Figure/Ground

Derrida is at a disadvantage when he quotes from Saussure, Jakobson, etc. because they are much clearer writers than he is, and he's choosing passages in which they make particularly succinct and forceful points. Set against the background of Derrida's flabby stemwinding, the words of these other thinkers really pop.

I shall use my powers to bend space and time and open the door to infinity!

Incomprehensible few pages (pp. 65-68) about the metaphysics of space and time at the beginning of "The Hinge". The opacity here doesn't bother me though, because I get the sense that here J.D. is just assuming a background in these issues I don't have. (Heidegger wrote a book called Being and Time, right? Maybe I'm coming in on the middle of that conversation.) I don't mind not understanding stuff as long as I think the fault lies with me.

By the way, wouldn't "The Hinge" be a great name for a superhero?

Bluffing?

A thought coalesced while I was looking back over the last few posts: Derrida introduces philosophical concepts like "transcendental signified" or "trace" that he clearly intends to be extensions of or rebuttals to more familiar concepts like "referent" or "structural distinction". J.D.'s new terms bear a family resemblance to the ones they supplant and so partake of those terms' long-established significance. But because J.D. keeps his definitions murky, it's not clear where his contribution lies. It's like he says, "You know that old idea of 'referent', well I've got this thing called 'transcendental signified' which is like referent, except better!" And then he's off on a tear and never gets around to telling you why it's better. The uncharitable reading of this technique is that he's bluffing.

In Defense of Obscurity

As annoyed as I am by Derrida's opaque style, his isn't the only way to be unclear. I tried to read Philosophical Investigations a few years back, and stylistically Wittgenstein is the anti-Derrida: short, blunt, workmanlike sentences, lots of examples about triangles and building blocks, little pictures. Every paragraph was completely lucid but I could never keep enough of them in my head at once to get his point.

Jesus, Everybody Calm Down

Part of the way through "The Outside and the Inside" and the basic story Derrida is laying out is good guys vs. bad guys. In honor of postmodernism's typographical exuberance and also just to keep things straight I'm going to highlight terms relating to the former in green and terms relating to the latter in red.

Derrida is critiquing the distinctions Saussure draws between speech and writing. Much of this is expressed through an inside vs. outside metaphor that Derrida attributes to Saussure, where J.D. claims that F.d.S. claims that speech is inside—warm, organic, close to the heart—while writing is outside—artificial, invasive, sullying. J.D. of course wants to say this is all bassackwards, and presents various quotes from F.d.S. in which he appears to be putting forth this melodramatic hostility towards writing per se. I haven't read Saussure so I don't know how accurate a representation of his tone this is, but then Derrida responds in kind with his own melodramatic tone that makes Saussure sound like the Man, trying to harsh our graphological mellow, and the whole thing just kinda spins off. To the speech vs. writing axes I hypothesized earlier I'll add a fourth one: (4) writing is preferable to speech for aesthetic emotional reasons.

Okay, it's not quite as bad as all that. I may have to read this part more closely; my initial sympathies in this chapter are with Saussure because, tone aside, many of the passages quoted sound like admonishments I'd give to a freshman linguistics class as a way of heading off questions like "What's the difference between the 'f' sound in 'fish' and 'physics'?" So my sense is that F.d.S. is making some reasonable methodological points, albeit in slightly overblown language, and then J.D. is choosing to focus on the overblown parts and work himself into a tizzy. But there may be a substantive critique beneath the hysteria.