Logocentrism

[Muchasmasgracias at cs.com]

 >> 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. 

Yeah, but if people claim to get something out of what he writes, then JD 
hasn't succeeded in failing like he set out to.  Derrida IS highly conceptual 
in a highly LINGUISTIC way.  He writes books.  He writes books.  It is 
discourse, it is a monologue.  He lectures as if he's reciting out of a book. 
 (Oddest thing, there is actually video footage of Derrida on the net.  Not 
something you could find on cable now is it?)  But so here's the thing:  
Derrida.  Is.  Logocentric.  How can I tell?  Not many are likely to 
appreciate him if they don't consume at least a book's worth of reading per 
week, and probably more.  And sure he's a philosopher, you can tell because 
he's still turning that same old screw with the stripped threads.

And as far as Derrida being similar to Pynchon, I think there is a huge 
difference between choosing to write philosophical tracts and writing 
fiction.  Like categorically huge, if you're somebody who's into speaking in 
terms of categories in the first place.  Who's more likely to have a 
discussion in terms of categories between a literary novelist and a literary 
theorist?  Categories are skeletal, death-like, no flesh at all so what's the 
point unless you've got some hang-up with perfectability.  






See *Glas* or *The
 Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond*, for typical 
exaCategoricallymples 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
 >
 
 
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