Can someone illustrate the differences between Derrida’s Deconstruction as a form of nihilism and how it contrasts Heidegger’s form of nihilism.

Okay, folks. What were the main arguments by Derrida against Plato's Phaedrus? You know, that stuff about speech vs. writing?.. Please, help...

the controversy around the mueller report is an illustration of derrida’s statement that "il n'y a pas de hors-texte” - there is nothing outside the text.

for two years the mueller report served to ground political discourse in truth - but this grounding could only occur as long as the report had not yet arrived.

once the report begins to arrive, it is both the cause and the subject of a deconstructive logic as corrosive as it is inevitable. the report, so long awaited as a kind of savior, is suddenly inadequate - we now need to see the notes, the transcripts of the interviews, we need to hear from the author himself in order to fully encounter its truth.

but the more we hear, the more context we get, the more this truth recedes.

I just watched this video from a guy named Steve Patterson about the subjectivity of language: https://youtu.be/OJZs8UKVIO0

He makes the point that the dead end one reaches when they chase down every word in the dictionary proves nothing about the instability of language because concepts stablize the meaning of words. It's true that part of a word's meaning can be understood by differentiating it from other words, but that is a very limited and particular lense to view meaning. When we use words to build concepts, the concept remains built after the word has changed. Consider a word that is currently in the process of changing meaning socially: racism. While it once commonly referred to a prejudice on the basis of race, the new definition is grounded in behavioral relations between members of racial difference in a society of racial inequity. If the new meaning is established, the old concept of racial prejudice remains, and the word racism is restabilized by a new concept.

Patterson points to a difference between ostensive meaning and linguistic meaning. There are ostensive concepts that one can point to underpinning a word, the existence of which gives the word meaning as well (its relational meaning to the concept). He gives the example of how we teach a child the word "cat." We don't write down a definition and hand it to them. We don't open a biology textbook and describe the taxonomy of the cat to a 2 year old. We point to a cat and say, "this is a cat," then the child attaches the word to a concept they integrate through sense data. The child will have no formal definition of the cat for years, yet the word will still have meaning to them through their attachment to the concept.

Did Derrida misunderstand meaning? Or I'm I misunderstanding Darrida?

Edit: Sorry I misspelled Derrida...

Hi all, I believe I understand Derrida’s concept of “trace”, but am struggling to find an example of it. Is it purely conceptual or do we see trace irl? If it is the mark of an absent presence .... then how do we identify it? Could mental illness be an example of trace? Because when we talk about mental health, often times, we describe it as a lack of mental illness. Could that be an example of trace irl or am I misunderstanding? Thanks for any help!

In Of Grammatology Derrida is, among other things, going to argue that Rousseau's notion of articulation in speaking is already at work in a language and doesn't befall language 'from the outside' or 'as an accident', as Rousseau wants it. Or differently put: Derrida will show how the logic of the supplement is already at work before the advent of language.

What I somehow can't seem to comprehend what Derrida's argument for this exactly is? So far I've managed my way through OG, even the part on imitation in the distinction of melody/harmony (which I found to be quite intriguing), but here I can't seem to discover what his argument for this conclusion is.

All secondary sources I've tried seem to brush over the argument itself and go straight to the conclusion, which is - as you can imagine - not helpful at all. Can anyone here help me out by any chance?

I am looking for texts by Derrida on the encounter with the Other. I would guess his texts that involve Levinas, or perhaps his book The Ear of The Other would be potentially what I’m after. Particularly interested in writing that involves the situation of encountering something that involves/requires a change in that which encounters this other.

I’m relatively new to Derrida as well as Post-Modernism in general and I am currently reading an introductory book on Derrida which includes a chapter on his critique of communication. The chapter highlights Derrida’s claim that iterability undermines the context of our speech and creates “disorder within communication”. The book poorly glosses over how those two things connect and I’ve failed to find any resources that could help clarify. Anyone got anything?

Hi all, I wanted to ask you your thoughts, interpretations, ideas on the following enigmatic quote of Derrida's that concludes his 1999 Death Penalty seminar which I am struggling to understand the meaning of: [E]ven when the death penalty will have been abolished, when it will have been purely and simply, absolutely and unconditionally abolished on earth, it will survive, there will still be some death penalty [il y en aura encore]. Other figures will be found for it, other figures will be invented for it. . . . Let us have no illusion on this subject: even when it will have been abolished, the death penalty will survive, it will have other lives in front of it, and other lives to get its teeth into [d’autres vies à se mettre sous la dent].

Pages 7-8

I am unable to get a copy through my institution, as well as libgen. Does anyone have a pdf file?

Hi everyone,

Apologies in advance if this is against the rules.

I edit a small journal of criticism called New Critique. We've just published an essay you guys might be interested in. It uses Derrida's theories of hauntology and spectrality to read Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children as a text obsessed with the historical, social, and religious ghosts that haunt the foundation of India.

Here it is: https://newcritique.co.uk/2020/05/22/essay-and-now-i-am-cast-as-a-ghost-spectres-of-india-in-midnights-children-seamus-mcginley-hughes/

Cheers,

J

I’m looking into the aporiatic structures Derrida exposed and I see the “always already” referenced as one. However, I can’t find any elaborations on that anywhere. I understand the concept of the always already but I don’t understand in what ways Derrida applied it. Does anyone have some clarification for me?

Does anyone know what Derrida means by in one case the Devaluation of the word 'language' and the second the inflation of the sign 'language'? What is he referring to here when he says word in one case vs. sign in the other?

Here's the paragraph this is found in:

"However the topic is considered, the problem of language has never been simply one problem among others. But never as much as at present has it invaded, as such, the global horizon of the most diverse researches and the most heterogeneous discourses, diverse and heterogeneous in their intention, method, and ideology. The devaluation of the word "language" itself, and how, in the very hold it has upon us, it betrays a loose vocabulary, the temptation of a cheap seduction, the passive yielding to fashion, the consciousness of the avant-garde, in other words-ignorance-are evidences of this effect. This inflation of the sign "language" is the inflation of the sign itself, absolute inflation, inflation itself. Yet, by one of its aspects or shadows, it is itself still a sign: this crisis is also a symptom. It indicates, as if in spite of itself, that a historico-metaphysical epoch must finally determine as language the totality of its problematic horizon. It must do so not only because all that desire had wished to wrest from the play of language finds itself recaptured within that play but also because, for the same reason, language itself is menaced in its very life, helpless, adrift in the threat of limitlessness, brought back to its own finitude at the very moment when its limits seem to disappear, when it ceases to be self- assured, contained, and guaranteed by the infinite signified which seemed to exceed it. Here's the paragraph:"

This is in the small paragraph at the start of chapter 1 before the program in of Grammatology.

Thanks!