Posts

The Impossible Preface: Nietzsche, Derrida, and the Instability of the Beginning

Image
Introduction: The Problem of the Threshold The preface appears to occupy a stable position. It is the first thing one reads; it introduces, frames, and justifies the work that follows. It functions as a gateway, an opening gesture that prepares the reader for what is to come. Yet a simple paradox unsettles this apparent stability: the preface is often written last. In order to announce what the book will say, the author must already know what the book has said. This observation, made explicit by Jacques Derrida, is not a minor editorial curiosity but a structural fissure. If the text that appears first is in fact composed afterward, then the distinction between beginning and supplement, inside and outside, becomes unstable. Long before this logic was conceptually elaborated, Friedrich Nietzsche had enacted it in his own writing. His Fünf Vorreden zu fünf ungeschriebenen Büchern (1872–73) and the Versuch einer Selbstkritik added in 1886 to The Birth of Tragedy form a constellati...
Post a Comment
Read more

Derrida’s Saussure: On the Limits of the Signifier/Signified Distinction

Image
The concept of the sign. AI image “ For the community of language users, the synchronic aspect (l'aspect synchronique) is the one and only reality ”. Course in General Linguistics. Introduction In Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences , Jacques Derrida argues that “ the concept of the sign ” has always been governed by a structure of referral: “sign-of, signifier referring to a signified” (Derrida, 1978, p. 281). On this basis, he aligns thinkers as distant as Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, and Ferdinand de Saussure within a shared configuration governed by what he calls the metaphysics of presence . The claim concerns more than intellectual history; it posits a structural logic that persists beneath doctrinal variation. This article questions whether such continuity can be sustained once Saussure’s technical redefinition of the sign is taken seriously. Saussure’s signe is not simply another version of the classical Aristotle’s σημείον and Augustin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is “Sign” a Trans-Historical Concept? Derrida, Saussure, and the Limits of Genealogy

Image
Car la signification « signe » a toujours été comprise et déterminée, dans son sens, comme signe-dé, signifiant renvoyant à un signifié , signifiant différent de son signifié . (bold added), Derrida, 1966. Introduction:  The Risk of Conceptual Continuity in Derrida’s Reading of Saussure In Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences , Derrida advances a far-reaching thesis: the concept of “sign” has always functioned within a structure of referral—“sign-of, signifier referring to a signified, signifier different from its signified” (Jacques Derrida, 1978, p. 281). On this basis, he aligns figures as distant as Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, and Ferdinand de Saussure within a shared configuration governed by what he names the metaphysics of presence. The claim is not merely historical; it concerns an underlying structural logic that allegedly persists beneath theoretical transformations. Yet this gesture raises a methodological difficulty. Saussure’s ...
Post a Comment
Read more