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Writing and Difference
First published in 1967, Writing and Difference, a collection of Jacques Derrida's essays written between 1959 and 1966, has become a landmark of contemporary French thought. In it we find Derrida at work on his systematic deconstruction of Western metaphysics. The book's first half, which includes the celebrated essay on Descartes and Foucault, shows the development of Derrida's method of deconstruction. In these essays, Derrida demonstrates the traditional nature of some purportedly nontraditional currents of modern thought—one of his main targets being the way in which "structuralism" unwittingly repeats metaphysical concepts in its use of linguistic models.
The second half of the book contains some of Derrida's most compelling analyses of why and how metaphysical thinking must exclude writing from its conception of language, finally showing metaphysics to be constituted by this exclusion. These essays on Artaud, Freud, Bataille, Hegel, and Lévi-Strauss have served as introductions to Derrida's notions of writing and différence—the untranslatable formulation of a nonmetaphysical "concept" that does not exclude writing—for almost a generation of students of literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.
Writing and Difference reveals the unacknowledged program that makes thought itself possible. In analyzing the contradictions inherent in this program, Derrida goes on to develop new ways of thinking, reading, and writing,—new ways based on the most complete and rigorous understanding of the old ways. Scholars and students from all disciplines will find Writing and Difference an excellent introduction to perhaps the most challenging of contemporary French thinkers—challenging because Derrida questions thought as we know it.
The second half of the book contains some of Derrida's most compelling analyses of why and how metaphysical thinking must exclude writing from its conception of language, finally showing metaphysics to be constituted by this exclusion. These essays on Artaud, Freud, Bataille, Hegel, and Lévi-Strauss have served as introductions to Derrida's notions of writing and différence—the untranslatable formulation of a nonmetaphysical "concept" that does not exclude writing—for almost a generation of students of literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.
Writing and Difference reveals the unacknowledged program that makes thought itself possible. In analyzing the contradictions inherent in this program, Derrida goes on to develop new ways of thinking, reading, and writing,—new ways based on the most complete and rigorous understanding of the old ways. Scholars and students from all disciplines will find Writing and Difference an excellent introduction to perhaps the most challenging of contemporary French thinkers—challenging because Derrida questions thought as we know it.
362 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
About the author
Jacques Derrida
582 books1,598 followersJacques Derrida was the founder of “deconstruction,” a way of criticizing not only both literary and philosophical texts but also political institutions. Although Derrida at times expressed regret concerning the fate of the word “deconstruction,” its popularity indicates the wide-ranging influence of his thought, in philosophy, in literary criticism and theory, in art and, in particular, architectural theory, and in political theory. Indeed, Derrida's fame nearly reached the status of a media star, with hundreds of people filling auditoriums to hear him speak, with films and televisions programs devoted to him, with countless books and articles devoted to his thinking. Beside critique, Derridean deconstruction consists in an attempt to re-conceive the difference that divides self-reflection (or self-consciousness). But even more than the re-conception of difference, and perhaps more importantly, deconstruction works towards preventing the worst violence. It attempts to render justice. Indeed, deconstruction is relentless in this pursuit since justice is impossible to achieve.
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April 12, 2024
Our freedom to dream and to find ourselves is nowadays rigorously repressed, and our Freedom to Be is stillborn. The media and the writing we read STIFLE our Freedom to be ourselves.
Each piece of Writing is a Case of Fraud: so says Jacques Derrida.
Writing and Difference? Well, it’s a LOT more like writing ABOUT our differences.
That “tenth of an inch” difference between really getting life’s meaning - and forever wandering in an eternal circle. The hopeless difference between Meaning and hopelessness.
The difference between being eternally lost - and being Forever Found.
Are we really already forever found? Forever safe? No.
Yet Writing and TV forever gloss over our Diference - that persistent voice that tells us who we ARE. WHY we are different.
What is Difference? It is a non-place, or possibly a panoptic place that is void of signifiers. Thus, to those who love, it is the Peace of Heaven, but to the contentious it is a continuously cacaphanous Hell.
Difference is the Real, the voice says. The TV world is an invention - a Supplement - that kicks out the Reality of Difference. So says our inner voice.
That voice is right, Derrida says. There IS no TV world! But civil order requires us to imagine one, cause that's the way the newsmen say it is.
And civil order says reality isn’t a set of hieroglyphics that needs a magical Rosetta Stone to decipher.
So how come we don’t feel quite at home in it? And why do we read and watch the news In the first place? And if we read a lot, how come there is still no final answer that satisfies us?
Cause there is none, he says. Except within ourselves. And outside ourselves in the presence of the Real - Difference - or Nature.
And on the day when the disconnect between truth and lies becomes too glaringly unendurable, it may be time to throw away all our presupositions. To finally begin our personal quest in all its gloriously obstinate and unyielding difficulty, knowing we may never get to its end.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Derrida’s metaphysically different (and purposefully ABSTRUSE? - as if he wants to break it to us gently, maybe?) Difference is the Beginning of it.
You see, difference in modern Newspeak ALSO means endless DEFERRAL of conflictual differences - black/white, rich/poor, and powerful/disenfranchised - into a pervasive fog of jabberwocky. Even though we SEE those differences.
So it soon becomes impossible to disentangle truth from lies. The Truth is a Vast Difference.
This beautiful but hugely difficult - in all its ingenuous irony - book helped lead me back to a Different Destination: a Road Less Travelled.
To my own distinctly different kinda Oz - and then back home, to a radically renewed at-homeness in the world.
And shone a Bright Light onto, and honed and corrected, my own long-standing confusion...
That in turn led me back to my own - decidedly different - forgotten Self.
And that was all I needed.
A push -
But oh, as Robert Frost says:
“The DIFFERENCE to me!”
Each piece of Writing is a Case of Fraud: so says Jacques Derrida.
Writing and Difference? Well, it’s a LOT more like writing ABOUT our differences.
That “tenth of an inch” difference between really getting life’s meaning - and forever wandering in an eternal circle. The hopeless difference between Meaning and hopelessness.
The difference between being eternally lost - and being Forever Found.
Are we really already forever found? Forever safe? No.
Yet Writing and TV forever gloss over our Diference - that persistent voice that tells us who we ARE. WHY we are different.
What is Difference? It is a non-place, or possibly a panoptic place that is void of signifiers. Thus, to those who love, it is the Peace of Heaven, but to the contentious it is a continuously cacaphanous Hell.
Difference is the Real, the voice says. The TV world is an invention - a Supplement - that kicks out the Reality of Difference. So says our inner voice.
That voice is right, Derrida says. There IS no TV world! But civil order requires us to imagine one, cause that's the way the newsmen say it is.
And civil order says reality isn’t a set of hieroglyphics that needs a magical Rosetta Stone to decipher.
So how come we don’t feel quite at home in it? And why do we read and watch the news In the first place? And if we read a lot, how come there is still no final answer that satisfies us?
Cause there is none, he says. Except within ourselves. And outside ourselves in the presence of the Real - Difference - or Nature.
And on the day when the disconnect between truth and lies becomes too glaringly unendurable, it may be time to throw away all our presupositions. To finally begin our personal quest in all its gloriously obstinate and unyielding difficulty, knowing we may never get to its end.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Derrida’s metaphysically different (and purposefully ABSTRUSE? - as if he wants to break it to us gently, maybe?) Difference is the Beginning of it.
You see, difference in modern Newspeak ALSO means endless DEFERRAL of conflictual differences - black/white, rich/poor, and powerful/disenfranchised - into a pervasive fog of jabberwocky. Even though we SEE those differences.
So it soon becomes impossible to disentangle truth from lies. The Truth is a Vast Difference.
This beautiful but hugely difficult - in all its ingenuous irony - book helped lead me back to a Different Destination: a Road Less Travelled.
To my own distinctly different kinda Oz - and then back home, to a radically renewed at-homeness in the world.
And shone a Bright Light onto, and honed and corrected, my own long-standing confusion...
That in turn led me back to my own - decidedly different - forgotten Self.
And that was all I needed.
A push -
But oh, as Robert Frost says:
“The DIFFERENCE to me!”
May 26, 2012
What is it to read Derrida? Is it not to read reading itself? But how does one read reading if one cannot read? Derrida presents his own "readings" of reading, but then what do I read? I bought this book- which itself is a negation of buying, an erasure of "that which is not bought"- in order to get to grips with Der-rida who I'd always-already had trouble understanding. I'd read two introductory texts that I thought (or "thought I", the presupposition of the presence of I in thought, and thought in I, an erasure of the thought-i (thought-eye, as in seeing or being seen, as an eye never sees itself)) would give me a nice solid grounding (to be ground-ed, an inversion of flight, of distance). I really understood them and had a good time dealing with the heavier concepts within(out) them but felt that I had to try reading the man himself. You can't rely on secondary stuff alone, so I bought this book to help me (or did me help? As Malarme said, or did not say, as saying is a not saying of the said-(un)"Said". Like Edward Said). I didn't understand a fuck-ing word of it.
[edit] Actually, in retrospect the last but one chapter on sign and play where he actually seems to be attempting to be clear was excellent and the best introduction to his work I could imagine being offered. But it's hardly redemption.
[edit] Actually, in retrospect the last but one chapter on sign and play where he actually seems to be attempting to be clear was excellent and the best introduction to his work I could imagine being offered. But it's hardly redemption.
January 30, 2013
Shopenhaur says if you can't understand what a person is saying, chances are they're not saying anything at all. I did not waste my time with some of these essays. some readers are taken by derrida's extremely large vocabulary and overly indulgent syntax, but these are only barriers to understanding behind which he hides his intellectual bankruptcy. Here is my favorite quote from differance-
"one can expose only that which at a certain moment can become present, manifest, that which can be shown, presented as something present, a being-present in its truth, in the truth of a present or the presence of the present"
Right. Ok Derrida. Makes perfect sense. It is the job of an academic to simplify concepts, not shroud them in obscurity so only a tiny percentage of humans can decipher, or pretend to decipher, a given sentence. The only thing that impresses me about Derrida is how he managed to write essays upon essays saying absolutely nothing. I remember a whole paragraph of differance where he is basically saying "the a and e difference is only detected in writing, not speech." It really takes a genius to find 20 lines of text to explain that concept.
When I first began reading him I thought he at least had something to say that I was too feeble minded to understand, but Derrida has been criticized by many academics who are much smarter than I. So if you read this and could detect no meaning whatsoever, don't worry, neither can Noam Chomsky. I just look forward to the day when Derrida falls out of fashion and hipster English majors stop pretending they're cool by drooling all over him. Derrida isn't cool. And neither are you.
"one can expose only that which at a certain moment can become present, manifest, that which can be shown, presented as something present, a being-present in its truth, in the truth of a present or the presence of the present"
Right. Ok Derrida. Makes perfect sense. It is the job of an academic to simplify concepts, not shroud them in obscurity so only a tiny percentage of humans can decipher, or pretend to decipher, a given sentence. The only thing that impresses me about Derrida is how he managed to write essays upon essays saying absolutely nothing. I remember a whole paragraph of differance where he is basically saying "the a and e difference is only detected in writing, not speech." It really takes a genius to find 20 lines of text to explain that concept.
When I first began reading him I thought he at least had something to say that I was too feeble minded to understand, but Derrida has been criticized by many academics who are much smarter than I. So if you read this and could detect no meaning whatsoever, don't worry, neither can Noam Chomsky. I just look forward to the day when Derrida falls out of fashion and hipster English majors stop pretending they're cool by drooling all over him. Derrida isn't cool. And neither are you.
Read
May 20, 2017Le tout sans nouveauté qu’un espacement de la lecture. -- Mallarmé, Preface to Un Coup de dés
I had in mind, perhaps, to perform a public service, to undertake finally Derrida’s Writing and Difference, to head off the intentions of my goodreads Friends who have been intrigued by this THING. Let me stop right there. Recently some interest has been expressed among my Friends to look into what Derrida is all about, and one should, should one so might. This volume in particular was indicated. I know a little about Derrida and I know a little about my Friends; it pained me to anticipate them putting themselves through this murk, this brick, this STUFF--whatever--I didn’t want to see them suffer. Enough suffering by book, enough already! These Friends of mine, whose best interest I undertook to protect and defend, are talented readers all. But Derrida? You don’t want to read Derrida. Am I protecting a secret treasure which ought not be dirtied by the enjoyers of Fiction, the sullen readers of Books? No. But what do we do when faced and repeatedly threatened by this spectacle which comes under the proper name of Derrida? Read the writing and the difference, but don’t beat yourself up, and don’t beat up Derrida. That’s all I ask. No debt is owed, no balances need be corrected. Frankly, if you find yourself curious about Derrida, I mean curious like some folks find themselves curious about that which is bandied about, then Derrida is probably not speaking to you. I mean, Derrida is not speak to you. Who is he speak to, then? I don’t know. I was only overhearing.
I don’t mean to warn you off Derrida, but warn you into him. What can you expect? The audience presumed is not anything like what is known as a ‘common reader.’ Derrida presumes, not a general familiarity with something vaguely denominated ‘western philosophy,’ but an intimate and thorough familiarity with and understanding of the projects of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger, to limit ourselves to only three of the most complex thinkers of recent centuries. When one hears him speak of the epoché one must know what its status is in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. When one hears “unhappy consciousness” or “force” one must hear the corresponding sections of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. When one hears “destruction of the history of metaphysics,” one must know that Heidegger has read and admired all of the history of metaphysics, that Hegel is its completion. When one hears “Being” one must know whether it is Hegel’s or Heidegger’s. And then there are those other proper names; Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault, Bataille, others rendered below.
And the ‘prose,’ that style and manner of Derrida in producing his texts. It is not a matter of arbitrary posing; not a matter of obfuscation of some pre-given content or ‘substance.’ Much more it is the question of the form and the content; the thing said and its saying. To object to Derrida’s texts as they are is already to make certain presumptions about the metaphysical status of such things as substance, essence, meaning, form, etc. The very things which are in question. The very problematic of using the only language available to us to question the very thing which we are employing to question it. Of course there is no privileged meta-language, no God’s point of view to which we could escape and from which we could reflect back upon our practices without having always already been tainted by being-in-the-world, temporal beings as we are, users of language.
Reading tip: the preludes to the essays are knots of the threads which will then be woven and unwoven in the course of each piece. One must read what has already been written.
_____________
Herewith, to further embarrass myself, a short delineation and direction-giving concerning the eleven essays. I do not deign to state Derrida’s theses; only to indicate a topos of each.
For better direction-giving, please do not skip Alan Bass’ “Translator’s Introduction.”
“Force and Signification” -- A critique of a certain manner of structuralist literary criticism, pointing out a certain failure of presumption to have escaped metaphysical presuppositions.
“Cogito and the History of Madness” -- Through a close reading of a passage from Descartes which Foucault wished to use to demonstrate that social structures excluded mad and insane individuals at the same historical nexus as Descartes wanted to exclude the question of madness from philosophy, Derrida shows that Descartes did precisely the opposite; that madness was the very center of his method of radical doubt.
“Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book” -- A mediation on the work of Jabès which would seem to parallel Heidegger’s own thinking with the the poet Hölderlin.
“Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas” -- Levinas, in addition to the Germans I enumerated above, is of central importance to Derrida’s thinking, and is second only perhaps to Heidegger for difficulty and importance. This essay is the most significant of W&D. I read it last summer, should return to it again, and would be the one I am most interested in disseminating. As I recall, it is a devastating wrap up of the project which would seek to cleanse our language of the last vestigial trace of violence.
“‘Genesis and Structure’ and Phenomenology” -- There is no point in reading this essay unless one has a close understanding of Husserl’s project of establishing philosophy as rigorous science, i.e., phenomenology.
“La parole soufflée” -- An engagement with the attempts of Artaud. The title is untranslatable. For what little I know of Artaud, this appears to be a fairly clear (but it’s not clear at all) working out of some of Derrida’s questions about purity of speech, speech which is not always already a writing. Difficult; but one suspects that a thorough grasp of this essay will get one many miles down Highway Derrida.
“Freud and the Scene of Writing” -- An examination of how the metaphor of writing works in the thought of Freud concerning memory and its aid. Esoterica Freudiana.
“The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation” -- The second essay about Artaud, this time more expository, approaching being concerned with Artaud himself rather than Derrida working through his own concerns.
“From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve” -- This one is only for those who are interested in the question of the possibility of escaping the Hegelian dialectic. Through a close reading of Bataille’s thinking against dialectic (Derrida insists that Bataille is taking Hegel seriously, that “Hegel was more right than he knew,” etc) we see with what little we are left when we refuse lordship (dialectic) and insist upon sovereignty (which would seem to concern the addition of a “non” or “not” prefix to every predicate, up to and including a kind of non-atheology or not-atheology); total expenditure with no reserve. One sees even more clearly the desolation which is produced by the insistence of escaping Hegel than what we get in Kierkegaard’s attempts. Dense.
“Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences��� -- Just to state the obvious. This might be the place to begin. Myself, it felt like I must have read this previously, and in the course of this reading, it’s common sense now. A critique of structuralism by way of an analysis of Levi-Strauss, especially concerning the nature-culture presupposition in his work, a presupposition which is complicated by the prohibition of incest. Anyone who still likes to talk about the nature-nurture “debate” hasn’t read Derrida.
“Ellipsis” -- ...
I had in mind, perhaps, to perform a public service, to undertake finally Derrida’s Writing and Difference, to head off the intentions of my goodreads Friends who have been intrigued by this THING. Let me stop right there. Recently some interest has been expressed among my Friends to look into what Derrida is all about, and one should, should one so might. This volume in particular was indicated. I know a little about Derrida and I know a little about my Friends; it pained me to anticipate them putting themselves through this murk, this brick, this STUFF--whatever--I didn’t want to see them suffer. Enough suffering by book, enough already! These Friends of mine, whose best interest I undertook to protect and defend, are talented readers all. But Derrida? You don’t want to read Derrida. Am I protecting a secret treasure which ought not be dirtied by the enjoyers of Fiction, the sullen readers of Books? No. But what do we do when faced and repeatedly threatened by this spectacle which comes under the proper name of Derrida? Read the writing and the difference, but don’t beat yourself up, and don’t beat up Derrida. That’s all I ask. No debt is owed, no balances need be corrected. Frankly, if you find yourself curious about Derrida, I mean curious like some folks find themselves curious about that which is bandied about, then Derrida is probably not speaking to you. I mean, Derrida is not speak to you. Who is he speak to, then? I don’t know. I was only overhearing.
I don’t mean to warn you off Derrida, but warn you into him. What can you expect? The audience presumed is not anything like what is known as a ‘common reader.’ Derrida presumes, not a general familiarity with something vaguely denominated ‘western philosophy,’ but an intimate and thorough familiarity with and understanding of the projects of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger, to limit ourselves to only three of the most complex thinkers of recent centuries. When one hears him speak of the epoché one must know what its status is in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. When one hears “unhappy consciousness” or “force” one must hear the corresponding sections of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. When one hears “destruction of the history of metaphysics,” one must know that Heidegger has read and admired all of the history of metaphysics, that Hegel is its completion. When one hears “Being” one must know whether it is Hegel’s or Heidegger’s. And then there are those other proper names; Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault, Bataille, others rendered below.
And the ‘prose,’ that style and manner of Derrida in producing his texts. It is not a matter of arbitrary posing; not a matter of obfuscation of some pre-given content or ‘substance.’ Much more it is the question of the form and the content; the thing said and its saying. To object to Derrida’s texts as they are is already to make certain presumptions about the metaphysical status of such things as substance, essence, meaning, form, etc. The very things which are in question. The very problematic of using the only language available to us to question the very thing which we are employing to question it. Of course there is no privileged meta-language, no God’s point of view to which we could escape and from which we could reflect back upon our practices without having always already been tainted by being-in-the-world, temporal beings as we are, users of language.
Reading tip: the preludes to the essays are knots of the threads which will then be woven and unwoven in the course of each piece. One must read what has already been written.
_____________
Herewith, to further embarrass myself, a short delineation and direction-giving concerning the eleven essays. I do not deign to state Derrida’s theses; only to indicate a topos of each.
For better direction-giving, please do not skip Alan Bass’ “Translator’s Introduction.”
“Force and Signification” -- A critique of a certain manner of structuralist literary criticism, pointing out a certain failure of presumption to have escaped metaphysical presuppositions.
“Cogito and the History of Madness” -- Through a close reading of a passage from Descartes which Foucault wished to use to demonstrate that social structures excluded mad and insane individuals at the same historical nexus as Descartes wanted to exclude the question of madness from philosophy, Derrida shows that Descartes did precisely the opposite; that madness was the very center of his method of radical doubt.
“Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book” -- A mediation on the work of Jabès which would seem to parallel Heidegger’s own thinking with the the poet Hölderlin.
“Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas” -- Levinas, in addition to the Germans I enumerated above, is of central importance to Derrida’s thinking, and is second only perhaps to Heidegger for difficulty and importance. This essay is the most significant of W&D. I read it last summer, should return to it again, and would be the one I am most interested in disseminating. As I recall, it is a devastating wrap up of the project which would seek to cleanse our language of the last vestigial trace of violence.
“‘Genesis and Structure’ and Phenomenology” -- There is no point in reading this essay unless one has a close understanding of Husserl’s project of establishing philosophy as rigorous science, i.e., phenomenology.
“La parole soufflée” -- An engagement with the attempts of Artaud. The title is untranslatable. For what little I know of Artaud, this appears to be a fairly clear (but it’s not clear at all) working out of some of Derrida’s questions about purity of speech, speech which is not always already a writing. Difficult; but one suspects that a thorough grasp of this essay will get one many miles down Highway Derrida.
“Freud and the Scene of Writing” -- An examination of how the metaphor of writing works in the thought of Freud concerning memory and its aid. Esoterica Freudiana.
“The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation” -- The second essay about Artaud, this time more expository, approaching being concerned with Artaud himself rather than Derrida working through his own concerns.
“From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve” -- This one is only for those who are interested in the question of the possibility of escaping the Hegelian dialectic. Through a close reading of Bataille’s thinking against dialectic (Derrida insists that Bataille is taking Hegel seriously, that “Hegel was more right than he knew,” etc) we see with what little we are left when we refuse lordship (dialectic) and insist upon sovereignty (which would seem to concern the addition of a “non” or “not” prefix to every predicate, up to and including a kind of non-atheology or not-atheology); total expenditure with no reserve. One sees even more clearly the desolation which is produced by the insistence of escaping Hegel than what we get in Kierkegaard’s attempts. Dense.
“Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences��� -- Just to state the obvious. This might be the place to begin. Myself, it felt like I must have read this previously, and in the course of this reading, it’s common sense now. A critique of structuralism by way of an analysis of Levi-Strauss, especially concerning the nature-culture presupposition in his work, a presupposition which is complicated by the prohibition of incest. Anyone who still likes to talk about the nature-nurture “debate” hasn’t read Derrida.
“Ellipsis” -- ...
October 9, 2023
Thus it has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which while governing the structure, escapes structurality.
Finished the book on the plane. Feeling Raymond Carver in response. I read the Foucault Cogito essay twice and the lengthy Levinas Violence essay easily warrants multiple readings. That’s the peril of my post structuralist short cuts.
I appreciated the two pieces on Artaud but I’m not sure they’ve aged well.
The essay on Freud and the one on the tenuous turns of Hegel/Bataille both blew my mind. The piece on Jabes was just beautiful: gnomic and prone to flourish.
The Levi-Strauss bombshell competed with a squalling infant and I admit my attention was rattled on occasion.
Finished the book on the plane. Feeling Raymond Carver in response. I read the Foucault Cogito essay twice and the lengthy Levinas Violence essay easily warrants multiple readings. That’s the peril of my post structuralist short cuts.
I appreciated the two pieces on Artaud but I’m not sure they’ve aged well.
The essay on Freud and the one on the tenuous turns of Hegel/Bataille both blew my mind. The piece on Jabes was just beautiful: gnomic and prone to flourish.
The Levi-Strauss bombshell competed with a squalling infant and I admit my attention was rattled on occasion.
October 14, 2012
Yikes. This is probably the most difficult book I've ever read. I feel a little weird reviewing it, honestly, because I'm not sure I really comprehended it at all. But Derrida has let me know that poems are nothing without the risk of being meaningless and that language is crazy signifying play all the time anyway, so I will give it a go. Once I write words down they're apparently alienated from me forever, so make of this what you will!
Derrida is all about deconstructions. There are ideas all over the place in this volume of twelve essays, but nearly all of them take the form of a discourse between Derrida and his chosen text: Foucault, Edmond Jabes, Emmanuel Levinas, Husserl, Bataille, Freud, Antonin Artaud, and Levi-Strauss are among the subjects. One of the main pillars that Derrida returns to is the idea that while the overriding concept of metaphysics that has ruled Western thought since Plato has been challenged (by Freud, Heidegger, Nietzsche), they haven't gone nearly far enough, and many of their challenges are predicated upon assumptions from the system they're attacking. They're attacking the structure from the inside, so their attacks have to make assumptions of the attacked system. Another central point is the problem of language: there are too many things signifying and its questionable whether there's any central object, beyond language, that gets signified. For Derrida, language is play and its impossible for it to indicate any single immutable thing (you can see it in his own text - even if it's often inscrutable it's almost always light and playful, with the prose gliding along). It's a new way of thinking of things that questions the foundations of what's come before, what Derrida at one point calls the end of the book (finite and meaningful) and the beginning of the text).
I thought it was interesting that his essays in here about literature and theater differed quite a bit in tone and structure (!) from those that were more traditionally philosophical. I felt like Derrida, to a certain extent at least, saw Edmond Jabes and Antonin Artaud as kindred spirits, having started (incompletely) the process of decentralizing and deconstructing their field's traditions.
And I think I'll stop. This book is making me absurdly self-conscious about my writing.
Edited to add: I liked that this philosophy seemed to have a sense of optimism to it. I always kinda figured that post-structuralism = rampant relativism and nihilism, but I didn't get that impression at all. Just freedom from closed structures and the embrace of flexibility.
Derrida is all about deconstructions. There are ideas all over the place in this volume of twelve essays, but nearly all of them take the form of a discourse between Derrida and his chosen text: Foucault, Edmond Jabes, Emmanuel Levinas, Husserl, Bataille, Freud, Antonin Artaud, and Levi-Strauss are among the subjects. One of the main pillars that Derrida returns to is the idea that while the overriding concept of metaphysics that has ruled Western thought since Plato has been challenged (by Freud, Heidegger, Nietzsche), they haven't gone nearly far enough, and many of their challenges are predicated upon assumptions from the system they're attacking. They're attacking the structure from the inside, so their attacks have to make assumptions of the attacked system. Another central point is the problem of language: there are too many things signifying and its questionable whether there's any central object, beyond language, that gets signified. For Derrida, language is play and its impossible for it to indicate any single immutable thing (you can see it in his own text - even if it's often inscrutable it's almost always light and playful, with the prose gliding along). It's a new way of thinking of things that questions the foundations of what's come before, what Derrida at one point calls the end of the book (finite and meaningful) and the beginning of the text).
I thought it was interesting that his essays in here about literature and theater differed quite a bit in tone and structure (!) from those that were more traditionally philosophical. I felt like Derrida, to a certain extent at least, saw Edmond Jabes and Antonin Artaud as kindred spirits, having started (incompletely) the process of decentralizing and deconstructing their field's traditions.
And I think I'll stop. This book is making me absurdly self-conscious about my writing.
Edited to add: I liked that this philosophy seemed to have a sense of optimism to it. I always kinda figured that post-structuralism = rampant relativism and nihilism, but I didn't get that impression at all. Just freedom from closed structures and the embrace of flexibility.
October 8, 2008
With this collection of subversive essays, Jacques Derrida exploded onto the scene of post-modern philosophy in Europe and the US though he didn't have a doctorate or teaching position at the time. In it, he demonstrates for the first time his conception of `deconstruction,' an apparently inexplicable concept which enables the analysis of `inter-textuality' and `binary-oppositions,' to be revealed. `Writing and Difference,' is of course a difficult text, and analytic philosophers don't even bother with it, though that may be their greatest mistake, for Derrida attempts (and not without success) to demonstrate that the notion of purely objective, enlightened truth seeking is an impossibility. That the essence of thought always operates within a given schema, a given facticity. "Differance," the famous phrase of Derrida, indicates that writing is necessarily primary to speech, we can see the `differ a nce' in text, not phonetically.
The first essay in this collection `Force and Signification,' attempts to apply a philosophical rigour to the analysis of literature, wherein Derrida explains Flaubert, Mallarme, and a number of others. `Cogito and the History of Madness' is an extremely famous essay about Foucault which triggered a feud between the two intellectuals that would never fully be mended. In it, Derrida argues that Foucault's book does not address the Cartesian notion of the Cogito adequately in the History of Madness, and that Foucault ultimately relies on the same principles of the enlightenment while attempting to expose the dynamics of its power simultaneously. The essay (along with violence and Metaphysics) is a perfect example of Derrida's capacity to deconstruct. However, he moves very quickly and without and assistance to the reader. If you have not read the author Derrida is deconstructing he will simply leave you in the dust.
The latter essays in the book deal primarily with Artaud, Freud, Bataille, Hegel, Heidegger, Levi-Strauss, and metaphysics and language generally. The essay on Levi-Strauss (Structure, Sign, and Play) is a particularly damning lecture delivered at Johns Hopkins University and left irreparable damages to the structuralist movement at the time. `Writing and Difference' is an important collection of critical texts for 20th century philosophy, and it should remain an important work for many ages to come.
The first essay in this collection `Force and Signification,' attempts to apply a philosophical rigour to the analysis of literature, wherein Derrida explains Flaubert, Mallarme, and a number of others. `Cogito and the History of Madness' is an extremely famous essay about Foucault which triggered a feud between the two intellectuals that would never fully be mended. In it, Derrida argues that Foucault's book does not address the Cartesian notion of the Cogito adequately in the History of Madness, and that Foucault ultimately relies on the same principles of the enlightenment while attempting to expose the dynamics of its power simultaneously. The essay (along with violence and Metaphysics) is a perfect example of Derrida's capacity to deconstruct. However, he moves very quickly and without and assistance to the reader. If you have not read the author Derrida is deconstructing he will simply leave you in the dust.
The latter essays in the book deal primarily with Artaud, Freud, Bataille, Hegel, Heidegger, Levi-Strauss, and metaphysics and language generally. The essay on Levi-Strauss (Structure, Sign, and Play) is a particularly damning lecture delivered at Johns Hopkins University and left irreparable damages to the structuralist movement at the time. `Writing and Difference' is an important collection of critical texts for 20th century philosophy, and it should remain an important work for many ages to come.
June 15, 2017
من أصعب الكتب التي قرأتها مؤخراً، لأنه كتاب موغل في التعقيد أولاً ولأنه يحمل فكرة جديدة يصعب فهمها بسهولة.
دريدا كفيلسوف يبتعد عن البساطة في كتابته لسببين برأيي، الأول وهو عمق اطلاعه وعدم قدرته على الموازنة بين العمق والبساطة في آن، الثاني وهو إيمانه بتأويلات النص وتفكيكيته وبالتالي حرص على استخدام العديد من الكلمات والتعابير التي عقدت النص لسيطر بذلك على النص ويقيه من انقلابه على كاتبه كما يدعي ذلك بشأن النصوص بشكل عام.
زادت صعوبة الكتاب أيضاً أثناء الترجمة التي كانت بلا شك أمراً مرهقاً بالنسبة للمترجم، حيث سيحاول جاهداً نقل الكتاب كما هو وبكل تأويلاته الممكنة وضمان وصوله بعبارات سلسلة للقارئ.
يعتبر فكر دريدا نقطة تحول في تاريخ الفلسفة بلا شك، وعلى قارئه أن يتحمل تبعات ذلك وخاصة أنه يقرأ لباحث وناقد في مجال الأدب واللغة.
دريدا كفيلسوف يبتعد عن البساطة في كتابته لسببين برأيي، الأول وهو عمق اطلاعه وعدم قدرته على الموازنة بين العمق والبساطة في آن، الثاني وهو إيمانه بتأويلات النص وتفكيكيته وبالتالي حرص على استخدام العديد من الكلمات والتعابير التي عقدت النص لسيطر بذلك على النص ويقيه من انقلابه على كاتبه كما يدعي ذلك بشأن النصوص بشكل عام.
زادت صعوبة الكتاب أيضاً أثناء الترجمة التي كانت بلا شك أمراً مرهقاً بالنسبة للمترجم، حيث سيحاول جاهداً نقل الكتاب كما هو وبكل تأويلاته الممكنة وضمان وصوله بعبارات سلسلة للقارئ.
يعتبر فكر دريدا نقطة تحول في تاريخ الفلسفة بلا شك، وعلى قارئه أن يتحمل تبعات ذلك وخاصة أنه يقرأ لباحث وناقد في مجال الأدب واللغة.
May 19, 2015
It's frustrating to know that there's something out there in the English language that's completely out of my grasp .WHAT THE FUCK
August 24, 2007
I had a class that Derrida guest lectured at right before he passed away. He was still thinking. That should have been his epitaph.
January 30, 2022
https://francesbeau.tumblr.com/post/6...
6 days babyyy - time to interact with society & touch some grass. 4.5
6 days babyyy - time to interact with society & touch some grass. 4.5
February 2, 2017
كتابٌ صعبٌ لدريدا مررتُ على فصولِه الأخيرةِ مرورًا سريعا إلى حد أنني اطلعتُ على الكتابِ ولم أقرأْه بمعنى القراءةِ الدقيقةِ، رجعتُ فيه إلى القواميسِ الفلسفيةِ وهي قد تكونُ ميزةً لكتابٍ يضطرُّ فيه قارئُه إلى البحثِ عن ما غمُض من مفاهيمِه
الكتابُ خليطٌ من مقابلاتٍ ورسائلَ وتوضيحاتٍ ومقالات وتعليقاتٍ على كتب وهذه ميزةٌ تنظمُّ لسابقتِها فالقارئُ يتنقل من حديقةٍ فكريةٍ لأخرى مما يخففُ شيئا من مللِه إذا ما كان في أسلوبٍ واحد
دريدا يكرهُ الكلامَ ويرى أنه قُدِّم على الكتابةِ في الفكرِ الغربي وهو يدقُّ هذا الأمرَ ويطرقُه كثيرا وفي مراجعتِه لآرتو يعمد إلى خلق نمطٍ مسرحي متفرد لا يكونُ عمادَه الكلامُ المعدُّ سلفا ولا قوامه متفرجونَ سلبيون، وفي مقابلةٍ هاتفيةٍ لكتابةِ عمودٍ صحفي يقدمُ الفلسفةَ فيها بأسلوبٍ مبسط يرى أن الفيلسوفَ من الأفضلِ له الصمتُ من أن يخطوَ هذه الخطوةَ، وحينما يبسطُ لمترجمِه الياباني مفهومَ التفكيك وكيف نفهمُه يسقطُ في معمعةِ التعقيدِ ويذهبُ بقارئِه لمتاهاتٍ لا يعرفُ كيف يخرجُ منها
أسلوبُ دريدا في كتابتِه أسلوبٌ مرحٌ وروحُ الدعابةِ وهو في كتابتِه الفلسفية حاضرةٌ
الكتابُ خليطٌ من مقابلاتٍ ورسائلَ وتوضيحاتٍ ومقالات وتعليقاتٍ على كتب وهذه ميزةٌ تنظمُّ لسابقتِها فالقارئُ يتنقل من حديقةٍ فكريةٍ لأخرى مما يخففُ شيئا من مللِه إذا ما كان في أسلوبٍ واحد
دريدا يكرهُ الكلامَ ويرى أنه قُدِّم على الكتابةِ في الفكرِ الغربي وهو يدقُّ هذا الأمرَ ويطرقُه كثيرا وفي مراجعتِه لآرتو يعمد إلى خلق نمطٍ مسرحي متفرد لا يكونُ عمادَه الكلامُ المعدُّ سلفا ولا قوامه متفرجونَ سلبيون، وفي مقابلةٍ هاتفيةٍ لكتابةِ عمودٍ صحفي يقدمُ الفلسفةَ فيها بأسلوبٍ مبسط يرى أن الفيلسوفَ من الأفضلِ له الصمتُ من أن يخطوَ هذه الخطوةَ، وحينما يبسطُ لمترجمِه الياباني مفهومَ التفكيك وكيف نفهمُه يسقطُ في معمعةِ التعقيدِ ويذهبُ بقارئِه لمتاهاتٍ لا يعرفُ كيف يخرجُ منها
أسلوبُ دريدا في كتابتِه أسلوبٌ مرحٌ وروحُ الدعابةِ وهو في كتابتِه الفلسفية حاضرةٌ
Read
April 6, 2020I did it. I finally read book-length Derrida.
Is Derrida consistent in his attack? Probably, but it's really, really hard to say. I mean I think that I get what Derrida's going for, and it's definitely helpful that I have some familiarity with Heidegger and Levinas. The first and last essays are the most comprehensible, but on the whole, Foucault's allegation of Derrida being an obscurantist-terrorist seems like it's probably right, and you can imagine their exchange stemming from Derrida's accusations against Foucault in that first essay.
Do I understand Derrida's project? Again, I think so. Do I think it has much in the way of value. Eh, not so sure about that. I would argue that you can be like Derrida and go on a quixotic quest for liberated (non-)thought, then say fuck it and rub your junk in everyone's face, then vociferously deny that what you were doing was going on any such quest, and insist that you were just rubbing your junk in everyone's face.
Or you can do philosophy, literature, etc., with certain caveats, and then you can go home and rub your junk without accompanying theory, and draw a line between them, and admit that the line is a bit pointless, and rub your junk anyway. Because it feels good. And if you believe, as at least some part of me does, that Derrida is better understood as a provocateur rather than a systematic philosopher, I would advise you to read Nietzsche, Foucault, and Spinoza, who all did it better.
Is Derrida consistent in his attack? Probably, but it's really, really hard to say. I mean I think that I get what Derrida's going for, and it's definitely helpful that I have some familiarity with Heidegger and Levinas. The first and last essays are the most comprehensible, but on the whole, Foucault's allegation of Derrida being an obscurantist-terrorist seems like it's probably right, and you can imagine their exchange stemming from Derrida's accusations against Foucault in that first essay.
Do I understand Derrida's project? Again, I think so. Do I think it has much in the way of value. Eh, not so sure about that. I would argue that you can be like Derrida and go on a quixotic quest for liberated (non-)thought, then say fuck it and rub your junk in everyone's face, then vociferously deny that what you were doing was going on any such quest, and insist that you were just rubbing your junk in everyone's face.
Or you can do philosophy, literature, etc., with certain caveats, and then you can go home and rub your junk without accompanying theory, and draw a line between them, and admit that the line is a bit pointless, and rub your junk anyway. Because it feels good. And if you believe, as at least some part of me does, that Derrida is better understood as a provocateur rather than a systematic philosopher, I would advise you to read Nietzsche, Foucault, and Spinoza, who all did it better.
January 11, 2024
کتاب سختی بود و نیاز به صبر و حوصله داشت. خوندنش ماهها طول کشید، اما در بهترین زمان ممکن سراغش رفتم. حس میکردم بین این کتاب و تک تک فیلمهایی که میبینم و کتابهای دیگهای که میخونم میتونم ارتباط برقرار کنم.
بخشهای کوگیتو و تاریخ جنون، گفتار دمیده و تئاتر قساوت بیشترین اثر رو روم داشتن.
بخشهایی هم نفهمیده باقی موندن و گذاشتم برای بعد و بازخوانیها که سوادم بیشتر شده.
باید باز هم دریدا بخونم.
بخشهای کوگیتو و تاریخ جنون، گفتار دمیده و تئاتر قساوت بیشترین اثر رو روم داشتن.
بخشهایی هم نفهمیده باقی موندن و گذاشتم برای بعد و بازخوانیها که سوادم بیشتر شده.
باید باز هم دریدا بخونم.
May 25, 2013
Every time I read Derrida I remember that he is hard to read. I don't want to sound dumb, but the big words and esoteric concepts that he uses, constantly, weigh down the text for the reader. Each paragraph is a struggle. Some people can read through these types of things more easily than others, of course, but the number of those people who will read Derrida for fun are quite few. At the end of the day Derrida is a little out of reach for the ordinary person, which is a shame.
Before reading this collection of essays I had only read some of Derrida's longer works. I wish I had started with Writing and Difference. Though I still think Of Grammatology is the easiest to read conceptually, the essays here allow the reader to connect with Derrida on a level not possible in the longer works. For whatever reason Derrida doesn't carry over his conversational rhetoric into the longer works. His conversational rhetoric may still be hard to follow, but it's a nice style regardless. On the whole a collection of essays also allows the reader to gain a deeper appreciation for Derrida's thought by viewing a larger breadth of his work. Rather than focusing on one idea for a long time, a collection will bring you through a number of ideas relatively quickly. The middle essay in this collection is particularly interesting and alone makes picking up this book worth it.
Unfortunately my main criticism of Derrida remains prominently present here, though. I cannot understand why he, as a philosopher, must cite others' works so friggin often. It's not that I begrudge Derrida using the works of others as a launching pad for his own writing; it's just that he makes it damnably hard to understand what he has to add to the conversation. You absolutely leave knowing what Derrida thinks, but other than the coining of differance and the intricacies of trace, you need to be a very close reader or already know the other authors referenced well to figure out what Derrida adds or modifies.
Before reading this collection of essays I had only read some of Derrida's longer works. I wish I had started with Writing and Difference. Though I still think Of Grammatology is the easiest to read conceptually, the essays here allow the reader to connect with Derrida on a level not possible in the longer works. For whatever reason Derrida doesn't carry over his conversational rhetoric into the longer works. His conversational rhetoric may still be hard to follow, but it's a nice style regardless. On the whole a collection of essays also allows the reader to gain a deeper appreciation for Derrida's thought by viewing a larger breadth of his work. Rather than focusing on one idea for a long time, a collection will bring you through a number of ideas relatively quickly. The middle essay in this collection is particularly interesting and alone makes picking up this book worth it.
Unfortunately my main criticism of Derrida remains prominently present here, though. I cannot understand why he, as a philosopher, must cite others' works so friggin often. It's not that I begrudge Derrida using the works of others as a launching pad for his own writing; it's just that he makes it damnably hard to understand what he has to add to the conversation. You absolutely leave knowing what Derrida thinks, but other than the coining of differance and the intricacies of trace, you need to be a very close reader or already know the other authors referenced well to figure out what Derrida adds or modifies.
December 12, 2008
The abstract art of modern philosophy. Self-indulgent (others say playful), unnecessarily digressive and round-about----the actual conceptual depth of what is conveyed, while it was surely groundbreaking, can be stated in terms much simpler than Derrida's. Derrida is a cultural hero to many and the gravitational mass of the cult that surrounds him has bent the light in the eyes of those who adulate a man that can do no wrong.
I once heard Derrida give a lecture in Auckland on the concept of mercy as related to "merci", and it was 3 hours long. 1/3 of the audience left by 30 minutes once they saw where he was headed, 1/3 sat in rapture, and 1/3 laughed and played cards (or maybe that was my friend and I...).
Derrida blah blah blah.
I once heard Derrida give a lecture in Auckland on the concept of mercy as related to "merci", and it was 3 hours long. 1/3 of the audience left by 30 minutes once they saw where he was headed, 1/3 sat in rapture, and 1/3 laughed and played cards (or maybe that was my friend and I...).
Derrida blah blah blah.
April 3, 2008
Okay...just finished it last night.
First of all. if you are not a fan- do not read this book. haha.
Secondly, if you're still not really sure what linguistic deconstruction is all about, the first half of this book would be a good introduction to Derrida's philosophy.
Thirdly, this book is awesome! While it is not as in depth as some of his other works, it is still a refreshing read if you're interested in deconstruction.
First of all. if you are not a fan- do not read this book. haha.
Secondly, if you're still not really sure what linguistic deconstruction is all about, the first half of this book would be a good introduction to Derrida's philosophy.
Thirdly, this book is awesome! While it is not as in depth as some of his other works, it is still a refreshing read if you're interested in deconstruction.
May 5, 2018
Ogni tanto lo riprendo in mano, non ci capisco nulla e penso sempre di più che non sia colpa mia.
July 29, 2018
Lenta agonía hacia la fascinación. Le daría un 4,5, un 5 no por lo de lenta y agonía.
September 3, 2014
وَلَوْ أَنَّمَا فِي الْأَرْضِ مِن شَجَرَةٍ أَقْلَامٌ وَالْبَحْرُ يَمُدُّهُ مِن بَعْدِهِ سَبْعَةُ أَبْحُرٍ مَّا نَفِدَتْ كَلِمَاتُ اللَّهِ ۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَزِيزٌ حَكِيمٌ (27)
لذلك نحس تحت لغة الكاتب الأصيل هذه الحركة التب تحاول سحب الكلام الملفوظ ك" الزفير" .لذلك كتاب مثل فرجينيا ولف وفوكنر وت.س اليوت كانو علي وعي بان "الكتاب" لا يوجد وأن ثمة للأبد كتب ينكسر فيها معني عالم غير مُفكر فيه من قبل ذات واعية قادرة
على المعني ان ينتظر ان يقال او ان -يكتب ،حتي يسكن نفسه ويصبح مايكونه باختلافه عن نفسه فالوجود دائما سابق للكتابة
يولد المكتوب كلغة حينما يكون ميتا كعلامة
ياخذ التفكُك الغدير الهايدجري كأصل ومنبع على الرغم من الماخذ التي يأخذها دريدا على هايدجر نفسه وان كانت الميتافيزيقيا الغربية فد قامت على اساس التمركز الصواتي واللوجوسي وحصر الوجود في الحضور حسب المذهب الروسوي ، ربما كمان في اللغة العربية معني او دلالة اكبر للفظة الوجود يقول الرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم "الحمد لله الذي اوجدني بعد فقر " ويقول الشاعر "الحمد لله الغني الواجد " وفي القران "أَسْكِنُوهُنَّ مِنْ حَيْثُ سَكَنْتُمْ مِنْ وُجْدِكُمْ " ربما كان في الأصل الاشتقاقي لل "وجود" في اللغة العربية معني تاجود والندي والكرم !
لذلك نحس تحت لغة الكاتب الأصيل هذه الحركة التب تحاول سحب الكلام الملفوظ ك" الزفير" .لذلك كتاب مثل فرجينيا ولف وفوكنر وت.س اليوت كانو علي وعي بان "الكتاب" لا يوجد وأن ثمة للأبد كتب ينكسر فيها معني عالم غير مُفكر فيه من قبل ذات واعية قادرة
على المعني ان ينتظر ان يقال او ان -يكتب ،حتي يسكن نفسه ويصبح مايكونه باختلافه عن نفسه فالوجود دائما سابق للكتابة
يولد المكتوب كلغة حينما يكون ميتا كعلامة
ياخذ التفكُك الغدير الهايدجري كأصل ومنبع على الرغم من الماخذ التي يأخذها دريدا على هايدجر نفسه وان كانت الميتافيزيقيا الغربية فد قامت على اساس التمركز الصواتي واللوجوسي وحصر الوجود في الحضور حسب المذهب الروسوي ، ربما كمان في اللغة العربية معني او دلالة اكبر للفظة الوجود يقول الرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم "الحمد لله الذي اوجدني بعد فقر " ويقول الشاعر "الحمد لله الغني الواجد " وفي القران "أَسْكِنُوهُنَّ مِنْ حَيْثُ سَكَنْتُمْ مِنْ وُجْدِكُمْ " ربما كان في الأصل الاشتقاقي لل "وجود" في اللغة العربية معني تاجود والندي والكرم !
June 1, 2018
I thoroughly enjoyed this stimulating work. It may not be a light read, and it will certainly require a more careful examination before I can give any considered opinion on much of its content. However, I was consistently fascinated by what I read, and I would recommend it.
May 17, 2018
If this feller could just say what he wants to say we'd all be having beers by now
May 13, 2020
Normalde Derrida'yı okurken çok zorlanırdım ama Yazı ve Fark'ta daha rahat ilerledim. Sufle Söz bölümü en keyif aldığım metin oldu; Derrida sayesinde Artaud'nun dünyası ile tanıştım.
July 23, 2022
How do I start with Derrida? There is no starting point when you start with Derrida, there are just continuous ruptures of your constructed world. In Derrida, language is hypersensitive to itself...it crumbles down the moment it starts to develop a binary construction. It is the limitation where it seeks the ultimate play or force or finds itself again and again in this force. Through Derrida, we could understand that no language or system can get out of its anxiety and metaphysics. Also that, words are not fixed labels attached to the object, but the perpetual play of differences. The presence of any word or object implies an absence. It is also what it is not. Now totalizing Derrida here would be a pure sign of folly because language itself escapes the totalization, not because it is infinite, but because it is finite and always already shifts it's center and supplicates new signification.
Writing and difference is a collection of essays and lectures. Some of these essays were so revolutionary that changed the whole perspective of how we see the world and language. There are also some essays on literary writing and poetry, where we can see Derrida as a great literary writer as well, especially with his use of puns and metaphors. Before trying his masterpiece Of grammatology, I think this books would be a perfect place to engage oneself with Derrida. And of course, thare are some of the most complex texts you can ever read, but it is so much fun to explore the shifting and deconstructive style of Derrida. And his writing is far from boring, there are always some intellectual challenges he is throwing at you to solve. But you can't approach Derrida at all unless you know sufficient amount of Husserl, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault(only to understand one whole essay called Cogito and the history of madness, which were written in reaction against Foucault's book Madness and civilization).
Writing and difference is a collection of essays and lectures. Some of these essays were so revolutionary that changed the whole perspective of how we see the world and language. There are also some essays on literary writing and poetry, where we can see Derrida as a great literary writer as well, especially with his use of puns and metaphors. Before trying his masterpiece Of grammatology, I think this books would be a perfect place to engage oneself with Derrida. And of course, thare are some of the most complex texts you can ever read, but it is so much fun to explore the shifting and deconstructive style of Derrida. And his writing is far from boring, there are always some intellectual challenges he is throwing at you to solve. But you can't approach Derrida at all unless you know sufficient amount of Husserl, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault(only to understand one whole essay called Cogito and the history of madness, which were written in reaction against Foucault's book Madness and civilization).
May 11, 2021
"Falar mete-me medo porque, nunca dizendo o suficiente, sempre digo também demasiado."
September 20, 2021
I was part of that lost generation of American smart-kids who was real messed up over my run-in with a guy whose name was on everyone's lips, and who I could not for the life of me make sense of. That was 30 years ago, and I've never quite gotten over the experience. But I'm getting my revenge now.
It's not important why or how but this year I sat down with my cell phone and tried to complete my education. At some level, I'm not going to lie, I was doing therapy on how dumb Derrida and that blasted shrink Lacan had made me feel as a kid. I basically quit reading books at that point, and I'm not saying that was why, but I was ready for the grudge match.
But see the thing is, I didn't get in the ring with J.D. 'Cause someone once said to me "Derrida is *very* careful about who he takes the time to criticize" because that meant he had to spend time writing and thinking and living with them, and that at least stuck with me and made sense, and I thought I'd do the same. So I went looking for *my* crew who *I* wanted to hang out with, and amazingly enough to me, found a bunch of good folks.
I found wonderful people like Hubert ('Bert) Dreyfus, America's premier interpreter of Martin Heidegger and a delightful person to listen to (God bless YouTube and his soul). I discovered other people like Henri Bergson, France's greatest pre-war philosopher, whose public debate with Einstein on the nature of time was I guess the Parisian equivalent of Wrestlemania. I discovered still other people like David Bohm, who won a Nobel prize in physics, wrote his own whole interpretation of quantum mechanics, and then decided the scientists were leading us down the wrong path and took up philosophy in the Eastern tradition instead.
My point being that I'm still not sure, but I'm more than half-convinced that there's not much of anything that J.D. is doing that you can't find being done by folks who are better writers and more open-handed with their ideas. Find your own team, no one is indispensable, and J.D. is far from the Michael Jordan of philosophy.
And another thing: If you're any where near a normal American -- i.e. if your family did not pay more for elementary school than you did for college -- you were probably (like me) completely educationally unprepared for your first tango with old Jacques. What a person needs to have under their belt before you and J.D. are speaking the same language I may never know. But I learned this year that there's a whole big mess of cultural background -- like a mountain -- that J.D. just assumes and that 99.9% of Americans have never even heard of much less brushed up against.
I went to a big rural high school in what used to be coal country and was one of five or six people who had either the interest or the means to get a college education. You talk about bringing an intellectual knife to a gun fight... I was bringing a plastic spork. That doesn't make me stupid, that makes me well-trained to survive America's rust-belt, which was the priority.
No one who makes this many people doubt their own capacities could possibly be any good for us. At the other end, anyone whose fans' brains are so half-baked that their book reviews sound like the transcript of an exorcism, well J.D.'s maybe even worse for them. Either way it seems like J.D.'s impact on the American scene has been all in all unreasonably pernicious in some strange ways. Maybe that's our fault for forgetting we're Americans and not everything is for us -- after all he told us straight up that translation was an "always-already failed project" or some such. Maybe he's like Littlefinger: "I did tell you not to trust me."
It seems like J.D. really gets his hooks in folks like me, bookish males with an inferiority complex and a secret desire to crush with our out-of-this-world words the bastards who put their feet well up our poor earth-bound asses back in the day. This is the kind of person I think J.D. maybe was.
My secret and ungenerous fantasy is this: That schoolyard bullying aside, that maybe, just maybe, when he ran up on Heidegger for the first time, he was beat and beat bad, not so much by the book, which he probably breezed through or something. I'm thinking maybe he got deflated by the fact that it was pretty obvious on reading Being and Time that it was pretty much over as far as who was going to wear the pre-millennial crown for biggest dick in the philosophical locker room, and that Jacques would have to live with that for a lot of years. He hadn't even gotten his shorts off and had already lost his chance to cure that nagging Napoleon complex. Traumatic!
Anyway, silliness like that keeps me from pondering too hard the really negative effect J.D. and basically my whole undergraduate education had on me, and reminds me not to go get a copy of this book and put myself through all of that again just to prove a point that's done been proven. I just picture Jacques, nose-to-nuts with Martin's hairy danglers, reaching for his drawers, and that makes it all better. With love for my fellow sufferers.
It's not important why or how but this year I sat down with my cell phone and tried to complete my education. At some level, I'm not going to lie, I was doing therapy on how dumb Derrida and that blasted shrink Lacan had made me feel as a kid. I basically quit reading books at that point, and I'm not saying that was why, but I was ready for the grudge match.
But see the thing is, I didn't get in the ring with J.D. 'Cause someone once said to me "Derrida is *very* careful about who he takes the time to criticize" because that meant he had to spend time writing and thinking and living with them, and that at least stuck with me and made sense, and I thought I'd do the same. So I went looking for *my* crew who *I* wanted to hang out with, and amazingly enough to me, found a bunch of good folks.
I found wonderful people like Hubert ('Bert) Dreyfus, America's premier interpreter of Martin Heidegger and a delightful person to listen to (God bless YouTube and his soul). I discovered other people like Henri Bergson, France's greatest pre-war philosopher, whose public debate with Einstein on the nature of time was I guess the Parisian equivalent of Wrestlemania. I discovered still other people like David Bohm, who won a Nobel prize in physics, wrote his own whole interpretation of quantum mechanics, and then decided the scientists were leading us down the wrong path and took up philosophy in the Eastern tradition instead.
My point being that I'm still not sure, but I'm more than half-convinced that there's not much of anything that J.D. is doing that you can't find being done by folks who are better writers and more open-handed with their ideas. Find your own team, no one is indispensable, and J.D. is far from the Michael Jordan of philosophy.
And another thing: If you're any where near a normal American -- i.e. if your family did not pay more for elementary school than you did for college -- you were probably (like me) completely educationally unprepared for your first tango with old Jacques. What a person needs to have under their belt before you and J.D. are speaking the same language I may never know. But I learned this year that there's a whole big mess of cultural background -- like a mountain -- that J.D. just assumes and that 99.9% of Americans have never even heard of much less brushed up against.
I went to a big rural high school in what used to be coal country and was one of five or six people who had either the interest or the means to get a college education. You talk about bringing an intellectual knife to a gun fight... I was bringing a plastic spork. That doesn't make me stupid, that makes me well-trained to survive America's rust-belt, which was the priority.
No one who makes this many people doubt their own capacities could possibly be any good for us. At the other end, anyone whose fans' brains are so half-baked that their book reviews sound like the transcript of an exorcism, well J.D.'s maybe even worse for them. Either way it seems like J.D.'s impact on the American scene has been all in all unreasonably pernicious in some strange ways. Maybe that's our fault for forgetting we're Americans and not everything is for us -- after all he told us straight up that translation was an "always-already failed project" or some such. Maybe he's like Littlefinger: "I did tell you not to trust me."
It seems like J.D. really gets his hooks in folks like me, bookish males with an inferiority complex and a secret desire to crush with our out-of-this-world words the bastards who put their feet well up our poor earth-bound asses back in the day. This is the kind of person I think J.D. maybe was.
My secret and ungenerous fantasy is this: That schoolyard bullying aside, that maybe, just maybe, when he ran up on Heidegger for the first time, he was beat and beat bad, not so much by the book, which he probably breezed through or something. I'm thinking maybe he got deflated by the fact that it was pretty obvious on reading Being and Time that it was pretty much over as far as who was going to wear the pre-millennial crown for biggest dick in the philosophical locker room, and that Jacques would have to live with that for a lot of years. He hadn't even gotten his shorts off and had already lost his chance to cure that nagging Napoleon complex. Traumatic!
Anyway, silliness like that keeps me from pondering too hard the really negative effect J.D. and basically my whole undergraduate education had on me, and reminds me not to go get a copy of this book and put myself through all of that again just to prove a point that's done been proven. I just picture Jacques, nose-to-nuts with Martin's hairy danglers, reaching for his drawers, and that makes it all better. With love for my fellow sufferers.
November 21, 2007
The structural nature of Western thought. He says:
“the concept of structure and even the word “structure” it self are as old as the episteme that is to say as old as western science and western philosophy and their roots thrust deep into the soil of ordinary language, into whose deepest recesses the episteme plunges in order to gather them up and to make them part of itself in a metaphorical displacement. Nevertheless, up to event which I wish to mark out and define, structure-or rather the structurality of structure-although it has always been at work, has always been neutralized and this by a process of giving it a center or of refining it to appoint of presence, a fixed origin.” (Derrida, Writing & Difference, Ch 10, pg 278, pa II)
Derrida points out that the very analysis or the structural addressing of the structure, also involves the very process that he is addressing, which is not oddly the cause for paradox. At times Derrida seems ambiguous so it’s very hard to understand what exactly he is trying to say or the undertone of his purpose. P>T….Derrida’s idea though is subjected to its own criticism, so he seems to have a deeper truth value that’s not directly ascertained, which requires much more meditation (on what I perceive to be a viable paradox.)
More or less the idea that I get is that the structure of Western philosophy is not entirely built upon knowledge… but rather symbolic thought in the language of logic, the symbolic is prone to error and the logic is just a language that is ultimately unaccounted for… when the symbols are traced back to their foundation the symbols are not able to make the jump to the non symbolic center… “Thus it has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which while governing the structure, escapes structurality. This is why classical thought concerning structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it.” (Derrida, W&D, pg 279, pa II) Now at this point we are talking epistemology and arguably western metaphysics…
“the concept of structure and even the word “structure” it self are as old as the episteme that is to say as old as western science and western philosophy and their roots thrust deep into the soil of ordinary language, into whose deepest recesses the episteme plunges in order to gather them up and to make them part of itself in a metaphorical displacement. Nevertheless, up to event which I wish to mark out and define, structure-or rather the structurality of structure-although it has always been at work, has always been neutralized and this by a process of giving it a center or of refining it to appoint of presence, a fixed origin.” (Derrida, Writing & Difference, Ch 10, pg 278, pa II)
Derrida points out that the very analysis or the structural addressing of the structure, also involves the very process that he is addressing, which is not oddly the cause for paradox. At times Derrida seems ambiguous so it’s very hard to understand what exactly he is trying to say or the undertone of his purpose. P>T….Derrida’s idea though is subjected to its own criticism, so he seems to have a deeper truth value that’s not directly ascertained, which requires much more meditation (on what I perceive to be a viable paradox.)
More or less the idea that I get is that the structure of Western philosophy is not entirely built upon knowledge… but rather symbolic thought in the language of logic, the symbolic is prone to error and the logic is just a language that is ultimately unaccounted for… when the symbols are traced back to their foundation the symbols are not able to make the jump to the non symbolic center… “Thus it has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which while governing the structure, escapes structurality. This is why classical thought concerning structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it.” (Derrida, W&D, pg 279, pa II) Now at this point we are talking epistemology and arguably western metaphysics…
September 22, 2021
"[W]riting can assist itself, for it has time and freedom, escaping better than speech from empirical urgencies."
Includes the infamous structuralist essay
"Structure, Sign, and Play," which "identifies a tendency for philosophers to denounce each other for relying on problematic discourse, and argues that this reliance is to some degree inevitable because we can only write in the language we inherit" and a very interesting critique of Foucault's "History of Madness, that "questions the intentions and feasibility of Foucault's book, particularly in relation to the historical importance attributed by Foucault to the treatment of madness by Descartes in the Meditations on First Philosophy."
Derrida, inheriting from Saussure, deals with structuralism, a "type of analysis which understands individual elements of language and culture as embedded in larger structures." While his text Of Grammatology deals with Deconstruction in a much more explicative fashion, it's underpinnings are heavily present in this book. As "language as a system of signs and words only has meaning because of the contrast between these signs... meaning is never present, but rather is deferred to other signs... [a] concept, then, must be understood in the context of its opposite: for example, the word "being" does not have meaning without contrast with the word "nothing."
Includes the infamous structuralist essay
"Structure, Sign, and Play," which "identifies a tendency for philosophers to denounce each other for relying on problematic discourse, and argues that this reliance is to some degree inevitable because we can only write in the language we inherit" and a very interesting critique of Foucault's "History of Madness, that "questions the intentions and feasibility of Foucault's book, particularly in relation to the historical importance attributed by Foucault to the treatment of madness by Descartes in the Meditations on First Philosophy."
Derrida, inheriting from Saussure, deals with structuralism, a "type of analysis which understands individual elements of language and culture as embedded in larger structures." While his text Of Grammatology deals with Deconstruction in a much more explicative fashion, it's underpinnings are heavily present in this book. As "language as a system of signs and words only has meaning because of the contrast between these signs... meaning is never present, but rather is deferred to other signs... [a] concept, then, must be understood in the context of its opposite: for example, the word "being" does not have meaning without contrast with the word "nothing."
January 6, 2024
Thought-diarrhea.
That's what writing is. But that's not the point. The point is that like pretty much all books and especially philosophy books, this is something that will mean more to you depending on when you read it. I was actually given the book like 12 years ago and had almost no interest in it after reading two essays. I read a few more a few years ago. Then I read through the rest of the book in about two weeks.
If you're interested, Derrida's whole approach is basically to take a piece of writing and say "Well now, this whole thing is just bullshit." And when he says that everything everyone is talking about is bullshit he means it as a compliment. Then he spirals that off into metaphysical reflection.
Edit: Derrida's theory of "face" appears to be rooted in Kant's idea that what is beautiful in art is moral. Characters in a book could act immorally, but the whole work would be moral. This would be showing something beyond what is seen in the work. This abstraction would probably be similar to Derrida's idea about face, although for Derrida I do not believe that a work is default moral.
That's what writing is. But that's not the point. The point is that like pretty much all books and especially philosophy books, this is something that will mean more to you depending on when you read it. I was actually given the book like 12 years ago and had almost no interest in it after reading two essays. I read a few more a few years ago. Then I read through the rest of the book in about two weeks.
If you're interested, Derrida's whole approach is basically to take a piece of writing and say "Well now, this whole thing is just bullshit." And when he says that everything everyone is talking about is bullshit he means it as a compliment. Then he spirals that off into metaphysical reflection.
Edit: Derrida's theory of "face" appears to be rooted in Kant's idea that what is beautiful in art is moral. Characters in a book could act immorally, but the whole work would be moral. This would be showing something beyond what is seen in the work. This abstraction would probably be similar to Derrida's idea about face, although for Derrida I do not believe that a work is default moral.
August 29, 2014
An absolute must for any Derrida reader (which is to infer an absolute must absolutely).
Also a good entry into Derrida, I guess. For is there any real entry into a deferring motion that has no real beginning or end as it slips within and without of the metaphysical closure?
On a personal level, I enjoyed the "Violence and Metaphysics" essay the most.
Also a good entry into Derrida, I guess. For is there any real entry into a deferring motion that has no real beginning or end as it slips within and without of the metaphysical closure?
On a personal level, I enjoyed the "Violence and Metaphysics" essay the most.
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