/différance/ - Jacques Derrida thread

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>tfw the meaning of any text is translation/deconstruction
>tfw the margins define the centre
>tfw you look like a mtg planeswalker
>tfw you fucking ruined literature

what good has ever come of faggots reading derrida? nietzsche claims hesse & miller. bergson has nabokov. derrida has... danielsskkwky?

>>8618462
I'm not sure I even understand what you are asking, but Derrida didn't consider any text to be specifically "literary" (unlike his colleague Paul de Man). For Derrida, there is no essential difference between reading fiction, the text of society or philosophy, as long as you can get interesting play out of it.

That being said, he does have interesting literary analyses. I recommend his reading of Paul Celan's "Niemand zeugt für den Zeugen" and Kafkas "Vor dem Gesetz".

>>8618456
Derrida is for faggots. Only read his essay on "gravity/Einstein theory" to realize that the only speak shit without even understanding it (also, read Weinberg's reply to Derrida)

>>8618476
When the scientism ideology encounters somethings it doesn't understand, it turns its attention to specific mentions of itself within the text it doesn't understand. It's a surprisingly egotistical turn.

No, Derrida is not an expert in theoretical physics, as I imagine neither is the poster. What is important to him in certain (really not that many) texts are the semiotics *surrounding* the natural sciences. Do you disagree that, for us uninitiated non-scientists, there is a certain system of signs available to us, surrounding it and perhaps even shrouding it in a kind of mystique and fetishism? If you can agree with this position, it should be a natural response to study and critique this sign system and how it may affect people.

>>8618484
Dude, I am a professional theoretical physicist. Even before that, I came across to Derrida article, it is shit. I mean, if people working on gravity has no fucking idea what this guy is talking about when talking about gravity, it means it is shit.

The fact I don't have a fucking clue, nor a nobel laureate, nor anyone else working on gravity, means that Derrida was talking just for talking. Unless the point of modern philosophy is to not be understood, which make it even worse.

>>8618456
Can you write something about Derrida and how he relates to the structuralists and post structuralists?

>>8618498
If you can't see the basic distinction between talking about something as a theoretical-physical study and talking about the semiotics surrounding it, I'm sorry, I probably will not be able to help you.

If you are implying that the text is shit because you didn't personally understand it, I think that's a childish and unfair position. As you are theoretical physicist, I wouldn't be able to understand a single word of what you publish, and if I didn't have a certain humility as to my own knowledge and its limits, I would probably also label it as "talking just for talking". Derridas teksts are specialised theoretical reflections, not some kind of kindergarden-variety backyard philosophy. If you can point me in the direction of quotes or texts, I might be able to help you with understanding, but your arrogance clearly makes it a moot point.

>>8618499
Well the best way, in my opinion, to describe structuralism is that it is a collection of human sciences who all have their theoretical, epistemological and methodological origins in the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. Such "applied linguistics" could be the anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss, the marxism of Louis Althusser and the literary theory of Gerard Genette, Rick Altman and the likes.

These "applied" sciences had just gotten a huge breakthrough in academia and were seen as the saviour of the humanities in general. However, Derrida saw in this a certain arrogance and reductionism. He noted, for example, the structuralists tendency to reduce time, history and inheritance to spatiality, difference and oppositions. For example, Levi-Strauss analysis of myth inherits certain linguistic and theoretical traces of Freud, all the while desperately trying to deny any influence of such a filthy, unscientific thinker.

This he did in the essay "Structure, Sign and Play in the History of the Humanities." The essay is regarded as being the very point of departure for post-structuralism, which is exactly this: using structuralism against itself in a reflexive and critical way.

>>8618506
>teksts

>>8618522
Yes, I'm not a native english speaker. You sure rekt me there, I guess. Savage.

>>8618519
>Well the best way, in my opinion, to describe structuralism is that it is a collection of human sciences who all have their theoretical, epistemological and methodological origins in the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure.

Have you ever read the Course in General Linguistics?

>>8618532
Yes.

>>8618534
Do you really feel that structuralism was somehow nascent in the handful of non-specialist non-philological pages that dealt langue/parole?

Just wondering because I notice this sloppy artificial "back to Saussure" pedigree from deconstructionists and especially poststructuralists a lot, which is pretty ironic.

>>8618456
so derrida is the guy saying that to get a text you need to know the social context and the life of the author?

>>8618544
No, he is the guy saying "the text never stops", by which he means that the text you are currently dealing with inherits uses of signs and paradigms of meanings in a complex web from other texts, both in its contemporary (such as the text of the author's life and the text of the social structures) and from its past, in such a way that its boundaries become blurred. This is merely a theoretical point, not a manifesto for writing literary analyses, or even reading texts as such.

>>8618537
Have you read, for example, Levi-Strauss' "The Structural Study of Myth", which is considered quintessential structuralism? Can you deny the inheritance it gets from saussurean concepts such as syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, difference and distinguishedness, signifier and signified, langue and parole and so on? I'm not sure I understand what you are saying, because the influence a nascency of structuralism in Saussure seems incredibly obvious to me. Do you have an example where it's not obvious?

>>8618563
Levi-Strauss' calls for a structuralist paradigm originate in his affiliation with the Prague School which is often considered to have "developed" Saussure with extreme prejudice. Especially if you're contrasting the faddish, end-of-science structuralism of its heyday with Saussure's pleasant plodding for linguistic insights in his final years battling cancer.

That's fine and all, you can still chart the intellectual influences, but it's funny to read someone like Foucault talking about the radical constitution of discourse, free from vulgar "history of ideas" tendencies, and then go "oh structuralism came from Saussure."

>>8618579
Do you consider Foucault a structuralist?

>>8618597
He was claimed and considered as one and rejected it, like a lot of conventionally considered structuralists.

I think he's clearly working from structuralist insights in his "historical ahistoricity" and rejection of Hegel and phenomenology. Like I said, I just find it funny when I read these highfalutin deconstruction and poststructuralism authors, and they lapse into traditional intellectual history and history of ideas every five seconds.

>>8618623
This is a thread *about* deconstruction, not one that seeks to practice it in every word and form and content. That would be absurd and was never the point. You are setting up a situation where you can neatly call me a hypocrite, but I have yet to hear you engage with a single derridean notion in any way whatsoever.

To the poster above I tried to expand on what I consider the best way to define structuralism and post structuralism in clear cut terms, being of course aware that it's difficult to do so at all. On that same not, I have never been close to thinking of Foucault as a structuralist in any way whatsoever. His notion of language seems to me to be very different from Saussure.

>>8618563
this guy gets it.
also, what I grab of Derrida's work is the importance of the reader: once the text is released, the author have no more any right over the interpetation, which is legt solely on the reader

>>8618506

Look dude, my complain about Derrida is not about "my personal feelings." As a scientist, I always look outside science, like most scientist. If I see an article about my field from someone outside it, I usually think it is crackpot stuff (there's a reason why he is not in the field). But you find certain famous/important guy from some other field talking about thing I know and I say "hey, this must be interesting," just like mathematicians when they read about Witten construction of Jordan's polynomials. But then you read this stuff and you say "wtf?" You didn't get anything, or if you did, you totally disagree with it. You ask your peers, they have the same opinion. Someone talk to the guy, so he can clear things up, it turns he doesn't. You really start thinking, "this guy is an asshole."

But, here you get humble and say "maybe I just don't know enough about what he is talking about." Make test, grab all the numbo-jumbo and strange phrases of this guy, and collaborators, and admirers, send it to some journal of the field. It turns, the editors accept the article, they even praise it. Now, you are really sure that all what you though was nonsense is actually nonsense. I mean, you just add the same nonsense in order to make a nonsense text and you get praises because you wrote an amazing essay? Surely those guy are idiots. (By the way, this really happened.)

I really appreciate your offer
> If you can point me in the direction of quotes or texts, I might be able to help you with understanding
but I already tried to understand the text, and it turned out to be totally nonsense.

If you really want to explain something to me, try to explain this phrase
>>8618519
"He noted, for example, the structuralists tendency to reduce time, history and inheritance to spatiality, difference and oppositions"

What the fact does it mean? I really don't get it.

LITERALLY heidegger

there is 0 differance between derrida and heidegger

Derrida is a fraud.
He stole everything from Jean-Baptiste Botul.

>>8618713
Alan Sokal was the physicist who wrote the article for Social Text. This event, plus the responses and counter responses, became known as 'the science wars'.

>>8618713
Sokalposting. Real original there.

Ok i'll try. The typical western way of thinking critically, analytically and scientifically works in relations, oppositions and spatial relations. For example, we could analyse language as consisting of the choosing of specific words and the combination of those choices into sentences. Or we could make an anthropological opposition and say that "the raw" and "the cooked" are two distinct, oppositional concepts that are incredibly important for understanding culture. What we see in these examples is a certain way of thinking in and of itself: cleaving concepts into oppositions, synthetically removing the spatial from the temporal and, more generally, to define fields, times and objects of studies as something clear cut, with boarders and a centre that organises it.

What Derrida asks us to consider are is time. This is why >>8618751 has the right idea - Heidegger's hermeneutics of time really DID lay the foundations for Derrida's critique. What voices from the past do we inherit? What does the phenomenon of time mean for the way of thinking, writing and reading? We forget things as individuals, and destroy archives as societies, or simply don't notice them anymore. We think in new ways and say it's a brand new philosophy, while being unaware of our broader metaphysical inheritance, and thus the phenomenon of time as such.

Something like that.

>>8618856
This is actually why continental philosophy, like Derrida, is difficult to understand or to explain to people. Good continental philosophy tries to be aware of all the inheritances of history and metaphysics that it has, thus making it something along the lines of an artefact the many sedimenting layers. These layers are difficult to grasp, as you can only see them "from above", so to speak, from "now". Continental philosophy is a discussion in layers.

Physics does not have to deal with these problems. History and (meta)physics only matter in so far as they are breakthroughs to destroy or make obsolete older forms of (meta)physics. Thus all the analytical, synthetical, spatial and temporal cleavages and restrictions of fields is not a problem to the discipline. In other words, inheritance of paradigms, signs, meaning and metaphysical doctrine has less consequence in physics, or chemistry.

However, it's not that "simple" when it comes to the humanities or the human sciences, because they are directly related to the way we think about ourselves and thus how we live, organise socially and so on. This is why the sedimenting discussion is still important and needs to be kept going in the most nuanced and sophisticated. Because it's a direct engagement with the current "now" as it can be analyzed, a still more interesting way of thinking about ourselves, our world and so on.

I love you OP. Thank for this thread and replying to everyone with patience, softness and caring. I really hope you have a nice day, a nice week. I am learning from this thread and for sure you know how difficult is that in /lit/.

I can't add so much, maybe just throwing a question: how related is the différance of Derrida with the deluzian concept of difference in Nietzsche (which I guess he also develops in "Difference and repetition")? Is related, in any way, to genealogy?

I tried to read "The margins of philosophy" and it was too much for me. What could you recommend in order to start with Derrida?

>>8618856
>>8618864

This is what I don'y get, first, we talk about "applied sciences", than you give an exposition about metaphysics and history. Those are totally unrelated way of thinking. How can culture determine what is the outcome of an experiment? Where is my inheritance in Bell's experiment?

I know there is context, but results are results, and they have nothing to do with my surroundings.

Those post are making my point: Derrida's comment on gravity just shows that the is an asshole, with 0 idea of what he is talking about.

>>8618894
as an outsider - what comments did Derrida make about gravity?

>>8618899
Double doubles of kek.

That reminds me like when people thinks that queer theory is related to identity politics, when it is exactly the opposite. It is, as our lovely friend says, ideology at its purest. They have a previous conception on what is going out there, and they didn't even bother in trying to approach it with a different will.

>>8618917
no seriously, I haven't read the text, what did he say?

>>8618894
>Where is my inheritance in Bell's experiment?
you must be joking. You know that there are still people who cling to the assignment observables before you do an experiment, that length [of an object] exist even in their fantasy world where no humans live; more generally, that there are people who speak of ''science'' [instead of ''what people call scientists''] as ''the scientific method'' while claiming to be empiricist while still fantasizing about being rigorous [creating the oxymoron empirical truth] ? that scientist have given up on proving that whatever is their activity, it does indeed give ''truths'', or at best, at the end of their career [since, right after university, they do not give a shit about what the scientist does since they never ever took a different class than physics/math] they go full ''it is just a bunch of interpretations'' like the retard hawking [who spend previously his life shitting on philosophy] but ''hey realism is totally okay, only retards believe in anti-realism'', that there are still undergraduates who think you can do science without money, that there are scientists who still use the word truth instead of models [oddly enough, for people who claim to speak about truth+proof, without proof.and after, somebody more empiricist than they make them notice this, they get butthurt and claim ''ho yeah, truth and proof are just a convenience, everybody knows that ''science'' is about models], that whoever acknowledge the demand of the scientists to be paid gives money to favorable projects and do not give money to non-favorable projects, that reviewers of papers does not hesitate to shit on ideas in drafts, even in math, just because they do not like it

>>8618923
ahahahaa no no, I was supporting your point. I am not >>8618894 . As far as I guess, without reading the text, Derrida probably speaks about the role of semiotics in the construction of a physic theory, what makes it actually a text about semiotics, not physical theoretics.

For me it is extremely paradoxical because it ends with people from the field of, for example this case physics, complaining about a work which is made from a expert in the semiotic field, and it is not its own: exactly what they criticize and complain about Derrida.

Magic. It is just magic.

>>8618882
Thanks for the kind words, they're really much appreciated! I can't help you with Deleuze and Nietzsche, as I'm really no expert on those.

As for texts, I would say the essay which I recall simply being called "Différance" and afterwards maybe some of his later stuff, in which he turns his attention from narrow semiotic reflections to politics, justice, society at large and so on. Of these I can really recommend "Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression", "Force of Law: the "Mystical Foundations of Authority"" and "Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International". He is a little easier when he talks about a little more earthly stuff.

>>8618894
In the case of "applied science" in the humanities and human sciences, the argument is exactly that: extremely consequential and important to think about inheritance and time. If you read my exposition carefully, though, you will see that i DID say that it's much less consequential in your field.

>>8618899

I can only find this exact quote

"The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability--it is, finally, the concept of the game [jeu]. In other words, it is not the concept of something--of a center starting from which an observer could master the field--but the very concept of the game which, after all, I was trying to elaborate"

It really makes no sense. I don't even know what the Einstenian constant is!

>>8618937

Look, Derrida is talking about gravity (or Einstein theory, actually.) I worked on that. If he is not able to make his ideas understandable for someone like me, or any of my colleagues, it is just a proof that he is talking nonsense. He is not even able to clarify what is the Einstenian constant! Unless that is a very deep "semiotic" concept, it just shows that Derrida doesn't even try to understand what he is talking about.

>>8618931
This just sounds like butthurt. I define path integral, work it out, find amplitudes, bamb, a match with the experiments results. That's good enough for me. But then you can ask about the validity of path integral, or how to do path integral in some more general way. And you work on that. And then you have another question about what you just answered. And then another, and another. Nobody in science says "this is the final truth." We keep questioning. We don't need an outsider (Derrida or other) to point out problems, we do it all the time. And if someone from outside does, and it is valid, we try to answer it. I really think that you haven't met any scientist.

>>8618947
humanities are not applied sciences. Applied science=math, physics, biology, chemistry. Some other "applied sciences"= technology, engineering.

>>8618970
You misunderstand me. I meant the application of saussurean linguistics to other fields within the human sciences, such as anthropology, literary studies and marxism, which is the best way I can think of to define structuralism.

>>8618970
Also you keep asserting your position that

you don't understand it = it must be nonsense.

It's really a foolish position to hold. Let me say it once again: he is talking about your field AS semiotics. This is not something you would be able to do, but should still be done and can be valuable. How many scientists are not trying to dictate normal peoples everyday life with their "Rationalia" fictional countries and suffocating, xenophobic doctrines of "rationality" and "atheism"? Try to be a little more critical about yourself.

>>8618970
>applied science=math

C'mon guys, we can go home now.

I even doubt mathematics are a science.

t. Mathematics' graduate in a master of Pure and Applied Logic.

>>8618980
Explain to me this sentence anon brought forward, in the broader context of the text:

>"The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability--it is, finally, the concept of the game [jeu]. In other words, it is not the concept of something--of a center starting from which an observer could master the field--but the very concept of the game which, after all, I was trying to elaborate"

What's the constant he is talking about, and what is the concept of jeu?

>>8618456
Say I understand, I really do, why Derrida and French academics in general need to make sure they avoid describing any of their concepts in solid, defining terms; assume also that I have yet, from experience, evaluated that people who adopt this attitude, intellectual weasels we might call them, are not worth my time. Which text from Derrida will change my mind about him?

You tired OP and he went :"(

>>8618985
>I even doubt mathematics are a science.
yeah you don't know shit
t. applied math grad student

Hey OP, what's your opinion on Glas?

>>8618462
>the meaning of any text
Bro you know shit about Derrida.

>>8619046
how is it a science?

>>8618990

we are still waiting for the answer

>>8618456
>philosopher writing obscure cryptic texts
>doesn't get nobel

>wannabe hipster musican who can't sing
>writes catchy tunes
>nobel prize

Derrida isn't worth the effort lads.

>>8619046
>he thinks applied math is math
> le I'm a mathematician because I know matlab

>>8619073
I'm studying real math and taking a class with a bunch of applied math graduate students, they are all universally retards who have trouble understanding even basic fucking set theory, I met some that were confused about having to do proofs in a fucking linear algebra class

>>8619467
but what do they do? Like, what do they learn?

Derrida For Beginners
http://www107.zippyshare.com/v/t2LSAW1m/file.html

>>8619527
They learn how to model some stuff in matlab and not much else

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>>8618506
hi i'm a "semiotician", only other "semiotician" can understand my works on "semiotics"

>>8619467
Oh, nice. It's the mathspergers "muh set theory" guy again. Hi.

>>8618894
>How can culture determine what is the outcome of an experiment?

how can one relay the outcomes of an experiment without engaging in culture?

maybe you should just stick to theoretical physics and leave the big boys to talk about talking

>>8620363
That's basically true in every field, friend

reminder that scientists in physics have change the convention of quantization of ''truth'' a few decades ago when they changed the number of sigmas they choose to be meaningful [to reach truth] form their pool of data, after they apply statistical interpretation on these data.

>>8621790
And? The more data you get, the more noise you get, so you need to adjust your cutoffs.

Biology, psychology have similar discussions going on. I don't see the reason behind your post.