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Before I Speak: Derrida, Foucault, and the Problem of Beginning

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1. Before I Speak “I have but one language—yet that language is not mine.” (Derrida, Monolingualism of the other ) Derrida’s sentence sounds like a contradiction. To have a language normally means to speak it, to use it, perhaps even to regard it as part of who one is. Yet Derrida immediately withdraws the possession his words seem to claim. He has one language, but that language is not his. Foucault begins from a different image: “I should have preferred to become aware that a nameless voice was already speaking long before me…” (Foucault, The order of discourse ) Here the disturbance concerns not possession but beginning. Foucault imagines a voice that was already speaking before he arrived, so that he would not have to occupy the position of the one who starts. The two sentences do not make the same argument. But they disturb a common assumption: that when I speak, I begin with myself. I imagine myself as the speaker who has something to say, finds the words for it, an...
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How Can I Have a Language That Is Not Mine? Derrida, Saussure, and the Question of Origins

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“At any given period, however far back in time we go, a language is always an inheritance from the past. In fact, no society has ever known its language to be anything other than something inherited from previous generations, which it has no choice but to accept. That is why the question of the origins of language does not have the importance generally attributed to it. It is not even a relevant question as far as linguistics is concerned”. — Saussure, F. de, Course in general linguistics 1. “I Have but One Language” “I have but one language—yet that language is not mine.” The sentence seems contradictory. To have a language ordinarily means to speak it, to use it, perhaps even to identify with it. Yet in  Monolingualism of the other; or, The prosthesis of origin , Derrida immediately withdraws the possession that his statement appears to claim. He has one language, but that language does not belong to him. The difficulty lies in the word have . Derrida is not denying tha...
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When Words Mean Nothing and Everything: The Double Valuation of Signs

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“It is curious to note that for centuries, in Europe, the words of a madman were either totally ignored or else were taken as words of truth. They either fell into a void - rejected the moment they were proffered -or else men deciphered in them a naive or cunning reason, rationality more rational than that of a rational man.” -           Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language “There is therefore a good and a bad writing: the good and natural is the divine inscription in the heart and the soul; the perverse and artful is technique, exiled in the exteriority of the body”. -           Derrida, Of grammatology 1. Nothing or Truth At the beginning of The Order of Discourse , Michel Foucault describes a curious fate that befell the words of the madman in Europe. For centuries, he writes, they were “either totally ignored or else were taken as words of truth.” They...
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Who Speaks? Foucault and the Problem of Beginning

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“ I would really like to have slipped imperceptibly into this lecture, as into all the others I shall be delivering, perhaps over the years ahead. I would have preferred to be enveloped in words, borne way beyond all possible beginnings. At the moment of speaking, I would like to have perceived a nameless voice, long preceding me, leaving me merely to enmesh myself in it, taking up its cadence, and to lodge myself, when no one was looking, in its interstices as if it had paused an instant, in suspense, to beckon to me. There would have been no beginnings: instead, speech would proceed from me, while I stood in its path - a slender gap - the point of its possible disappearance”. Michel Foucault, The Discourse on Language 1. The Desire Not to Begin At the beginning of The Order of Discourse , Foucault imagines a different way of entering speech. He would have preferred not to be the one who begins: “I should have preferred to become aware that a nameless voice was already speakin...
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