. The undecidable, for Derrida, is not mere oscillation between two significations. It is the experience of what, though foreign to the calculable and the rule, is still obligated. We are obligated – this is a kind of duty—to give oneself up to the impossible decision, while taking account of rules and law. As Derrida says, “A decision that did not go through the ordeal of the undecidable would not be a free decision, it would only be the programmable application or unfolding of a calculable process” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, p. 24). And once the ordeal is past (“if this ever happens,” as Derrida says), then the decision has again followed or given itself a rule and is no longer presently just. Justice therefore is always to come in the future, it is never present. There is apparently no moment during which a decision could be called presently and fully just. Either it has not followed a rule, hence it is unjust; or it has followed a rule, which has no foundation, which makes it again unjust; or if it did follow a rule, it was calculated and again unjust since it did not respect the singularity of the case. This relentless injustice is why the ordeal of the undecidable is never past. It keeps coming back like a “phantom,” which “deconstructs from the inside every assurance of presence, and thus every criteriology that would assure us of the justice of the decision” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 24–25). Even though justice is impossible and therefore always to come in or from the future, justice is not, for Derrida, a Kantian ideal, which brings us to the third aporia. The third is called “the urgency that obstructs the horizon of knowledge” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 26–28). Derrida stresses the Greek etymology of the word “horizon”: “As its Greek name suggests, a horizon is both the opening and limit that defines an infinite progress or a period of waiting.” Justice, however, even though it is un-presentable, does not wait. A just decision is always required immediately. It cannot furnish itself with unlimited knowledge. The moment of decision itself remains a finite moment of urgency and precipitation. The instant of decision is then the moment of madness, acting in the night of non-knowledge and non-rule. Once again we have a moment of irruptive violence. This urgency is why justice has no horizon of expectation (either regulative or messianic). Justice remains an event yet to come. Perhaps one must always say “can-be” (the French word for “perhaps” is “peut-être,” which literally means “can be”) for justice. This ability for justice aims however towards what is impossible.
Even later in Derrida’s career he will formalize, beyond these aporias, the nature of deconstruction. The third definition of deconstruction can be found in an essay from 2000 called “Et Cetera.” Here Derrida in fact presents the principle that defines deconstruction:
Each time that I say ‘deconstruction and X (regardless of the concept or the theme),’ this is the prelude to a very singular division that turns this X into, or rather makes appear in this X, an impossibility that becomes its proper and sole possibility, with the result that between the X as possible and the ‘same’ X as impossible, there is nothing but a relation of homonymy, a relation for which we have to provide an account…. For example, here referring myself to demonstrations I have already attempted …, gift, hospitality, death itself (and therefore so many other things) can be possible only as impossible, as the im-possible, that is, unconditionally (Deconstructions: a User’s Guide, p. 300, my emphasis).
Even though the word “deconstruction” has been bandied about, we can see now the kind of thinking in which deconstruction engages. It is a kind of thinking that never finds itself at the end. Justice – this is undeniable – is impossible (perhaps justice is the “impossible”) and therefore it is necessary to make justice possible in countless ways.
Finally, with the publication of the death penalty lectures, we have another definition of deconstruct, one also dating from 2000 (lecture dated March 1/8, 2000). Here is what Derrida says:
To deconstruct death, then, that is the subject, while recalling that we do not know what it is, if and when it happens, and to whom. ... The dream of deconstruction, a convulsive movement to have done with death itself. Not to put into question again the question, what is death? when and where does it take place? etc. What comes afterward? and so forth. But to deconstruct death. Final period. And with the same blow, to come to blows with death and put it out of action. No less than that. Death to death (The Death Penalty (Volume 1), pp. 240–241).
“No less than that. Death to death”: This shows us that perhaps even more than justice deconstruction values (if we can speak of a moral value) life more than anything else. But, this life is not unscathed; it is life in its irreducible connection to death. Thus what deconstruction values is survival.
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Significantly, Derrida also pointed out that structuralists elevate empiricism to the status of a logos or centering force. Structuralists believe science provides the tools for studying the structure, much like Christians believe the Bible provides the tool for studying God. Derrida, who wanted to smash all logos and particularly delighted in smashing the logos of people who claimed they have no logos, said empiricism is a major problem:
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https://philarchive.org/archive/ARAMOD
https://www.openculture.com/2013/07/jea ... sophy.html
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FreeHumanity
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10y ago
Here is Searle on Derrida's obscurantism. The general gist of the criticism is that Derrida is intentionally obtuse and difficult to read which makes it hard to know exactly what he's saying. Any criticism of Derrida is deflected with a "well, you just don't understand him." This makes it easy to reject all criticism as non-substantive and based on a poor reading of Derrida. It seems that Derrida himself used this tactic, which is probably why fans of his work sometimes do as well.
This whole criticism is sometimes mixed up in the analytic-continental debate. This debate is kind of boring, so I'm not going to bother saying much about it. If you are unfamiliar with it, there's been tons of discussion on it here. Whether or not this is a fair criticism of Derrida's theories, I'll leave to people more familiar with his works.
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ben_profane
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10y ago
I've studied three of Derrida's books (Of Grammatology, Margins of Philosophy, and Dissemination). For context, my training is roughly 60-70% analytic and 30-40% continental. It is very likely I am not the most sympathetic reader, but I think I'm sympathetic enough to give a fair(ish) assessment.
Attempting to extract and evaluate a Derrida argument is maddening. The obscurity of his writing isn't just whimsical; Derrida was suspicious of some really basic assumptions in the Western philosophical tradition, so his texts deploy an incredibly complicated philosophical vocabulary in an attempt to move "beyond" the limits of that tradition. That isn't really special about his work, though. Plenty of philosophers, marginal and otherwise, have created and continue to create new vocabularies because they are dissatisfied with the restrictions of their received vocabulary. However, I think the main interpretive problem most analytic folks have is with the way Derrida's vocabulary works. He consistently refuses to use "settled terms" for his concepts -- one concept plus several minuscule variations of it are expressed interchangeably by multiple terms.
Why is the way he uses his vocabulary a problem for analytic folks? Simple. We tend to think of philosophical writing as a vehicle for communicating philosophical ideas with other people. One consequence of this is that we want to extract and evaluate arguments; in doing so, we try to make our attempts at communicating ideas as engaged and productive as possible. We want to locate mistakes in our theories and talk them out in order to either improve the theories or demonstrate that the theories have irreconcilable flaws. We tend to get annoyed when our efforts at extracting and evaluating arguments are frustrated due to insurmountable language barriers because such frustrations undermine what we perceive to be the act of philosophizing. Since Derrida's vocabulary is not just complicated (difficult terms) but also slippery (multiple terms juggled for multiple concepts with minimal consistency), we tend to get extra annoyed with him. And, as u/FreeHumanity noted, when we express our annoyance or sheer bewilderment we get chastised for not being sympathetic or careful enough. But given the slipperiness of his vocabulary, someone defending his work can easily slide out of any criticism without thoughtful engagement. So trying to talk about Derrida becomes a futile exercise for some people and it creates really irritating argumentative habits in other people.
So is Derrida garbage? I'm not so sure. He's definitely a waste of time if your goal is to extract and evaluate arguments for a focused discussion. But I think carefully studying his writing can serve as an excellent interpretive exercise, one which many readers (especially readers who shy away from "hard" stuff) might find profitable.
Hope that was at least in part helpful.
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the_night_shift
OP
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10y ago
This does really help; I'm trying to begin Of Grammatology at the moment but it's almost futile (well, I find at least) without first thoroughly reading Gayatri Spivak's preface. Did you think she wrote a decent introduction to his work?
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ben_profane
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10y ago
The preface is helpful, though it is more of a primer for his style than a clear exegesis of the book's content. Grammatology is going to be rough whether you read the preface or not.
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Khif
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2y ago
First, that's a bit of a poor translation. There is no outside-text doesn't really say there is nothing that is non-textual, or that any singular the text is a self-contained unit of meaning (it's the opposite!) but more that there is no outsideness in our relationship to textuality. (Note that to Derrida, texts are quite a bit more than pure, immediate writing.) What he's saying is that there is no interpretive process of texts that could leave an ultimately self-referential chain of interpretation as such. There is no transcendental signified, a provider of meaning outside language and context and interpretation. The God of the Bible is in the text.
There are two excellent responses in this thread. I'll quote the one by u/na4ez as supplement:
To say that Derrida is difficult to understand is an understatement, and every engagement with Derrida by the way of quotes should be considered carefully, as it is simple to fall into the trap of quoting him out of context and not fully understanding how the quote relates to his writing and "project" in a given text.
The quote "there is nothing outside the text" is a somewhat poor translation of the french "Il n'y pas hors-texte" and would be directly translated as "there is no outside-text" from the french hors-texte which means any part of french typography outside the main text such as illustrations and other figures.
This is the paragraph in its entirety:
Yet if reading must not be content with doubling the text, it cannot legitimately transgress the text toward something other than it, toward a referent (a reality that is metaphysical, historical, psychobiographical, etc.) or toward a signified outside the text whose content could take place, could have taken place outside of the language [langue], that is to say, in the sense that we give here to that word, outside of writing in general. That is why the methodological considerations that we risk applying here to an example are closely dependent on general propositions that we have elaborated above; as regards the absence of the referent or the transcendental signified. There is nothing outside of the text [there is no outside-text; il n’y a pas de horstexte]. And that is neither because Jean-Jacques’ life, or the existence of Mamma or Thérèse themselves, is not of interest to us in the first place, nor because we have access to their so-called “real” existence only in the text and we have neither any means of altering this, nor any right to neglect this limitation. All reasons of this type would already be sufficient, to be sure, but there are more radical reasons. What we have tried to show by following the guiding line of the “dangerous supplement,” is that in what one calls the real life of these existences “of flesh and bone,” beyond and behind what one believes can be circumscribed as Rousseau’s text, there has never been anything but writing; there has never been anything but supplements, substitutive significations which could only emerge in a chain of differential references, the “real” supervening, and adding itself only by taking on meaning from a trace and from an appeal to the supplement, etc. And thus to infinity, for we have read, in the text, that the absolute present, nature, that which words like “real mother” name, are always already hidden, have never existed; that what opens meaning and language [langage] is that writing as the disappearance of natural presence.
We see in the beginning of the quote what Derrida is aiming at in OG, that is try to show that any meaning-system that tries to get its meaning or relate its meaning towards a referent (a transcendental signified, a first principle, a genesis, a logos) or that any meaning found in words get their meaning from something outside itself, such that a tree gets its meaning from an actual tree in the world in the sense of: "tree" (word) -> tree (concept). Derrida is writing here about Rousseau, or rather has found in Rousseau a "singular situation" or "exemplary articulation" of the logocentric epoch which Derrida sketches from Plato through Descartes, Rousseau, Hegel and Heidegger. Rousseau and other thinkers which exemplifies the logocentric epoch (any metaphysics which tries to refer to logos as a first-principle or a transcendental signified) sees writing as a dangerous supplement, the supplement to speech, because for them meaning is hierarchical: the thought refers to thought itself and directly to concepts, and the voice refer to the thought. The voice is then a reference to a referent, but writing can only be a referent to a referent, and thus has no such direct-relationship to meaning.
The reason why writing is the "dangerous supplement" is because its existence threatens the idea that logos or the voice (phono which is greek, which is why Derrida also talks about a phonocentrism in the history of metaphysics) as directly related to logos as primary, as beginning, because if voice which directly relates to logos come before writing and was already split from the start, it threatens logos as primary because to speak of voice/writing as different from each other, we have to already operate with a concept of difference (which Derrida writes ad différance rather than différence (french for difference)). In short, writing is a dangerous supplement because it threatens logos as primary concept.
Another point is that if the voice relates directly to thought, to meaning, to logos, and thus is self-referential and complete, why is it in need of a supplement, when a supplement is the addition of something to something else that is not complete. Thus "there is nothing outside the text", there is no reference to a referent, no supplement to a beginning; there is only text/there are only supplements.
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Streetli
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2y ago
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Edited 2y ago
Well, if there is nothing outside the text, it's worth knowing what 'the text' is. And to know what a 'text' is, it's worth looking at the concept Derrida defines it against: 'the book'. The first chapter of Of Grammatology is titled: "The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing". And 'the text' is precisely what is associated with 'writing', over and against 'the book' - whose time is at an end!
Here is Derrida: "The idea of the book, which always refers to a natural totality, is profoundly alien to the sense of writing ... If I distinguish the text from the book, I shall say that the destruction of the book..." (OG,p. 18). So if the 'text' is distinguished from the 'book', what are the features of the book? You've already seen it: the book is defined by a 'natural totality': "The idea of the book is the idea of a totality, finite or infinite, of the signifier". By contrast then, 'the text' is what cannot be totalized: "this totality of the signifier cannot be a totality".
So the book stands for what can be treated as a whole, as a totality, while the text is what cannot be treated as such - it is 'untotalizable'. So on a rather straightforward first-pass reading, there is nothing outside the text because the text is not something that can be totalized, such that it could have an outside to begin with. There is nothing outside the text because, definitionally, that's the kind of thing a 'text' is: something that cannot be given a boundary which would allow for an outside.
The more interesting question though is why the text does not allow for an outside. What makes it untotalizable? Elsewhere in OG, Derrida speaks of the text as a 'fabric of signs' (p.14), and it is in the nature of the sign that one has to look for the reason. To condense it down alot, the problem of the sign is that it's 'value' is defined primarily by what it is not: its value is differential, defined by its relations to other signs. This means that no sign is 'self-sufficient': it must refer to another, which in turn must refer to another, and so on. This differential character of the sign, which in turn constitutes the 'text', is precisely what makes it untotalizable: the 'system' of signs - AKA the text - cannot be closed, without imposing on it a self-sufficiency which, by definition, it lacks.
From this follows all the stuff about logos and presence and the supplement and writing and the voice and so on and so forth by which Derrida will try and articulate this logic and draw out its deepest implications.
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u/bobthebobbest avatar
bobthebobbest
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2y ago
Profile Badge for the Achievement Top 1% Commenter Top 1% Commenter
"
More propaganda:
https://www.samharris.org/blog/5-myths- ... ar-in-gaza
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/01/opin ... itism.html
https://www.ajc.org/news/5-reasons-why- ... t-genocide
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025 ... on-in-gaza
https://tcf.org/content/commentary/wash ... d-the-war/
https://jeremybenami.substack.com/p/a-moral-stain
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2391 ... -democrats
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kFoyauextlH
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Re: Derrida | Language as Writing
Why I keep bringing up propaganda is because of sophistry and moral obfuscation, confusing people with language and cerebral disconnection, making gibberish out of the anchor that words and language and the senses intended connect back to, which weren't all that mysterious except if some really tried to convince others of the complexity of what wouldn't be considered complex. It didn't appear to me to be complex at all, but people coming away with "complex, complex" and this subjectivism and nihilism can open up the floodgates, which is why some found what they may have perceived as Derrida's big crap on language and meaning to start impacting the institutions and norms that are formed out of the material of language which make reference to senses and which should stem from comparison and fair judgment, like law and justifications for responses and penalties for actions.
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In the context of war, sophism refers to the use of deceptive or misleading arguments to justify or manipulate perceptions of conflict. It involves employing rhetoric and logical fallacies to present a distorted view of the situation, often to advance a particular agenda or gain an advantage. This can manifest in various forms, such as exaggerating the enemy's threat, minimizing one's own casualties, or portraying aggression as self-defense.
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https://philpapers.org/rec/DEBDAN
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iunoionnis
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6y ago
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Edited 6y ago
This is a complicated question, and I don't think it has an easy answer. It could be that there is a close connection between deconstruction and Hegelian dialectics, one that Derrida did not himself realize.
I would recommend this article on the subject, which I remember being quite good: https://philpapers.org/rec/DEBDAN
I also took a stab at this question a while back on here in this post:
The general difference would be that deconstruction is aporetic, focuses on "undecidability" and "impossibility," and is an open ended process. This would be the part that's "non-teleological" (although we need to be really specific about what we mean by "teleology" when talking about Hegel).
Take, for example, Derrida's analysis of democracy in Rogues. Oversimplifying it a bit (but like, you have to with him), democracies are always in a state of tension between the binary oppositions of freedom and license, numerical equality and a worth that can't be measured, and also democracies are fundamentally "auto-immune," meaning that they are self-critical and attack their own body, even to the point that they commit suicide. The gist is that a democracy can democratically elect a non-democratic government (vote to abolish democracy), and yet can even suspend democracy in order to halt a non-democratic force (kill democracy to save it). In order for a democracy to remain democratic, Derrida thinks, it must remain in the form of a "democracy to come," meaning that it remains open to the decisions of future sovereigns, open to its other, even though this openness might (by virtue of democracy's auto-immunity) lead to the suicide of the democracy.
To have a democracy is to have this kind of open ended relationship to the future, to defer to a future decision, and this makes democracy ever different from itself, unstable, and constantly changing its meaning. So basically, democracy is governed by the movement of what Derrida calls Differance (with an "a").
From the standpoint of the Hegelian dialectic, this instability shows the concept of democracy to be abstract. If democracy contradicts itself and turns into its opposite, this shows that it's a one-sided determination, and lacks the Concept, which can remain with itself when uniting with its opposite.
So Derrida is "anti-teleological" in contrast to Hegel insofar as Derrida claims we cannot conceive of an "end" that democracy aims at. It fundamentally exists by being something "to come." From the standpoint of dialectics, by contrast, we might conceive of a final resolution or end to this so-called aporia (like, I don't know, communism), and in this sense it's teleological (just because we can conceive of a possible end, not because there's some kind of magical spirit spaghetti monster guiding things towards this end).
the tensions within these dichotomies serve as a kind of "potential energy" which drives history forward.
Honestly, this sounds more like Marx. For Hegel (like Marx), contradiction is the source of all movement, but it's ultimately the immanent self-development of the Concept.
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u/Zent_Tech avatar
Zent_Tech
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6y ago
Trying to understand what you wrote, does Derrida mean that democracy never is, or that democracy is in tension with a demise by its own hands, or both?
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u/iunoionnis avatar
iunoionnis
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6y ago
Both
Zent_Tech
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6y ago
So how can we even conceive of democracy if it can't be?
For example, we might say that, as you describe, we can suspend democracy in order to prevent it from killing itself, and we might claim we are being democratic, because we are in doing so, maximizing democracy in the future. How can we say that it is democratic to suspend democracy in this way, of democracy never is?
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u/iunoionnis avatar
iunoionnis
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6y ago
It isn’t democratic to do this. Democracy, according to Derrida, is marked by a fundamental impossibility. It’s always in the form of a democracy “to come,” and can never be. It’s always in the future, and can never exist in the present.
So when the democratic state suspends democracy to preserve itself, it’s like a body with an autoimmune disease: it is fighting itself.
As for how the suspension works ontologically, the suspension happens in anticipation of a future non-democratic decision. So it’s not Democratic by virtue of the way it is no longer open to the other as the sovereign decision to come.
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u/Zent_Tech avatar
Zent_Tech
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6y ago
So, in conclusion, we can never make democratic decisions?
It's hard for me to conceptualize something that exists in the future, but can never exist in a present. To me, when I think of a "future" it is something that could be present. For example, if I conceptualize what the future might look like, I might say there would be people living on mars. In order to conceptualize of people living on mars, I think about what it would be like to see them, what their houses would look like, and so on. When I do this I imagine what it would be like to see them and their houses, as if I was there in the present. To me, if something can be, that means I can conceive of a situation in which it is.
iunoionnis
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6y ago
Right, but this is what Heidegger criticizes in Being and Time as the vulgar interpretation of time, a view of time that only understands time in terms of the present, rather than in terms of past, present, and future. Derrida calls this generally speaking the “metaphysics of presence.”
The point of this whole analysis is that Derrida wants to escape the logic of sovereignty that we find at work from Hobbes to Schmitt, which he sees as a kind of ontotheology at the level of politics.
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u/Zent_Tech avatar
Zent_Tech
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6y ago
This seems completely absurd to me, but I guess I'll have to read it to understand it (or criticize it). As someone with little to no philosophical background, can I jump into Heidegger/Derrida immediately or should I read other works first to understand them better?
Thanks for explaining this to me, you've helped me greatly!
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u/iunoionnis avatar
iunoionnis
•
6y ago
Well, you did try to explain the future as an imaginary present, so it can’t be completely absurd to say that we normally think about the future and past in terms of the present, rather than in their own terms.
Like I said, I am oversimplifying. And no, you can’t really jump into either. It’d be like jumping into quantum physics before taking basic algebra. And I guess similarly, quantum physics sounds absurd when you don’t know the reasoning behind it.
I think that Being and Time is more possible as a starting place than Derrida, but you’ll have to have a solid background in the history of philosophy first. I’m sure there are plenty of posts on here with good advice about how to do this.
Zent_Tech
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6y ago
What I meant as absurd was of me, an individual, conceptualizing a future which I didn't think of in terms of it as a present. Also, while quantum mechanics has seemed crazy to me when it has been explained to me by experts, I've never thought of it as absurd. It seemed incredibly complicated and weird, but still something I could imagine, which cannot be said for a future which isn't though of as a present. I'll look into some other posts, thanks!
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iunoionnis
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6y ago
Heidegger uses the example of thinking of the personal significance of one’s own death: an event in the future that we cannot experience, yet impacts our life in the present.
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u/Zent_Tech avatar
Zent_Tech
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6y ago
When I think about my own death, I imagine experiences that would or wouldn't be caused by it.
I may think of how sad my loved ones would be at my passing, but then I'm imagining their experience that would result from my death, so I'm still thinking of the future as the experience of a conscious entity, even if that entity might not be myself.
I may think of some happy event, such as achieving something like a professorship, that I will not experience if I die. Again, I'm thinking about a happy event that I would experience, if I don't die.
Anything I can think of related to my death, I fail to think of in any way without imagining experience.
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Infinites_Warning
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2mo ago
don’t think Hegel gives up on teleology entirely, but it’s not teleology in the normal sense that Derrida’s critiquing.
There’s no external purpose (substance) or divine plan driving history to a predetermined end. Instead, Hegel’s “teleology” is internal - immanent- and retrospective. The unfolding of history happens through its own cause, driven by the contradictions within, necessary by definition - substance itself. crucially and which is the key development of Hegel, substance becomes subject for Hegel. Basically his major break from Spinoza. Spinoza sees substance as static and impersonal and without negation (no other substance can exist to negate or cause it); for Hegel, it’s almost the opposite, developing through contradiction and negation, which becomes self-conscious.
when Hegel talks about “absolute knowing,” he’s not saying history ends at some final event, but rather that spirit (Geist) reaches a point where it recognises that its development was necessary, — but for “us” we only sees that after the fact. That’s the whole point of the “owl of Minerva flies at dusk” thing. It’s only in hindsight that reason grasps the process as rational.
Which is Hegel is building on Spinoza’s idea that a true idea must agree with its object (Ethics I, axiom 6). Absolute knowing is basically the moment when concept and reality line up — when history realises what it always was. An ontological correspondence theory.
if you read it as “everything had to happen exactly this way,” which can sound super deterministic or conservative. That’s part of Derrida’s issue — the idea that Hegel’s system closes history and forecloses other possibilities. But Hegel’s idea of necessity is always dialectical — it comes through contradiction and negation, not some purely positive motor.
Just my two cents
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u/Lukontos avatar
Lukontos
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2mo ago
Wonderful response
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u/Flashy_Management962 avatar
Flashy_Management962
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2mo ago
A very beautiful response, which works of hegel would you recommend to start with him? I speak also german, so german works as well
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u/asleepinthedesert avatar
asleepinthedesert
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2mo ago
VERY helpful response, thank you for taking the time to reply.
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u/robert9777 avatar
robert9777
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2mo ago
Hegel reserves teleology for the highest moment of objectivity in the Science of Logic. The most independent object is one that is self-realizing--positing its own end and accomplishing it. Organic beings, for instance, are the most objective natural beings insofar as they attain objective independence in exhibiting internal purposiveness (self-preservation, growth, reproduction, etc.). Right there is real teleology in the world exhibiting the very independence we claim characterizes true objectivity (that which is what it is without being subjected).
Most would criticize Hegel for a teleological conception of history in particular. If this is what you have in mind, Hegel's concept of history has to do with humanity becoming conscious of its freedom. Why? Well, self-consciousness is free but must be free explicitly by becoming self-conscious of this freedom. We have freedom by virtue of simply being human, but this initial freedom means little if it isn't recognized by ourselves, our peers, and society's institutions. Otherwise, we live in a literally irrational condition according to our concept--as slaves. The reason slavery is wrong is precisely because slaves live outwardly (unfree) in a way which contradicts what they are inwardly (free). Free beings must become free "for themselves" in recognizing the universal freedom of all through their institutions. It's a simple self-referential move of the concept of spirit itself which forces it to exhibit a self-realization of this coming consciousness of its freedom in time. History has a logical end insofar as its concept naturally falls out of the self-affirmation of spirit. This does not of course require that there is no such thing as contingent influences (an asteroid could kill us all and bring an empirical end to our history). Nor does it require that people will not stray from history's logic (we might nuke ourselves to extinction). But none of this would stop history itself from being inherently teleological according to its derived concept.
Personally, I really don't see how you get out of teleology in any genuinely philosophic conception. I don't know how Derrida goes about criticizing it, but I've always found troubling how folks go about disagreeing with Hegel here. For instance, underneath a comment asking what would be wrong with teleology, you dropped a quote which simply tells us what Derrida's own conception is. Obviously, most French theorists opt for less teleological, more "open-ended" conceptions of history. This is already well known. But this is not an answer to the question unless one thinks that simply having a different conception is enough to criticize. If I'm an adherent of A while you're an adherent of B, it would not be considered philosophically worthy for me to criticize B for it simply not being A. That's just a disagreement, not a true criticism.
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Majestic-Effort-541
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2mo ago
Hegel doesn’t abandon teleology but redefines it as immanent and retrospective driven by dialectical contradictions, not a divine plan.
Substance becomes subject, unlike Spinoza’s static view. Derrida critiques this as closing off historical possibilities risking determinism.
I see Hegel’s teleology as dynamic not inherently problematic but its claim to rational necessity can feel reductive, sidelining contingency as Derrida suggests.
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Same_Winter7713
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2mo ago
Why is teleology problematic
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u/TraditionalDepth6924 avatar
TraditionalDepth6924
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2mo ago
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For Derrida, philosophy - including speculative totalisation - is both rigorous and necessary. It is also erected upon a series of blindspots that render the quest for truth of philosophy deeply problematic. […] Derrida somewhere says that this field - différance - could be called history, were it not for the teleological resonances of that term.
This would be, for instance, a non-totalisable history. That is not to say that totalisation - as an operation involving a summing up relative to the expectation of meaning from some interpretation or a determination of the factors essential to some project - is not a valid and necessary procedure. Derrida remarks in Of Grammatology that the point of intervention of a deconstructive reading is the outcome of an historical hermeneutics, ie. a determination of the meaning of a region of history for the purposes of intervening against injustice. It is simply that this totalisation is never the totality.
— Geoff Boucher, Dialectics After Derrida (2000)
Note: I’m aware there’s some caricatural elements of Hegel in this
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https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/course ... 520Man.pdf
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/pc/1232222 ... t;rgn=main
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“Naturally, when he speaks of war, Heidegger does not tell stories...”
Jacques Derrida, Heidegger: The Question of Being and History, p. 199
What does war mean to Heidegger? And what does war mean for Derrida’s interpretation of Heidegger? In Heidegger’s Being and Time and Introduction to Metaphysics, war—understood broadly as struggle and confrontation—forms part of the question of being. War, in turn, takes on a critical role in Derrida’s 1964-65 seminar Heidegger: The Question of Being and History. In the seminar as a whole, Derrida asks: “What is the relationship between being and history in Heidegger?” and in the eighth session, Derrida explains that struggle, the Greek polemos, forms the connection between being and history.
Here, I explore the relationship between being and history in Heidegger and Derrida as it passes through polemos. In the first part, I focus on how polemos helps Derrida move from being to history, that is to say, how polemos answers the seminar’s overarching question about the relationship between being and history. In the second part, I ask further questions about Derrida’s interpretation of polemos. At stake in both parts are the consequences of positing war or struggle as an integral part of the question of being, with effects on language, temporality, and history. Through Derrida’s seminar, I examine the conceptual stakes of placing war with the question of being. In the conclusion to this essay, I suggest a modified formulation of how struggle fits between being and history.
I.
How does polemos help Derrida turn from the question of being toward history? In the final three sessions of the 1964-65 seminar, Derrida shows that the concept of “authentic historicity” is little more than an extension of Heidegger’s idea of temporality in Being and Time.[1] Derrida notes that Heidegger was dissatisfied with the end of his 1927 magnum opus and so retook the theme of history in later years. As a consequence, Derrida argues that Being and Time must be read alongside Heidegger’s book on Kant, published as Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics in 1929, and the 1935 seminar on metaphysics, published as Introduction to Metaphysics in 1953. Without this later work, readers might be led to an erroneous understanding of Heidegger that emphasizes shared destiny over struggle. In turn, if Heidegger had emphasized shared destiny over struggle, then it would be easy to accuse him of blind Nazi romanticism. Instead, Derrida points to passages in the Introduction to Metaphysics where Heidegger sustains the importance of struggle, especially as polemos.[2] In Derrida’s words: “Heidegger neglects struggle and warfare so little in the essential movement of historicity that he increasingly emphasized that logos was polemos and eris and that the revelation of being was violence” (Heidegger 198; emphasis original).
Derrida’s statement can be broken into two parts: struggle and warfare are part of the essential movement of history, and being reveals itself as polemos. I will look at these two pieces in the opposite order, starting with (i) being as polemos and then (ii) the movement of history.
(i) Polemos appears as part of the revelation of being in a number of places in Heidegger’s work, but most clearly in the repeated quotation of Heraclitus’s fragment 53. In Gregory Fried’s translation the fragment reads: “War [polemos] is both father of all and king of all: it reveals the gods on the one hand and humans on the other, makes slaves on the one hand, the free on the other” (Fried 21). In the Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger clarifies his understanding of this passage: “The polemos named here is a strife that holds sway before everything divine and human, not war in the human sense. As Heraclitus thinks it, struggle first and foremost allows what essentially unfolds to step apart from each other in opposition, first allows position and status and rank to establish themselves in coming to presence” (Introduction 67; Einführung 47). Heidegger is careful to ward off misinterpretations that emphasize war in the traditional “human” sense. Derrida explains this struggle slightly differently, using polemos to move from being to history: “Polemos, then, means this unity of unveiling and dissimulation as movement of history” (Heidegger 199). The struggle is a simultaneous revealing and concealing of being, and this unexpected and misunderstood movement of conflict courses through history. Heidegger takes struggle seriously, Derrida says, “at the level of the thinking of being or of the truth of being” (Heidegger 199).[3] For Derrida, this violent conflict forms the basis of Heidegger’s ontological investigation, and only a willfully misguided interpretation could claim that Heidegger overlooks struggle in favor of a common or shared destiny.
However, Heidegger’s abandonment of shared destiny does not absolve him of charges of Nazism. Other commentators find Heidegger’s emphasis on conflict to be his clearest connection to Hitler. In a 1933 letter to Carl Schmitt, for instance, Heidegger mentions that both men had seen the importance of the Heraclitus fragment: “War [polemos] is both father of all and king of all...” (Fried 21). The quotation takes on sinister echoes given the rise of National Socialism. Moreover, in early translations of polemos into German, Heidegger rendered the word as Kampf, resonating with a key term in Hitler’s lexicon, where the father and king seemed damningly close to the Führer who had the power to separate men from gods and slaves from free.[4] In other words, taking polemos seriously is a polemical move in itself. On one hand, ignoring polemos leads to national socialist romanticism. On the other hand, stressing it approaches Hitlerism. The stakes are high, and both paths seem to lead to fascism.[5] Yet in his 1964-65 seminar, Derrida shows how to continue asking both the question of being and that of history without discarding polemos. He shows how to continue thinking about struggle alongside the question of being without lapsing into Nazism.
(ii) In order to accomplish this task, Derrida turns to history, making polemos the vehicle of movement between being and history. Derrida leaves his remark that polemos is part of “essential movement of historicity” (Heidegger 198) largely undeveloped until, in the final session, he provides a clearer explanation of his view of historicity in Heidegger. Derrida expands on the assertion that Heidegger does not “tell stories.” Heidegger’s understanding of history is not motivated by narrative form, nor does it have historical purpose. Derrida explains to a student in attendance that Heidegger’s philosophy is not teleological, explaining:
why and how there is no teleology in Heidegger, such that here one should not even say inequality but anequality, inequality presupposing a defect or a shortcoming with respect to a measure or a telos, to a common entelechy, to a measure of all things. The concept of anequality is the only one able to respect this originality, and the radicality of the difference of which Heidegger was always primarily concerned to remind us, an originary difference: that is, one not thinkable within the horizon of a simple and initial or final unity. (Heidegger 208)
Derrida then adds, and this is critical: “So, an irreducible multiplicity of historicities” (Heidegger 208). This originary anequality offers a different interpretation of Heraclitus’s polemos that sets beings forth into multiplicity.
Here, Derrida signals a clear departure from Heidegger, altering the received interpretation of the Heraclitus fragment from inequal setting apart to anequal setting apart. By reading these passages together, it becomes clear that Derrida sees anequality from the very beginning of fragment 53. Polemos already differs from itself; it is already anequal to itself. This internal conflict, then, comes into conflicted being in the words: “Polemos is...” Recognizing in the “is” the affirmation of being and the metaphysical privilege of presence, Derrida signals the problem of the verb conjugated in “the third person singular of the present indicative” (Heidegger Introduction 100; Einführung 70; cf. Derrida Heidegger 224). Yet instead of dwelling on this present tense verb, Derrida emphasizes the difference inscribed in the fragment. This difference allows for multiple historicities that depart from an anequal and conflictive origin.
II.
Derrida’s 1964-65 seminar clarifies his debt to Heidegger as well as his departure from his work. Yet Derrida also leaves some important questions unanswered. Most importantly, how is the fragment that begins “Polemos is...” transmitted into history and the “irreducible multiplicity of historicities”? Derrida does not expand his interpretation, but we can make a collage of his reading of Heidegger to produce a new version of Heraclitus’s fragment 53. Instead of the original version—“War [polemos] is both father of all and king of all: it reveals the gods on the one hand and humans on the other, makes slaves on the one hand, the free on the other” (Fried 21)—we might change it to: “Polemos links being and history; it unveils and conceals anequality.” In other words, polemos signals difference, an anequal, non-teleological difference bound in language. This revision suggests a more subtle understanding of the Heraclitus fragment, but leaves questions about the specific connection between polemos and history. Below, I break these questions into two distinct but related parts.
(i) First, Derrida affirms that polemos initiates multiple historicities, as we have seen. According to Derrida, Heidegger also avoids imposing narrative and metaphor to convey meaning, using an approach that is “not a matter of substituting one metaphor for another, which is the very movement of language and history, but of thinking this movement as such” (Heidegger 190). The goal is certainly not to consider polemos the subject of history—that is, conflict responsible for the narrative twists and turns of history—nor to think of polemos as a metaphor for history’s unfolding through conflict. Rather, the question is how polemos connects to historicity through apparent and dissimulated conflict.
For Heidegger, the struggle of polemos appears in form. In the Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger links polemos to the way that beings appear, or in his words, “take a stand.” Beings appear as they encounter their own limits. Heidegger explains: “For something to take such a stand [from nonbeing into being] ... means for it to attain its limit, to de-limit itself” (Introduction 65; Einführung 46). Grammatical rules define certain ways of taking a stand, for instance, in the verb’s move from the indeterminate infinitive through conjugation or the noun’s inflection in case. Grammatical features mark the ways that being inclines from its stand as it “freely and on its own runs up against the necessity of its limit” (Introduction 65; Einführung 46). Heidegger even goes so far as to say that “Limit and end are that whereby beings first begin to be” (Introduction 65; Einführung 46). Being appears as inflection and conflict, and both appear in the delimitation of form. These inherent limits reappear in the later essay “The Origin of the Work of Art.” In that essay, Heidegger links strife directly to truth “in such a way that the conflict opens up in this being” (“Origin” 61). Citing a version of Heraclitus’s oppositions this time as “the question of victory and defeat, blessing and curse, mastery and slavery” (“Origin” 61), Heidegger argues that the work of art emerges from and returns to the earth as “figure, shape, Gestalt” (“Origin” 62). The work of art embodies the conflicted encounter with limits.
Derrida’s seminar, however, moves away from the association between strife and figure. He suggests that polemos ends up stuck with the stories and metaphors of inauthentic history precisely because polemos implies a container or border. It is always already wedded to a morphology or form, whether of language, art, or politics. In Heidegger’s formulation, it alludes to divisions, such as those between human and divine, slaves and free, barbarian and citizen, inauthentic and authentic. As a result, polemos posits an anequal history of, what Derrida calls, “irreducible multiplicity,” yet it cannot fully explore this anequality because it is bound by its own constitutive limit (cf. Heidegger Introduction 65-66; Einführung 45-46). As Geoffrey Bennington writes, “Even taking polemos as basileus [or king], as in the Heraclitus fragment of which Heidegger is so fond, is already drawing dispersion back into a potentially binary construal...” (Scatter I 245).[6] Instead, Derrida points toward the movement of setting apart. He asks: is there a way to talk about the struggle that links being and history without a limit or container, without assuming the divisions that result from this struggle? According to Derrida, Heidegger “runs out of breath” before this question—so critically linked to the question of authentic historicity. It remains a question that Derrida’s seminar solicits even now.
(ii) Second, these limits affect language and temporality. In his 1953 notes to the Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger adds to his discussion of polemos: “Confrontation does not divide unity, much less destroy it. It builds unity; it is the gathering (logos). Polemos and logos are the same” (Introduction 67-68; Einführung 47). For Heidegger, this gathering involves struggle—a struggle that reaches to the depths of the question of being and the gathering of sense that the term logos implies.[7] Derrida agrees in his seminar, writing: “Without the pre-comprehension of being that opens language, there would be no war” (Heidegger 198-199). However, Derrida shifts the emphasis, adding that “it is polemos primarily because in the meaning of being, in the manifestation of being, is dissimulation of being” (Heidegger 199). The polemical hinge between being and history is the pairing of revealing and concealing. Thus, it is associated with language, but not with something as simple as the “is,” or the morphology of the verb “to be.” Rather, Derrida explains that the logos forms part of the “irreducibly grammatical dimension of meaning[;] this writing, this necessary trace of meaning is the metaphorical process itself, historicity itself” (Heidegger 224). In other words, Derrida looks for the grammar between signs, a grammar that does not necessarily appear in inflection or declension.
At the same time, Derrida does not ignore the inevitable metaphors that appear in the knot of conflict, language, logic, and unity. Instead of simply saying that these concepts and phenomena conceal the comprehension of being, he pushes toward the trace as movement, the trace as part of the revelation and concealment of conflict. Rather than redoubling Heidegger’s polemos in a formula like “polemos polemicizes”—which would make borders border according to a fractal logic—Derrida traces movement among conflicting traces and meanings. He focuses on this paradoxical gathering in logos to point to the simultaneous inscription and erasure of metaphors as part of the question of being. Consequently, sense gathers, not only in the present singular indicative, but also in other tenses that, in turn, refer to other temporalities, and thus to multiple historicities.
In short, conflict has an irreducibly temporal dimension. Derrida asks how to understand anequality in multiple temporalities and how to think the “irreducible multiplicity of historicities” at the same time. Here, he comes to another thorny question: what is the relationship between time and history in anequal gathering, given the mingling of authentic and inauthentic, the conflict of unveiling and dissimulation? Is it possible to write history without privileging the present of the “is,” or is it possible to write a history in the future perfect tense of what will have been? Since temporality departs from and stands outside itself, is it possible to read with Derrida for an ecstatic history? Is it possible to identify mixed temporalities whose conjugations exceed grammatical form?
Here is another opening that Derrida offers as part of the destruction of history as narrative and metaphor, though he cautions that such a destruction “does not mean that one leaves the metaphorical element of language behind, but that it is in its new metaphor the previous metaphor appears as such” (Heidegger 224). He works toward the destruction and deconstruction of metaphor “accomplished slowly, patiently” (Heidegger 224).
Conclusion
At the end of the seminar, Derrida says, “Each of [the words of this title], even the name Heidegger, has turned out to be metaphorical” (Heidegger 225). Polemos too is metaphorical. I have suggested approaching the question of being from the struggle already at its origin, re-formulating the Heraclitus fragment as: “Polemos links being and history; it unveils and conceals anequality.” Yet important questions remain after this revision. My only response to these questions—and it is a necessarily partial response (cf. Heidegger 185)—is to replace the term polemos with something unhampered by the sovereign as king and the limit as border. My suggestion for re-examining these still important, still unanswered questions is to replace the bordered inscription of difference with an internecine one—to move from polemos to stasis, from the war of the sovereign to an internal conflict that, far from stagnant, posits historicities of difference.[8] I believe that this new starting point transforms the two questions I have left here—being’s relationship to language and history. Changing the stakes of polemos, just a breath away from logos, into stasis provides another path into the patient deconstruction of history as narrative and metaphor. It offers a way of re-positing the connected questions of being and history.
Works Cited
Bennington, Geoffrey. Kant on the Frontier: Philosophy, Politics, and the Ends of the Earth. Fordham University Press, 2017.
——. Scatter I: The Politics of Politics in Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida. Fordham University Press, 2016.
Derrida, Jacques. Heidegger: The Question of Being and History. Edited by Thomas Dutoit, translated by Geoffrey Bennington, University of Chicago Press, 2016.
——. The Politics of Friendship. Translated by George Collins, Verso, 2005.
Fried, Gregory. Heidegger’s Polemos: From Being to Politics. Yale University Press, 2000.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh, revised by Dennis J. Schmidt, State University of New York Press, 2010.
——. Introduction to Metaphysics. Revised and expanded, translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, Yale University Press, 2014.
——. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter, Harper Perennial, 2013, pp. 15-86.
Notes
Derrida repeatedly refers to §74 of Being and Time.return to text
In particular, Alexandre Kojève focuses on being-with [Mitsein]. Derrida explains Kojève’s critique in order to tease out his own reading of the terms resoluteness [Entschlossenheit], destiny [Schicksal], and co-destiny [Geschick].return to text
The full sentence reads: “Taking struggle seriously is thus to take it seriously not merely at the level of the ontic, or even at the level of the ontological (in the sense in which Heidegger is trying to destroy [illegible word] the ontological), but at the level of the thinking of being or of the truth of being” (Derrida Heidegger 199).return to text
For more extensive treatment of these two events, see Fried’s Heidegger’s Polemos: From Being to History.return to text
Some scholars argue fervently against the connection between polemos and history, arguing that polemos is a representation of an imperial European world-view, most obviously defective in Heidegger’s public allegiance to Nazism. The solution is to replace polemos with ethics, discarding ontology and affirming multiplicity, or put another way, to leave behind the question of being while accepting the dizzying multiplicity of beings.return to text
The full quotation emphasizes the sovereign decision and reads: “...that returns to a sovereignist interpretation of decision” (Scatter 245). See also Bennington’s Kant on the Frontier, especially the “Prolegomena.”return to text
Later in the Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger uses the term ousia.return to text
Derrida will later elaborate on stasis through Schmitt and Nicole Loraux in the The Politics of Friendship, 88-93, see especially 91.
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https://bamidbar-journal.org/wp/wp-cont ... atella.pdf
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In the context of war, sophism refers to the use of deceptive or misleading arguments to justify or manipulate perceptions of conflict. It involves employing rhetoric and logical fallacies to present a distorted view of the situation, often to advance a particular agenda or gain an advantage. This can manifest in various forms, such as exaggerating the enemy's threat, minimizing one's own casualties, or portraying aggression as self-defense.
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https://philpapers.org/rec/DEBDAN
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iunoionnis
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6y ago
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Edited 6y ago
This is a complicated question, and I don't think it has an easy answer. It could be that there is a close connection between deconstruction and Hegelian dialectics, one that Derrida did not himself realize.
I would recommend this article on the subject, which I remember being quite good: https://philpapers.org/rec/DEBDAN
I also took a stab at this question a while back on here in this post:
The general difference would be that deconstruction is aporetic, focuses on "undecidability" and "impossibility," and is an open ended process. This would be the part that's "non-teleological" (although we need to be really specific about what we mean by "teleology" when talking about Hegel).
Take, for example, Derrida's analysis of democracy in Rogues. Oversimplifying it a bit (but like, you have to with him), democracies are always in a state of tension between the binary oppositions of freedom and license, numerical equality and a worth that can't be measured, and also democracies are fundamentally "auto-immune," meaning that they are self-critical and attack their own body, even to the point that they commit suicide. The gist is that a democracy can democratically elect a non-democratic government (vote to abolish democracy), and yet can even suspend democracy in order to halt a non-democratic force (kill democracy to save it). In order for a democracy to remain democratic, Derrida thinks, it must remain in the form of a "democracy to come," meaning that it remains open to the decisions of future sovereigns, open to its other, even though this openness might (by virtue of democracy's auto-immunity) lead to the suicide of the democracy.
To have a democracy is to have this kind of open ended relationship to the future, to defer to a future decision, and this makes democracy ever different from itself, unstable, and constantly changing its meaning. So basically, democracy is governed by the movement of what Derrida calls Differance (with an "a").
From the standpoint of the Hegelian dialectic, this instability shows the concept of democracy to be abstract. If democracy contradicts itself and turns into its opposite, this shows that it's a one-sided determination, and lacks the Concept, which can remain with itself when uniting with its opposite.
So Derrida is "anti-teleological" in contrast to Hegel insofar as Derrida claims we cannot conceive of an "end" that democracy aims at. It fundamentally exists by being something "to come." From the standpoint of dialectics, by contrast, we might conceive of a final resolution or end to this so-called aporia (like, I don't know, communism), and in this sense it's teleological (just because we can conceive of a possible end, not because there's some kind of magical spirit spaghetti monster guiding things towards this end).
the tensions within these dichotomies serve as a kind of "potential energy" which drives history forward.
Honestly, this sounds more like Marx. For Hegel (like Marx), contradiction is the source of all movement, but it's ultimately the immanent self-development of the Concept.
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u/Zent_Tech avatar
Zent_Tech
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6y ago
Trying to understand what you wrote, does Derrida mean that democracy never is, or that democracy is in tension with a demise by its own hands, or both?
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u/iunoionnis avatar
iunoionnis
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6y ago
Both
Zent_Tech
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6y ago
So how can we even conceive of democracy if it can't be?
For example, we might say that, as you describe, we can suspend democracy in order to prevent it from killing itself, and we might claim we are being democratic, because we are in doing so, maximizing democracy in the future. How can we say that it is democratic to suspend democracy in this way, of democracy never is?
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iunoionnis
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6y ago
It isn’t democratic to do this. Democracy, according to Derrida, is marked by a fundamental impossibility. It’s always in the form of a democracy “to come,” and can never be. It’s always in the future, and can never exist in the present.
So when the democratic state suspends democracy to preserve itself, it’s like a body with an autoimmune disease: it is fighting itself.
As for how the suspension works ontologically, the suspension happens in anticipation of a future non-democratic decision. So it’s not Democratic by virtue of the way it is no longer open to the other as the sovereign decision to come.
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Zent_Tech
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6y ago
So, in conclusion, we can never make democratic decisions?
It's hard for me to conceptualize something that exists in the future, but can never exist in a present. To me, when I think of a "future" it is something that could be present. For example, if I conceptualize what the future might look like, I might say there would be people living on mars. In order to conceptualize of people living on mars, I think about what it would be like to see them, what their houses would look like, and so on. When I do this I imagine what it would be like to see them and their houses, as if I was there in the present. To me, if something can be, that means I can conceive of a situation in which it is.
iunoionnis
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6y ago
Right, but this is what Heidegger criticizes in Being and Time as the vulgar interpretation of time, a view of time that only understands time in terms of the present, rather than in terms of past, present, and future. Derrida calls this generally speaking the “metaphysics of presence.”
The point of this whole analysis is that Derrida wants to escape the logic of sovereignty that we find at work from Hobbes to Schmitt, which he sees as a kind of ontotheology at the level of politics.
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Zent_Tech
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6y ago
This seems completely absurd to me, but I guess I'll have to read it to understand it (or criticize it). As someone with little to no philosophical background, can I jump into Heidegger/Derrida immediately or should I read other works first to understand them better?
Thanks for explaining this to me, you've helped me greatly!
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u/iunoionnis avatar
iunoionnis
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6y ago
Well, you did try to explain the future as an imaginary present, so it can’t be completely absurd to say that we normally think about the future and past in terms of the present, rather than in their own terms.
Like I said, I am oversimplifying. And no, you can’t really jump into either. It’d be like jumping into quantum physics before taking basic algebra. And I guess similarly, quantum physics sounds absurd when you don’t know the reasoning behind it.
I think that Being and Time is more possible as a starting place than Derrida, but you’ll have to have a solid background in the history of philosophy first. I’m sure there are plenty of posts on here with good advice about how to do this.
Zent_Tech
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6y ago
What I meant as absurd was of me, an individual, conceptualizing a future which I didn't think of in terms of it as a present. Also, while quantum mechanics has seemed crazy to me when it has been explained to me by experts, I've never thought of it as absurd. It seemed incredibly complicated and weird, but still something I could imagine, which cannot be said for a future which isn't though of as a present. I'll look into some other posts, thanks!
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iunoionnis
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6y ago
Heidegger uses the example of thinking of the personal significance of one’s own death: an event in the future that we cannot experience, yet impacts our life in the present.
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Zent_Tech
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6y ago
When I think about my own death, I imagine experiences that would or wouldn't be caused by it.
I may think of how sad my loved ones would be at my passing, but then I'm imagining their experience that would result from my death, so I'm still thinking of the future as the experience of a conscious entity, even if that entity might not be myself.
I may think of some happy event, such as achieving something like a professorship, that I will not experience if I die. Again, I'm thinking about a happy event that I would experience, if I don't die.
Anything I can think of related to my death, I fail to think of in any way without imagining experience.
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Infinites_Warning
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2mo ago
don’t think Hegel gives up on teleology entirely, but it’s not teleology in the normal sense that Derrida’s critiquing.
There’s no external purpose (substance) or divine plan driving history to a predetermined end. Instead, Hegel’s “teleology” is internal - immanent- and retrospective. The unfolding of history happens through its own cause, driven by the contradictions within, necessary by definition - substance itself. crucially and which is the key development of Hegel, substance becomes subject for Hegel. Basically his major break from Spinoza. Spinoza sees substance as static and impersonal and without negation (no other substance can exist to negate or cause it); for Hegel, it’s almost the opposite, developing through contradiction and negation, which becomes self-conscious.
when Hegel talks about “absolute knowing,” he’s not saying history ends at some final event, but rather that spirit (Geist) reaches a point where it recognises that its development was necessary, — but for “us” we only sees that after the fact. That’s the whole point of the “owl of Minerva flies at dusk” thing. It’s only in hindsight that reason grasps the process as rational.
Which is Hegel is building on Spinoza’s idea that a true idea must agree with its object (Ethics I, axiom 6). Absolute knowing is basically the moment when concept and reality line up — when history realises what it always was. An ontological correspondence theory.
if you read it as “everything had to happen exactly this way,” which can sound super deterministic or conservative. That’s part of Derrida’s issue — the idea that Hegel’s system closes history and forecloses other possibilities. But Hegel’s idea of necessity is always dialectical — it comes through contradiction and negation, not some purely positive motor.
Just my two cents
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u/Lukontos avatar
Lukontos
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2mo ago
Wonderful response
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u/Flashy_Management962 avatar
Flashy_Management962
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2mo ago
A very beautiful response, which works of hegel would you recommend to start with him? I speak also german, so german works as well
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u/asleepinthedesert avatar
asleepinthedesert
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2mo ago
VERY helpful response, thank you for taking the time to reply.
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u/robert9777 avatar
robert9777
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2mo ago
Hegel reserves teleology for the highest moment of objectivity in the Science of Logic. The most independent object is one that is self-realizing--positing its own end and accomplishing it. Organic beings, for instance, are the most objective natural beings insofar as they attain objective independence in exhibiting internal purposiveness (self-preservation, growth, reproduction, etc.). Right there is real teleology in the world exhibiting the very independence we claim characterizes true objectivity (that which is what it is without being subjected).
Most would criticize Hegel for a teleological conception of history in particular. If this is what you have in mind, Hegel's concept of history has to do with humanity becoming conscious of its freedom. Why? Well, self-consciousness is free but must be free explicitly by becoming self-conscious of this freedom. We have freedom by virtue of simply being human, but this initial freedom means little if it isn't recognized by ourselves, our peers, and society's institutions. Otherwise, we live in a literally irrational condition according to our concept--as slaves. The reason slavery is wrong is precisely because slaves live outwardly (unfree) in a way which contradicts what they are inwardly (free). Free beings must become free "for themselves" in recognizing the universal freedom of all through their institutions. It's a simple self-referential move of the concept of spirit itself which forces it to exhibit a self-realization of this coming consciousness of its freedom in time. History has a logical end insofar as its concept naturally falls out of the self-affirmation of spirit. This does not of course require that there is no such thing as contingent influences (an asteroid could kill us all and bring an empirical end to our history). Nor does it require that people will not stray from history's logic (we might nuke ourselves to extinction). But none of this would stop history itself from being inherently teleological according to its derived concept.
Personally, I really don't see how you get out of teleology in any genuinely philosophic conception. I don't know how Derrida goes about criticizing it, but I've always found troubling how folks go about disagreeing with Hegel here. For instance, underneath a comment asking what would be wrong with teleology, you dropped a quote which simply tells us what Derrida's own conception is. Obviously, most French theorists opt for less teleological, more "open-ended" conceptions of history. This is already well known. But this is not an answer to the question unless one thinks that simply having a different conception is enough to criticize. If I'm an adherent of A while you're an adherent of B, it would not be considered philosophically worthy for me to criticize B for it simply not being A. That's just a disagreement, not a true criticism.
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Majestic-Effort-541
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2mo ago
Hegel doesn’t abandon teleology but redefines it as immanent and retrospective driven by dialectical contradictions, not a divine plan.
Substance becomes subject, unlike Spinoza’s static view. Derrida critiques this as closing off historical possibilities risking determinism.
I see Hegel’s teleology as dynamic not inherently problematic but its claim to rational necessity can feel reductive, sidelining contingency as Derrida suggests.
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Same_Winter7713
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2mo ago
Why is teleology problematic
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u/TraditionalDepth6924 avatar
TraditionalDepth6924
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2mo ago
Profile Badge for the Achievement Top 1% Poster Top 1% Poster
For Derrida, philosophy - including speculative totalisation - is both rigorous and necessary. It is also erected upon a series of blindspots that render the quest for truth of philosophy deeply problematic. […] Derrida somewhere says that this field - différance - could be called history, were it not for the teleological resonances of that term.
This would be, for instance, a non-totalisable history. That is not to say that totalisation - as an operation involving a summing up relative to the expectation of meaning from some interpretation or a determination of the factors essential to some project - is not a valid and necessary procedure. Derrida remarks in Of Grammatology that the point of intervention of a deconstructive reading is the outcome of an historical hermeneutics, ie. a determination of the meaning of a region of history for the purposes of intervening against injustice. It is simply that this totalisation is never the totality.
— Geoff Boucher, Dialectics After Derrida (2000)
Note: I’m aware there’s some caricatural elements of Hegel in this
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https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/course ... 520Man.pdf
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/pc/1232222 ... t;rgn=main
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“Naturally, when he speaks of war, Heidegger does not tell stories...”
Jacques Derrida, Heidegger: The Question of Being and History, p. 199
What does war mean to Heidegger? And what does war mean for Derrida’s interpretation of Heidegger? In Heidegger’s Being and Time and Introduction to Metaphysics, war—understood broadly as struggle and confrontation—forms part of the question of being. War, in turn, takes on a critical role in Derrida’s 1964-65 seminar Heidegger: The Question of Being and History. In the seminar as a whole, Derrida asks: “What is the relationship between being and history in Heidegger?” and in the eighth session, Derrida explains that struggle, the Greek polemos, forms the connection between being and history.
Here, I explore the relationship between being and history in Heidegger and Derrida as it passes through polemos. In the first part, I focus on how polemos helps Derrida move from being to history, that is to say, how polemos answers the seminar’s overarching question about the relationship between being and history. In the second part, I ask further questions about Derrida’s interpretation of polemos. At stake in both parts are the consequences of positing war or struggle as an integral part of the question of being, with effects on language, temporality, and history. Through Derrida’s seminar, I examine the conceptual stakes of placing war with the question of being. In the conclusion to this essay, I suggest a modified formulation of how struggle fits between being and history.
I.
How does polemos help Derrida turn from the question of being toward history? In the final three sessions of the 1964-65 seminar, Derrida shows that the concept of “authentic historicity” is little more than an extension of Heidegger’s idea of temporality in Being and Time.[1] Derrida notes that Heidegger was dissatisfied with the end of his 1927 magnum opus and so retook the theme of history in later years. As a consequence, Derrida argues that Being and Time must be read alongside Heidegger’s book on Kant, published as Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics in 1929, and the 1935 seminar on metaphysics, published as Introduction to Metaphysics in 1953. Without this later work, readers might be led to an erroneous understanding of Heidegger that emphasizes shared destiny over struggle. In turn, if Heidegger had emphasized shared destiny over struggle, then it would be easy to accuse him of blind Nazi romanticism. Instead, Derrida points to passages in the Introduction to Metaphysics where Heidegger sustains the importance of struggle, especially as polemos.[2] In Derrida’s words: “Heidegger neglects struggle and warfare so little in the essential movement of historicity that he increasingly emphasized that logos was polemos and eris and that the revelation of being was violence” (Heidegger 198; emphasis original).
Derrida’s statement can be broken into two parts: struggle and warfare are part of the essential movement of history, and being reveals itself as polemos. I will look at these two pieces in the opposite order, starting with (i) being as polemos and then (ii) the movement of history.
(i) Polemos appears as part of the revelation of being in a number of places in Heidegger’s work, but most clearly in the repeated quotation of Heraclitus’s fragment 53. In Gregory Fried’s translation the fragment reads: “War [polemos] is both father of all and king of all: it reveals the gods on the one hand and humans on the other, makes slaves on the one hand, the free on the other” (Fried 21). In the Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger clarifies his understanding of this passage: “The polemos named here is a strife that holds sway before everything divine and human, not war in the human sense. As Heraclitus thinks it, struggle first and foremost allows what essentially unfolds to step apart from each other in opposition, first allows position and status and rank to establish themselves in coming to presence” (Introduction 67; Einführung 47). Heidegger is careful to ward off misinterpretations that emphasize war in the traditional “human” sense. Derrida explains this struggle slightly differently, using polemos to move from being to history: “Polemos, then, means this unity of unveiling and dissimulation as movement of history” (Heidegger 199). The struggle is a simultaneous revealing and concealing of being, and this unexpected and misunderstood movement of conflict courses through history. Heidegger takes struggle seriously, Derrida says, “at the level of the thinking of being or of the truth of being” (Heidegger 199).[3] For Derrida, this violent conflict forms the basis of Heidegger’s ontological investigation, and only a willfully misguided interpretation could claim that Heidegger overlooks struggle in favor of a common or shared destiny.
However, Heidegger’s abandonment of shared destiny does not absolve him of charges of Nazism. Other commentators find Heidegger’s emphasis on conflict to be his clearest connection to Hitler. In a 1933 letter to Carl Schmitt, for instance, Heidegger mentions that both men had seen the importance of the Heraclitus fragment: “War [polemos] is both father of all and king of all...” (Fried 21). The quotation takes on sinister echoes given the rise of National Socialism. Moreover, in early translations of polemos into German, Heidegger rendered the word as Kampf, resonating with a key term in Hitler’s lexicon, where the father and king seemed damningly close to the Führer who had the power to separate men from gods and slaves from free.[4] In other words, taking polemos seriously is a polemical move in itself. On one hand, ignoring polemos leads to national socialist romanticism. On the other hand, stressing it approaches Hitlerism. The stakes are high, and both paths seem to lead to fascism.[5] Yet in his 1964-65 seminar, Derrida shows how to continue asking both the question of being and that of history without discarding polemos. He shows how to continue thinking about struggle alongside the question of being without lapsing into Nazism.
(ii) In order to accomplish this task, Derrida turns to history, making polemos the vehicle of movement between being and history. Derrida leaves his remark that polemos is part of “essential movement of historicity” (Heidegger 198) largely undeveloped until, in the final session, he provides a clearer explanation of his view of historicity in Heidegger. Derrida expands on the assertion that Heidegger does not “tell stories.” Heidegger’s understanding of history is not motivated by narrative form, nor does it have historical purpose. Derrida explains to a student in attendance that Heidegger’s philosophy is not teleological, explaining:
why and how there is no teleology in Heidegger, such that here one should not even say inequality but anequality, inequality presupposing a defect or a shortcoming with respect to a measure or a telos, to a common entelechy, to a measure of all things. The concept of anequality is the only one able to respect this originality, and the radicality of the difference of which Heidegger was always primarily concerned to remind us, an originary difference: that is, one not thinkable within the horizon of a simple and initial or final unity. (Heidegger 208)
Derrida then adds, and this is critical: “So, an irreducible multiplicity of historicities” (Heidegger 208). This originary anequality offers a different interpretation of Heraclitus’s polemos that sets beings forth into multiplicity.
Here, Derrida signals a clear departure from Heidegger, altering the received interpretation of the Heraclitus fragment from inequal setting apart to anequal setting apart. By reading these passages together, it becomes clear that Derrida sees anequality from the very beginning of fragment 53. Polemos already differs from itself; it is already anequal to itself. This internal conflict, then, comes into conflicted being in the words: “Polemos is...” Recognizing in the “is” the affirmation of being and the metaphysical privilege of presence, Derrida signals the problem of the verb conjugated in “the third person singular of the present indicative” (Heidegger Introduction 100; Einführung 70; cf. Derrida Heidegger 224). Yet instead of dwelling on this present tense verb, Derrida emphasizes the difference inscribed in the fragment. This difference allows for multiple historicities that depart from an anequal and conflictive origin.
II.
Derrida’s 1964-65 seminar clarifies his debt to Heidegger as well as his departure from his work. Yet Derrida also leaves some important questions unanswered. Most importantly, how is the fragment that begins “Polemos is...” transmitted into history and the “irreducible multiplicity of historicities”? Derrida does not expand his interpretation, but we can make a collage of his reading of Heidegger to produce a new version of Heraclitus’s fragment 53. Instead of the original version—“War [polemos] is both father of all and king of all: it reveals the gods on the one hand and humans on the other, makes slaves on the one hand, the free on the other” (Fried 21)—we might change it to: “Polemos links being and history; it unveils and conceals anequality.” In other words, polemos signals difference, an anequal, non-teleological difference bound in language. This revision suggests a more subtle understanding of the Heraclitus fragment, but leaves questions about the specific connection between polemos and history. Below, I break these questions into two distinct but related parts.
(i) First, Derrida affirms that polemos initiates multiple historicities, as we have seen. According to Derrida, Heidegger also avoids imposing narrative and metaphor to convey meaning, using an approach that is “not a matter of substituting one metaphor for another, which is the very movement of language and history, but of thinking this movement as such” (Heidegger 190). The goal is certainly not to consider polemos the subject of history—that is, conflict responsible for the narrative twists and turns of history—nor to think of polemos as a metaphor for history’s unfolding through conflict. Rather, the question is how polemos connects to historicity through apparent and dissimulated conflict.
For Heidegger, the struggle of polemos appears in form. In the Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger links polemos to the way that beings appear, or in his words, “take a stand.” Beings appear as they encounter their own limits. Heidegger explains: “For something to take such a stand [from nonbeing into being] ... means for it to attain its limit, to de-limit itself” (Introduction 65; Einführung 46). Grammatical rules define certain ways of taking a stand, for instance, in the verb’s move from the indeterminate infinitive through conjugation or the noun’s inflection in case. Grammatical features mark the ways that being inclines from its stand as it “freely and on its own runs up against the necessity of its limit” (Introduction 65; Einführung 46). Heidegger even goes so far as to say that “Limit and end are that whereby beings first begin to be” (Introduction 65; Einführung 46). Being appears as inflection and conflict, and both appear in the delimitation of form. These inherent limits reappear in the later essay “The Origin of the Work of Art.” In that essay, Heidegger links strife directly to truth “in such a way that the conflict opens up in this being” (“Origin” 61). Citing a version of Heraclitus’s oppositions this time as “the question of victory and defeat, blessing and curse, mastery and slavery” (“Origin” 61), Heidegger argues that the work of art emerges from and returns to the earth as “figure, shape, Gestalt” (“Origin” 62). The work of art embodies the conflicted encounter with limits.
Derrida’s seminar, however, moves away from the association between strife and figure. He suggests that polemos ends up stuck with the stories and metaphors of inauthentic history precisely because polemos implies a container or border. It is always already wedded to a morphology or form, whether of language, art, or politics. In Heidegger’s formulation, it alludes to divisions, such as those between human and divine, slaves and free, barbarian and citizen, inauthentic and authentic. As a result, polemos posits an anequal history of, what Derrida calls, “irreducible multiplicity,” yet it cannot fully explore this anequality because it is bound by its own constitutive limit (cf. Heidegger Introduction 65-66; Einführung 45-46). As Geoffrey Bennington writes, “Even taking polemos as basileus [or king], as in the Heraclitus fragment of which Heidegger is so fond, is already drawing dispersion back into a potentially binary construal...” (Scatter I 245).[6] Instead, Derrida points toward the movement of setting apart. He asks: is there a way to talk about the struggle that links being and history without a limit or container, without assuming the divisions that result from this struggle? According to Derrida, Heidegger “runs out of breath” before this question—so critically linked to the question of authentic historicity. It remains a question that Derrida’s seminar solicits even now.
(ii) Second, these limits affect language and temporality. In his 1953 notes to the Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger adds to his discussion of polemos: “Confrontation does not divide unity, much less destroy it. It builds unity; it is the gathering (logos). Polemos and logos are the same” (Introduction 67-68; Einführung 47). For Heidegger, this gathering involves struggle—a struggle that reaches to the depths of the question of being and the gathering of sense that the term logos implies.[7] Derrida agrees in his seminar, writing: “Without the pre-comprehension of being that opens language, there would be no war” (Heidegger 198-199). However, Derrida shifts the emphasis, adding that “it is polemos primarily because in the meaning of being, in the manifestation of being, is dissimulation of being” (Heidegger 199). The polemical hinge between being and history is the pairing of revealing and concealing. Thus, it is associated with language, but not with something as simple as the “is,” or the morphology of the verb “to be.” Rather, Derrida explains that the logos forms part of the “irreducibly grammatical dimension of meaning[;] this writing, this necessary trace of meaning is the metaphorical process itself, historicity itself” (Heidegger 224). In other words, Derrida looks for the grammar between signs, a grammar that does not necessarily appear in inflection or declension.
At the same time, Derrida does not ignore the inevitable metaphors that appear in the knot of conflict, language, logic, and unity. Instead of simply saying that these concepts and phenomena conceal the comprehension of being, he pushes toward the trace as movement, the trace as part of the revelation and concealment of conflict. Rather than redoubling Heidegger’s polemos in a formula like “polemos polemicizes”—which would make borders border according to a fractal logic—Derrida traces movement among conflicting traces and meanings. He focuses on this paradoxical gathering in logos to point to the simultaneous inscription and erasure of metaphors as part of the question of being. Consequently, sense gathers, not only in the present singular indicative, but also in other tenses that, in turn, refer to other temporalities, and thus to multiple historicities.
In short, conflict has an irreducibly temporal dimension. Derrida asks how to understand anequality in multiple temporalities and how to think the “irreducible multiplicity of historicities” at the same time. Here, he comes to another thorny question: what is the relationship between time and history in anequal gathering, given the mingling of authentic and inauthentic, the conflict of unveiling and dissimulation? Is it possible to write history without privileging the present of the “is,” or is it possible to write a history in the future perfect tense of what will have been? Since temporality departs from and stands outside itself, is it possible to read with Derrida for an ecstatic history? Is it possible to identify mixed temporalities whose conjugations exceed grammatical form?
Here is another opening that Derrida offers as part of the destruction of history as narrative and metaphor, though he cautions that such a destruction “does not mean that one leaves the metaphorical element of language behind, but that it is in its new metaphor the previous metaphor appears as such” (Heidegger 224). He works toward the destruction and deconstruction of metaphor “accomplished slowly, patiently” (Heidegger 224).
Conclusion
At the end of the seminar, Derrida says, “Each of [the words of this title], even the name Heidegger, has turned out to be metaphorical” (Heidegger 225). Polemos too is metaphorical. I have suggested approaching the question of being from the struggle already at its origin, re-formulating the Heraclitus fragment as: “Polemos links being and history; it unveils and conceals anequality.” Yet important questions remain after this revision. My only response to these questions—and it is a necessarily partial response (cf. Heidegger 185)—is to replace the term polemos with something unhampered by the sovereign as king and the limit as border. My suggestion for re-examining these still important, still unanswered questions is to replace the bordered inscription of difference with an internecine one—to move from polemos to stasis, from the war of the sovereign to an internal conflict that, far from stagnant, posits historicities of difference.[8] I believe that this new starting point transforms the two questions I have left here—being’s relationship to language and history. Changing the stakes of polemos, just a breath away from logos, into stasis provides another path into the patient deconstruction of history as narrative and metaphor. It offers a way of re-positing the connected questions of being and history.
Works Cited
Bennington, Geoffrey. Kant on the Frontier: Philosophy, Politics, and the Ends of the Earth. Fordham University Press, 2017.
——. Scatter I: The Politics of Politics in Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida. Fordham University Press, 2016.
Derrida, Jacques. Heidegger: The Question of Being and History. Edited by Thomas Dutoit, translated by Geoffrey Bennington, University of Chicago Press, 2016.
——. The Politics of Friendship. Translated by George Collins, Verso, 2005.
Fried, Gregory. Heidegger’s Polemos: From Being to Politics. Yale University Press, 2000.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh, revised by Dennis J. Schmidt, State University of New York Press, 2010.
——. Introduction to Metaphysics. Revised and expanded, translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, Yale University Press, 2014.
——. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter, Harper Perennial, 2013, pp. 15-86.
Notes
Derrida repeatedly refers to §74 of Being and Time.return to text
In particular, Alexandre Kojève focuses on being-with [Mitsein]. Derrida explains Kojève’s critique in order to tease out his own reading of the terms resoluteness [Entschlossenheit], destiny [Schicksal], and co-destiny [Geschick].return to text
The full sentence reads: “Taking struggle seriously is thus to take it seriously not merely at the level of the ontic, or even at the level of the ontological (in the sense in which Heidegger is trying to destroy [illegible word] the ontological), but at the level of the thinking of being or of the truth of being” (Derrida Heidegger 199).return to text
For more extensive treatment of these two events, see Fried’s Heidegger’s Polemos: From Being to History.return to text
Some scholars argue fervently against the connection between polemos and history, arguing that polemos is a representation of an imperial European world-view, most obviously defective in Heidegger’s public allegiance to Nazism. The solution is to replace polemos with ethics, discarding ontology and affirming multiplicity, or put another way, to leave behind the question of being while accepting the dizzying multiplicity of beings.return to text
The full quotation emphasizes the sovereign decision and reads: “...that returns to a sovereignist interpretation of decision” (Scatter 245). See also Bennington’s Kant on the Frontier, especially the “Prolegomena.”return to text
Later in the Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger uses the term ousia.return to text
Derrida will later elaborate on stasis through Schmitt and Nicole Loraux in the The Politics of Friendship, 88-93, see especially 91.
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kFoyauextlH
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Re: Derrida | Language as Writing
https://www.academia.edu/11518078/Being ... nd_DeLanda
I've gotten the impression that people can't feel safe or wise investing in collections or writings of a nobody (like me), so instead look for a "somebody", of which there are only a few, and not with any real idea or concern if the nobody is saying something or if the somebody isn't.
So a person would spend hours watching and reading sh*t from people giving off cues and indicators that they are a somebody, like having writing put in a book, ooo, or appearing on an interview that is filmed with a film camera ooooo!
So why would anyone read out of all these unknowns and nobodies, rather than a big somebody, rather than just nobodies talking about somebody, or better yet, a celebrasomebody talking about a somebody with a glance to nobodies to get an impression of what the "chorus", like in a Greek play, seems to be saying in unison for the most part.
Anyway, I'm worse than most nobodies, because what I give appears so overwhelming to even begin to approach, plus that such is not coming from an accredited and verified with the checkmark somebody, that they would rather read something that could be coming from a total moron but at least far briefer, while I could, for all they would ever be able to tell since they need me to be surrounded by flashing cameras or on billboards to risk caring, a moron while they wasted more time looking at anything I'm offering, but any other sorts of morons are harder to imagine, since how could they be on television, or manage to get places that nobodies can't seem to, unless they were something special, some kind of nobility one way or another.
So too is it with words, which likewise are Gods and the stuff that Gods or Aspects Of God seem to be and seem to be made up of, the more they are used, like any lie, the more they seem to be something to some people, yet they can't be too common, like a nobody, or a wh*re of a word, or else we might look much more spiritually towards:
I've gotten the impression that people can't feel safe or wise investing in collections or writings of a nobody (like me), so instead look for a "somebody", of which there are only a few, and not with any real idea or concern if the nobody is saying something or if the somebody isn't.
So a person would spend hours watching and reading sh*t from people giving off cues and indicators that they are a somebody, like having writing put in a book, ooo, or appearing on an interview that is filmed with a film camera ooooo!
So why would anyone read out of all these unknowns and nobodies, rather than a big somebody, rather than just nobodies talking about somebody, or better yet, a celebrasomebody talking about a somebody with a glance to nobodies to get an impression of what the "chorus", like in a Greek play, seems to be saying in unison for the most part.
Anyway, I'm worse than most nobodies, because what I give appears so overwhelming to even begin to approach, plus that such is not coming from an accredited and verified with the checkmark somebody, that they would rather read something that could be coming from a total moron but at least far briefer, while I could, for all they would ever be able to tell since they need me to be surrounded by flashing cameras or on billboards to risk caring, a moron while they wasted more time looking at anything I'm offering, but any other sorts of morons are harder to imagine, since how could they be on television, or manage to get places that nobodies can't seem to, unless they were something special, some kind of nobility one way or another.
So too is it with words, which likewise are Gods and the stuff that Gods or Aspects Of God seem to be and seem to be made up of, the more they are used, like any lie, the more they seem to be something to some people, yet they can't be too common, like a nobody, or a wh*re of a word, or else we might look much more spiritually towards: