Discussion is kind of moot, as we don't think in the same dominant faculties in the first place, Spinoza knew that -- but a better example is... hmmm, don't recall the source of this one, damn, won't look as cool, but I think is was Chomsky probably...

He talked about trying an experiment where he would try to keep track of a minute, and see what he could do while doing that. He discovered that he could read, but not speak when doing it, and told a friend of his that didn't understand why he wouldn't be able to speak while doing it. So he learned to keep track of a minute and demonstrated that he could speak, but not read. Upon further analysis it came to light that Chromsky was just audibly counting in his head, occupying that faculty, so that he could look at the pages and read them, but not speak. Whereas his friend was visually imagining a clock counting, so that he couldn't "take his eyes of it" as it were to read, but he could speak no problem, because they thought in predominantly different faculties.

Taking the universal assumption that everyone must experience such an inner voice cannot be made. — TheWillowOfDarkness

That's right, as we can imagine human beings who don't think with words at all, and especially other animals which don't use words, but still think. There is no reason to assume the universality of an inner "voice".

I often think in images, imagining events, ordering my day, or next few minutes, by imagining where and when, what will occur. Then I put words to the events which have been ordered, and this is how I remember the intended order. This is similar to the way I memorize occurrences which I have observed. I go over the images in my mind, numerous times, choosing words to describe the occurrence, trying different words, exchanging the words for better words, until I am satisfied that the chosen words adequately describe the event as it occurred.

Then there is very often a song playing in the back of my mind. I could be carrying on my normal thinking, ordering images and putting words to them, while seemingly all the time I am doing this, there is a song playing as well. Is there multiple inner voices? In fact, I can go to sleep with the song playing, and wake up any time at night, or in the morning, with the same song playing. How does that work, is it playing inside my memory? But it is also present to my conscious mind. It's almost involuntary though, because it takes an enormous amount of effort to remove the song and replace it with another. This can be annoying when it's the jingle from a bad TV commercial. I haven't quite put my finger on the remote control.

So the "inner voice" is extremely complex, and what one person refers to as "the inner voice", may be just one aspect of a vey complex thing. And the aspects present to an individual may vary from one to another, just like the aspects of our physical traits.

If you're not here to talk to things at least tangentially related to V&P, take it to another thread or PM.

Yup, definitely. Just got up and am getting on it now. (One of the reasons I was willing -- I have today off so have enough time to put in :) )

There's some guess-work in this rendition so by all means please bring in your own thoughts on this chapter. This is just a first stab. I found it hard to follow at times.




I decided to reread 1-3. I think there's actually more argument going on in the first three chapters than I initially surmised. Especially in 2 and 3 -- which are linking indication and expression, respectively, to the metaphysics of presence. 1 still reads as a introduction to the problem Derrida wishes to explore along with a quick announcement of how he's going to tackle said problem. And 4 is a statement of Husserl's arguments in favor of the distinction between indication and expression in order to see how they likewise work in favor of presence and absence (and, also, against the sign -- or, rather, for the sign as a modification of presence); or, as Husserl would have it, the "solitary life of the soul" bears the weight for the distinction between expression and indication, and this -- according to Derrida's reading, at least -- is the reaffirmation of the metaphysics of presence which from this point onward never goes unquestioned by Husserl. Chapter five begins:

The sharp point of the instant, the identify of lived-experience present to itself in the same instant bears therefore the whole weight of this demonstration

If I'm correct in my reading then 1-4 are meant to justify this statement.

The introduction to this section is surmised a few paragraphs down:

If the punctuality of the instant is a myth, a spatial or mechanical metaphor, a metaphysical concept inherited, or all of that at once, if the present of the presence to self is not simple, if it is constituted in an originary or irreducible synthesis, then the principle of Husserl's entire argumentation is threatened

I read this as -- if a or b or c or (a and b and c), or d, or e, then p

Purely in a logical way, at least. I don't think the disjunctive language is meant to spell out a rather messy syllogism, but is meant to elucidate the meaning of the term

"the present of the prsence to self is not simple"

So that this can be read as --

if q, then p

And the remainder of the chapter is basically arguing for "q", thereby concluding that Husserl's entire argumentation is threatened. The interesting part about "q", from my standpoint at least, is that Derrida is attempting to make that argument primarily by way of citation of Husserl's texts. (note that I am certainly in no position to evaluate whether or not what Derrida states of Husserl's is a fair reading -- this is just my summation of how the argument works).




1. Punctuality plays a major role in Husserl's thought even while Husserl attempts to disavow this.

Although the flowing of time is "indivisible into fragments that could be by themselves, and indivisible into phases that could be by themselves, into points of continuity," the "mods of the flowing of an immanent temporal object have a beginning, a, so to speak, source-point This is the mode of flowing by which the immanent object begins to be. It is characterized as present" Despite all the complexity of its structure, temporality has a non-displaceable center, an eye or a living nucleus, and that is the puncutality of the actual now

Derrida goes on to claim that this domination of the now is characteristic of the metaphysics of presence. In contradistinction to said metaphysic Derrida here makes reference to Freud's unconscious (or similar constructions, one presumes) to elucidate in what way Husserl is committed to this metaphysics of presence, and goes on to quote Husserl rejection of the unconscious.


I must admit that part 2's argument is something I find difficult to evaluate because of my lack of familiarity with the content it's drawing from. But what I gather is the following

2. In LI Husserl utilizes punctuality. This allows him to make the distinction between expression and indication, which likewise is how Husserl is able to interpret language, at large, as a modification of presence (and, hence, non-expressive). However, in The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness and elsewhere the content of the description forbids us from speaking of a simple self-identity of the present. So self-identity is not simple.

3. Here Derrida opens with a restatement of the conclusions of 1 and 2, to give what he calls their "apparent irreconcilable possibilities" -- and then what follows is a reconciliation of the two by way of repetition. i.e. the sign.

It seems to me that Derrida restates this on several fronts -- that what makes expression possible is the hiatus between these two irreconcialable possibilities -- at least, irreconcialable unless one accepts the sign as what allows these two possibilities to co-exist. So it is not so much that Husserl is even wrong in his analysis, but rather, in accord with his own philosophical project, we can reconcile what is apparently contradictory if we think of language not in terms of a modification of presence, but rather as what allows this original distinction to make sense.

Or, if that not be the case, then expression at least is not linguistic, but expressive language is "added on to an originary and pre-expressive stratus of sense. Expressive language itself would have to supervene on the absolute silence of the self-relation"

One sentence I want to highlight that I read and re-read and for the life of me find difficult to understand what it is saying -- I don't know if I'm just being dense, if I'm just not familiar enough with the referenced content, or if it is genuinely a difficult idea being expressed -- I wanted to post to see if others found it either difficult or really, really obvious. Page 53, paragraph 3, sentence begins on line 8:

It therefore prescribes the place of a problematic that puts phenomenology into confrontation with every thought of non-consciousness that would know how to approach the genuine stakes and profound agency where the decision is made: the concept of time

I gather that this means that the domination of the now prescribes the importance of the concept of time, which is the same metaphysic both of the greek world and the modern world where the idea is thought of as representation. Followed by saying that The phenomenolgoy of Internal Time-Consciousness is not some chance fluke, but rather very important to the point Derrida wants to make.

But that was some guess work on my part

My biggest puzzlement with this chapter, before more substantial commentary: the argument here explicitly depends on Derrida not taking Husserl at his word, which is in sharp contrast with the close reading strategy we've seen up til now. Husserl says that the past is given in originary perception, but if he's serious, this undermines Derrida's whole point, since for Derrida's criticism of Husserl to go through, it must be that all originary perception, and so the principle of principles, must be confined to the present, and so cannot have anything non-punctual related to it. But this is precisely what Husserl denies in insisting that retention is not re-repsentation, but presentation!

So the rhetorical strategy here is extremely odd. We are to criticize Husserl for a metaphysics of presence which, on the most straightforward reading of his account of time-consciousness, he explicitly denies. Now Derrida notes this trouble and tries to garner textual support for why Husserl can't seriously mean what he says here. But is it really convincing? Why not hold, as Husserl says he does, that the past itself belongs through retention to originary perception, and so undermine Derrida's entire claim to presentation being dependent on re-presentation? If the past is 'present' in this way, then the fact that retention and the primal impression are co-constututive simply does not get Derrida what he wants.

The point is just that Derrida's reading of Husserl must take on a different tone for this to work. It cannot be simply that we are digging Husserl's commitments out of his own words: we must now in some sense go beyond them, to find a hidden tension and extract from it something that Husserl would deny is even his position, not because some contradiciton contrary to his intention had been found, but because we have somehow psychoanalyzed him and told him that he did not really mean what he said to begin with. This is a very different strategy, and in my opinion a much less convincing one.

(Also note there is a sly rhetorical move here, which under its strongest interpretation might even be construed as fallacious: that because the present depends on the past, we can therefore say that it is the past or the repetition which must have priority. This of course does not follow, because it overlooks co-constituting or equiprimordiality, which seems to be what Husserl is getting at with his notion of horizontal intentionality; but he does also in some way seem to want to privilege the primal impression as the true present of the present. Also, it is unclear how serious Derrida is to committing to this reversal, rather that breaking down the distinction that makes any privileging of one over the other possible).

To illustrate this as concretely as possible, here is Derrida on p. 55 (my bold, his italics):

We see very quickly then that the presence of the perceived present is able to appear as such only insofar as it is in continuous composition with a non-presence and a non-perception, namely, primary memory and primary anticipation (retention and protention).

This is, in a way, the whole point of this chapter. But look at the bolded: Husserl denies that retention and protention are non-perceptions, this is the whole point. Derrida is punning here or making use of what he takes to be a pre-established conclusion: that perception must be presence in the strict sense of not belonging to the past or future, which retention and protention in some sense do. But there is a weird circle going on here. Husserl is prey to the metaphysics of presence because he takes all originary consciousness to be presentation, as opposed to representation, and all presentation is presence because he takes only the presence and not the past or future to be presentation proper, which we see because retention and protention can't be perception because...they're past and present?! Which was to be proved? This just does not add up.

So what is Derrida's response to this difficulty? We continue:

These non-perceptions are not added on, do not accompany contingently the actually perceived now [again, these are non-perceptions, and not actually perceived - TGW]; indispensibly and essentially they participate in its possibility. No doubt Husserl says that retention is still a perception.

Here Derrida admits his contention is against the letter of Husserl's text. So how will he save his interpretation?

But it is the absolutely unique case–Husserl has never spoken of another–of a perception whose perceived is not a present but a past as the modification of the present"

But this is no answer, surely? We can disregard Husserl from speaking of the past as perceived, because in all other cases that don't have to do with perceiving the past he only speaks of the present as being perceived? Shouldn't it be precisely in the case of retention, i.e. the past, where Husserl speaks of the past as being perceived? Where else would he, or could he, speak of it in such a way?

Derrida then goes on to quote passages in which Husserl seems to equate the shading of the primal impression into retention with the shading of perception into non-perception. But I just don't understand – how in the world do these quoted passages not straightforwardly demonstrate that Derrida is mistaken in thinking Husserl can be fitted into his characterization of the metaphysics of presence? The quotations have an air of triumph, but they sound like he is shooting himself in the foot to me.

But surely the key quote (from Husserl) is the one at the bottom of p.55 and runs over to p.56:

"If we now relate the term perception with the differences in the way of being given which temporal objects have, the opposite of perception is then primary memory and primary anticipation (retention and protention) which here comes on the scene, so that perception and non-perception pass continuously into one another".

Retention and protention are here - in Husserl - explicitly tokened as 'the opposite of perception'. And the quote that immediately follows speaks of a "continuous passage of perception into primary memory", a turn of phrase which explicitly makes primary memory something other than perception.

If anything, what's interesting about Derrida's move here is not to simply accuse Husserl of outright equivocation or contradiction, but to grasp the nettle and say that yes, this is exactly the case, that presence and non-presence, perception and non-perception both inhabit the 'blink of an eye' that is the 'now'.

Then why is it so crucial for Derrida to overturn Husserl's own insistence here? Clearly Husserl believes in some sort of primacy of the primal impression, but nonetheless takes retention and protention to be perceptual and intuitive. They depend on one another, and shade off into non-perception at their edges, with some ambivalence as to how this terminology should be adequately arranged.

Now, given all this, where are the teeth left in the criticism? Suppose that we can, as Husserl insists, perceive the past, and so Derrida's insistence that perception is strictly the form of the present (segun Husserl) is wrong in the strong sense he has maintained it so far. Suppose further, as he also insists, that non-perception lies at the end of protention and retention as a continuum. Given this picture, what is the appeal of placing Husserl within a 'metaphysics of presence?'

But Husserl's 'own insistance' is just as much that retention and protention are 'the opposite of perception' - this isn't something Derrida is claiming as an 'external' supposition. Husserl actually said that.

I'm not sure exactly what the context of that quote was, but one of the main theses of the Internal Time Consciousness lectures was to refute the psychological picture, apotheosized in Brentano, that the immediate past was representational or phantasical as opposed to perceptive or intuitive. Given that this was one of Husserl's primary and overriding concerns, and one of the main developments in his account of time consciousness, I'd have to know in what sense 'opposite' is meant here, for it to be capable of standing on equal footing with its antithesis.

Consider one possibility. We schematize the living present as a line:

R <-------- x --------> P

R is retention, P is protention, and x is the primal impression. Now, in this schematization, R and P can be seen in a way as 'opposites' of x; they are at the poles of that which x is at the center of. But this in no way means that they are simply external to perception, only that, as Husserl himself insists, both are intuitive and shade off into non-perception. One could very well read the Time Consciousness Lectures as a rebuttal of a kind of 'psychology of presence' in this vein.

I'm not trying to say that Husserl's thought has no tensions on this score, but this segment really shocked me with the way the argument was carried out. I feel like if I wrote this I would be crossing my fingers that no one read it too closely.

Edit: Apparently there is no citation for the quote, or for the one preceding it. Unfortunate. I feel like re-reading the Time Consciousness lectures would be helpful here.

Yeah, I understand how the living present supposed to 'work', but the question at the heart of this chapter remains: is there a way, in principle to distinguish the living present from what is not? Husserl literally says: "In principle it is impossible to display any phase of this flow in a continuous succession and therefore to transform in thought the flow to such an extent that this phase is extended into identity with itself". It is not impossible on account of some contingent failure of thought - it is impossible in principle.

I get, of course - and Derrida even mentions it - that this is meant to serve as a bulwark against Brentano, but once you turn the living present into a sheer continuum, you're basically faced with the opposite problem: how then to 'introduce' representation into it? The charge of course is that Husserl basically slips it in under the table, hoping that it'll go unnoticed. The living present shades off, and then all of a sudden, at some unspecified - unspecifiable!, in principle - point, boom, you have representation.

I think you're right that Derrida does leave this point annoyingly underdeveloped, so I want to say more regarding the notion of the 'flow' here which is brought up in this chapter, but I dont have my PDFs on me ATM, so I'll try and expand upon this later. There's a bit in Husserl where he speaks of the failure of metaphor in regards to the flow, and there's a ton that can be developed in that breach. But again, I dont have my citations on me right now.

Now, given all this, where are the teeth left in the criticism? Suppose that we can, as Husserl insists, perceive the past, and so Derrida's insistence that perception is strictly the form of the present (segun Husserl) is wrong in the strong sense he has maintained it so far. Suppose further, as he also insists, that non-perception lies at the end of protention and retention as a continuum. Given this picture, what is the appeal of placing Husserl within a 'metaphysics of presence?' — The Great Whatever

Isn't this actually all granted? It seems to me that these things aren't an issue on their face, but only when you consider the development of the expression/indication distinction -- and not just that distinction, but rather, the argument that goes into separating expression off from indication. What this picture paints is something very much other than the solitary life of the soul which gives us pure expression. Derrida has no problem with that unto itself -- actually, it seems, given what he states about the mixture of presence and absence, he rather favors the view -- but rather that this description of time consciousness does not square away with the now, as described to support the notion of pure expressivity, which is how the sign became subordinate to presence (hence the metaphysics of presence).

EDIT: At least, that's the gist I'm getting from reading -- the goal isn't so much a criticism for participating in the same metaphysical tradition in the sense that he ought not to do it, but rather, that in one case the sign is relegated to a modification of presence -- an eternal "now" outside of, or prior to, the sign, where the sign is produced as a series of exits -- but in the other case this "now" is disrupted in the sense defended in the LI as the basis for expression. Therefore, the enthymeme seems to be, Husserl should accept the subordination of expression to indication -- that Time Consciousness, as described by Husserl, actually takes advantage of this interplay between two positions without owning up to the more prominent role which the sign actually plays. The two sides structure one another, but the truth is somewhere in-between the two extremes that are seemingly contradictory.

I think the focus is more on Husserl's take on language than it is a critique in the sense of Husserl being in error, since that would open the door to the wider picture of language which Derrida wishes to advance.

If anyone participating think that's an entirely off reading please do say so.

Also, it'd be cool to read Time-Consciousness lectures directly after this. But in some sense, at least at this stage of reading, I'm not quite as invested in that project because it would be the more critical project of evaluating Derrida's claims. At this point I'd settle for a fair reading of what V&P is trying to get at more than anything -- not necessarily whether or not it is correct in its assertions. (as is my usual approach to reading phil)

Why not hold, as Husserl says he does, that the past itself belongs through retention to originary perception, and so undermine Derrida's entire claim to presentation being dependent on re-presentation? If the past is 'present' in this way, then the fact that retention and the primal impression are co-constututive simply does not get Derrida what he wants. — The Great Whatever

The problem I see is that not only retention is proper to the present for Husserl, but protension (anticipation) as well. This creates the divisibility, and non-punctuality of the present, as if part of the past and the future wee both proper to the present. Derrida seems to think that the way to confirm or reaffirm the punctuality of the present is to class retention over with representation. He'll do this by reducing retention to a possibility, the possibility of repetition, which will contrast the "pure actuality of the now". This is toward the end of the chapter, p58.

I wanna post some snippets of Martin Hagglund's reading in his Radical Atheism, where he comments on and extends Derrida's arguments here in a way that's pretty illuminating. There are things here that the next chapter in VP covers as well, but it'll be useful to even keep in mind when we do get round to that. This'll be long but worth it. Hagglund begins by noting how for Husserl, not only the perceived, but the very act of perception itself is extended in time. He beings by quoting Husserl:

"Now let us exclude transcendent objects and ask how matters stand with respect to the simultaneity of perception and the perceived in the immanent sphere. If we take perception here as the act of reflection in which immanent unities come to be given, then this act presupposes that something is already constituted — and preserved in retention — on which it can look back: in this instance, therefore, the perception follows after what is perceived and is not simultaneous with it."

Hagglund comments: "Husserl’s philosophical vigilance concerning the temporality of perception is exemplary, as is his attentiveness to the unsettling implications of such temporality. If the act of immanent perception also takes time, it cannot be given as an indivisible unity but exhibits a relentless displacement in the interior of the subject, where every phase of consciousness is intended by another phase of consciousness. Husserl, however, tries to evade the threat of an infinite regress by positing the foundational presence on a third level of consciousness, which he distinguishes from the temporality of retention as well as reflection.

Husserl: "But—as we have seen—reflection and retention presuppose the impressional ‘internal consciousness’ of the immanent datum in question in its original constitution; and this consciousness is united concretely with the currently intended primal impressions and is inseparable from them: if we wish to designate ‘internal consciousness’ too as perception then here we truly have strict simultaneity of perception and what is perceived".

This brings Husserl to the notion of the 'pre-reflexive absolute flow'. An 'unchanging dimension of consciousness which always coincides with itself', where perception and the perceived are simulanious. This is the thesis of 'logitudianal' or 'horizontal' itnentionality that TGW brought up above. Hagglund: "Husserl describes it as a “longitudinal intentionality” that is pretemporal, prereflexive, and preobjective. ... [Yet] Neither Husserl nor his followers can explain how such an intentionality could be possible at all. How can I appear to myself without being divided by the structure of reflexivity? And how can the retentional consciousness — which by definition involves a differential relation between phases of the flow — not be temporal? The only answer from Husserl and his followers is that there must be a more fundamental self-awareness than the reflexive one; otherwise, we are faced with an infinite regress where the intending subject in its turn must be intended and thus cannot be given to itself in an unmediated unity."

-- Absolute Flow:

Hagglund now turns to Husserl's description of the absolute flow; Husserl: "The flow of the consciousness that constitutes immanent time not only exists but is so remarkably and yet intelligibly fashioned that a self-appearance of the flow necessarily exists in it, and therefore the flow itself must necessarily be apprehensible in the flowing. The self-appearance of the flow does not require a second flow; on the contrary, it constitutes itself as a phenomenon in itself. The constituting and the constituted coincide, and yet naturally they cannot coincide in every respect. The phases of the flow of consciousness in which phases of the same flow of consciousness become constituted phenomenally cannot be identical with these constituted phases, and of course they are not. What is brought to appearance in the actual momentary phase of the flow of consciousness, in its series of retentional moments [“reproductive moments” in the other version], are the past phases of the flow of consciousness."

Hagglund comments: "It is crucial that Husserl in the passage quoted above describes the absolute flow, which in his theory is the fundamental level of time-consciousness. The absolute flow is supposed to put an end to the threat of an infinite regress by being “self-constituting” and thereby safeguarding a primordial unity in the temporal flow. This solution requires that the subject appears to itself through a longitudinal intentionality that is not subjected to the constraints of a dyadic and temporal reflexivity. As we can see, however, Husserl’s own text shows that the absolute flow cannot coincide with itself. Even on the deepest level it is relentlessly divided by temporal succession. No phase of consciousness can intend itself. It is always intended by another phase that in turn must be intended by another phase, in a chain of references that neither has an ulterior instance nor an absolute origin.

...Husserl’s idea that the subject constitutes time is thus untenable. The subject does not constitute but is rather constituted by the movement of temporalization. The consequences of this inversion are considerable, since it is the supposed nontemporality of the absolute flow that allows Husserl to evade the most radical implications of retention and protention. If the reference to a nontemporal instance cannot be sustained, retention and protention cannot be posited as a unity in the “living presence” of subjectivity".

Thus, Hagglund takes aim at Husserl's ultimately incoherent claim that 'we lack names' for designating this 'priomordial source point' of 'absolute subjectivity' which is meant to put a stop to the infinite regress of the acts of perception. Husserl: "It is the absolute subjectivity and has the absolute properties of something to be designated metaphorically as a “flow”; the absolute properties of a point of actuality, a primordial source-point, “the now,” etc. In the actuality-experience we have the primordial source-point and a continuity of moments of reverberation. For all of this, names are lacking."

Hagglund: " As is evident from Husserl’s reasoning ... the latter idea and its connection to an “absolute subjectivity” ... answers to the phenomenological version of the metaphysics of presence. Husserl here claims that the flow of consciousness is an originary presence, a “primordial source-point” that constitutes time without itself being temporal. But whenever Husserl sets out to describe the pretemporal level, he will inevitably have recourse to a temporal vocabulary that questions the presupposed presence. This is not because the metaphors of language distort an instance that in itself is pretemporal but rather because the notion of absolute subjectivity is a projection that cannot be sustained—a theoretical fiction."

Here, as I see it, is 'the problem.' One of Husserl's primary concerns in his account of time-consciousness is to demonstrate that perception is not confined to the present. This simply does not square with Derrida's portrayal of Husserl in this chapter, and while Derrida seems to be aware that his exegesis doesn't make complete sense, he fumbles over the point unconvincingly.

I get, of course - and Derrida even mentions it - that this is meant to serve as a bulwark against Brentano, but once you turn the living present into a sheer continuum, you're basically faced with the opposite problem: how then to 'introduce' representation into it? The charge of course is that Husserl basically slips it in under the table, hoping that it'll go unnoticed. The living present shades off, and then all of a sudden, at some unspecified - unspecifiable!, in principle - point, boom, you have representation. — StreetlightX

I don't understand what you mean. The perception does not 'turn into' representation at its far end. Representation is going to be things like secondary memory and fantasy, which are not a function of this shading off, but have to be introduced by separate noetic acts (primary memory does not 'become' secondary memory at its far end, and fantasy has to be deliberately introduced by new acts of imagination).

The absolute flow is hard to comment on because it's hard to understand – few people have 'real ideas' in their lives, and I think this is one of them. In any case Hagglund's commentary here is mere incredulity and dismissal, which whatever you think of the notion, is not going to cut it.

I had thought at some point that the pre-temporal names of retention and protention were in fact ethical names, like worry (apprehension) and satiation, or taking for granted. The temporalizing of what is 'done' and what is 'yet to come' – you know the old thought experiments where you wake up in the hospital and hope the painful operation is over rather than about to start, even though both options leave you suffering the same amount 'in the end.' So this line of thought would go, time is the product of pain, and an attempt to unseat it by allowing it to be deferred. Husserl was in my opinion not properly sensitive to the phenomenology of pain and so could not articulate this.

Hey, new here.

Does anyone know of free pdf of Derrida Speech and Phenomenon?

The discussion appears to have stagnated, so I'll share some thoughts. Please feel free to question any of these ideas.

In ch4, Derrida presented "sign" as the possibility of repetition. In defining it this way, it is designated as possibility, and this is somewhat different from describing the actuality of a thing. What the sign actually is, is a representation. However, re-presentation is not necessary for a sign to be a sign, only the possibility of repetition is necessary. The actuality of the sign then is within itself, its identity, while its possibility is "of repetition".

By this designation now, the sign has the nature, or essence, of a possibility, or potentiality. It can be classed under protention, as an anticipation, (perhaps even, pre-tense, or pre-tending), anticipating the occurrence of repetition, as the possibility of such. However, as an actuality, a self-representing representation, it is classed as a retention. This is not perception per se, but in some way appears to be perceptive. The duality of the sign makes it the epitome of presence, the actuality of retention and possibility of protention. But according to Husserl, it is not the present itself.

There is an alienation between the sign and the present itself. The "now" we know as punctual, with the appearance of continuity. The retention and protention of the sign deny the possibility of punctuality, though they do appear to support continuity. This alienation is described at the end of ch4, p50. The sign is "foreign" to self-presence.

Retention, and its alternate, protension anticipation, (the essence of the sign) become a non-present in relation to the present, or non-perceptive in relation to perception. Husserl claims the relationship between these two, non-perceptive to perceptive, or non-present to present, accounts for the continuity of time, the flow. For Husserl this difference is the "speading out" of the now. The actual present, the source point, the beginning, the punctuality, is like the head of a comet. The sign, being like the tail of the comet can never actually partake of the source point, the present.

Now on p58, Derrida wants to insert the possibility of re-petition into the pure actuality of the now. The claim is that the movement of the différance means that the possibility is inserted into the pure actuality of the now. Of course this is a highly contentious claim, because if this possibility really inhabited, or was inserted into, the pure actuality of the present, this actuality would no longer be a pure actuality.

I got up to ch2 free then I had to buy it.

I've honestly kind of lost the plot - sometimes it all seems to hold together, for a second, but then I lose it. All I have, at this point, is something like: retention/protention introduce a non-present into the present the way an indicative sign does, so the 'solitary life of the soul' is infused with non-presence from the get-go.

More or less what @Moliere said above:

At least, that's the gist I'm getting from reading -- the goal isn't so much a criticism for participating in the same metaphysical tradition in the sense that he ought not to do it, but rather, that in one case the sign is relegated to a modification of presence -- an eternal "now" outside of, or prior to, the sign, where the sign is produced as a series of exits -- but in the other case this "now" is disrupted in the sense defended in the LI as the basis for expression.

------ edit -

Thoughhh, now that I think about it, that would be pretty circular. The point of demonstrating that the indication/expression distinction cannot hold is to then show how the failure of that distinction compromises the rest of Husserl's project. But if the rest of Husserl's project is precisely what you need to collapse that distinction....

All I have, at this point, is something like: retention/protention introduce a non-present into the present the way an indicative sign does,,, — csalisbury

I think it is the difference, or relation between this non-presence, and the present itself which is supposed to be responsible for the flow of time.

MU, I wouldn't associate the sign with protention as you have. The possibility of repetition generally, or expectation generally, is something far and above protention, which is something a little closer to home: the kind of primary expectation that comes in sort of 'seeing the future' when you watch movement, with things that are about to happen seemingly 'getting ready to happen' right before your eyes.

I think it's no question that retention is easier to understand than protention, which is why everyone focuses on retention even when protention could make the same point. I have expressed skepticism about the phenomenological reality of retention previously, but the reality of protention is even ore contentious; I am not even sure where to look for it. The Husserlian metaphor of the comet's trail is no accident: the tail of the comet may extend quite a ways backwards, but if the primal impression is the rock, there is scarcely a prenumbra 'in front of it' – very short, if there at all.

It doesn't seem that contentious to me. I find it very difficult to imagine an experience where I'm not implicitly anticipating what's to come. It's not as obvious, but it's easy to draw it out by imagining an unanticipated disruption which prevents what you were experiencing or doing from continuing.

That is hard for me to separate from secondary anticipation, though. Sure, I expect things all the time, but I also have little memories flitting back and forth all the time, little recollections. These are not retentions, since retention has to happen automatically as a condition on perception, and not intrusively as these recollections seem to happen. I guess I can 'see' why the retentional tail is an appealing posit (even though I am skeptical of it). The protentional end is harder. Things get left behind in some sense, but I am unsure I can see the future rather than walking a razor's edge of future-oriented present competence. The more I think about it, the more I seem to live in an endless moment, more than the stretch that Husserl's extended present implies. The easiest example should be a melody, I guess (though even this is misleading because it's not as if anything is happening in a melody that isn't always supposed to be happening), especially a melody that one is familiar with. But here I feel like there are all sorts of little non-passive future intrusions of what's to come as well.

Also, note the oddity that if protention is literally perceptive, this means that the future is in some sense 'there' to be seen. A disruption would have to be literally a kind of illusion, rather than a mistaken doxastic attitude, however momentary.

But I'm not talking about expectations you explicitly call to mind (imagining meeting a friend tomorrow, anticipating traffic during the morning commute). I mean think of anything - playing a video game, going outside to have a smoke, typing an email, eating a meal, playing pinball, shining a shoe - in each case there's clearly some sense of what's coming next, even if you're not focused immediately on it. I genuinely have trouble imagining an experience without this layer.