Quotes from Jeff Collins

Secondly, is there "something" to be defined or translated? Derrida resisted the suggestion that there is a concept of deconstruction, simply present to the word, outside of the word's inscription in sentences and phrases determined by the undecidables. There's no such concept simply to pass over into other words, other languages.

elements or origins.

Unformed, monstrous, and perhaps unidentifiable, deconstruction has moved virally through fields beyond philosophy and theory. Derrida advanced its progress in architecture, art, politics and law. And especially, in literature…

So as a last resort, can deconstruction be described as a project? Not if it has an outcome staked out in advance, a goal which predetermines its movements. Such a goal would govern foundationally. Deconstruction might clear pathways for its movements, but not knowing entirely where they lead.

Once the aberrant logic of the pharmakon is let loose, it poisons the fixity and clarity of the other oppositions grouped around it. For instance, Plato's argument relies on father/son, Egyptian/Greek, original/derivation. Can we be sure of these? In Derrida's hands, they start to unravel. He turns to the "original" Egyptian myth where the characters are Thoth and King Ammon. Thoth is the son of the sun god, Ammon.

So Thoth opposes his father-king, but he opposes what he himself repeats. He opposes himself. Thoth, the demi-god, is undecidable. And so is Theuth, his Greek counterpart…

Every act of his is marked by an unstable ambivalence. He is the god of calculation, arithmetic and rational science; and he also presides over the occult sciences, astrology and alchemy. He is the god of magic formulae, of secret accounts, of hidden texts. And so he is the god of medicine. The god of writing is the god of the pharmakon…

but rather a sort of joker, a floating signifier, a wild card, one who puts play into play." And this joker is the inventor of play, of games of draughts, dice

Instead of countering Plato's argument, or approving it or modifying it, Derrida insists on its instabilities. It is inhabited at every turn by an undecidability that it cannot fully master.

In speech, the speaker and the listener have to be present in at least two senses:- A Present to the words in a spatial sense B Present at a particular moment in time in which the words are uttered. Therefore it seems that the speakers' thoughts are as close as possible to their words. The thoughts are present to the words. So speech offers the most direct access to consciousness. The voice can seem to be consciousness itself.

So now we begin to understand the paradoxical phonocentric "history of silence", that repression of writing which can scarcely be acknowledged.

Undecidables disrupt this oppositional logic. They slip across both sides of an opposition but don't properly fit either. They are more than the opposition can allow. And because of that, they question the very principle of "opposition".

But Derrida is confronting an argument for the priority of speech over writing. A side issue? According to Derrida, setting speech to rule over writing is crucial to the underpinning presuppositions of Western philosophy.

Derrida maintains that through three millenia of Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Rousseau, Hegel, Husserl and others, philosophers have indeed privileged speech. What have they claimed?

Différance is actively disruptive. Language, thought and meaning aren't to be allowed the comfort of their daily routines. If that leaves philosophical language ruined, sick with its own instabilities, what about ordinary language and everyday communication? Can we rely on grounded decidability in the supermarket, the office and the lecture hall?

lost. So the /p/ is in a way present, though not simply so. It is carried as a trace in the /b/, necessarily

Neither simply present nor simply absent, the trace is an undecidable. The relay of differences (pig, big, bag, rag, rat, etc) depends upon a structural undecidability, a play of presence and absence at the origin of meaning. Undecidability at the "origin", between presence and absence.

Concepts need their physical sounds, their scripted marks, etc. Even if we can imagine words "inside our head", we are conjuring their signifiers, their sensory aspects.

an undecidable presence-absence at the origin of meaning.

Does this eradicate CONTEXT? For Derrida, no. There are contexts, but they have no centre and can never entirely govern meanings.

Now, if the trace is a constant sliding between presence and absence, those philosophical words cannot establish full, replete presence.

This strikes at the very roots of Western metaphysics, because it's the claim to full presence which underpins metaphysical concepts and procedures.

Derrida has argued that communication is always subject to iterability, citation and grafting. If so, it can't be taken as a guaranteed, masterable passage of meanings. Language, Derrida says, is a "non-masterable dissemination". If that's the case, we lose absolute assurance that we can "say what we mean" or "know what someone is thinking".

Derrida's texts aren't located "outside" the texts they examine, in a position of attempted mastery or privileged authority. He doesn't simply reject or oppose them. It's more a strategy of inhabiting them, making a destabilizing passage through them, undoing their presuppositions and desedimenting them: stirring up their underlying levels.