Lars Johnson

ENGL 752

July 19, 2004

Discussion Points:

Derrida, “Of Grammatology,” and “Dissemination”

I offer the following (rudimentary) questions and issues in the spirit of Meno commenting on Socrates’ bewitching and venomous use of logos:

If I may be flippant, I think that not only in outward appearance but in other respects as well you are exactly like the flat stingray that one meets in the sea. Whenever anyone comes into contact with it, it numbs him, and that is the sort of thing you seem to be doing to me now. My mind and my lips are literally numb, and I have nothing to reply to you . . . . (1865)

1) The tenets of Structuralism (especially Saussure’s linguistic theory) influenced the strategies Derrida applies to the reading of a text—what elements of Structuralism inform Derrida’s approach, and, more precisely, how does Derrida complicate Sassure’s idea of the arbitrary relationship between the sign = signifier/signified?

2) In regard to the above it might be useful to define Derrida’s notions of difference/differance; supplementation; logocentrism; the transcendental signified. . .

3) In “Of Grammatology,” Derrida argues for a new process of “critical reading,” one which “must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer, between what he commands and what he does not command of the patterns of the language that he uses. This relationship is not a certain quantitative distribution of shadow and light, of weakness or of force, but a signifying structure that critical reading should produce” (1825). How is Derrida’s definition of “critical reading” both informed by and opposed to a Formalist or New Critical approach to a text? What does Derrida mean by “doubling the text,” and why is this reductive? What are the implications for “critical reading” when one realizes that “in each case, the person writing is inscribed in a determined textual system.” (1826)?

4) In both “Of Grammatology” and “Dissemination,” Derrida posits that within Western metaphysics speech has been privileged over writing, and one of his intents seems to be to reverse the binary speech/writing—this is the primary focus of his explication of the pharmakon in Plato’s Phaedrus. Is Derrida simply substituting one hierarchy for another, or opening up new avenues of meaning in the space between presence and absence? If so, what elements or characteristics must be examined, included, valorized in order to create meaning in the space Derrida opens?