Heidegger, Identity and Difference
Being is a thing only when it is placed in opposition to Existence
Difference stems from the comparison of Being and Existence
Difference is a product of human intelligence, an addition of our own mental images à Existence
What is difference if Being and Existence appear through difference?
Differance, Derrida
Semantic Analysis of “differance”
o Writing about writing, so he has to make an intentional spelling error
o The difference between the two phonemes is inaudible, and the difference only exists in writing, so using this “a” is further showing the fact that language is comprised of arbitrary signs
o Not a capital letter because it is not “some ineffable being that cannot be approached by a name” (i.e. God)
o Has the same sound as “difference” to prove that language (and the concept of ideas) is a play of differences
o Has 2 implications/definitions: “to differ” (establish alterity or otherness) and “to defer” (to put off until a later time); “differance” compensates for the lack of temporality in “difference”
o the a of differance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, that which cannot be governed by or distributed between the terms of this opposition (Semiology and Grammatology)
o The a of differance also recalls that spacing is temporization, the detour and postponement by means of which intuition, perception, consummation (Semiology and Grammatology)
Substitution of the sign
Primordial definition (something that exists from the beginning of time) implies substance and existence of signs, which differance does not.
o Assumes signs have always existed in our way of thinking
o Interconnection between differance as temporalizing-temporalization and differance freed from the traditional metaphysical essence of presence (spacing)
Saussure: Signs are arbitrary and made up of differences
Differences are what make up the language, but these differences are an effect of something else (i.e. differences (aka language) did not fall out of the sky) (see Heidegger)
**on ppt, make “difference” fall from top of screen**
DifferAnce is the “movement of play [/origin] that ‘produces’ these differences
Differance can be used to denote the activity of primordial difference and the temporalizing detour of deferring
Saussure : Subject is the function of language (not the other way around); establishes an opposition between speech and language (a person can function w/ 1 and not the other, 1 effects the other, etc.)
Differance : play of differences in language and relation of speech to language
Presence and difference:
before, presence was “matrical", or determined by a matrix in and of itself
Derrida suggests that presence now be considered an effect of “differance"
Now force itself is never present; it is only a play of differences and quantities. There would be no force in general without the difference between forces; and here the difference in quantity counts more than the content of quantity, more than the absolute magnitude itself
2 meanings of differance tied together in Freudian theory
1. Origin of memory and psyche is differance b/c there is no facilitation w/o difference and no difference w/o a trace
2. Differences involved in the production of unconscious traces and the process of inscription are “moments of differance”
Relation between restricted and a general system – these two cannot function at the same time, but the real/concept of differance is the outlet in which they can… ?
· Freud calls the restricted system the “unconscious” – this is a difference from our normal lives
· Can’t describe the unconscious w/ language or in terms of “presence” b/c it’s not a thing
differance is, to be sure, but the historical and epochal deployment of Being or of the ontological difference. The a of differance marks the movement of this deployment. (293)
It is a trace that no longer belongs to the horizon of Being but one whose sense of Being
is borne and bound by this play; it is a play of traces or differance that has no meaning
and is not, a play that does not belong.
Here we must allow the trace of whatever goes beyond the truth of Being to appear/ disappear in its fully rigorous way. It is a trace of something that can never present itself; it is itself a trace that can never be presented, that is, can never appear and manifest itself as such in its phenomenon. It is a trace that lies beyond what profoundly ties fundamental ontology to phenomenology. Like differance, the trace is never presented as such. In presenting itself it becomes effaced; in being sounded it dies away, like the writing of the a, inscribing its pyramid in differance.
Trace: What goes on beyond the truth of Being that cannot be presented, not appear in the idea of the “present”
Being and presence:
“The forgetting of Being is the forgetting of differences between Being and beings” (Heidegger)
If we admit that differance (is) (itself) something other than presence and absence, if it traces, then we are dealing with the forgetting of the difference (between Being and beings), and we now have to talk about a disappearance of the trace's trace.
the present becomes the sign of signs, the trace of traces. It is no longer what every reference refers to in the last instance; it becomes a function in a generalized referential structure. It is a trace, and a trace of the effacement of a trace. (295)
- The present, like the idea of Being is erased, but in erasing it, you are searching for a trace to follow so you can erase it, and thus, the present and the idea of Being are simultaneously alive and dead.
Differance is a metaphysical name; it is the difference between Being and being, present and presence; Differance is not a name, but a “nominal unity” (297), differance is not a being-present (282), “neither a word nor a concept” (283),
Must be conceived w/o nostalgia, which is why we can’t call it “Being”
Possible Youtube videos:
A good intro, then passes into a New Age explanation of deconstruction – very funny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgwOjjoYtco&feature=related
Jacques Derrida on writing and his own authorship, how he is unconscious and conscious as he writes – very good one!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9YaNW7Q0c8&NR=1
Semiology and Grammatology:
“Logocentric” and ethnocentric limits of the model of the sign and it correlates (i.e. what Saussure talks about)
Sign belongs to metaphysics; when you reach the logocentric and ethnocentric limits (which is difficult because every area must be exhausted), the idea of signs must be abandoned.
The double role of Saussurian semiology: use the sign to overturn metaphysics
1. The signified is inseparable from the signifier à against metaphysical traditions that say otherwise (i.e. body and soul are different). Instead, Body and soul are part of the human, thus creating a “two-sided unity”
2. Differentiated “signified content” and the “expressive substance” with the claim that sounds are not language; thus, he materialized these two things, these “signs”, rendering them part of the material world, not the metaphysical one.
3. Saussure fails to abandon all metaphysical terminology, that is, “the sign”
Why one must be careful when differentiating the signified and the signifier
I. Differentiating between the signifier and the signified still keeps in mind the idea of the concept, and therefore the sign
a. Must deconstruct all of metaphysics, which constructs our language and our world since we are always on the hunt for a “transcendental signified”
b. If the difference between the signifier and the signified is never pure, then translation can never be exact and is therefore always tainted. This shows the limits of differentiating the two because you can never attain a pure idea; it is always talked about in terms of concepts
II. Although Saussure recognized the difference between phonic substance (sounds) and language, he still attributes a lot to speech, which he claims is the “natural link” between thought and voice. Along with Hegel, he recognizes that arbitrary signs (speech) are independent from thoughts and ideas.
III. The concept of the sign establishes the necessity of linguistics as the pattern for semiology (the study of signs)
IV. General semiology is not inscribed in psychology, as Saussure claims, “Linguistic sign is therefore a psychic entity”
What is the gram as a "new structure of nonpresence"? What is writing as
differance? What rupture do these concepts introduce in relation to the key concepts of
semiology - the (phonetic) sign and structure? How does the notion of text replace, in
grammatology, the linguistic and semiological notion of what is enounced?
Limits of logocentrism and how Differance resolves this
Gram, or Differance = a new concept of writing: Whether an idea is written or spoken, no sign can function without reference to other signs; there are only differences and traces of traces
o Neutralizes the phonological importance of the sign
o Cannot function on the level of differences, but rather on the play of differences
o Differences are the effect of transformations
o If you try to differentiate language and speech, code and message, etc. (aka the conceptual differences found in metaphysics) it is impossible to know where to start in defining each of them; this is why differance works so well – because it establishes that there are not binary differences, but differences that reference other differences through traces
The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes
Intro to Barthes and his work on semiology
Writing is a neutral space where the subject slips away
Normally, writing and the style is accounted for with the author’s life and personality
Mallarmé: language speaks, not the author
Proust blurs the definition between the author and the character/narrator
Surrealism’s automatic writing further separates the author’s consciousness from writing itself
Language knows a subject, not a person
The Author is the past of his own book; he nourishes the book, and therefore must exist before it to do so
This cannot be true, because the book is “written” when it is enunciated, during the “here and now”, and not in the past, or through the Author
A text is not “a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning”; rather, it is a “multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash”
Here we see the kind of differance that Derrida talks about: there is no single text or meaning, but an interconnectedness of differences
The author cannot express himself because what he thinks must be translated by a dictionary (of signs) that is not a direct representation of his thoughts.
“The scriptor no longer bears within him passions, humours, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws a writing that can know no half: life never does more than imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, and imitation that is ultimately deferred.”
Authorship limits the text
“A text’s unity lies not in its origin, but in its destination”
We must let authorship, history, biography, and psychology in a text go in order to emphasize and give credit to the reader.
“The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”
What is an author?, Michel Foucault
Suspicious of universal truths, instead historicizes grand abstractions
References Barthes and Derrida’s …
Writing is something practiced not completed
2 major themes of writing:
1. Writing has freed itself from the dimension of expression; writing creates a space in which the writing subject disappears
2. Writing’s relationship with death:
a. Greek epics stress the immortality of the hero, Arabian narratives elude death (The Thousand and One Nights)
b. The work now has the right to kill instead of prolonging the notion of immortality. As a result, the author must die as well.
Notions that have hindered us from taking full measure of the author’s existence
1. What is a work? Notes, fragments, full texts, stories?
2. The notion of writing
a.