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Jacques Derrida, deconstruction notes
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Jacques Derrida, deconstruction notes
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Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction: some general notesDerrida attacks logocentrism (sometimes used interchangeably with phenocentrism) –
Systems of thought and- or habits of mind, reliant upon the metaphysics of presence
(a belief in an extra-systemic validating presence-centre which underwrites and fixes
linguistic meaning and is itself beyond challenge). Logocentrism, for Derrida, is the
drive to ground truth in a single ultimate point- an ultimate origin.
Logos: (Greek) an mean logic, reason, speech, God, the word (in Derrida’s context,
the Word).
Logos – inward rational principle of verbal texts, human beings, the natural universe.
Logos- the law serves to control and take charge of outward material things.
In Derrida’s view, the belief in the security provided by logos is illusory; there are no
such inward rational principles; meaning is always deferred (postponed), the sign is
always in excess. Not one single meaning can be assigned to the text, a meaning that
is underwritten by an origin, a presence.
The word which imposes order:
There is a center of meaning and signification (a definitive univocal meaning), a
transcendental signifier, therefore an effort to control the arbitrariness of the signifier.
Language is bsed on binary oppositions (that the metaphysics of presence sets up in
order to ground its questions) and one side of the opposition is more privileged than
the other.
The notion of differance-
It is coined form the French words for “differ” and “defer” and combines their senses.
1. Language as a weave of differences: the meaning of a word is a function of its
contrasts with other words; we perceive things in binary oppositions.
2. Language as a weave of deferrals (in two senses).
a. Any item said to be signified by a word is ‘also in the position of the
signifier’ for it too needs to be interpreted and applied.
b. An expression’s meaning is deferred in that a grasp of it always refers us
to further contexts and occasions of the expression’s use (to grasp a
meaning inevitably refers us to a whole system of meanings and to past
and future uses of the term); the notion of intertextuality comes in
- Meaning is not contained in language, it is co-extensive in the game of
language. A univocal meaning cannot be put forward because as soon
as it is uttered it defers from the original meaning.
- Citation: the context is unbound, it cannot be controlled.
- The signifier is always excessive; there is no one signified which can
fill this signifier.
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