Goodbye. — Jackson
Should I find the tiny violin player or will you? — igjugarjuk
I am a philosopher and discussing ideas. I suggest you stop making personal attacks. — Jackson
I hear you, but I don't think we think can or should just jettison that very distinctions that make such exciting claims possible in the first place.
Let's imagine a set of concepts such that, starting from any privileged subset, we can use that subset to rhetorically hobble all the rest.
Along these lines, see how your latest claim above depends on the concepts of singularity, polarity, and eventhood. Which, according to your own claim, must be metaphorical usages. As I grok the white mythology (and I expect you'll agree), it's no good to simply point out the metaphorical origin or residue of master concepts. The most obvious objection is that metaphor is itself a metaphor being applied metaphysically in such a context. This is a problem in general with centers of structures/systems, both inside and outside problematically. — igjugarjuk
. Because language is a system of differences and a form without substance, it makes no sense to privilege the voice. — igjugarjuk
This would not be Derrida’s view. For him there is no form without substance. — Joshs
Saussure’s system of language is a structuralism, — Joshs
For Derrida the ‘system’ of language remakes itself one singular to the next, without reference to a pre-existing totality. — Joshs
Of Grammatology also has a great introduction, and lots of copies were printed, so one can get used copies pretty cheap from Amazon, etc. — igjugarjuk
It wouldnt be a question of jettisoning distinctions , but of making any singularity equivocal and indeterminable(which is not the same thing as indefinable). — Joshs
I'm curious about the 'gramatology' label. Saussure called his topic 'linguistique générale". — Olivier5
I should have said the issue for Derrida was the undecidability vs the indetermination of the poles of distinctions.It wouldnt be a question of jettisoning distinctions , but of making any singularity equivocal and indeterminable(which is not the same thing as indefinable).
— Joshs
Maybe you can tame what you are getting at. — igjugarjuk
Still, I don't think a tamer version of that claim is anything Saussure would object to. Synchronic study is an abstraction. We take language, living evolving thing, at an ideal moment. Every tiny piece of parole will theoretically reverberate through the structure, changing it. But is this more than a footnote? The magnitude of that reverberation matters. Is it news? — igjugarjuk
As I understand it, it's a slicker version of Writingology. Basically there's a deep structure in sign systems that's more like writing than (an idealized vision of) speech, and 'writing' is repurposed to refer to this deeper structure. — igjugarjuk
where writing derives from accounting, and not directly from speech. — Olivier5
Our math these days depends on symbols that are only very awkwardly translated into English. We learn to think with these non-phonetic symbols. — igjugarjuk
Our minds are not hermetically sealed spirit chambers. They are continuous with our bodies and environments. Or that's an idea I read into Derrida. — igjugarjuk
Aka ideograms. Yes, modern math has rediscovered the power of ideograms. They are much more intuitive and shorter (essential almost) than alphabetic code can ever be. — Olivier5
So on these historical grounds I would disagree with idealising writing as some sort of Ur-language. — Olivier5
Since you know some math, perhaps you know of structuralism in the philosophy of math? I think that's adjacent to Derrida too. The meaning or content of '1' (for instance) is 'only' its place in a system. — igjugarjuk
Deleuze is useful here. He argues that quantification is inherently qualitative. That is , every repetition of a numeric counting (a counting of degree) is simultaneously a qualitative change. Every difference in degree is a difference in kind. — Joshs
A tamer version of that claim which presupposes the dialectical transformation of centered structures(reverberation through a structure) is a form of structuralism. — Joshs
Small point maybe, but what do you imagine to be the center of a system of differences without positive elements? I don't see a center for language itself, but only a central cluster perhaps in certain language games (such as in philosophy there are few master concepts entangled with all the others.) — igjugarjuk
(J. Hillis Miller, Theory Now and Then, 1991, 126.)Deconstruction as a mode of interpretation works by a careful and circumspect entering of each textual labyrinth. The [deconstruction] critic feels his way from figure to figure, from concept to concept, from mythical motif to mythical motif, in a repetition which is in no sense a parody. It employs nevertheless, the subversive power present in even the most exact and ironical doubling. The deconstructive critic seeks to find, by this process of retracing, the element in the system studied which is alogical, the thread in the text in question which will unravel it all, or the loose stone which will pull down the whole building.
The deconstruction, rather, annihilates the ground on which the building stands by showing that the text has already annihilated that ground, knowingly and unknowingly. Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of the text but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock but thin air.
The uncanny moment in Derrida’s criticism, the vacant place around which all his work is organized, is the formulation of this non-existence of the ground out of which the whole textual structure seems to rise…
The uncanny moment in Derrida’s criticism, the vacant place around which all his work is organized, is the formulation of this non-existence of the ground out of which the whole textual structure seems to rise…
Derrida, too, must acknowledge that the ground upon which his criticism is organized is on non-existent ground. Miller is pointing out the irony, or the parallel, if you will.I'm not sure if this is meant as a compliment or a snipe. — Tom Storm
I'm interested to enhance my understanding of what Derrida believed he was primarily working towards. (I get that this is a blunt and perhaps reductive question) Was he essentially trying to reevaluate traditional Western values, build a new ethical process? — Tom Storm
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