Lecture 5 Derrida and Differance 1 Jacques Derrida

Lecture 5 Derrida and Differance

1. Jacques Derrida 1930 -2004 • Born in Algeria • 1952 Enters ENS • 1962 Introduction to translation of Husserl’s Origin of Geometry • 1966 Johns Hopkins conference • 1967 Speech and Phenomena, Of Grammatology • 1992 Cambridge affair • 2002 Visit to York • Obituary: www. guardian. co. uk/obituaries/ story/0, 3604, 1324160, 00. html

OG - 'Deconstruction of presence' • Main aim of the book (OG 70) – To make enigmatic what one thinks one understands by the words ‘proximity’, ‘immediacy’, ‘presence’ (the proximate [proche], the own [propre], and the pre- of presence), is my final intention in this book. This deconstruction of presence accomplishes itself through the deconstruction of consciousness, and therefore through the irreducible notion of the trace (Spur), as it appears in both Nietzschean and Freudian discourse. (p. 70)

Deconstruction? Writing ‘inaugurates the destruction. Not the demolition but the de-sedimentation, the deconstruction, of all the significations that have their source in that of the logos. Particularly the signification of truth. All the metaphysical determinations of truth. . . are more or less immediately inseparable from the instance of the logos. . ’ (OG p. 10)

Presence? Logocentrism as ‘phonocentrism’ (OG 11 -12), which is ‘the historical determination of the meaning of being in general as presence. . . . (presence of the thing to sight as eidos, presence as substance/essence/existence, temporal presence as point of the now or of the moment, the selfpresence of the cogito, consciousness, subjectivity, the co-presence of the other and of the self, intersubjectivity as the intentional phenomenon of the ego. . )’

Speech and writing • ‘phonocentrism’ – implies priority of speech (phone) – voix • ‘grammatology’ – theory of ‘writing’ • Traditional position: speech is prior to writing JD holds that actually writing reveals the fundamental character of language better than a ‘phonocentric’ approach.

Writing • ‘Writing in general covers the entire field of linguistic signs’ (OG 44) • ‘I would rather wish to suggest that the alleged derivativeness of writing, however real and massive, was possible only on one condition: that the ‘original’, ‘natural’ etc. language had never existed, never been intact and untouched by writing, that it had itself always been a writing. An arche-writing whose necessity and new concept I wish to indicate and outline here’ (OG 56).

Writing vs science, presence • ‘This arche-writing, although its concept is invoked by themes of ‘the arbitrariness of the sign’ and of difference, cannot and can never be recognized as the object of a science. It is that thing which cannot let itself be reduced to the form of presence. The latter orders all objectivity of the object and all relation to knowledge’. (OG 57)

Language • These questions about speech and writing concern language; but what is JD’s conception of this? ‘One says ‘language’ for action, movement, thought, reflection, consciousness, unconsciousness, experience, affectivity’ etc. (OG 9) • But JD recognises that this is not the traditional picture

The traditional picture (e. g. Locke) • (i) ‘Pure’ thoughts (ideas, feelings, consciousness) are expressed in • (ii) Speech by speakers in a language which can then be recorded in • (iii) Writing (which is a ‘signifier’ of a ‘signifier’)

Derrida’s critique • (i) The very idea of a pure thought which is conceived as available to a thinker (‘present’) without presupposing language, is a myth • (ii) The best way to think about the role of language here is by thinking in terms of language as ‘writing’, not speech.

‘the movement of the signifier’ • ‘nothing escapes the movement of the signifier and …. , in the last instance, the difference between signifier and signified is nothing. ’ (OG 22 -3) • What does this mean?

‘Signified’? What? JD continues: ‘this proposition of transgression, not yet formulated into a careful discourse, runs the risk of formulating regression itself’ (OG 23) But he writes: ‘signified (sense or thing, noeme or reality)’ (OG p. 18)

• Preferred interpretation: signified as: ‘sense’ ‘noeme’ connect with criticism of ‘transcendental signified’ - conception of ‘pure meanings’, ideas etc. • Unwanted interpretation signified as ‘thing’ or ‘reality’ This view leads to linguistic idealism

Against Husserl • JD sets out this critique in his critical discussion of Husserl’s theory of signs in Speech and Phenomena • This turns out to be a radical critique of Husserl’s conception of phenomenology, esp. of Husserl’s conception of ‘constitution’ and ‘subjectivity’

Husserl on language • Indication (‘natural meaning’) ‘spots means measles’ vs • Expression (‘genuine meaning’) ‘vixen’ means female fox • Expression and Solitary life The soliloquy as the paradigm of expression • Hence expressive meaning is preserved by the Phenomenological reduction

Inner Speech (Voix) • According to Derrida (in SP = Speech and Phenomena), Husserl’s position is one which suggests that speech (voix) has a privileged position as the expression of meaning (SP 76 ff. ) Why? Because of the possibility of purely ‘inner speech’ – (i) Inner speech is not thought of as worldly at all (SP 79) (ii) Inner speech provides a ‘diaphanous’ expression of meaning (SP 80)

Derrida: This absolute proximity of the signifier to the signified, and its effacement in immediate presence, is the condition for Husserl’s being able to consider the medium of expression (i. e. inner speech) as “unproductive” and “Reflective” (SP 80) Hence JD takes it that one can use the ‘writing/speech’ distinction as a model for the ‘body/soul’ distinction.

JD’s arguments (i) Indexicals (SP 94 ff. ) The meaning of all indexicals, including ‘I’ and ‘now’, is dependent upon worldly context – on who is speaking and, especially, when. So meaning cannot be fixed by ‘inner speech’ alone; signifiers must be symbols that can occur in a worldly content.

(ii) There is no unique event of meaning (SP 50) The meaning of a signifier here and now always depends on its use on other occasions. Hence signifiers must be such that the same signifier can be re-used especially by others. That leads one to thing of signifiers as paradigmatically ‘written’ (‘iterable’)

• The underlying argument here is that in using symbols to say (or think) something, it must be possible that one’s statement (or thought) be mistaken: meaning must not be dependent on truth. • Hence meaning cannot be just a matter of connecting individual signifiers to experiences one-by-one; it requires rule-governed practices of a linguistic community which determine the meaning of a statement in advance of settling the question of its truth. • (I take this argument from Wittgenstein, not Derrida; but it seems to me presupposed by JD’s objections to Husserl)

Differance Derrida’s key concept The French verb ‘différer’ means (in English) both ‘differ’ and ‘defer’. JD’s thesis is that meaning essentially involves both – both difference and deferral ‘Difference’ comes in because of the ‘holistic’ aspect of meaning – the meaning of one symbol depends on the meanings of other similar symbols (e. g colour words) ‘Deferral’ comes in because the meaning of a symbol on one occasion is dependent on its use on other occasions; so it is ‘deferred’ to these other occasions (n. b. useful ambiguity of ‘defer’ in English, not replicated in French)

Difference and subjectivity • Derrida’s radical thesis: meaning as difference is what is fundamental to subjectivity – the possibility of having thoughts and thus being a ‘subject’: ‘This movement of differance is not something that happens to a transcendental subject; it produces a subject’ (SP 82)

Derrida against Husserl • This is a major disagreement with Husserl’s phenomenology, according to which ‘transcendental subjectivity’ is what is fundamental ‘The concept of subjectivity belongs a priori and in general to the order of the constituted. . There is no constituting subjectivity. The very concept of constitution must itself be deconstructed’ (SP 845)

Temporality/intersubjectivity • Derriderean ‘differance’ involves the use of symbols on other occasions and by other speakers/writers. Derrida does not separate these aspects: ‘Intersubjectivity is inseparable from temporalisation taken as the openness of the present upon an outside of itself, upon another absolute present. ’ (SP 84)

Trace (SP 85 -6) • The most difficult feature of JD’s position is his conception of a ‘trace’. So far I have written of ‘symbols’ as signifiers; but JD’s usual term here is ‘trace’. • What are ‘traces’? ‘The living present springs forth out of its nonidentity with itself and from the possibility of a retentional trace. It is always already a trace. This trace cannot be thought out on the basis of a simple present whose life would be within itself; the self of the living present is primordially a trace’. (SP 85)

Trace in OG • ‘The trace is in fact the absolute origin of sense in general. Which amounts to saying once again that there is no absolute origin of sense in general. The trace is the differance which opens appearance and signification’ (OG p. 65)

Pure (arche-) trace (OG 62) (i) ‘Trace’ in French = ‘Trace’ or ‘Track/path’ in English (ii) ‘The (pure) trace is differance. It does not depend on any sensible plenitude, audible or visible, phonic or graphic. It is, on the contrary, the condition of such a plenitude. Although it does not exist, although it is never a beingpresent outside of all plenitude, its possibility is by rights anterior to all that one calls sign (signified/signifier, content/expression etc. )…. (iii) … ‘constitute the texts, the chains, and the systems of traces’ (OG 65)

What is a trace? (i) Intuitively: traces are a type of evidence (evidence of the presence of something/someone); e. g. fingerprint, dna sample. But this can’t be what JD has in mind. (ii) Indeed since the ‘pure’ trace ‘does not exist’, it cannot be an object of any kind (e. g. a symbol etc. ) (iii) If traces aren’t objects, are they perhaps ‘acts’, such as gestures, cries, movements - acts which have a ‘differantial’ significance dependent on difference and deferral? (iv) This interpretation does not fit JD’s text, but it does fit his ‘philosophical’ aspiration.

‘Naturalism vs. Normativity’ • Here’s a way of thinking about traces as ‘acts’. Suppose one takes it that meaning (significance) does not depend on ‘natural’ causal/functional connections; but arises instead within rule-governed ‘practices’ (language-games etc. ) whose rules specify what ‘should’ be done in terms of ‘differantial’ networks. Then: if ‘traces’ are ‘moves’ within a practice, something like JD’s story will come out right. For it will be the practice that turns out to be fundamental, and the meanings of established signs (words etc. ) will depend on their role within practices.

Will this do? Probably not! • Here’s a typical passage: The signified face (? figure), to the extent that it is still originarily distinguished from the signifying face (? ), is not considered a trace; by rights, it has no need of the signifier to be what it is. … It is thus the idea of the sign that must be deconstructed through a meditation on writing. …. Thus the signified is originarily and essentially …. Trace, that it is always already in the position of the signifier, is the apparently innocent proposition within which the metaphysics of the logos, of presence and consciousness, must reflect upon writing as its death and its resource. (OG 73)

Metaphysics of the logos • JD connects ‘logos’ with truth. So is the deconstruction of the logos a sceptical doctrine about truth? • Maybe concerning a traditional conception of truth the ‘absolute truth’ of non-linguistic propositions (Frege’s ‘thoughts’). • But not, I think, generally: statements etc. can be true - in their language etc.

Logocentrism and truth I have never put such concepts as truth, reference and the stability of interpretive contexts radically into question if ‘putting radically into question’ means contesting that there and that there should be truth, reference, and stable contexts of interpretation. I have – but this is something entirely different – posed questions that I hope are radical concerning the possibility of these things, of these values, of these norms, of this stability (which by essence is always provisional and finite). (Limited Inc p. 150)

Man. • ‘Supplementarity <differance> makes possible all that constitutes the property of man: speech, society, passion etc. ’ (OG 244)