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.
>
> 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.


It's not so much that he is trying to fail: the concepts are
self-referential. Insofar as the deconstructive approach embraces all text,
including Derrida's own, then the texts themselves insist on their
indeterminacy, foreground it, in ways that Plato's and St Augustine's and
Hegel's never did.

Derrida's readings always focus on processes which are already operative
within the texts under consideration. For example, Derrida merely points up
the inherent lapses in Plato's argumentation and thinking in the *Phaedrus*
by untangling how the text's language works against itself. (Plato
privileges speech over writing by using the Greek term 'pharmakon' in its
meaning of 'poison' as a metaphor for writing. But despite Plato's careful
attempt to contextualise his use of the term his discourse is spoilt by the
fact that 'pharmacon' also means 'cure', and the multiple and contradictory
meanings of this term resonate at each usage. The purity of philosophical
discourse Plato aspires to is overwhelmed by ambiguity and confusion.) See
Derrida's *Dissemination*.

>From the very beginning Derrida explained that for post-structuralist and
deconstructive criticism, "the passage beyond philosophy does not consist in
turning the page of philosophy ... but in continuing to read philosophers
*in a certain way*." ('Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the
Human Sciences', in *Writing and Difference*, p. 288. This was the paper
that rocked the American philosophical world at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore in 1966.)

> I think there is a huge
> difference between choosing to write philosophical tracts and writing
> fiction.

This is the sort of binary opposition -- the logocentric privileging of one
item over another using some illusory centre or external reference point as
a yardstick -- which deconstruction (and Pynchon) seeks to dismantle.

best


----------
>From: Muchasmasgracias at cs.com
>To: jbor at bigpond.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Logocentrism
>Date: Sun, Jun 18, 2000, 3:56 PM
>