Logocentrism

[jbor]

> Derrida harps on logocentrism a 
> lot for somebody who writes so much heavily prolix prose.  I wonder if it
> ever occurred to him to take up drawing or enroll in a dance class?
snip

Actually, Derrida's own texts seek to undermine their intrinsic
logocentricity, to self-de(con)struct, in other words. See *Glas* or *The
Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond*, for typical examples of
Derrida's later style. The puns, ardent non-linearity, words "sous rature"
(crossings out) and other typographical play, transgression of textual
borders and margins, and the syntheses of commentary and citation within the
texts which blur the perceived boundaries between the philosophical and the
literary -- all are a reflexive assault on the logocentric assumptions at
the heart of the continental tradition of philosophy from Plato on down,
that world and word (logos) coincide, and that word and deed are one. Very
subversive. Very Pynchon.

Derrida's notion of "writing" includes not only "cinematography,
choreography ... but also pictorial, musical and sculptural 'writing'." (*Of
Grammatology* p.9) The one proviso is that it "creates meaning by
enregistering it, by entrusting it to an engraving, a groove, a relief, to a
surface whose essential characteristic is to be infinitely transmissible"
('Force and Signification, in *Writing and Difference* p.12). In Derrida's
terms all "writing", all media -- incorporating not only the creative arts
but also aesthetic criticism and theoretical formulations about art and
language (i.e. philosophy) -- is received as text, and all texts are thereby
fictions: "il n'y a pas de hors-texte".(*Of Grammatology*, *Limited Inc abc*
et. al.) Even a photograph is a fiction in this construct because each
viewer's interpretation of the image is necessarily subjective.

In *Of Grammatology* Derrida continues: "One might also speak of athletic
writing, and with even greater certainty of military or political writing in
view of the techniques that govern those domains today." Thus can terrorism
be seen as the medium of communication in both the Waco and Oklahoma City
attacks, the writing on the wall.


best


----------
>From: Muchasmasgracias at cs.com
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Logocentrism
>Date: Sat, Jun 17, 2000, 3:02 AM
>