Two Can Play at this Game

An uncharitable reading of J.D.'s refusal to define his terms is that he's bluffing. A charitable reading is to say that he's doing it on purpose because he's thinks making precise philosophical definitions is a fool's game. No one can actually do it, so why pretend–it's more honest to just start using a technical term like "trace" and let it accrue whatever meaning it's going to accrue. (More honest in the way that writing Being is more honest.) Maybe this is a valid point about philosophical nomenclature, except the definition-by-ostension strategy seems parasitic on someone else's definition-by-describing-what-you-mean strategy. For example, the whole hullabaloo about "traces" falls flat unless we already have the clearly delineated Saussurian distinction between /b/ and /p/ in mind.

Hey, can I push this a little further and deconstruct Derrida? Let's try.

1. Tacit dichotomy...J.D.'s definition-by-ostension differs from other philosophers' definition-by-description.
2. Privileged member of dichotomous pair...Definition-by-description is for chumps. The only way to introduce a philosophical term is to just start using it.
3. Self-undermining nature of dichotomous privileging...Definition-by-ostention only works if there are definition-by-description terms to play off of.

And...gotcha! That was kinda fun, but ultimately unsatisfying.

Of course another possibility is that J.D. isn't doing anything particularly tricky here and I'm simply failing to follow his argument.

An Out of Band X

In the discussion of Heidegger's technique of putting an X through "Being" (Translator's Preface pg. xv) the idea seems to be this: at some point in philosophy we're going to encounter concepts that are so abstruse that we'll never be able to adequately talk about them. The usual strategy is to invent technical terms for these concepts, but that makes them look like things we can talk about. It's more honest to just draw a big X through the word, to draw attention to the fact that such-and-such a concept is a tough nut to crack. Apparently Derrida is going to embrace and extend this idea in his own notion of erasure (sous rature).

Heidegger's X is what computer protocol people would call out-of-band information. The standard channel is conventional printing, while the out-of-band channel is created by the typographical novelty of a strikethrough, though here Heidegger crosses out the word "Being", whose odd capitalization is itself already a typographical novelty. (At least it is in English; I'm not sure how this comes across in German.) Note that this only works because strikethrough is relatively rare. If everybody started drawing X's through words willy-nilly, erasure would become just another part of the writing system. Arguably this is what has already happened to shudder quotes.

("Arguably" this "is" what has already "happened" to shudder quotes.)

Spivak shows examples of Derrida putting "is" under erasure. Derrida must be aware that copula be gets expressed in many different ways in the world's languages. Many people just don't say "is" so there's nothing to erase.