All posts filed under: derrida

Notes on Derrida’s “Structure, Sign and Play in the Human Sciences”

Saturday, March 11, 2017
by Taylor Adkins
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deconstruction / derrida / Levi-Strauss / Nietzsche / structuralism / Uncategorized

Derrida: “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” From Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978): 278-93. “We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things” (Montaigne). Derrida refers to the history of the concept of structure and an “event” in that history (it should be noted that in this opening paragraph, Derrida himself highlights the bracketing of the term event in quotation marks to […]

Quiet

Wednesday, September 30, 2009
by Joseph Weissman
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counter-linguistics / derrida / resistance / schizophrenia / silence

Silence, that shadow of language in which everything is nevertheless said, is today almost always but a lapse, the momentary oversight of an animal which acts as though in speech it found its very reality, its absolute and primary function. The distinction between language and noise dwindles, and yet is taken all the more seriously. Too often our silence seems but a desire to escape noise; it is so rarely to evade our enslavement. And […]

Fair Reflection

Saturday, May 31, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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axiom / derrida / diagram / fear / Interpretation / joy / Marx / proof / property

The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property — historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production — this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property you […]

Deconstructing Cybernetics

Saturday, January 19, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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abstract machine / catastrophe / chaos / communication / conservatism / cybernetics / decentralization / derrida / distinction / exteriority / godel / humanity / machine / metaphysics / ontology / spencer-brown / spirit / writing

Notes on Derrida and Cybernetics Let us conjecture that the invention of the transistor — an auto-controllable circuit — indicates the attainment of a critical level of development in cybernetics, a “tipping point.” Then for writing the corresponding moment is the invention of the video camera, perhaps more precisely the photograph: now seeing is writing, literally marking. Visio-literature is the only kind that can ever exists for us today — even ancient literature is post-modern […]

Systems of Control: Derrida and Machines

Wednesday, January 16, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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automation / control / cybernetics / derrida / history / human / machine / metaphysics / nonhuman / system

(notes for an abstract) If the theory of cybernetics is by itself to oust all metaphysical concepts — including the concepts of soul, of life, of value, of choice, of memory — which until recently served to separate the machine from man, it must conserve the notion of writing, trace, written mark, or grapheme, until its own historico-metaphysical character is also exposed. […[E]ven before being determined as human… or nonhuman, the gramme — or the […]