Why begin a creative writing course with Derrida and Thalia Field? We began a discussion about why this might be so, talking around the possibility of possibility within (our use of) language. Specifically, language structures (large and small) that are familiar and those that are less so – realizing that this binary of what counts as familiar (or belongs in the household) and what is alien or monstrous (or is “not of the household”) is itself unstable. Comments on the blog (cf) have furthered this discussion, a couple pointing out a) that the monstrous might not only be welcomed, or fetishized, in contemporary western cultures, but is eventually subsumed, tamed, by the very schema of these cultures. I want to hold off on that discussion until we take a peek at Adorno and Wittgenstein later in the quarter. For now, the main thread here is this: Derrida and Field’s recognition of possibility inherent in language (the signified, as it were, is a limitless set), but also that many, sometimes the majority, of interpretations, readings, possibilities, are repressed. Where the sources of this repression are multiple, laden with power, and work, as we can probably guess by looking out the window or at our electricity bill, along heirarchical gridlines.
Where I find commonality in the two texts we’ve read goes beyond acknowledgment or recognition of possibility and repression and shows itself textually, i.e., in form. Derridian criticism (leaving the many problems of deconstruction aside) manifests, indeed embraces (as in Of Grammatology) contradiction and erasure, or, as Derrida would have it the theses that ground his notion of arche-writing. If, as Derrida suggests, the possibility of monstrosity is parasitic on a temporally-determined marginally acceptable set of [repressed] interpretations, then what follows are the implicit axioms of a) language-as-public, b) meaning-as-unstable, and c) writing-as-collaborative. A, B, and C show themselves in Field’s work. Formally, the process by which writing-as-collaboration (i.e., reading=writing in some way yet to be discussed here), is overtly simplistic. Anyone who has played with Mad Libs automatically knows the game. Yet, it is the overt pointing to the idea of behind the Mad Lib (what makes the Mad Lib possible), performing a text in different ways potentially infinitely, that Field is in part interested in. The pointing shows the importance of a worn exercise, its prevalence in what we do when we read almost anything, and most importantly, processes that hide behind or within texts and our ideas about their meanings. I take it to be somewhat obvious that the set of possibilities one bring’s to Field’s Theater is very much like post-Brechtian alienation–a naked text daring you to stare at your own habituation as you fill in the brackets.
I’m interested in what you think about the relation between these texts, admitting, of course, that one is a part of an interview (and Derrida’s work insists on drawing distinctions between speech and writing). I’m more interested in you using Derrida’s talk as a way to warm your brain to performing Field’s Theater. Feel free to post your comments or send me, via email, your Field pieces (or any other longer writing), and I’ll post it on the main blog page.
Optional Further Readings:
For a decent intro to Derrida, go here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/derrida.htm#SH3b
Thalia Field, Point and Line
I decided to buy a copy of Of Grammatology by Derrida because the idea of his monster is so interesting to me. I think I’ve been thinking about it in completely different terms than where you’re taking it though.
Maybe I’m reading into what he’s saying to much, but it seems like the only conclusion I could come to after that interview was that there can only be one true monster, and that’s nothingness. It’s the only thing truly unfathomable by humanity and completely lacks the ability to be domesticated. I find it so interesting how he broke down the fact that all other monsters can be domesticated once humanity learns to tame them, and eventually, probably subsidize them and capitalize off of them.
But nothingness?
It adds further flavor to me that he says he no longer views his writing as monstrous. So it seems like a monstrous element in writing is something I’d want to avoid. It also made House Of Leaves completely make sense to me as well. I’m hoping it’s good, but I’d love to talk to you about this further. Maybe I’m way off base when it comes to what he meant, but it’s an idea that’s put my brain in a choke hold ever since I read that interview.
Out-of-body Thinking
Derrida gets the language for his epistemology from Husserl. Phenomenology starts with a “principle of principles” that “primordial presence to intuition is the source of sense and evidence, the a priori of a prioris.”
This means that “the certainty, itself ideal and absolute, that the universal form of all experience (Erlebnis), and therefore of all life, has always been and will always be the present. The present alone is and ever will be. Being is presence or the modification of presence. The relation with the presence of the present as the ultimate form of being and of ideality is the move by which I transgress empirical existence, factuality, contingency, worldliness, etc.” [Speech and Phenomena, 53-54.]
However, the choice of the words “present” and “presence” to indicate the ground of all knowledge has some very unfortunate consequences. That choice sets up a confusion between two completely different meanings of the word “presence.”
One meaning is “phenomenological presence”. This refers to the immediate access to being in the original act of knowledge. It does not refer to time at all. So, phenomenological presence might be better expressed by calling it presence-to-being. That would save it from being confused with the other meaning of “presence”, what we should call “temporal presence”, that is, the occurrence of an event at a particular moment in time.
Derrida also calls this living presence “the now”. This reinforces the confusion between presence-to-being and occurrence-at-a-particular-moment-in-time. It is also unfortunate that Derrida uses the word “form” in the phrase “the universal form of all experience”. What he wants to refer to is the “universal basis of all experience”, which is not a form. It is an act. But this word-slippage is also quite telling, and one of the many clues in Derrida’s work that he is confusing the order of abstract concepts and the order of actual reality.
This epistemology leads to the cornerstone mistake of claiming that iterability is an a priori condition of knowing, whereas in fact iterability is an a posteriori result of knowing. An original presence-to-being (insight) occurs in time. Consequently it is repeatable. So, iterability is not “inside” phenomenological presence, it is extrinsic to it. This mistake is made all the more easy since both relationships are necessary. Once you get this, then all of Derrida’s objections to realist epistemology collapse, and his whole philosophical system collapses into imaginary ashes.
I have discussed these issues at length in my article “Dealing With Derrida”, which you can find on the Radical Academy web site. http://radicalacademy.com/studentrefphilmhd1.htm
Although running down Derrida’s mistakes in his text is difficult, once you get the key point that he was dissociated, the whole pattern of his out-of-body thinking makes sense. Once you discover Derrida’s dissociation, you find it in many thinkers. There is a lot of out-of-body thinking in philosophy and social theory. Perhaps leaving one’s body is an occupational hazard for professional thinkers. Dissociation is the result of trauma, and trauma is easy to come by.
There are many sources of insight into dissociation. I recommend Trauma and the Body (2006) by Pat Ogden et al. as a start.