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賳賵卮鬲丕乇 賵 鬲賮丕賵鬲
賳賵卮鬲丕乇 賵 鬲賮丕賵鬲 賲噩賲賵毓賴鈥屫й� 丕夭 賳禺爻鬲蹖賳 賲賯丕賱丕鬲 丿乇蹖丿丕 丕爻鬲 讴賴 丿乇 爻丕賱 郾酃鄱鄯 賲賳鬲卮乇 卮丿 賵 丿乇 賲蹖丕賳 丌孬丕乇 丕賵 噩丕蹖诏丕賴蹖 賲賲鬲丕夭 丿丕乇丿. 丿乇蹖丿丕 丿乇 賴乇蹖讴 丕夭 丕蹖賳 賲賯丕賱丕鬲貙 讴賴 賳賵毓蹖 爻讴賵蹖 倬乇鬲丕亘 卮賲乇丿賴 賲蹖鈥屫促堎嗀� 亘毓囟蹖 丿乇賵賳鈥屬呚й屬団€屬囏й� 亘賳蹖丕丿蹖 賵 乇賵卮鈥屬囏й� 讴賱蹖丿蹖 丕賳丿蹖卮賲賳丿丕賳 亘夭乇诏 毓氐乇 禺賵蹖卮 (乇賵爻賴貙 賮賵讴賵貙 跇丕亘爻貙 賴賵爻乇賱貙 賴丕蹖丿诏乇貙 賱賵蹖賳丕爻貙 丕乇鬲賵貙 賮乇賵蹖丿貙 亘丕鬲丕蹖貙 賱賵蹖 丕爻鬲乇賵爻 賵 ...) 乇丕 賲賵乇丿 爻賳噩卮 賯乇丕乇 賲蹖鈥屫囏�. 丕夭 禺賱丕賱 丕蹖賳 爻賳噩卮貙 禺胤賵胤 賵 毓賳丕氐乇 卮讴賱鈥屫囐嗀団€屰� 賮囟丕蹖 丕賳丿蹖卮賴鈥屰� 丿乇蹖丿丕蹖蹖 丕賳丿讴鈥屫з嗀� 趩賴乇賴 賲蹖鈥屬嗁呚й屬嗀� 鬲丕 丿乇 丌孬丕乇 亘毓丿蹖 丕賵 爻蹖賲丕蹖 賲卮禺氐鈥屫臂� 倬蹖丿丕 讴賳賳丿. 鬲賳賵毓貙 睾賳丕 賵 丕賴賲蹖鬲 賲爻丕卅賱 賲胤乇丨鈥屫簇囏� 卮蹖賵賴鈥屰� 倬乇爻卮鈥屭臂� 賵 賳賯丿 丿乇蹖丿丕 丿乇 丕蹖賳 噩爻鬲丕乇賴丕 鬲賵賱丿 丕賳丿蹖卮賲賳丿蹖 乇丕 亘卮丕乇鬲 賲蹖鈥屫ж� 讴賴 亘乇丕蹖 賲丕賳丿賳 丌賲丿賴 亘賵丿 賵 鬲兀孬蹖乇 丕賳讴丕乇賳丕倬匕蹖乇卮 亘乇 丕賯賱蹖賲 賮賱爻賮蹖 夭賲丕賳賴鈥屫ж� 诏賵丕賴 丌賳 亘賵丿賴 丕爻鬲.
632 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1967
247 people are currently reading
13468 people want to read
About the author
Jacques Derrida
639听books1,717听followersJacques Derrida was a French philosopher best known for developing deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that questioned the stability of meaning in language, texts, and Western metaphysical thought. Born in Algeria, he studied at the 脡cole Normale Sup茅rieure in Paris, where he was influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. His groundbreaking works, including Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), positioned him at the center of intellectual debates on language, meaning, and interpretation.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions鈥攕uch as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion鈥攖hat falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of diff茅rance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the 脡cole des Hautes 脡tudes en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida鈥檚 ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions鈥攕uch as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion鈥攖hat falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of diff茅rance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the 脡cole des Hautes 脡tudes en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida鈥檚 ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.
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May 11, 2025
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鈥檚 a LOT more like writing ABOUT our differences.
That 鈥渢enth of an inch鈥� difference between really getting life鈥檚 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鈥檛 a set of hieroglyphics that needs a magical Rosetta Stone to decipher.
So how come we don鈥檛 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鈥檚 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:
鈥淭he DIFFERENCE to me!鈥�
Each piece of Writing is a Case of Fraud: so says Jacques Derrida.
Writing and Difference? Well, it鈥檚 a LOT more like writing ABOUT our differences.
That 鈥渢enth of an inch鈥� difference between really getting life鈥檚 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鈥檛 a set of hieroglyphics that needs a magical Rosetta Stone to decipher.
So how come we don鈥檛 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鈥檚 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:
鈥淭he DIFFERENCE to me!鈥�
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 nouveaut茅 qu鈥檜n espacement de la lecture. -- Mallarm茅, Preface to Un Coup de d茅s
I had in mind, perhaps, to perform a public service, to undertake finally Derrida鈥檚 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鈥檛 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鈥檛 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鈥檛 beat yourself up, and don鈥檛 beat up Derrida. That鈥檚 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鈥檛 know. I was only overhearing.
I don鈥檛 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 鈥榗ommon reader.鈥� Derrida presumes, not a general familiarity with something vaguely denominated 鈥榳estern philosophy,鈥� 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 别辫辞肠丑茅 one must know what its status is in Husserl鈥檚 transcendental phenomenology. When one hears 鈥渦nhappy consciousness鈥� or 鈥渇orce鈥� one must hear the corresponding sections of Hegel鈥檚 Phenomenology of Spirit. When one hears 鈥渄estruction of the history of metaphysics,鈥� one must know that Heidegger has read and admired all of the history of metaphysics, that Hegel is its completion. When one hears 鈥淏eing鈥� one must know whether it is Hegel鈥檚 or Heidegger鈥檚. And then there are those other proper names; Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault, Bataille, others rendered below.
And the 鈥榩rose,鈥� 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 鈥榮ubstance.鈥� Much more it is the question of the form and the content; the thing said and its saying. To object to Derrida鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 theses; only to indicate a topos of each.
For better direction-giving, please do not skip Alan Bass鈥� 鈥淭ranslator鈥檚 Introduction.鈥�
鈥淔orce and Signification鈥� -- A critique of a certain manner of structuralist literary criticism, pointing out a certain failure of presumption to have escaped metaphysical presuppositions.
鈥淐ogito and the History of Madness鈥� -- 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.
鈥淓dmond Jab猫s and the Question of the Book鈥� -- A mediation on the work of Jab猫s which would seem to parallel Heidegger鈥檚 own thinking with the the poet H枚lderlin.
鈥淰iolence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas鈥� -- Levinas, in addition to the Germans I enumerated above, is of central importance to Derrida鈥檚 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.
鈥溾€楪enesis and Structure鈥� and Phenomenology鈥� -- There is no point in reading this essay unless one has a close understanding of Husserl鈥檚 project of establishing philosophy as rigorous science, i.e., phenomenology.
鈥淟a parole souffl茅e鈥� -- 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鈥檚 not clear at all) working out of some of Derrida鈥檚 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.
鈥淔reud and the Scene of Writing鈥� -- An examination of how the metaphor of writing works in the thought of Freud concerning memory and its aid. Esoterica Freudiana.
鈥淭he Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation鈥� -- The second essay about Artaud, this time more expository, approaching being concerned with Artaud himself rather than Derrida working through his own concerns.
鈥淔rom Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve鈥� -- 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鈥檚 thinking against dialectic (Derrida insists that Bataille is taking Hegel seriously, that 鈥淗egel was more right than he knew,鈥� 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 鈥渘on鈥� or 鈥渘ot鈥� 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鈥檚 attempts. Dense.
鈥淪tructure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences鈥� -- 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鈥檚 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 鈥渄ebate鈥� hasn鈥檛 read Derrida.
鈥淓llipsis鈥� -- ...
I had in mind, perhaps, to perform a public service, to undertake finally Derrida鈥檚 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鈥檛 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鈥檛 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鈥檛 beat yourself up, and don鈥檛 beat up Derrida. That鈥檚 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鈥檛 know. I was only overhearing.
I don鈥檛 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 鈥榗ommon reader.鈥� Derrida presumes, not a general familiarity with something vaguely denominated 鈥榳estern philosophy,鈥� 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 别辫辞肠丑茅 one must know what its status is in Husserl鈥檚 transcendental phenomenology. When one hears 鈥渦nhappy consciousness鈥� or 鈥渇orce鈥� one must hear the corresponding sections of Hegel鈥檚 Phenomenology of Spirit. When one hears 鈥渄estruction of the history of metaphysics,鈥� one must know that Heidegger has read and admired all of the history of metaphysics, that Hegel is its completion. When one hears 鈥淏eing鈥� one must know whether it is Hegel鈥檚 or Heidegger鈥檚. And then there are those other proper names; Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault, Bataille, others rendered below.
And the 鈥榩rose,鈥� 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 鈥榮ubstance.鈥� Much more it is the question of the form and the content; the thing said and its saying. To object to Derrida鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 theses; only to indicate a topos of each.
For better direction-giving, please do not skip Alan Bass鈥� 鈥淭ranslator鈥檚 Introduction.鈥�
鈥淔orce and Signification鈥� -- A critique of a certain manner of structuralist literary criticism, pointing out a certain failure of presumption to have escaped metaphysical presuppositions.
鈥淐ogito and the History of Madness鈥� -- 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.
鈥淓dmond Jab猫s and the Question of the Book鈥� -- A mediation on the work of Jab猫s which would seem to parallel Heidegger鈥檚 own thinking with the the poet H枚lderlin.
鈥淰iolence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas鈥� -- Levinas, in addition to the Germans I enumerated above, is of central importance to Derrida鈥檚 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.
鈥溾€楪enesis and Structure鈥� and Phenomenology鈥� -- There is no point in reading this essay unless one has a close understanding of Husserl鈥檚 project of establishing philosophy as rigorous science, i.e., phenomenology.
鈥淟a parole souffl茅e鈥� -- 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鈥檚 not clear at all) working out of some of Derrida鈥檚 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.
鈥淔reud and the Scene of Writing鈥� -- An examination of how the metaphor of writing works in the thought of Freud concerning memory and its aid. Esoterica Freudiana.
鈥淭he Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation鈥� -- The second essay about Artaud, this time more expository, approaching being concerned with Artaud himself rather than Derrida working through his own concerns.
鈥淔rom Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve鈥� -- 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鈥檚 thinking against dialectic (Derrida insists that Bataille is taking Hegel seriously, that 鈥淗egel was more right than he knew,鈥� 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 鈥渘on鈥� or 鈥渘ot鈥� 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鈥檚 attempts. Dense.
鈥淪tructure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences鈥� -- 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鈥檚 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 鈥渄ebate鈥� hasn鈥檛 read Derrida.
鈥淓llipsis鈥� -- ...
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鈥檚 the peril of my post structuralist short cuts.
I appreciated the two pieces on Artaud but I鈥檓 not sure they鈥檝e 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鈥檚 the peril of my post structuralist short cuts.
I appreciated the two pieces on Artaud but I鈥檓 not sure they鈥檝e 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
賲賳 兀氐毓亘 丕賱賰鬲亘 丕賱鬲賷 賯乇兀鬲賴丕 賲丐禺乇丕賸貙 賱兀賳賴 賰鬲丕亘 賲賵睾賱 賮賷 丕賱鬲毓賯賷丿 兀賵賱丕賸 賵賱兀賳賴 賷丨賲賱 賮賰乇丞 噩丿賷丿丞 賷氐毓亘 賮賴賲賴丕 亘爻賴賵賱丞.
丿乇賷丿丕 賰賮賷賱爻賵賮 賷亘鬲毓丿 毓賳 丕賱亘爻丕胤丞 賮賷 賰鬲丕亘鬲賴 賱爻亘亘賷賳 亘乇兀賷賷貙 丕賱兀賵賱 賵賴賵 毓賲賯 丕胤賱丕毓賴 賵毓丿賲 賯丿乇鬲賴 毓賱賶 丕賱賲賵丕夭賳丞 亘賷賳 丕賱毓賲賯 賵丕賱亘爻丕胤丞 賮賷 丌賳貙 丕賱孬丕賳賷 賵賴賵 廿賷賲丕賳賴 亘鬲兀賵賷賱丕鬲 丕賱賳氐 賵鬲賮賰賷賰賷鬲賴 賵亘丕賱鬲丕賱賷 丨乇氐 毓賱賶 丕爻鬲禺丿丕賲 丕賱毓丿賷丿 賲賳 丕賱賰賱賲丕鬲 賵丕賱鬲毓丕亘賷乇 丕賱鬲賷 毓賯丿鬲 丕賱賳氐 賱爻賷胤乇 亘匕賱賰 毓賱賶 丕賱賳氐 賵賷賯賷賴 賲賳 丕賳賯賱丕亘賴 毓賱賶 賰丕鬲亘賴 賰賲丕 賷丿毓賷 匕賱賰 亘卮兀賳 丕賱賳氐賵氐 亘卮賰賱 毓丕賲.
夭丕丿鬲 氐毓賵亘丞 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 兀賷囟丕賸 兀孬賳丕亍 丕賱鬲乇噩賲丞 丕賱鬲賷 賰丕賳鬲 亘賱丕 卮賰 兀賲乇丕賸 賲乇賴賯丕賸 亘丕賱賳爻亘丞 賱賱賲鬲乇噩賲貙 丨賷孬 爻賷丨丕賵賱 噩丕賴丿丕賸 賳賯賱 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賰賲丕 賴賵 賵亘賰賱 鬲兀賵賷賱丕鬲賴 丕賱賲賲賰賳丞 賵囟賲丕賳 賵氐賵賱賴 亘毓亘丕乇丕鬲 爻賱爻賱丞 賱賱賯丕乇卅.
賷毓鬲亘乇 賮賰乇 丿乇賷丿丕 賳賯胤丞 鬲丨賵賱 賮賷 鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱賮賱爻賮丞 亘賱丕 卮賰貙 賵毓賱賶 賯丕乇卅賴 兀賳 賷鬲丨賲賱 鬲亘毓丕鬲 匕賱賰 賵禺丕氐丞 兀賳賴 賷賯乇兀 賱亘丕丨孬 賵賳丕賯丿 賮賷 賲噩丕賱 丕賱兀丿亘 賵丕賱賱睾丞.
丿乇賷丿丕 賰賮賷賱爻賵賮 賷亘鬲毓丿 毓賳 丕賱亘爻丕胤丞 賮賷 賰鬲丕亘鬲賴 賱爻亘亘賷賳 亘乇兀賷賷貙 丕賱兀賵賱 賵賴賵 毓賲賯 丕胤賱丕毓賴 賵毓丿賲 賯丿乇鬲賴 毓賱賶 丕賱賲賵丕夭賳丞 亘賷賳 丕賱毓賲賯 賵丕賱亘爻丕胤丞 賮賷 丌賳貙 丕賱孬丕賳賷 賵賴賵 廿賷賲丕賳賴 亘鬲兀賵賷賱丕鬲 丕賱賳氐 賵鬲賮賰賷賰賷鬲賴 賵亘丕賱鬲丕賱賷 丨乇氐 毓賱賶 丕爻鬲禺丿丕賲 丕賱毓丿賷丿 賲賳 丕賱賰賱賲丕鬲 賵丕賱鬲毓丕亘賷乇 丕賱鬲賷 毓賯丿鬲 丕賱賳氐 賱爻賷胤乇 亘匕賱賰 毓賱賶 丕賱賳氐 賵賷賯賷賴 賲賳 丕賳賯賱丕亘賴 毓賱賶 賰丕鬲亘賴 賰賲丕 賷丿毓賷 匕賱賰 亘卮兀賳 丕賱賳氐賵氐 亘卮賰賱 毓丕賲.
夭丕丿鬲 氐毓賵亘丞 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 兀賷囟丕賸 兀孬賳丕亍 丕賱鬲乇噩賲丞 丕賱鬲賷 賰丕賳鬲 亘賱丕 卮賰 兀賲乇丕賸 賲乇賴賯丕賸 亘丕賱賳爻亘丞 賱賱賲鬲乇噩賲貙 丨賷孬 爻賷丨丕賵賱 噩丕賴丿丕賸 賳賯賱 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賰賲丕 賴賵 賵亘賰賱 鬲兀賵賷賱丕鬲賴 丕賱賲賲賰賳丞 賵囟賲丕賳 賵氐賵賱賴 亘毓亘丕乇丕鬲 爻賱爻賱丞 賱賱賯丕乇卅.
賷毓鬲亘乇 賮賰乇 丿乇賷丿丕 賳賯胤丞 鬲丨賵賱 賮賷 鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱賮賱爻賮丞 亘賱丕 卮賰貙 賵毓賱賶 賯丕乇卅賴 兀賳 賷鬲丨賲賱 鬲亘毓丕鬲 匕賱賰 賵禺丕氐丞 兀賳賴 賷賯乇兀 賱亘丕丨孬 賵賳丕賯丿 賮賷 賲噩丕賱 丕賱兀丿亘 賵丕賱賱睾丞.
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
January 11, 2024
讴鬲丕亘 爻禺鬲蹖 亘賵丿 賵 賳蹖丕夭 亘賴 氐亘乇 賵 丨賵氐賱賴 丿丕卮鬲. 禺賵賳丿賳卮 賲丕賴鈥屬囏� 胤賵賱 讴卮蹖丿貙 丕賲丕 丿乇 亘賴鬲乇蹖賳 夭賲丕賳 賲賲讴賳 爻乇丕睾卮 乇賮鬲賲. 丨爻 賲蹖鈥屭┴必� 亘蹖賳 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 賵 鬲讴 鬲讴 賮蹖賱賲鈥屬囏й屰� 讴賴 賲蹖鈥屫ㄛ屬嗁� 賵 讴鬲丕亘鈥屬囏й� 丿蹖诏賴鈥屫й� 讴賴 賲蹖鈥屫堎嗁� 賲蹖鈥屫堎嗁� 丕乇鬲亘丕胤 亘乇賯乇丕乇 讴賳賲.
亘禺卮鈥屬囏й� 讴賵诏蹖鬲賵 賵 鬲丕乇蹖禺 噩賳賵賳貙 诏賮鬲丕乇 丿賲蹖丿賴 賵 鬲卅丕鬲乇 賯爻丕賵鬲 亘蹖卮鬲乇蹖賳 丕孬乇 乇賵 乇賵賲 丿丕卮鬲賳.
亘禺卮鈥屬囏й屰� 賴賲 賳賮賴賲蹖丿賴 亘丕賯蹖 賲賵賳丿賳 賵 诏匕丕卮鬲賲 亘乇丕蹖 亘毓丿 賵 亘丕夭禺賵丕賳蹖鈥屬囏� 讴賴 爻賵丕丿賲 亘蹖卮鬲乇 卮丿賴.
亘丕蹖丿 亘丕夭 賴賲 丿乇蹖丿丕 亘禺賵賳賲.
亘禺卮鈥屬囏й� 讴賵诏蹖鬲賵 賵 鬲丕乇蹖禺 噩賳賵賳貙 诏賮鬲丕乇 丿賲蹖丿賴 賵 鬲卅丕鬲乇 賯爻丕賵鬲 亘蹖卮鬲乇蹖賳 丕孬乇 乇賵 乇賵賲 丿丕卮鬲賳.
亘禺卮鈥屬囏й屰� 賴賲 賳賮賴賲蹖丿賴 亘丕賯蹖 賲賵賳丿賳 賵 诏匕丕卮鬲賲 亘乇丕蹖 亘毓丿 賵 亘丕夭禺賵丕賳蹖鈥屬囏� 讴賴 爻賵丕丿賲 亘蹖卮鬲乇 卮丿賴.
亘丕蹖丿 亘丕夭 賴賲 丿乇蹖丿丕 亘禺賵賳賲.
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
6 days babyyy - time to interact with society & touch some grass. 4.5
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.
February 2, 2017
賰鬲丕亘賹 氐毓亘賹 賱丿乇賷丿丕 賲乇乇鬲購 毓賱賶 賮氐賵賱賽賴 丕賱兀禺賷乇丞賽 賲乇賵乇賸丕 爻乇賷毓丕 廿賱賶 丨丿 兀賳賳賷 丕胤賱毓鬲購 毓賱賶 丕賱賰鬲丕亘賽 賵賱賲 兀賯乇兀賿賴 亘賲毓賳賶 丕賱賯乇丕亍丞賽 丕賱丿賯賷賯丞賽貙 乇噩毓鬲購 賮賷賴 廿賱賶 丕賱賯賵丕賲賷爻賽 丕賱賮賱爻賮賷丞賽 賵賴賷 賯丿 鬲賰賵賳購 賲賷夭丞賸 賱賰鬲丕亘賺 賷囟胤乇購賾 賮賷賴 賯丕乇卅購賴 廿賱賶 丕賱亘丨孬賽 毓賳 賲丕 睾賲購囟 賲賳 賲賮丕賴賷賲賽賴
丕賱賰鬲丕亘購 禺賱賷胤賹 賲賳 賲賯丕亘賱丕鬲賺 賵乇爻丕卅賱賻 賵鬲賵囟賷丨丕鬲賺 賵賲賯丕賱丕鬲 賵鬲毓賱賷賯丕鬲賺 毓賱賶 賰鬲亘 賵賴匕賴 賲賷夭丞賹 鬲賳馗賲購賾 賱爻丕亘賯鬲賽賴丕 賮丕賱賯丕乇卅購 賷鬲賳賯賱 賲賳 丨丿賷賯丞賺 賮賰乇賷丞賺 賱兀禺乇賶 賲賲丕 賷禺賮賮購 卮賷卅丕 賲賳 賲賱賱賽賴 廿匕丕 賲丕 賰丕賳 賮賷 兀爻賱賵亘賺 賵丕丨丿
丿乇賷丿丕 賷賰乇賴購 丕賱賰賱丕賲賻 賵賷乇賶 兀賳賴 賯購丿賽賾賲 毓賱賶 丕賱賰鬲丕亘丞賽 賮賷 丕賱賮賰乇賽 丕賱睾乇亘賷 賵賴賵 賷丿賯購賾 賴匕丕 丕賱兀賲乇賻 賵賷胤乇賯購賴 賰孬賷乇丕 賵賮賷 賲乇丕噩毓鬲賽賴 賱丌乇鬲賵 賷毓賲丿 廿賱賶 禺賱賯 賳賲胤賺 賲爻乇丨賷 賲鬲賮乇丿 賱丕 賷賰賵賳購 毓賲丕丿賻賴 丕賱賰賱丕賲購 丕賱賲毓丿購賾 爻賱賮丕 賵賱丕 賯賵丕賲賴 賲鬲賮乇噩賵賳賻 爻賱亘賷賵賳貙 賵賮賷 賲賯丕亘賱丞賺 賴丕鬲賮賷丞賺 賱賰鬲丕亘丞賽 毓賲賵丿賺 氐丨賮賷 賷賯丿賲購 丕賱賮賱爻賮丞賻 賮賷賴丕 亘兀爻賱賵亘賺 賲亘爻胤 賷乇賶 兀賳 丕賱賮賷賱爻賵賮賻 賲賳 丕賱兀賮囟賱賽 賱賴 丕賱氐賲鬲購 賲賳 兀賳 賷禺胤賵賻 賴匕賴 丕賱禺胤賵丞賻貙 賵丨賷賳賲丕 賷亘爻胤購 賱賲鬲乇噩賲賽賴 丕賱賷丕亘丕賳賷 賲賮賴賵賲賻 丕賱鬲賮賰賷賰 賵賰賷賮 賳賮賴賲購賴 賷爻賯胤購 賮賷 賲毓賲毓丞賽 丕賱鬲毓賯賷丿賽 賵賷匕賴亘購 亘賯丕乇卅賽賴 賱賲鬲丕賴丕鬲賺 賱丕 賷毓乇賮購 賰賷賮 賷禺乇噩購 賲賳賴丕
兀爻賱賵亘購 丿乇賷丿丕 賮賷 賰鬲丕亘鬲賽賴 兀爻賱賵亘賹 賲乇丨賹 賵乇賵丨購 丕賱丿毓丕亘丞賽 賵賴賵 賮賷 賰鬲丕亘鬲賽賴 丕賱賮賱爻賮賷丞 丨丕囟乇丞賹
丕賱賰鬲丕亘購 禺賱賷胤賹 賲賳 賲賯丕亘賱丕鬲賺 賵乇爻丕卅賱賻 賵鬲賵囟賷丨丕鬲賺 賵賲賯丕賱丕鬲 賵鬲毓賱賷賯丕鬲賺 毓賱賶 賰鬲亘 賵賴匕賴 賲賷夭丞賹 鬲賳馗賲購賾 賱爻丕亘賯鬲賽賴丕 賮丕賱賯丕乇卅購 賷鬲賳賯賱 賲賳 丨丿賷賯丞賺 賮賰乇賷丞賺 賱兀禺乇賶 賲賲丕 賷禺賮賮購 卮賷卅丕 賲賳 賲賱賱賽賴 廿匕丕 賲丕 賰丕賳 賮賷 兀爻賱賵亘賺 賵丕丨丿
丿乇賷丿丕 賷賰乇賴購 丕賱賰賱丕賲賻 賵賷乇賶 兀賳賴 賯購丿賽賾賲 毓賱賶 丕賱賰鬲丕亘丞賽 賮賷 丕賱賮賰乇賽 丕賱睾乇亘賷 賵賴賵 賷丿賯購賾 賴匕丕 丕賱兀賲乇賻 賵賷胤乇賯購賴 賰孬賷乇丕 賵賮賷 賲乇丕噩毓鬲賽賴 賱丌乇鬲賵 賷毓賲丿 廿賱賶 禺賱賯 賳賲胤賺 賲爻乇丨賷 賲鬲賮乇丿 賱丕 賷賰賵賳購 毓賲丕丿賻賴 丕賱賰賱丕賲購 丕賱賲毓丿購賾 爻賱賮丕 賵賱丕 賯賵丕賲賴 賲鬲賮乇噩賵賳賻 爻賱亘賷賵賳貙 賵賮賷 賲賯丕亘賱丞賺 賴丕鬲賮賷丞賺 賱賰鬲丕亘丞賽 毓賲賵丿賺 氐丨賮賷 賷賯丿賲購 丕賱賮賱爻賮丞賻 賮賷賴丕 亘兀爻賱賵亘賺 賲亘爻胤 賷乇賶 兀賳 丕賱賮賷賱爻賵賮賻 賲賳 丕賱兀賮囟賱賽 賱賴 丕賱氐賲鬲購 賲賳 兀賳 賷禺胤賵賻 賴匕賴 丕賱禺胤賵丞賻貙 賵丨賷賳賲丕 賷亘爻胤購 賱賲鬲乇噩賲賽賴 丕賱賷丕亘丕賳賷 賲賮賴賵賲賻 丕賱鬲賮賰賷賰 賵賰賷賮 賳賮賴賲購賴 賷爻賯胤購 賮賷 賲毓賲毓丞賽 丕賱鬲毓賯賷丿賽 賵賷匕賴亘購 亘賯丕乇卅賽賴 賱賲鬲丕賴丕鬲賺 賱丕 賷毓乇賮購 賰賷賮 賷禺乇噩購 賲賳賴丕
兀爻賱賵亘購 丿乇賷丿丕 賮賷 賰鬲丕亘鬲賽賴 兀爻賱賵亘賹 賲乇丨賹 賵乇賵丨購 丕賱丿毓丕亘丞賽 賵賴賵 賮賷 賰鬲丕亘鬲賽賴 丕賱賮賱爻賮賷丞 丨丕囟乇丞賹
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 pi霉 che non sia colpa mia.
July 29, 2018
Lenta agon铆a hacia la fascinaci贸n. Le dar铆a un 4,5, un 5 no por lo de lenta y agon铆a.
September 3, 2014
賵賻賱賻賵賿 兀賻賳賻賾賲賻丕 賮賽賷 丕賱賿兀賻乇賿囟賽 賲賽賳 卮賻噩賻乇賻丞賺 兀賻賯賿賱賻丕賲賹 賵賻丕賱賿亘賻丨賿乇購 賷賻賲購丿購賾賴購 賲賽賳 亘賻毓賿丿賽賴賽 爻賻亘賿毓賻丞購 兀賻亘賿丨購乇賺 賲賻賾丕 賳賻賮賽丿賻鬲賿 賰賻賱賽賲賻丕鬲購 丕賱賱賻賾賴賽 蹢 廿賽賳賻賾 丕賱賱賻賾賴賻 毓賻夭賽賷夭賹 丨賻賰賽賷賲賹 (27)
賱匕賱賰 賳丨爻 鬲丨鬲 賱睾丞 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 丕賱兀氐賷賱 賴匕賴 丕賱丨乇賰丞 丕賱鬲亘 鬲丨丕賵賱 爻丨亘 丕賱賰賱丕賲 丕賱賲賱賮賵馗 賰" 丕賱夭賮賷乇" .賱匕賱賰 賰鬲丕亘 賲孬賱 賮乇噩賷賳賷丕 賵賱賮 賵賮賵賰賳乇 賵鬲.爻 丕賱賷賵鬲 賰丕賳賵 毓賱賷 賵毓賷 亘丕賳 "丕賱賰鬲丕亘" 賱丕 賷賵噩丿 賵兀賳 孬賲丞 賱賱兀亘丿 賰鬲亘 賷賳賰爻乇 賮賷賴丕 賲毓賳賷 毓丕賱賲 睾賷乇 賲購賮賰乇 賮賷賴 賲賳 賯亘賱 匕丕鬲 賵丕毓賷丞 賯丕丿乇丞
毓賱賶 丕賱賲毓賳賷 丕賳 賷賳鬲馗乇 丕賳 賷賯丕賱 丕賵 丕賳 -賷賰鬲亘 貙丨鬲賷 賷爻賰賳 賳賮爻賴 賵賷氐亘丨 賲丕賷賰賵賳賴 亘丕禺鬲賱丕賮賴 毓賳 賳賮爻賴 賮丕賱賵噩賵丿 丿丕卅賲丕 爻丕亘賯 賱賱賰鬲丕亘丞
賷賵賱丿 丕賱賲賰鬲賵亘 賰賱睾丞 丨賷賳賲丕 賷賰賵賳 賲賷鬲丕 賰毓賱丕賲丞
賷丕禺匕 丕賱鬲賮賰購賰 丕賱睾丿賷乇 丕賱賴丕賷丿噩乇賷 賰兀氐賱 賵賲賳亘毓 毓賱賶 丕賱乇睾賲 賲賳 丕賱賲丕禺匕 丕賱鬲賷 賷兀禺匕賴丕 丿乇賷丿丕 毓賱賶 賴丕賷丿噩乇 賳賮爻賴 賵丕賳 賰丕賳鬲 丕賱賲賷鬲丕賮賷夭賷賯賷丕 丕賱睾乇亘賷丞 賮丿 賯丕賲鬲 毓賱賶 丕爻丕爻 丕賱鬲賲乇賰夭 丕賱氐賵丕鬲賷 賵丕賱賱賵噩賵爻賷 賵丨氐乇 丕賱賵噩賵丿 賮賷 丕賱丨囟賵乇 丨爻亘 丕賱賲匕賴亘 丕賱乇賵爻賵賷 貙 乇亘賲丕 賰賲丕賳 賮賷 丕賱賱睾丞 丕賱毓乇亘賷丞 賲毓賳賷 丕賵 丿賱丕賱丞 丕賰亘乇 賱賱賮馗丞 丕賱賵噩賵丿 賷賯賵賱 丕賱乇爻賵賱 氐賱賶 丕賱賱賴 毓賱賷賴 賵爻賱賲 "丕賱丨賲丿 賱賱賴 丕賱匕賷 丕賵噩丿賳賷 亘毓丿 賮賯乇 " 賵賷賯賵賱 丕賱卮丕毓乇 "丕賱丨賲丿 賱賱賴 丕賱睾賳賷 丕賱賵丕噩丿 " 賵賮賷 丕賱賯乇丕賳 "兀賻爻賿賰賽賳購賵賴購賳賻賾 賲賽賳賿 丨賻賷賿孬購 爻賻賰賻賳賿鬲購賲賿 賲賽賳賿 賵購噩賿丿賽賰購賲賿 " 乇亘賲丕 賰丕賳 賮賷 丕賱兀氐賱 丕賱丕卮鬲賯丕賯賷 賱賱 "賵噩賵丿" 賮賷 丕賱賱睾丞 丕賱毓乇亘賷丞 賲毓賳賷 鬲丕噩賵丿 賵丕賱賳丿賷 賵丕賱賰乇賲 !
賱匕賱賰 賳丨爻 鬲丨鬲 賱睾丞 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 丕賱兀氐賷賱 賴匕賴 丕賱丨乇賰丞 丕賱鬲亘 鬲丨丕賵賱 爻丨亘 丕賱賰賱丕賲 丕賱賲賱賮賵馗 賰" 丕賱夭賮賷乇" .賱匕賱賰 賰鬲丕亘 賲孬賱 賮乇噩賷賳賷丕 賵賱賮 賵賮賵賰賳乇 賵鬲.爻 丕賱賷賵鬲 賰丕賳賵 毓賱賷 賵毓賷 亘丕賳 "丕賱賰鬲丕亘" 賱丕 賷賵噩丿 賵兀賳 孬賲丞 賱賱兀亘丿 賰鬲亘 賷賳賰爻乇 賮賷賴丕 賲毓賳賷 毓丕賱賲 睾賷乇 賲購賮賰乇 賮賷賴 賲賳 賯亘賱 匕丕鬲 賵丕毓賷丞 賯丕丿乇丞
毓賱賶 丕賱賲毓賳賷 丕賳 賷賳鬲馗乇 丕賳 賷賯丕賱 丕賵 丕賳 -賷賰鬲亘 貙丨鬲賷 賷爻賰賳 賳賮爻賴 賵賷氐亘丨 賲丕賷賰賵賳賴 亘丕禺鬲賱丕賮賴 毓賳 賳賮爻賴 賮丕賱賵噩賵丿 丿丕卅賲丕 爻丕亘賯 賱賱賰鬲丕亘丞
賷賵賱丿 丕賱賲賰鬲賵亘 賰賱睾丞 丨賷賳賲丕 賷賰賵賳 賲賷鬲丕 賰毓賱丕賲丞
賷丕禺匕 丕賱鬲賮賰購賰 丕賱睾丿賷乇 丕賱賴丕賷丿噩乇賷 賰兀氐賱 賵賲賳亘毓 毓賱賶 丕賱乇睾賲 賲賳 丕賱賲丕禺匕 丕賱鬲賷 賷兀禺匕賴丕 丿乇賷丿丕 毓賱賶 賴丕賷丿噩乇 賳賮爻賴 賵丕賳 賰丕賳鬲 丕賱賲賷鬲丕賮賷夭賷賯賷丕 丕賱睾乇亘賷丞 賮丿 賯丕賲鬲 毓賱賶 丕爻丕爻 丕賱鬲賲乇賰夭 丕賱氐賵丕鬲賷 賵丕賱賱賵噩賵爻賷 賵丨氐乇 丕賱賵噩賵丿 賮賷 丕賱丨囟賵乇 丨爻亘 丕賱賲匕賴亘 丕賱乇賵爻賵賷 貙 乇亘賲丕 賰賲丕賳 賮賷 丕賱賱睾丞 丕賱毓乇亘賷丞 賲毓賳賷 丕賵 丿賱丕賱丞 丕賰亘乇 賱賱賮馗丞 丕賱賵噩賵丿 賷賯賵賱 丕賱乇爻賵賱 氐賱賶 丕賱賱賴 毓賱賷賴 賵爻賱賲 "丕賱丨賲丿 賱賱賴 丕賱匕賷 丕賵噩丿賳賷 亘毓丿 賮賯乇 " 賵賷賯賵賱 丕賱卮丕毓乇 "丕賱丨賲丿 賱賱賴 丕賱睾賳賷 丕賱賵丕噩丿 " 賵賮賷 丕賱賯乇丕賳 "兀賻爻賿賰賽賳購賵賴購賳賻賾 賲賽賳賿 丨賻賷賿孬購 爻賻賰賻賳賿鬲購賲賿 賲賽賳賿 賵購噩賿丿賽賰購賲賿 " 乇亘賲丕 賰丕賳 賮賷 丕賱兀氐賱 丕賱丕卮鬲賯丕賯賷 賱賱 "賵噩賵丿" 賮賷 丕賱賱睾丞 丕賱毓乇亘賷丞 賲毓賳賷 鬲丕噩賵丿 賵丕賱賳丿賷 賵丕賱賰乇賲 !
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'y谋 okurken 莽ok zorlan谋rd谋m ama Yaz谋 ve Fark'ta daha rahat ilerledim. Sufle S枚z b枚l眉m眉 en keyif ald谋臒谋m metin oldu; Derrida sayesinde Artaud'nun d眉nyas谋 ile tan谋艧t谋m.
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 tamb茅m 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:
鈥渢he concept of structure and even the word 鈥渟tructure鈥� 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.鈥� (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鈥檚 very hard to understand what exactly he is trying to say or the undertone of his purpose. P>T鈥�.Derrida鈥檚 idea though is subjected to its own criticism, so he seems to have a deeper truth value that鈥檚 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鈥� 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鈥� when the symbols are traced back to their foundation the symbols are not able to make the jump to the non symbolic center鈥� 鈥淭hus 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.鈥� (Derrida, W&D, pg 279, pa II) Now at this point we are talking epistemology and arguably western metaphysics鈥�
鈥渢he concept of structure and even the word 鈥渟tructure鈥� 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.鈥� (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鈥檚 very hard to understand what exactly he is trying to say or the undertone of his purpose. P>T鈥�.Derrida鈥檚 idea though is subjected to its own criticism, so he seems to have a deeper truth value that鈥檚 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鈥� 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鈥� when the symbols are traced back to their foundation the symbols are not able to make the jump to the non symbolic center鈥� 鈥淭hus 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.鈥� (Derrida, W&D, pg 279, pa II) Now at this point we are talking epistemology and arguably western metaphysics鈥�
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."
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.
February 4, 2016
most well known for 'structure, sign, & play,' but contains otherwise some great little gems on hegel, foucault, levinas, husserl, inter alia.
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