If nothing can take God's place as an anchor, can words and ideas still hold a stable meaning?
31 claims from this lecture, in the order Marci Shore makes them, with the 15 terms it leans on and its 14 links to other lectures.
I often describe deconstruction as something which happens. It's not purely linguistic, involving text or books. You can deconstruct gestures, choreography. That's why I enlarged the concept of text.
Jacques Derrida. The epigraph Shore gives this lecture.
By number of claims in this lecture.
Shore’s own judgments and connections
The 7 claims the lecture spends most time on.
From the ancient Greeks through Saussure, Western metaphysics has favored speech over writing: a speaking self seems immediately there, offering a window onto inner consciousness that writing lacks.
Put simply Derrida: since the ancient Greeks, Western thinkers have ranked speech above writing. A speaker seems to be right there, giving a direct view into their mind, while writing seems one step removed.
A sign can only be a stable unity if something anchors it: an arche or transcendental signified that fixes the signifier-signified gap as absolute and irreducible.
Put simply Derrida: a word could keep one fixed meaning only if something outside language anchored it, a first origin or ultimate meaning (a "transcendental signified") that ties word and meaning together for good.
Not only is God dead; so is every would-be successor. History, Man, the Self, any transcendental signified: none exists to ground meaning or hold a system together.
Put simply Derrida: God is dead, and so is everything people tried to put in God's place, such as History, Man or the Self. Nothing exists that could ground meaning or hold a system of thought together.
Différance packs both meanings of the French différer, differing and deferring, together: meaning is other than its neighbors and still to come, so synchronic and diachronic are handled together.
Put simply Derrida's word "différance" joins "differ" and "defer." Meaning comes from differing from other words, and it is never finished, always still to come. So he studies language at one moment and over time together.
Derrida's essay on de Man's war has been called deconstruction's bankruptcy and one of the finest texts on intellectual friendship ever written; Shore feels both are, in some sense, true.
Put simply Shore: Derrida's essay on his late friend Paul de Man's Nazi-era journalism has been called both the bankruptcy of deconstruction and one of the finest texts on friendship. Shore thinks both are partly true.
Deconstruction is politics in the good sense, an antidote to the absolutist truth claims behind Nazism and Stalinism: "the at least necessary condition for identifying and combating the totalitarian risk."
Put simply Derrida: deconstruction is political in a good way. By taking apart claims to absolute truth, like those behind Nazism and Stalinism, it is at least a precondition for spotting and fighting totalitarianism.
Shore finds deconstruction thrilling and provoking, but it ultimately leaves us hanging as the avant-garde was: the leap opens every possibility and offers no handhold.
Put simply Shore finds deconstruction thrilling and provocative, but in the end it leaves us dangling, as the avant-garde artists were: once you jump, anything is possible, but there is nothing to hold on to.
Read down to follow the lecture. The time opens that minute on YouTube.
Asked whether God can be replaced, the question this course began with, postmodernism will answer, in Shore's summary, no.
Nobody really escapes Hegel. Even Foucault and Derrida, who reject any sure direction in history, keep some form of dialectic, because ideas once loose are recombined and inverted, never erased.
Put simply Shore: no one really escapes Hegel's idea that history moves through clashing opposites. Even Foucault and Derrida, who deny history has a sure direction, keep some version of it, because ideas once released get remixed and reversed, never erased.
For Shore, Marxism symbolically died as a passionately held worldview when Warsaw Pact tanks ended Prague's socialism with a human face in 1968; that post-structuralism took off just then is, she says, no coincidence.
Put simply Shore: Marxism symbolically died as a passionate belief in 1968, when Soviet-bloc tanks crushed Prague's experiment in a humane socialism. That post-structuralism took off just then is, she says, no coincidence.
Derrida, a dismantler in Nietzsche's line, gives us no system and not even Foucault's usable method, only an invitation to read and think differently, treating life as a text.
To Derrida, anything linear, one-directional or Hegelian feels totalitarian, and goes with an illusion: that a transcendental signified, a unifying first principle, exists.
Put simply To Derrida, anything linear or one-directional, anything Hegelian, feels totalitarian. It goes with an illusion: that a single unifying first principle, a stand-in for God, exists.
The postmodern, in Lyotard's famous 1979 formula, is "incredulity toward meta-narratives": a refusal to believe any single grand story could gather everything up and make it cohere.
To deconstruct is to take apart, not merely to smash. The target is stability itself: any meaning that claims to be settled, decisive and self-anchoring, structuralism's binaries among them.
Put simply Derrida: to deconstruct means to take apart, not just to smash. What he takes apart is any meaning that claims to be settled and to hold itself in place, including structuralism's neat paired opposites.
As Derrida reads him, Lévi-Strauss holds that writing reached the societies he studied as a corruption: hierarchy, control and even violence came with it, and an innocence was lost.
From the ancient Greeks through Saussure, Western metaphysics has favored speech over writing: a speaking self seems immediately there, offering a window onto inner consciousness that writing lacks.
Put simply Derrida: since the ancient Greeks, Western thinkers have ranked speech above writing. A speaker seems to be right there, giving a direct view into their mind, while writing seems one step removed.
Speech cannot guarantee presence, because the one speaking is not necessarily present even to himself; so presence versus absence, like speech versus writing, is a binary to be dismantled.
Put simply Derrida: speaking does not prove that someone is truly "present", because the speaker is not fully present even to himself. So presence versus absence, like speech versus writing, is a contrast to be taken apart.
Any given sign draws its meaning from the signifiers it is not, which are absent; so language turns on absence more than on presence.
Put simply Derrida: a word gets its meaning from all the words it is not ("cat" is not "bat" or "hat"), and those are absent. So language depends more on what is missing than on what is there.
Derrida's opening question on writing echoes Heidegger twice: needing a preliminary idea of writing before asking where it begins is the hermeneutic circle, and "always already" is Heidegger's phrase.
Put simply Shore hears Heidegger twice in Derrida. To ask where writing begins, you must already have some idea of what writing is: Heidegger's "hermeneutic circle." And "always already" is Heidegger's phrase.
Deconstruction is not confined to books: gestures, choreography, even a room of diners count as text, because Derrida has widened the notion of text to take in all of life.
Put simply Derrida: deconstruction is not only for books. Gestures, dance, even a restaurant full of diners can be read as a "text", because he stretches the word "text" to cover all of life.
A sign can only be a stable unity if something anchors it: an arche or transcendental signified that fixes the signifier-signified gap as absolute and irreducible.
Put simply Derrida: a word could keep one fixed meaning only if something outside language anchored it, a first origin or ultimate meaning (a "transcendental signified") that ties word and meaning together for good.
Not only is God dead; so is every would-be successor. History, Man, the Self, any transcendental signified: none exists to ground meaning or hold a system together.
Put simply Derrida: God is dead, and so is everything people tried to put in God's place, such as History, Man or the Self. Nothing exists that could ground meaning or hold a system of thought together.
Play is Derrida's word for signifiers bouncing off one another; with no transcendental signified to cap it, that play has no limit and signification extends infinitely.
Put simply Derrida: words keep bouncing off one another, which he calls "play". With no ultimate meaning to stop it, this play has no limit, so meaning spreads without end.
Structuralism's central pairs, nature and culture, empirical and rational, sensible and intelligible, are in some measure ideological constructs: never as tidy as they look, and always open to being undone.
Put simply Derrida: the paired opposites structuralism relied on, such as nature versus culture, are partly ideological constructions. They are never as tidy as they look and can always be undone.
Eagleton's hostile illustration of deconstruction: man becomes himself only by endlessly shutting woman out as his opposite, so his identity hangs on, and is endangered by, what he excludes.
Put simply Eagleton, a hostile critic of deconstruction, illustrates how it unravels opposites: man defines himself by constantly shutting woman out as his opposite, so his identity depends on, and is endangered by, what he excludes.
Différance packs both meanings of the French différer, differing and deferring, together: meaning is other than its neighbors and still to come, so synchronic and diachronic are handled together.
Put simply Derrida's word "différance" joins "differ" and "defer." Meaning comes from differing from other words, and it is never finished, always still to come. So he studies language at one moment and over time together.
The trace is what a signifier carries of meanings it seems not to have: a leftover, neither quite there nor quite gone, on which its own sense may nonetheless rest.
Put simply Derrida's "trace": every word carries faint leftovers of other meanings it does not seem to have. They are neither fully there nor fully gone, yet the word's own meaning may depend on them.
An aporia, or double bind, is the point where language turns on itself: caught between two meanings that cannot both hold, one reaches an impasse where no meaning seems possible.
Put simply Derrida's "aporia" or "double bind": the point where language contradicts itself. Caught between two meanings that cannot both hold, you reach a dead end where no meaning seems possible.
Shore's own illustration of aporia is the Stalinist terror: everyone had to watch ceaselessly for enemies lurking anywhere, even as history's iron laws supposedly guaranteed the communist future.
Put simply Shore's own example of a self-contradiction ("aporia") is Stalin's terror. People had to watch constantly for hidden enemies everywhere, yet history's laws supposedly guaranteed communism's victory anyway.
Derrida's essay on de Man's war has been called deconstruction's bankruptcy and one of the finest texts on intellectual friendship ever written; Shore feels both are, in some sense, true.
Put simply Shore: Derrida's essay on his late friend Paul de Man's Nazi-era journalism has been called both the bankruptcy of deconstruction and one of the finest texts on friendship. Shore thinks both are partly true.
Yet "on the other hand," Derrida argues, the whole of de Man's antisemitic article is "organized as an indictment of vulgar antisemitism": its meaning undoes itself.
Put simply Derrida then argues the other side: read closely, his friend Paul de Man's antisemitic article is built as an attack on crude antisemitism. Its meaning, he claims, undoes itself.
De Man's antisemitic 1941 article held that Western literature's resisting Jewish influence proved its vitality, and that removing Jews to an isolated colony would cost it only a few mediocre writers.
Derrida grants that de Man's 1941 article is antisemitic, verging on a call for exclusion and even deportation, and that no analysis will heal the wound it gave him.
Put simply Derrida, writing about his late friend Paul de Man's wartime article of 1941, admits it is antisemitic and close to urging exclusion and even deportation. No analysis, he says, will heal the wound.
Followed line by line, Derrida's brilliant unpicking of de Man's article convinces: meaning does seem to dissolve. Step away for five minutes and the verdict reverses: it does not work.
Put simply Shore: read slowly, line by line, Derrida's brilliant analysis of de Man's article seems to show its meaning unraveling. Walk away for five minutes and you think: no, it doesn't work.
Deconstruction is politics in the good sense, an antidote to the absolutist truth claims behind Nazism and Stalinism: "the at least necessary condition for identifying and combating the totalitarian risk."
Put simply Derrida: deconstruction is political in a good way. By taking apart claims to absolute truth, like those behind Nazism and Stalinism, it is at least a precondition for spotting and fighting totalitarianism.
Shore sometimes finds it hard not to suspect something psychologically self-serving in de Man's embrace of aporia: for someone wanting to disown his past, denying any persisting self is appealing.
Put simply Shore admits she sometimes cannot help suspecting that de Man's embrace of a philosophy where meaning undoes itself was self-serving. For someone wanting to cut himself off from his past, believing in no lasting self is appealing.
There are two ways to think the absent center: mourn it, in the sad, guilty, nostalgic Rousseauist manner, or affirm with Nietzsche the joyous play of a world without origin.
Put simply Derrida: with no fixed center, we can respond in two ways. Mourn it, sadly, guiltily and nostalgically, in Rousseau's manner. Or celebrate, with Nietzsche, the joyful free play of a world with no origin.
Shore finds deconstruction thrilling and provoking, but it ultimately leaves us hanging as the avant-garde was: the leap opens every possibility and offers no handhold.
Put simply Shore finds deconstruction thrilling and provocative, but in the end it leaves us dangling, as the avant-garde artists were: once you jump, anything is possible, but there is nothing to hold on to.
15 of these 15 first come up in this lecture. Definitions are our paraphrase.
Where a claim here answers an earlier lecture, and where a later lecture answers a claim here. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.
ShoreThe candidates Shore names for God's vacant place, Man and History (both capitalized), set up a lasting tension between subjectivity, a turn inward, and teleology, time's forward motion. L1 · 42:16
DerridaNot only is God dead; so is every would-be successor. History, Man, the Self, any transcendental signified: none exists to ground meaning or hold a system together. L22 · 28:52
Nothing, whether History, Man or Self, can fill the place God left
HegelHistory's end, for Hegel, is a mystical point where all oppositions (freedom and necessity, is and ought, subject and object) dissolve into synthesis; nobody has ever witnessed it. L4 · 41:30
DerridaTo Derrida, anything linear, one-directional or Hegelian feels totalitarian, and goes with an illusion: that a transcendental signified, a unifying first principle, exists. L22 · 16:37
Derrida calls Hegel's linear march toward a final synthesis totalitarian.
HegelHegel's slogan "the true is the whole" means everything is interdependent and intelligible only together; since a totality shows itself only from its end, meaning arrives in retrospect. L4 · 46:56
LyotardThe postmodern, in Lyotard's famous 1979 formula, is "incredulity toward meta-narratives": a refusal to believe any single grand story could gather everything up and make it cohere. L22 · 17:41
Incredulity toward any grand story claiming to hold the whole togetherOur inference
NietzscheNo replacement God can end the nihilist crisis, and every such attempt fails, because wanting an ordering principle is where the crisis began: the disorder has no real cure. L6 · 46:11
DerridaNot only is God dead; so is every would-be successor. History, Man, the Self, any transcendental signified: none exists to ground meaning or hold a system together. L22 · 28:52
No new God or substitute order can cure the lossOur inference
NietzscheSuffering is not wholly negative and should be embraced, not merely endured, because whoever says yes to one joy says yes to every woe: "all things are entangled, ensnared, enamored." L6 · 32:55
DerridaThere are two ways to think the absent center: mourn it, in the sad, guilty, nostalgic Rousseauist manner, or affirm with Nietzsche the joyous play of a world without origin. L22 · 50:15
In the passage Shore quotes, Derrida himself names the joyous alternative to mourning the lost center "Nietzschean affirmation".
FreudWe can never fully know ourselves: what is most basic in us sits in the unconscious, so the self stays opaque to itself and permanently at odds with itself. L9 · 48:02
DerridaSpeech cannot guarantee presence, because the one speaking is not necessarily present even to himself; so presence versus absence, like speech versus writing, is a binary to be dismantled. L22 · 22:10
Shore points to Freud in Derrida's claim that the speaking self is not present to itself: the self is hidden from the self.
SaussureNothing natural or God-given ties a signifier to its signified: the word dog refers to dogs only by differing from cat and hog, and by sheer convention. L10 · 20:22
DerridaAny given sign draws its meaning from the signifiers it is not, which are absent; so language turns on absence more than on presence. L22 · 22:36
If meaning comes from differences, it depends more on what is absent than presentOur inference
HeideggerAsking what Being is presupposes some rough prior sense of it; without that, the question could not even be framed. The questioner is already inside: the hermeneutic circle. L12 · 19:52
ShoreDerrida's opening question on writing echoes Heidegger twice: needing a preliminary idea of writing before asking where it begins is the hermeneutic circle, and "always already" is Heidegger's phrase. L22 · 23:11
Shore hears echoes of Heidegger's hermeneutic circle in Derrida's point that one must already know what writing is to ask where it begins.
BeauvoirBeauvoir's diagnosis: man is treated as the default human, woman as the derivative; a man need never introduce himself as belonging to a sex, while she is "defined and differentiated with reference to man." L16 · 34:05
EagletonEagleton's hostile illustration of deconstruction: man becomes himself only by endlessly shutting woman out as his opposite, so his identity hangs on, and is endangered by, what he excludes. L22 · 33:38
Man defines himself by excluding woman, and depends on what he excludesOur inference
KosíkIf iron laws drive history inexorably toward a goal, how can that be squared with human striving, or with human activity meaning anything? Kosík holds this antinomy still unresolved. L18 · 42:00
ShoreShore's own illustration of aporia is the Stalinist terror: everyone had to watch ceaselessly for enemies lurking anywhere, even as history's iron laws supposedly guaranteed the communist future. L22 · 38:30
The antinomy of iron laws versus responsibility reappears as the aporia of Stalinist vigilanceOur inference
Lévi-StraussClassical structuralism, as it comes through Lévi-Strauss's anthropology, charts many cultural relations as binary oppositions: cooked against raw, low against high, cold against hot. L19 · 43:52
DerridaTo deconstruct is to take apart, not merely to smash. The target is stability itself: any meaning that claims to be settled, decisive and self-anchoring, structuralism's binaries among them. L22 · 19:14
Structuralism's clean binaries do not hold; post-structuralism begins by unsettling them
Lévi-StraussKinship can be read as a language: its relations form a system on Saussure's model, where each term has value only by differing from the others. L19 · 42:15
DerridaDeconstruction is not confined to books: gestures, choreography, even a room of diners count as text, because Derrida has widened the notion of text to take in all of life. L22 · 23:32
All culture as language becomes all of life as text
SaussureStudying how a language changes over time and studying how it works as a system at one moment are separate disciplines; neither is inferior, but a linguist picks one. L19 · 21:45
DerridaDifférance packs both meanings of the French différer, differing and deferring, together: meaning is other than its neighbors and still to come, so synchronic and diachronic are handled together. L22 · 35:55
Différance fuses the synchronic and diachronic axes that Saussure kept strictly apart
DerridaDeconstruction is not confined to books: gestures, choreography, even a room of diners count as text, because Derrida has widened the notion of text to take in all of life. L22 · 23:32
EagletonEagleton's jab: deconstruction's dogma, that we are locked inside our discourse, lets you wreck everyone else's beliefs while holding none; an invulnerable position, and emptiness is its price. L23 · 4:52
If everything is text, deconstruction can demolish every belief while holding noneOur inference
Throughlines that pass through this lecture.
As they come up in the lecture.
Derrida born in Algeria.
Nazi occupation of Belgium; de Man begins writing for collaborationist papers.
Jews in Contemporary Literature Les Juifs dans la littérature actuelle
De Man publishes "Les Juifs dans la littérature actuelle".
Tristes Tropiques Tristes Tropiques
Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines
Johns Hopkins conference on structuralism: Derrida presents his paper and meets de Man.
On Grammatology De la grammatologie
Writing and Difference L'écriture et la différence
Writing and Difference and On Grammatology published.
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia ends the Prague Spring.
The Postmodern Condition La condition postmoderne
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition published.
Paul de Man dies of cancer.
Graduate student finds de Man's wartime collaborationist journalism and sends it to Derrida.
Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell: Paul de Man's War
Derrida publishes "Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell: Paul de Man's War".