Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 08:25:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Language and Discourse




On Fri, 30 Jun 1995 PhilMill-AT-aol.com wrote:

> 	If I understand you correctly, you are saying that the question of 
> priority between language and discourse is one that Derrida would not 
> allow.  He would say that the question reflects an ordinary, "centered" 
> way of thinking in which we seek an origin or a telos, a point of 
> presence in which thought might get a foothold.  His own way of thinking 
> is "decentered"; he repudiates any question of origins, any desire to 
> find a presence in which thinking might begin or end.

Not quite.  This is how I read Derrida:

Our ordinary 'centered' kind of thinking does not lead us to ponder the 
possibility of a 'rupture' or to ask questions about what comes first, 
language or discourse.  They occur together in our lives, discourse and 
language.  As children, we would never ask which came first.  When we 
become decentered, this question occurs to us and we puzzle about it.  I 
think Derrida does not really go beyond noticing that the question 
reflects this decentering.  That is, I see his work as deconstructive 
rather than ontological.

> 	I agree that Derrida's response to the question might well be 
> along those lines.  But I can't help asking _why_ Derrida would feel 
> compelled to repudiate the possibility of presence and seek that 
> decentered place you refer to.

I think he is in a decentered place, as all of us in this list are, too, 
and now he is decentering his decentering.  That is, he is looking at 
himself looking at himself, etc.  Personally, I think there is something 
to be said for moving back and forth.

  I gather it's because (in contrast to 
> Husserl and Heidegger) he thinks there is no "transcendental signified," 
> no possibility of moving from discourse to the things themselves.  

I think the decision to say the transcendental signified is unreachable 
is trivial.  It is a decision to define the transcendental signified in 
such a way that it would be incoherent to think of reaching it.  But 
reaching the transcendental signified is not the same as being centered.  
The transcendental signified is real beyond the naive illusions of the 
centered consciousness, by definition, and one cannot reach it by 
remaining centered.  It is the motiviation for becoming decentered, for 
trying to understand beyond the illusions of language.

But 
> doesn't Derrida's rejection of the transcendental signified rest 
> ultimately on his view of meaning as "differance"?  We can't get from 
> discourse to a presence of the things themselves, he says, because our 
> own meanings are opaque to us, depending as they do on a play of 
> differences which we do not control.  But doesn't this view of meaning 
> imply a Saussurian characterization of discourse in terms of the 
> language system disclosed in structuralist linguistic science?

I haven't looked at this paper for a while and not have a copy.  I tend 
to read the word 'differance' as a 'difference that makes a difference in 
the way we perceive the world, a discrimination that we naturally bring 
to what we observe and talk about.'  Maybe you can help me with that.  
But if I am interpreting differance correctly, I must say that it does 
not seem to imply a Saussurian model of signification.  The Saussurian 
model is merely one evoked to explain the fact that people notice the 
world in terms of differences that make a difference to them.


> 	I'm hesitant to attempt to deconstruct the Deconstructor, but it 
> does seem to me that the movement of Derrida's thought implies that 
> language is prior to discourse, even if you are right in saying that he 
> himself would reject any explicit statement (or even question) to that 
> effect.

Well, language is prior to discourse for any given human being.  One can 
imagine language and discourse having developed, however,  side by side 
that the question of which came first becomes, in this genetic model of 
things, rather meaningless (No?)  I am not sure what it is in Derrida's 
discussion that would lead to saying anything more than this about 
language being prior to discourse.

..Lois shawver


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