Jacques Derrida

momus yes by (non-poetic) logic that is obviously the case: what parts of the "world" do you consider by definition unreachable within this yes wide but coherent definition of "text"* (i don't in fact think the claim requires they be reached yet or indeed that we will actually ever reach them)

*(what is a better term for it? relayable consciousness? as i keep saying, i don't like "text" used in this broad sense bcz it's so easy to toss up bogus contradictions which get their specious force from the ordinary-language usage of text)

i'm really off the point anyway, carry on - i've totally lost the point of how this relates to the specialist use of "text"

(did we just reach a pf banality point)

yes, i'm aware of that; what i'm asking is, for derrida can we back date the existence of these 'laws' to the time before newton? ditto the existence of elements, pluto, etc.

see my problem is that momus is saying that his apprehension of various sense-data happens outside his capacity to himself tell stories about it, and then this capacity switches on subsquently and deals with it in "linguistic" fashion - as a series of bloc states, i guess

whereas i'm saying that the weave of reception and interpretation operates at either a microswitch level - you flick back and forth below self-awareness - or (if these are indeed different) they have long ago pre-emptively adapted to one another and become one thing

clearly there are primarily absorbtive, primarily intuitive and primarily analytic states (others too probably), but i take their permament codependence and constant interraction as constitutive of consciousness in itself anyway

Tom -- are you deliberately attempting to sabotage my attempt to get some work done this week?

-- alex t (alex...), September 25th, 2001 1:00 AM. (admin)

Yes.

-- Tom (ebro...), September 25th, 2001 1:00 AM. (admin)

it isn't; but other scientific phenomena are; ie actually existing forces were not perceived (of course, now i'm at a loss for one, but discovery of planets might do). i used a bad example i suppose.

okay -- in some cases let's say it's hard to dissociate the phenomenon from its alleged causes. having a ruddy face for example... ach, i'll come back when i know what i'm on about.

no doubt; i suppose i'm just impatient, but that seems basically mealy-mouthed (i'm using the proper terminology here). what if they aren't consistent, however? which is more than likely to be the case
for example, ideas of historical causation.

i could accept that strictly our own understanding ox [x] phenomena is itself partial; i still have to bum rides off of people.

if pluto was "beyond text" then we STILL wouldn't know we'd discovered it

If the texts aren't consistent we have to doubt the texts, the explanation, or the assumption that the phenomena now are as they were then.

I'm not sure what you mean by ideas of historical causation.

"this is after all (among other things) a theory of active consciousness in time"

well, in any theory you have one motive force privileged above others: god, men, economic 'forces', for example. history remains as controversial as ever because of these conflicting worldviews; and i imagine it's similar, but not quite so similar, in science. it's hard to dissociate phenomena from causes very often. but in any case, mark's right that pluto was 'beyond text' for ppl 100 years ago; i'm trying to understand derrida, and see if he wd feel that that meant pluto did not exist 100 years ago. this is basic stuff i know.

i.e. what does it mean to be a good "reader" of something that is not a book and why is it useful?

what can we elaborate as ways to be a reader?

ie the modernist irruption = artists/craftsmen honing their conscious round the material requirements of what they worked on (material = technique, content AND the stuff it wz made of) in order not to be caught up in the overweaning rationalised ideology of conformism-via-OFFICIAL-"texts")

ie yes we DO get distracted by text-vs-notext argts, when actually politics and the social whatever is - in part - abt the distinctions and battles between levels and types of text (and our mastery of same)

Another thinker who could be inserted into that dialectic is Raymond Williams. He seems to me to hve had an urge to 'complicate' which did not mean a total lack of illumination. NB that this is not a blanket defence of his work.

Your point that JD has taken up stances on nukes and apartheid appears to me to back up my claim that we do not philosophers to tell us what stances to take on such issues: or rather, that his views on those matters (which are probably just fine) are no more exceptional than yours or mine.

I think it is a mistake to say: 'Look, JD has taken up positions on nukes, apartheid and whether killing kittens is wrong - therefore he has something (philosophically?) special to contribute to our politics'.

I do not claim that you have said that.

And what text is modified by the rule, the glue-pot, the nails?

"Our knowledge of thing's length, the temperature of the glue, and the solidity of the box."

Would anything be gained by this assimilation of expressions?

(okay okay, sorry about that)

Alex mentioned that Derrida has avoided taking public stances

No, he did at certain points -- i.e. until the mid-to-late 70s. However he has been quite selective, and is I think quite distrustful of the idea of the intellectual as someone whose views on major world events should be solicited. He has taken public stances (this is by no means an exhaustive list, but based on what I can remember of the top of my head) on topics including: Palestine, the wearing of headscarves in French schools, immigration laws, Czech dissidents (before and after his arrest in Prague), apartheid...

trying to understand derrida, and see if he wd feel that that meant pluto did not exist 100 years ago.

In his introduction to Husserl's Origin of Geometry Derrida argues that Husserl encounters a problem accounting for the historicity of ideal structures. i.e. the laws of geometry are clearly non-material; they also originate at a point in time (they are made not discovered). However they are then clearly in some way transcendental, i.e. not dependent on their material inscription in some form (including in people's minds, memories, not just in books or on stone tablets). Husserl's solution to this problem does not satisfy Derrida (can't remember quite what it is) but rather than come up with EITHER the Kantian conclusion -- time and space are a priori conditions of consciousness, but do derive from the human mind -- which tends to divide a realm of transcendental constants from an inaccessible material reality -- OR the materialist solution -- that ideas are functions of particular sets of material, social and historical circumstances (which leads to relativism), Derrida suggests that *everything* is like geometry, and has a quasi-transcendental status. i.e. Pluto (like any other 'event' (i.e. an ordering or naming of an instance in the manifold of space/time) doesn't exist until its origin (discovery): but that origin is in principle repeatable from the very beginning, so there can be no particular priority attached to that beginning. (Or you might say, as soon as it has been discovered, it has always been there). (I think I've explained this right, but it's a tricky question)

Sterling's idea that we read the world through text sounds much more like Fred Jameson in The Political Unconscious -- i.e. there is a real world out there, but our access to it is mediated by texts -- which a) assumes the existence of a real world (as opposed to an unreal world?) independent of our consciousness of it but b) separates our knowledge from it forever, and seems to regress to Kant. I think Derrida is a realist (this is a disputed point, but C. Norris argues it quite convincingly) and so when he says 'text' he doesn't mean 'this thing between me and the world', he means 'the world'. That which 'IS', is like text, making the analogy viable, because it can never be definitely said to be (which would mean being able to distinguish that which is from that which isn't, presence from absence), so it has the indeterminate and unfinished character of a text / a ghost / quasi-transcendental geometry etc. But in both Derrida and de Man there is a privilege attached to 'materiality' (de Man) or things, which remain or resist (Derrida). But this is not a materialism, since ideas are equally singular and resistant to being subsumed under concepts (to use a more Adorno-esque terminology) as things are.

that assimilation and translation may be loss as well as gain eg (my theory of music is partly that its apparent "untranslateability" is a central part of its social value, and that its generation of a communal will-to-translate is another.... these two values are in tension i think) (also this theory of music may be in tension w.my overall "text"-thesis: i don't know cz i only just thought of this)

"yes but if the world is all text does pluto exist before we discover it?"
"it's in the NEXT CHAPTER d00d!"

>>This is pure ideology, and fails to take into account that narrative tends to be made after events, and to confer sense (often spuriously) onto them retrospectively. We actually experience the world through our senses (ie phenomenologically), which might be a better reason for invoking 'Heidigger' (sic).

I am pleased to have successfully arrived at the world's first example of pure ideology! Anyhow mark pretty much said what I'd say - that narrative is ongoing, permanently occurring; that sense-events are also construed within narrative (i.e., "I am writing" is non-different from "I wrote"). Again this is cinniblount's "I am eating the fries" from upthread. Our experiences = narratives in progress, else all is chaos! Which it is, and can't be, hence Derrida

I also think that cardigans and wee bracelets made of sweets should be worn in all Scottish schools.

exactly -- does deconstruction exist for those millions of us who kno nothing of it? has derrida said anything before you read him?