Differance

What puzzled me in the presentation of the deconstruction was the often improper use of terms. The text defines the Post-Structuralism as a theory that “ departed so radically from the core assumptions of Structuralism.” That is true but if fails to tell us in which way. Things became more complicated for me when I realized I hardly can translate all these invented terms in Derrida’s theory and then in Heidegger’s philosophy. So what I had to do a lot of dictionary reading. So here are a few thoughts on what I understand is deconstruction. If the Structuralism works with binary oppositions, the Post- Structuralism operates with differences. At a first glance this does not seem such a radically different point of view. We have to keep in mind though that Structuralism exists inside the language only. Any opposition is something that always traces back to language. The Saussurian a non a approach is arguable only through its rapport to other language binaries. What makes the enormous step forward in the Post- Structuralist theory is the heideggerian late assumptions on language in Time and Being and also in Identity and Difference. This rapport a non a seems to be inexistent in Heidegger’s late thinking. For him what is different is what derives from a vertical actualization. Derrida’s differance would be, I think, in heideggerian terms the Being or precisely that concept that remains alway un- actualised or in other words the non-textual source of a text. Or this is exactly that something that can never be deconstructed. This non-textual source is what produces text. So the critique deconstruction brings upon Structuralism is the very origin of originality. How can we produce new texts, new ideas? Originality can not be produce still within language. It needs to originate in something different than itself, or in Humboldt terminology, this would be what generates difference. For Heidegger that is the Being, for Wittgenstein is Silence and for Derrida seems to be that something that can not be exposed. In that respect I really liked his graphic argumentation on the opposition difference/differance. So I assume the equivalent of Being or Silence, would be here differance : “ Already we have note tat differance is not, does not exist, and is not any sort of being-present (on) [...] It belongs to no category of being present or absent.” ( p. 282) But Derrida states very clearly that his differance is not onto- theological, it only somehow follows the same pattern of reasoning.

A rather double death

What triggered my curiosity in the pile of readings of the past week was the revolution of the hermeneutics through phenomenology, and I am not talking here about a science of phenomenas, but rather about phenomenalisation. In that respect words don’t matter for what they express immediately, but rather for the differences they state in their actualisation. Probably Aristotel was the first to say that the Logos offers meanings right because it separates concepts. In my opinion Barthes Death of the author would not have been possible beyond these phenomenological assumptions. I find this gloomy, rhetorical death pretty cool though. This death of the author has its origin in the idea that the text is nothing but a “gramme”, or in other words a trace of what was almost about to be actualized by the author. These traces do not aim to point towards an origin, but rather they talked about the passage itself towards the Origin or the non textual source of the text itself. In other words once a text written, its author becomes automatically its reader, and interpreter. The separation between the author and his text is univocal and automatic precisely because the unique character of the writing act. This author can only once write a text, everything that follows is interpretation. We perceive then a distinction between the author and his thinking. His only merit is that he was the first to think his thinking. The great privilege of the author is only the fact that he was his first interpreter. But in that respect, I wonder, couldn’t we very well also speak about a possible death of the reader? I find myself so many times disappointed in front of a text that once I stroke my emotions and I try to revitalize that grammme, that trace that seemed to grasp the Origin and I am unable to repeat the experience.

Probably a pertinent question at the beginning of this class would be why utilize a method when reading a text, why know various technical approaches when a text should require simply a free style reading that trigers what Barthes calls “le plaisir du texte”. The answer to this question seems natural in Trubetkoi work (Phonology Today), which states that we do not deal only with conscious linguistic processes, but also with the unconscious ones. Or these unconscious linguistic phenomenas predetermines author and lecturer in the same time. For a long time, literature has been considered a message without a code. Gerard Genette, points out that the structuralist method defines the moment where its message is found in the code, which is visible in the analysis of the textual structures. This represents already an opposition. The text is not analyzed through exterior constraints, but through its immanent structures. If the historical method uses social paradigms, genetical forms and a certain sense in the evolution of thinking, the structural method focuses exclusively on form. The origin of structuralism is in general the linguistic model proposed by Saussure. He makes a distinction between language and speech. Language is a system of signs where what matters is sound and sense differences; in language there are only differences, says Saussure. Also, for him, the link between sign and sense is arbitrary in the same way the unconscious is an arbitrary construction. This is an idea that forced Lacan later to say that the unconscious itself is structured as language. Troubetkoi influenced Levi-Strauss through this authentic existence established at the unconscious level of the spirit. But this approach is rather helpful when we deal with language itself. Although the structuralist method remains the most valid, there are also limits linked to it. These limits are considered by Paul Ricoeur in his book, The Conflict of interpretations. Ricoeur analyses the work of Levi-Strauss (La pensee sauvage) and sees a problem when structuralism shifts from its status of structuralist science to the status of structuralist philosophy. The structuralism is pertinent when the analysis deal with a fix object, which is the written text. When it extrapolates to cultural phenomenas or discursive structures such as for example the oral tradition (a system taken into consideration by Gadamer), the structural method can not be productive anymore, simply because, says Ricoeur, it is not able to play out all its meanings.