Derrida Quiz (not?)
1 why aren’t words sources of stable meaning? how is the word “drug” an example of this instability? the word “couch”?
they don’t necessarily refer to anything—their conceptual connections to what they signify are merely arbitrary. “drug” arbitrarily refers to a palliative as well as a poison, highlighting the particularly contradictory meanings of many words.and “couch” is an example of a word that takes its meaning from its distinction from “chair” and “seat” and “sofa,” etc.—all these words need each other for their individual meanings, a process that indicates the “slipperiness” of meanings. Derrida coined the term “differance” to denote this quality of language; the word conflates “difference” and “deference”: yes, the meanings of words are distinct from one another, but they’re also dependent on each other, resulting in a perpetual “deferral” of meaning.
2 accordingly, explain Derrida’s critique of the concept of supplementarity.
it presumes that a supplement, by definition, supplements something whole already—if it weren’t, it wouldn’t be a “supplement,” but, rather, a piece of the whole. so the word contradicts its own conceptual meaning and thus serves as an example of how words, and the concepts they signify, often undermine their own meanings.the meanings of words “slip around,” like seals on acid on ice.
3 why aren’t linguistic binary oppositions (in which one of the words is always “privileged” over the other, meaning it is valued more positively)—why aren’t theysources of stable meaning? give an example of a linguistic binary opposition that is unstable for this reason.
just as the meanings of individual words defer to other words, so do binary oppositions defer to other binary oppositions: light/dark defers to day/night and day/night to warm/cold and warm/cold defers to up/down (toward the sun/in the earth), etc., and as the Lakoff & Johnson handout reveals these terms are in turn associated w/ abstractions, such that warm/cold defers to life/death or intimate/strange and intimate/strange to close/distant, close/distant to life/death and we’re back to light/dark, and so on and so on. sometimes, as Barry explains, these dochotomies deconstruct themselves in our culture. concerning the gay/sraight dichotomy, Barry tells us of the famous movie star of the 2nd half of the 20th century, Rock Hudson, a hetero-sex-icon, who late in his careercame out, but Barry pts out that many social critics found this unsurprising b/c his hetero-status may have rested precisely on his unthreatening demeanor, which women had subconsciously perceived as emanating from his heterosexuality. (hetero men too might’ve welcomed his straight sex-status, relieved that women were finding a man sexy who wasn’t nearly as macho as they had previously felt they had to be to be sexy.)these kinds of social phenomena reveal the “fluidity” of linguistic signification.another deconstruction occurred recently w/ the NFL football star killed in battle in Afghanistan it turns out, after a military cover-up scandal, by friendly fire. How can a hero, a double-hero (football & soldier) be killed by our own weapons?these kinds of events reveal the unstable reality underlying the veneer of linguistic certainty.
4 Derrida makes a reference to an epistemological “rupture” in modern intellectual history. Who instigated this rupture and what isD.’s reasoning for why it was apt that it occurred in the late 19th century simultaneously w/ the advent of the scientific discipline of ethnology (the branch of anthropology that compares cultures & ethnicities)?
Nietzsche & Freud are two figures prominent in this rupture—Nietzsche instigated the critique of Western epistemology, arguing that we create our own knowledge to perpetuate specific power structures; Freud instigateda rupture in psychology by arguing that we are not in control of our own motives.
It was apt that ethnology arose as a discipline at this time b/c ethnology presumes that cultures create their values and as such those values are distinct from one another enough to be compared; that presumption could not have been made w/out Nietzsche’s epistemic insights.
5 what was Levi-Strauss’s critique, early in the 20th century, of his own taxonomy of myth, a critique Derrida cites at length in his essay we read?
itpresupposes that empiricism itself is not a myth, that it’s a meta-tool that stands above the natural phenomena and human needs that myths typically provide a code for. he saw that empiricism—the epistemology of science, the foundation upon which science makes its truth-claims—is simply another code for the scientist’s observations of natural phenomena & human needs.that is, science is merely a code providing the same function that primitive cultures’ myths provide for them; his taxonomy for myths, then, is merely a code for a code, no better or worse necessarily than the myth-codes they categorize.science is not the center of anything; it’s merely another arbitrary interpretation of phenomena, one that merely reflects what the scientific culture has come to arbitrarily value.
6 some might be skeptical of this claim of Levi-Strauss’s that science is merely another myth b/c it doesn’t involve stories the way myths usually do, but is that true? name some stories associated w/ science and the morals those stories convey.
HERO (all of these are accompanied by MORAL VIRTUE
stories of their successes)
archimedes, discovery of displacementintelligence, inventiveness,
madame curie, discovery or radiationintelligence, bravery, persistence edwardjenner, (1796) used cowpox virus intelligence, resourcefulness
thomasedison, light bulb, phonograph etc.intelligence, hard work
georgeeastman, camera & film industryintelligence, persistence
neilarmstrong (NASA) first person on the moonintelligence, fortitude
charlesdarwin, articulated & evidenced evolutionintelligence, bravery
7 how might aDerridean perspective manifest in creative writing?
In the excerpt from Paul Auster’s novel I sent you are many characteristics of Derrida’s perspective. Two examples: one of the characters is named Paul Auster, which is a violation of the traditional “contract” btwn reader & writer that this “fictional” text be fictional, a violation of the truth/fiction dichotomy. Also, the “main” (if there is one) character is described as observing himself going to a meeting w/ Peter Stillman: he isn’t willing himself to go—his actions appear to be occurring independent of his will, which is a violation of our conventional dichotomy of active/passive; agent/object; perpetrator/victim; etc.
What Is Poetry
by John Ashbery
The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow
That came when we wanted it to snow?
Beautiful images? Trying to avoid
Ideas, as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving
The mistress we desire? Now they
Will have to believe it
As we believed it. In school
All the thought got combed out:
What was left was like a field.
Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.
Now open them on a thin vertical path.
It might give us--what?--some flowers soon?
8 deconstruct this quiz
it presupposes that knowledge can be attained and is worthy of our pursuit, while it also critiques those assumptions. it claims that if you don’t understand Derrida’s critique you are naive, but it critiques the value of all knowledge, including, presumably, knowledge of itself. so it argues that it’s important to your educational pursuits, and not.i would guess D. had the agenda that deconstruction frees us from what has been called the tyranny of the Enlightenment, manifested in the way constructed dichotomies rule our thinking and behavior: straight’s good/gay’s bad; love’s good/sex’s bad; thin’s good/fat’s bad; etc. I would guess Derrida was happy to be subverting this tyranny.