JACQUES
DERRIDA
OF GRAMMATOLOGY
FIRST PART
by Anny Ballardini
with my acknowledgment to
Professor and Poet Bill Lavender
UNO, University of New Orleans
Exergue
(the reverse of a coin or medal, usually below the central design and often giving the date and place of engraving – from the free online Dictionary)
shine shine
sun
scribe
Samas (sun-god)
light
scan
metaphysics
of phonetic writing
enigmatic
essential
dissimulate its own history
from the pre-Socratics to Heidegger
logos
the history of truth
of the truth of truth
the condition of the episteme
mutation
explicitation
accumulation
revolution
tradition
grammatology
liberation
imperceptible
historico-metaphysical epoch
the closure.
I do not say the end.
ineluctable world
FUTURE
proclaims itself at present
beyond the closure of knowledge.
1
The End
of the Book
and the Beginning
of Writing
“language”
cheap seduction
fashion -ignorance- inflation
The Program
_____some twenty centuries____
signifieds
destroying
concept of “sign”
overwhelming
effacement
world-origin
(((((inside, ideality, nonideality, universal, nonuniversal, transcendental, empirical))))))
technics
willfully
misleading us
death
of adventure
of the book
of speech
beyond the signifying
the signified
FACE
___cinematography_choreography_pictorial_muscial_sculptural_military_political_scientific
enclave
philosophical idea of the episteme
istoria
The Signifier and Truth
destruction de-sedimentation de-construction
THE significations of truth
metaphysical ontotheology (Heidegger)
pre-Socratic philosophical God ___anthropological sense
pre-Hegelian
post-Hegelian
link to the phonè
spoken symbols → written words
primary symbols (semeïa prótos)
medieval theology : res from eidos __ sense in logos __ God
written signifier : technical representative
sign
/ \
/ \
. . . . signifier signified
.Saussure: the same leaf
logocentrism _____ phonocentrism
Hegel: privilege of sound
ear _ perceives _ interior vibration
hearing-oneself-speak ::: subject affects itself
phonocentrism / presence
substance/essence/existence ::: cogito, consciousness, subjectivity, self, intersubjectivity
appurtenance
organized ___ herarchized ___ history
Christian creationism and infinitism ← Greek conceptuality
Stoic / later medieval :::
signans ≠ signatum
sensible ≠ intelligible
signans /signifier (Saussure’s signifiant) ≠ signatum /signified (signifié) . . .
hidden sediments
refers to absolute logos _____ infinite creative subjectivity _____ intelligible face of the sign _ of God _ the age of the sign ::: theological !
crevice
metaphysical appurtenance _ agonized labor _ tradition _ misunderstanding
///
there is no linguistic sign before writing _ language would collapse _ understand ::::
“closure of an epoch”
“historical genealogy”
writing of truth in the soul
:
a sign signifying a signifier itself signifying an eternal verity
determining the “literal” meaning of writing as metaphoricity
Platonic writing of the truth in the soul
(divine or natural, human and laborious, finite and artificial inscription)
seas
ink
reeds
parchments
water
NATURE
riddle
*
intelligences far superior
*
echo
*
dreams
*
isolated
*
obscure
*
manuscript
*
existence deciphers
///
corpse
dead letter
carrier of death
exhausts life
prescriptive _ arche-speech _ writing _ LAW
\\\
NATURE
sublime book
good writing comprehended
within a nature
first thought within an eternal presence
PROFOUNDLY ALIEN
to the sense of writing
encyclopedic protection of theology
of logocentrism
← AGAINST →
┴
AGAINST DIFFERENCE
the destruction ___of the book___
denudes
the surface of the text
The Written Being/
The Being Written .
the order of the signified
is
never contemporary
/
subtly discrepant inverse or parallel-discrepant
a breath-from the order of the signifier
signified = presence
privilege of presence
interpretation_perspective_evaluation_difference
Nietzsche
contributed to
the
liberation
of the signifier
from its dependence / derivation ← logos : truth : primary signified
text = “originary” operation
(completely misunderstood ___one must accentuate the “naiveté” / breakthrough___we must deconstruct)
Heidegger :
reinstate
rather than destroy LOGOS
:
truth of being ↔ “primum signatum”–“transcendental signified”-ens, unum, verum, bonum – “primum cognitum”
the logos of being – the Voice of Being
in
the
element
of
ideality
or
universality
URWORT
the opening of Being and Time
a psychoanalytical research
“voice of being” :
silent, mute, insonorous, wordless, originarily a-phonic
die Gewähr der lautlosen Stimme verborgener Quellen
never simply a “signified”
being escapes the movement of the sign
↕
being as history only through logos
the difference between signified and signifier is nothing
the sense of being is not a transcendental or trans-epochal signified
but
a determined signifying TRACE
derivative is difference ___ DIFFERANCE – from differing/deferring
movements of deconstruction
do not destroy structures from the outside
(operating necessarily from the inside _ isolate elements and atoms
formalize its rules
Hegel:
ontology as absolute logic
presence ← the eschatology of parousia
the self-proximity of subjectivity
best writing – the mind’s writing : respects the ideal interiority of phonic signifiers
sublimates space and sight
writing betrays life :
breath_spirit_history_spirit’s relationship with itself
sterilizing_immobilizing spiritual creation
the horizon of absolute knowledge : the effacement of writing in the logos
the reappropriation of difference
the metaphysics of the proper [le proper-self-possession, propriety, property, cleanliness]
Hegel: the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing
2
Linguistics
and
Grammatology
Writing is nothing but the representation of speech; it is bizarre that one gives more care to the determining of the image than to the object. –
J.-J. Rousseau, Fragment inédit d’un essai sur les langues
[[science]]
XVIII CENTURY determines
« living speech » & inscription
____writing____ IS the condition of epistémé
Historicity:
____writing____ opens the field of history (Historia in German)
of historical becoming (Geschichte)
An ontophenomenological question of essence:
origin of writing
paralyzes _ sterilizes
the typological or historical research of facts
What is writing?
Where and when does writing begin?
CONTRAST between: theoretical fragility of reconstructions and
wealth of historical, archeological, ethnological, philosophical information
Ferdinand de Saussure *** Linguistics *** the science of language *** cours de languistique generale
phonological foundation – the epistemological model for all sciences
the unity of the phoné _ the glossa _ the logos
language/speech ___ langue/parole ___ code/message ___ scheme/usage ___ linguistic/logic ___ phonology/phonematics/phonetics/glossematics
the immediate and privileged UNITY of sound and sense
the subordination of grammatology ::: an enslaved instrument
The Outside .
and the Inside
writing ::: representative
signifier of the first signifier
representation of the self-present
immediate _ natural _ direct signification of meaning
of vox
André Martinet:
writing constructed or at least condensed the “screen of the world”
_it is behind the screen of the world that the truly fundamental characteristics of human language often appear_
///
not only: 1) “ideographic” (Chinese) ___ 2) “phonetic” : syllabic + alphabetic
but / pictographic / /ideographic / /phonetic scripts
Saussure: “writing is unrelated to the inner system of language ___ External/internal, image/reality, representation/presence
Derrida: ___ the opening of the “image” within it appears as the condition of “reality”a relationship that can no longer be thought within the simple difference and the uncompromising exteriority of “image” and “reality,” of “outside” and “inside,” of “appearance” and “essence”
Phaedrus _ Plato:
(((evil of writing
(((come from without
(((a heresy
(((intrusion of an artful technique
(((archetypal violence
(((eruption of the outside within the inside
(((breaching into the interiority of the soul
(((the living self-presence of the soul within the true logos
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
the graphic from of words
unity of language throughout time
natural phenomenon
fascinating:
[[intimacy]]
entwining
/ \
/ \
image thing
graph phoné
speech speculum of writing
_manages_
to usurp the main role
reflecting pools
images
no longer
a source_a spring
what is reflected is split
in itself
the reflection
_the image
_the double
_splits what it doubles
the origin
becomes
a difference
writing
a mnemotechnic
means _ signifies
forgetfulness
//////////////
when linguists become embroiled in a theoretical mistake
they are culpable
their fault is moral
they have yielded to imagination, sensibility, passion
they have fallen into the TRAP
/////////////
_moral perversion is pathological_
Saussure:
confronts :
the system of language with the system of phonetic writing
with the telos of writing
this teleology is a Western ethnocentrism
a premathematical primitivism
a preformalist intuitionism
a natural bond between phoné and sense
privilege to an order of signifier
the major signified of all other signifier
upon a psychology of consciousness
of intuitive consciousness
::::: the possibility of nonintuition?
the corruption of speech by writing
the inalterable and natural independence of language
Rousseau : …teratological cases….
Writing is not a sign of a sign, except if one says it of all signs, which would be more profoundly true.
The Outside is..
the Inside .
if
writing = inscription = durable institution of a sign (the only irreducible kernel of the concept of writing)
writing covers the entire field of linguistic signs
arbitrariness of the sign
unthinkable before writing
phoneme grapheme
signifier-signified pure signified
Saussure _never thought_
writing : an image
a figuration
a representation
a symbol
of the spoken language
he nonetheless _____NEEDED_____these inadequate notions to decide upon the exteriority of writing
Chapter VI : Graphic Representation of Language ----- is not scientific
the entire uncritical tradition he inherits.
Derrida’s justification:
this and other indices
give means
of broaching
DE-CONSTRUCTION
of the greatest totality
-the concept of the epistémé and logocentric metaphysics-
all of the Western methods of analysis
explications
reading
interpretation
Writing is more exterior to speech
more interior to speech
it implies the framework of the instituted trace
unmotivated
it has no attachment to the signified within reality
the instituted trace cannot be thought
without the retention of difference
within a structure of reference where difference appears
the absence of another here-and-now
of another transcendental present
of another origin
IS
an irreducible absence within the presence of the trace
is the questioning of metaphysics
describes the structure implied by the arbitrariness of the sign
there we have :::
all history
the entire field of the entity (étant)
the trace must be thought before the entity
it produces itself as self-occultation
THE TRACE IS INDEFINITELY ITS OWN BECOMING-UNMOTIVATED
Charles Sanders Peirce
“Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs, particularly from icons, or from mixed signs”
“Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I have shown, only another name for semiotics (semeiotike), the quasi-necessary, or formal, doctrine of signs.”
Like Husserl
Peirce refers to Grammatica speculativa of Thomas d’Erfurt
a discourse must satisfy
to have a sense
to mean
even if false or contradictory
science of semiotic: 3 branches
1_ grammatica speculativa by Duns Scotus – pure grammar
what is true of the representamen to embody any meaning
2_ logic proper : formal science of the conditions of the truth of representations
3_ pure rhetoric _ ascertain laws by which in every scientific intelligence one sign gives birth to
another
one thought to another
Johann Heinrich Lambert inventor of the word : phenomenology
to reduce the theory of things to the theory of signs
phaneoroscopy or phenomenology: MANIFESTATION does not reveal a presence – it makes a sign
the thing itself is already a representamen
shielded from intuitive evidence
it functions only by giving rise to an interpretant
that becomes a sign
the property of the representamen is not to be proper [propre]
proximate to itself (prope, proprius)
the question of the meaning of being
the being of the entity
the transcendental origin of the world
the world-ness of the world
must be patiently/rigorously worked
the immotivation of the trace
must be understood as an active movement
GRAMMATOLOGY
a science of the arbitrariness of the sign
science of the immotivation of the trace
science of writing before speech and in speech
within the closure of this epoch
of this civilization
in the process
of disappearing
in its very globalization
difference is never in itself a sensible plenitude
differance is the formation of form
it is in this trace / imprint / temporalization of a lived experience
that differences appear among the elements
produce them / make them emerge /
constitute the texts
chains / systems
of traces
they cannot be outlined ↔ except in the fabric of this trace or imprint
the difference between
the appearing and the appearance [l’apparaissant et l’apparaître]
the world and the lived experience
is the condition of all other differences \ of all other traces \ and _it is_ a trace
∆ anterior to all physiological problematics / metaphysical problematics : “the meaning of absolute presence whose trace is thus opened to deciphering
The trace is in fact the absolute origin of sense in general. Which amounts to saying once again that there is no absolute origin of sense in general. The trace is the differance which opens appearance [l’apparaître] and signification.
THE TRACE
is not more
ideal than real
intelligible than sensible
transparent signification than opaque energy
NO CONCEPTS OF METAPHYSICS CAN DESCRIBE IT
a fortiori
anterior to the distinction between regions of sensibility
anterior to sound as much as to light
is there a sense in establishing
a “natural” hierarchy
between the sound-imprint – and the visual (graphic) imprint?
The Hinge [La Brisure]
.
The word is brisure [joint, break] “-broken, cracked part. Cf. Breach, crack, fracture, fault, split, fragment, [brèche, cassure, fracture, faille, fente, fragment.]Hinged articulation of two parts of wood- or metal-work. The hinge, the brisure [folding point] of a shutter. Cf. Joint.” Roger Laporte
Writing of difference
permits
difference in time & space to appear
permits
a graphic (visual or tactile spatial) chain to be adapted
to a spoken (phonic temporal) chain
Saussure: what is natural to mankind is not spoken language but the faculty of constructing a language
that the imprint is irreducible
speech is passive
its relationship to a past
an absolute past
TRACE
what cannot be summed up in the simplicity of a present
what is anticipated in protention
does not sever the present /any less from its self-identity
then does that which is retained in the trace
past has always signified present-past
trace proclaims as much as it recalls: difference defers-differs [diffère]
passivity : relation with the future
concepts: present_past_future
the metaphysical concept of time
cannot describe the structure of trace
time now anterior present delay
speech in the world
rooted
in passivity
in metaphysics: sensibility
logos is first imprinted
the imprint is the writing resource of language
logos is not a creative activity
the continuous full element of the divine word, etc.
differance is also something other than finitude
spacing
is
the unperceived
the nonpresent
the nonconscious
arche-writing
as spacing
cannot occur
as such
it marks
the dead
time
Freud: dreamwork comparable rather to a writing than to a language, and to a hieroglyphic rather than phonetic writing
spacing
the becoming-absent
unconscious
by the movement
of its drift/derivation [derive]
emancipation of sign
desire of presence
as the subject’s relationship
with death
this becoming is the constitution of subjectivity
the economy
of death
all graphemes
of a testamentary essence
original absence
of the subject
of writing
=
absence of the thing
or the referent
signification formed
within the hollow of differance:
discontinuity
discreteness
diversion
the reverse of what does not appear
hinge [brisure]
of language
marks
the impossibility
that a sign
/// the unity of a signifier and a signified ///
be produced
within the plenitude
of a present
an absolute presence
WHY THE TRACE?
WHY THIS WORD?
refers to itself to a certain number
of contemporary discourses
Emmanuel Levinas: (critique of ontology): illeity – aterity of a past – never was never can be – LIVED
beyond Heidegger
understand
the words
proximity immediacy presence
the proximate [proché] own [propre] pre- of presence
deconstruction of presence
deconstruction of consciousness
if trace
belongs
to signification
signification
is a priori
written
in a sensible spatial element → the exterior
trace is the first exteriority in general
the enigmatic relationship
of the living to its other
of an inside
to an outside :
spacing
this outside
spatial
objective exteriority
would not appear
without the grammè
without differance as temporalization
without the nonpresence of the other inscribed within the sense of the present
without the relationship with death as concrete structure of living present
all dualisms
theories of immortality /soul spirit/
monisms /spiritualist or materialist ___ dialectical or vulgar/
strive → reduction of the trace
it begins in the form of Platonism
ends in infinitst metaphysics
logos as the sublimation of the trace is theological
linearist concept of time
deepest adherences of the modern concept
of the sign to its won history
distinction:
Stoic logic necessary for the coherence of a scholastic thematics dominated by infinitist theology
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::
the signatum
referred to a res
first thought and spoken thinkable and speakable in the eternal present
through the intermediary of a signans
signatum had an immediate relationship with the divine logos
modern linguistics:
if the signifier is a trace
signified is a meaning thinkable within the full presence of an intuitive consciousness
the signified face still originarily distinguished from the signifying face is not considered a trace
linguistics _______ semantics
the meaning of a signified
thinkable & possible
outside all signifiers still dependant on onto-theo-teology
the idea of the sign must be deconstructed
through a meditation upon writing
merging with the undoing of onto-theology
faithfully repeating it
the signified
is
originally & essentially
TRACE
always already in the position of the signifier
is the apparent innocent proposition within which the metaphysics of the logos, of the presence and consciousness, must reflect upon writing as its death and its resource:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
3
Of Grammatology
as a
Positive
Science
grammatology
undoing [sollicitation] of logocentrism
on what conditions is grammatology possible?
where and how does it begin?
one must know what writing is
Algebra: Arcanum and
Transparence
৪
◊
logocentrism is an ethnocentric metaphysics
Leibnitz:
Chinese – arbitrariness – independence
seems to be invented by a deaf man
Father Kircher:
opening to Egyptology ∆
Leibnitz:
*****hieroglyphs:
*****far fine
*****more sublime script
*****closer to abstractions
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
*_*_*
*
Science and the
Name of Man
discoveries
have shaken
the most assured foundations
of our philosophical conceptuality
determined by the relationship
between logos and writing
writing _____ phonetic writing
rooted
in a past of nonlinear writing
defeated
assured a great security
possibilities of capitalization
in a dangerous and anguishing world
linear thought _____ reduction of history _____ linear scheme of the unfolding of presence
linearization _____ more effective
Leroi-Gourhan :
we must de-sediment
four thousand years of linear writing
discreteness
differance
spacing
linear norm _____ emphasized _____ limits _____ marked concepts of symbol and language
model _____ has become a model _____ as a model _____ it remains inaccessible
thesaurization _ capitalization _ sedentarization _ hierarchization _ formation of ideology
by the class that writes
or
commands the scribes
the end of linear writing
is
the end of the book
it is within the book
literary _ theoretical
writings
are encased
beginning to write without the line
one begins
to reread past writing
according to a different organization of space
suspense between two ages
of writing
we are beginning to write differently
we are beginning to read differently
access
to a pluridimensionality
to a delinearized temporality
is not a regression
towards
mythogram
ON THE CONTRARY
it makes all rationality
subject to a linear model
appear as another form
of mythography
The Rebus and the .
Complicity of Origins
graphic discourse
graphic forms
graphic substances _ materials
the constitution of good and bad objects
as categories
psychoanalysis
(did not achieve the transcendentality of arche-writing)
a mundane science
Melanie Klein
The Role of the School in the Libidinal Development of the Child
ideal objectivity must pass through the written signifier
history
phonetic _ nonphonetic
characteristics of typical elements
numerous dominant
within all systems of signification in general
a name does not escape spacing
signifier broken _ constellated
into a system
refers
to a thing and to a sound
thing = a collection of things
a chain of differences in space
sound = an atomic element
entering a composition
→
a script
apparently pictographic
in fact phonetico-analytical _ as the alphabet
Alfred Métraux:
The Aztecs achieved a greater degree of phoneticism. By having recourse to a truly phonetic analysis
writing of the Easter Islands : picto-ideo-phonographic
Gernet: primitive prestige of Chinese graphism _ a reality singular and unique like itself
THE BREAKTHROUGH
more secure
more penetrating
in literature and in philosophy
Nietzsche
Fenellosa
Mallarmé
Pound’s fascination with Chinese ideogram
what is lost is the myth of the simplicity of origin
access to the written sign
assures the sacred power of keeping existence operative
within the trace
all clergies exercising political power or not
strategy _ ballistics _ diplomacy _ agriculture _ fiscality _ penal law
are linked in their history
in their structure to the constitution of writing
incompetence of science
incompetence of philosophy
| the closure of the epistémè |
the closure of the epistémè
root
((((concealment of the origin))))
not common _____ it does not amount to the same thing
except with the unmonotonous insistence of difference
the movement of difference-itself
the
trace _____ reserve _____ differance ::::::::::::
writing only in the historical closure
within the limits of science and philosophy
thought means NOTHING
thinking is what we already know
we have not yet begun
it is broached only in the epistémè
▲
◙
GRAMMATOLOGY
THIS THOUGHT
WOULD STILL BE WALLED-IN WITH PRESENCE.
__________________________________________________________________
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