Derrida Quiz (not?)
1 why aren’t words sources of stable meaning? how is the word “drug” an example
of this instability? the word “couch”?
they don’t necessarily refer to anything—their conceptual connections to what they signify are
merely arbitrary. “drug” arbitrarily refers to a palliative as well as a poison, highlighting the
particularly contradictory meanings of many words. and “couch” is an example of a word that
takes its meaning from its distinction from “chair” and “seat” and “sofa,” etc.—all these words
need each other for their individual meanings, a process that indicates the “slipperiness” of
meanings. Derrida coined the term “differance” to denote this quality of language; the word
conflates “difference” and “deference”: yes, the meanings of words are distinct from one
another, but they’re also dependent on each other, resulting in a perpetual “deferral” of
meaning.
2 accordingly, explain Derrida’s critique of the concept of supplementarity.
it presumes that a supplement, by definition, supplements something whole already—if it
weren’t, it wouldn’t be a “supplement,” but, rather, a piece of the whole. so the word contradicts
its own conceptual meaning and thus serves as an example of how words, and the concepts they
signify, often undermine their own meanings. the meanings of words “slip around,” like seals on
acid on ice.
3 why aren’t linguistic binary oppositions (in which one of the words is always
“privileged” over the other, meaning it is valued more positively)—why aren’t they
sources of stable meaning? give an example of a linguistic binary opposition that is
unstable for this reason.
just as the meanings of individual words defer to other words, so do binary oppositions defer to
other binary oppositions: light/dark defers to day/night and day/night to warm/cold and
warm/cold defers to up/down (toward the sun/in the earth), etc., and as the Lakoff & Johnson
handout reveals these terms are in turn associated w/ abstractions, such that warm/cold
defers to life/death or intimate/strange and intimate/strange to close/distant, close/distant to
life/death and we’re back to light/dark, and so on and so on. sometimes, as Barry explains,
these dochotomies deconstruct themselves in our culture. concerning the gay/sraight
dichotomy, Barry tells us of the famous movie star of the 2nd half of the 20th century, Rock
Hudson, a hetero-sex-icon, who late in his career came out, but Barry pts out that many social
critics found this unsurprising b/c his hetero-status may have rested precisely on his
unthreatening demeanor, which women had subconsciously perceived as emanating from his
heterosexuality. (hetero men too might’ve welcomed his straight sex-status, relieved that
women were finding a man sexy who wasn’t nearly as macho as they had previously felt they
had to be to be sexy.) these kinds of social phenomena reveal the “fluidity” of linguistic
signification. another deconstruction occurred recently w/ the NFL football star killed in battle
in Afghanistan it turns out, after a military cover-up scandal, by friendly fire. How can a hero, a
double-hero (football & soldier) be killed by our own weapons? these kinds of events reveal the
unstable reality underlying the veneer of linguistic certainty.
4 Derrida makes a reference to an epistemological “rupture” in modern intellectual
history. Who instigated this rupture and what is D.’s reasoning for why it was apt
that it occurred in the late 19th century simultaneously w/ the advent of the
scientific discipline of ethnology (the branch of anthropology that compares
cultures & ethnicities)?
Nietzsche & Freud are two figures prominent in this rupture—Nietzsche instigated the critique
of Western epistemology, arguing that we create our own knowledge to perpetuate specific
power structures; Freud instigated a rupture in psychology by arguing that we are not in
control of our own motives.
It was apt that ethnology arose as a discipline at this time b/c ethnology presumes that
cultures create their values and as such those values are distinct from one another enough to
be compared; that presumption could not have been made w/out Nietzsche’s epistemic insights.
5 what was Levi-Strauss’s critique, early in the 20th century, of his own taxonomy of
myth, a critique Derrida cites at length in his essay we read?
it presupposes that empiricism itself is not a myth, that it’s a meta-tool that stands above the
natural phenomena and human needs that myths typically provide a code for. he saw that
empiricism—the epistemology of science, the foundation upon which science makes its truthclaims—is simply another code for the scientist’s observations of natural phenomena & human
needs. that is, science is merely a code providing the same function that primitive cultures’
myths provide for them; his taxonomy for myths, then, is merely a code for a code, no better or
worse necessarily than the myth-codes they categorize. science is not the center of anything; it’s
merely another arbitrary interpretation of phenomena, one that merely reflects what the
scientific culture has come to arbitrarily value.
6 some might be skeptical of this claim of Levi-Strauss’s that science is merely
another myth b/c it doesn’t involve stories the way myths usually do, but is that
true? name some stories associated w/ science and the morals those stories convey.
HERO (all of these are accompanied by
stories of their successes)
MORAL VIRTUE
archimedes, discovery of displacement
madame curie, discovery or radiation
edward jenner, (1796) used cowpox virus
thomas edison, light bulb, phonograph etc.
george eastman, camera & film industry
neil armstrong (NASA) first person on the moon
charles darwin, articulated & evidenced evolution
intelligence, inventiveness,
intelligence, bravery, persistence
intelligence, resourcefulness
intelligence, hard work
intelligence, persistence
intelligence, fortitude
intelligence, bravery
7 how might a Derridean perspective manifest in creative writing?
In the excerpt from Paul Auster’s novel I sent you are many characteristics of Derrida’s
perspective. Two examples: one of the characters is named Paul Auster, which is a violation of
the traditional “contract” btwn reader & writer that this “fictional” text be fictional, a violation
of the truth/fiction dichotomy. Also, the “main” (if there is one) character is described as
observing himself going to a meeting w/ Peter Stillman: he isn’t willing himself to go—his
actions appear to be occurring independent of his will, which is a violation of our conventional
dichotomy of active/passive; agent/object; perpetrator/victim; etc.
What Is Poetry
by John Ashbery
The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow
That came when we wanted it to snow?
Beautiful images? Trying to avoid
Ideas, as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving
The mistress we desire? Now they
Will have to believe it
As we believed it. In school
All the thought got combed out:
What was left was like a field.
Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.
Now open them on a thin vertical path.
It might give us--what?--some flowers soon?
8 deconstruct this quiz
it presupposes that knowledge can be attained and is worthy of our pursuit, while it also critiques those
assumptions. it claims that if you don’t understand Derrida’s critique you are naive, but it critiques the
value of all knowledge, including, presumably, knowledge of itself. so it argues that it’s important to your
educational pursuits, and not. i would guess D. had the agenda that deconstruction frees us from what has
been called the tyranny of the Enlightenment, manifested in the way constructed dichotomies rule our
thinking and behavior: straight’s good/gay’s bad; love’s good/sex’s bad; thin’s good/fat’s bad; etc. I would
guess Derrida was happy to be subverting this tyranny.