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Frequently Used Literary Terms and Titles (these pages under construction) |
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For Derrida, language is deeply embedded in Western metaphysical thought as a whole. In Western culture, Derrida says, we have tended to think in binary oppositions: mind-body, good-evil, white-black, culture-nature, man-woman, self-other, etc.. In addition, the first terms of such pairs are seen as positive and superior to the negative, inferior opposites against which they define themselves. Presence, too, has been seen as preferable to absence, and this relates to why, as far back as Plato, speech is privileged over writing. Language, separated from the person who utters it, does not seem to carry as much weight as when the speaker's self is "present" to guarantee its meaning. In Plato, in fact, writing is not just a necessary but inferior supplement; it is a dangerous one. Derrida views the privileging of speech/presence as an illusion, not least because, as Freud and others have shown, the self is not really present even to the self. We simply posit such things as self-presence--that I know who and what "I" am and what "I" mean--to provide some sort of foundation that exists outside of the play of signification and différance. Derrida calls these concepts "transcendental signifieds" (others include God, spirit, consciousness, essence, being). Derrida emphasizes, however, that language actually functions more in keeping with the principle of absence, not presence: signs stand in place of the things they signify and possess "meaning" only in their difference from other signs, which are absent yet essential. Writing, then, reflects much more basically the condition of language itself--absence and différance. Quod erat demonstrandum.
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Revised: May 21, 2003
Contact: Prof. Christine Roth or Cary Henson