Posts

How Things Become Intelligible: The Life of Concepts

Image
“Psychologically, setting aside its expression in words, our thought is simply a vague, shapeless mass. Philosophers and linguists have always agreed that were it not for signs, we should be incapable of differentiating any two ideas in a clear and constant way. In itself, thought is like a swirling cloud, where no shape is intrinsically determinate. No ideas are established in advance, and nothing is distinct, before the introduction of linguistic structure. But do sounds, which lie outside this nebulous world of thought, in themselves constitute entities established in advance? No more than ideas do.” — Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics I. When a Word Becomes a Thing We normally think of a concept as the name of a thing. Something exists; the concept identifies it; language gives it a name. Once named, it can be described, compared, and judged. Consider three familiar expressions: human nature , the subject , and human rights . We tend to hear them as thoug...
Post a Comment
Read more

When a Concept Becomes a Slogan

Image
  “I would say that’s part of the discussion of free discussion, of the modern task of a modern Enlightenment: it is necessary not to rely on slogans. When you hear ‘deconstruction of the subject,’ this is a slogan, usually. It is used by people who want to avoid what they consider to be the threat coming from deconstruction.” — Jacques Derrida, Talking Liberties 1. The Word That Warns Against Words What happens when the name of a practice of questioning becomes a slogan? The question arises in a 1992 conversation at Oxford between Jacques Derrida and Alan Montefiore, held as part of the Oxford Amnesty Lectures on human rights. Montefiore suggests that perhaps “reconstruction” would be a better term when speaking about the subject. Derrida does not respond by defending deconstruction as the correct name for a doctrine. Instead, he shifts the discussion to the danger of slogans: “It is necessary not to rely on slogans.” He then makes the point directly: when we hear “...
Post a Comment
Read more

Deconstruction, Affirmation, and What Is to Come

Image
  “Deconstruction was mainly affirmation. Affirmation doesn’t mean reconstruction, doesn’t mean positioning something positive, but it means constant reference to a “yes.” Yes, I speak to you. I address you. I listen to you. So it’s a thinking of affirmation. Now, this affirmation is not simply reconstruction”. — Jacques Derrida, Talking liberties 1. Deconstruction and the Subject If deconstruction questions the subject, does it leave us without a subject? The problem becomes particularly pressing when the subject is linked to human rights. Rights belong to someone: a person who can act, suffer, choose, speak, and assume responsibility. If there is no stable subject behind these capacities, who, then, possesses the rights we seek to defend? This is the problem put to Jacques Derrida by Alan Montefiore in an interview on the “deconstruction of the subject.” Derrida’s first response is brief but decisive: “Deconstruction doesn't mean dissolution.” To question the subjec...
Post a Comment
Read more

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

Image
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...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Can I Have a Language That Is Not Mine? Derrida, Saussure, and the Question of Origins

Image
“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...
Post a Comment
Read more