Of Grammatology
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Corrected Edition. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1997. Print.
SummaryDerrida explores the relation between speech and writing and how both develop into language. He believes the system of language is broken, and calls for scholars to investigate the brokenness. He is seeking a deconstruction of the system. Specifically, Derrida argues that we need a methodology in order to locate power structures, and once we do that, we can then deconstruct. He wants us to focus on revealing these structures.
Throughout the text, he takes other theorists' concepts and arguments and rips them apart by showing their flaws and contradictions. The concept of differance--between meaning and outer representation, or the middle of inside and outside--is central to Derrida's methodology. Differance deals with absence and binaries, just as Derrida's method of deconstruction does as well. ResponseDerrida believes the development of language comes through a mix of both speech and writing. Neither, he says, is more important in terms of language development. At this point of the semester, I'm nodding in agreement with Derrida with his thought here. Humans tend to be so fixated on levels of hierarchy What's most important?, Who's first place?, etc. I'm reminded of the beginning of the semester when I was so fixated on thinking about which came first and which was more important--speech or thought. Derrida tells us both are needed and important--none more important than the other.
If Derrida is calling for a sort of crituqe in order to look at origins and locations of power, how might we go about doing so? Perhaps we should first look for binaries and then identify how the rhetorical argument has been constructed using specific strategies. This reminds me a bit of Peter Elbow's Believing and Doubting Game. Connections/QuestionsHorkheimer and Adorno advocate for a way of deconstructing ideology with the purpose of unmasking power and domination, just as Derrida seeks ways to unmask power structures through deconstructing texts (and the system at large).
He believes the system of language is broken, and we need to be able to embrace these flaws to investigate how who move past these issues. Similarly, Heidegger suggests that rather than trying to fix and solve everything, we should instead embrace leave questions open-ended in order to seek the essence of what we are questioning--seeking out the "stellar course of mystery" (12). Both men are vying for a sort of deconstruction of fixed order. Derrida says that one word always signifies another (7), so language is not fixed, but rather chaotic. Specifically, he describes it as the "movement of language" (7). Words/signifiers are always dependent upon other words/signifiers. This visual of movement reminds me of Volosinov's description of language as "an ever-flowing stream of speech acts in which nothing remains fixed and identical to itself" (52). Derrida says we need to use language to find flaws, but ironically, language itself is flawed. This reminds me of another paradox from Horkheimer and Adorno who say, “Humans believe themselves free of fear when there is no longer anything unknown” (11), while at the same time, the enlightenment, as they note, leaves no space for anything unknown and fear is the unknown. |
Key Quotes
“In a sense, thought means nothing” (93).
"We can say that what is natural to mankind is not spoken language but the faculty of constructing language; i.e., a system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas" (66).
“Language is first . . . writing,” the “violence of writing does not befall an innocent language” (37).
Derrida calls writing, “sensible matter and artificial exteriority: a ‘clothing’” (35).
“Representation mingles with what it represents, to the point where one speaks as one writes, one thinks as if the represented were nothing more than the shadow or reflection of the representer. A dangerous promiscuity and a nefarious complicity between the reflection and the reflected which lets itself be seduced narcissistically . . . There is no longer a simple origin. For what is reflected is in itself and not only as an addition to itself of its image” (36).
“If either of these two substances, the stream of air or the stream of ink, were an integral part of the language itself, it would not be possible to go from one to the other without changing the language” (59).
“The end of linear writing is indeed the end of the book, even if, even today it is within the form of a book that new writings—literary or theoretical—allow themselves to be, for better or for worse, encased. It is less a question of confiding new writings to the envelop of a book than of finally reading what wrote itself between the lines in the volumes” (86).
"We can say that what is natural to mankind is not spoken language but the faculty of constructing language; i.e., a system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas" (66).
“Language is first . . . writing,” the “violence of writing does not befall an innocent language” (37).
Derrida calls writing, “sensible matter and artificial exteriority: a ‘clothing’” (35).
“Representation mingles with what it represents, to the point where one speaks as one writes, one thinks as if the represented were nothing more than the shadow or reflection of the representer. A dangerous promiscuity and a nefarious complicity between the reflection and the reflected which lets itself be seduced narcissistically . . . There is no longer a simple origin. For what is reflected is in itself and not only as an addition to itself of its image” (36).
“If either of these two substances, the stream of air or the stream of ink, were an integral part of the language itself, it would not be possible to go from one to the other without changing the language” (59).
“The end of linear writing is indeed the end of the book, even if, even today it is within the form of a book that new writings—literary or theoretical—allow themselves to be, for better or for worse, encased. It is less a question of confiding new writings to the envelop of a book than of finally reading what wrote itself between the lines in the volumes” (86).