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Guide Questions for Derrida readings

What is deconstruction?

The easiest way to describe deconstruction is to understand it as a hermeneutic exercise in analysis.  So what is that? Hermeneutics is a way of reading the environment (including texts) and looking for multiple possible interpretations; it is the science of interpretation. For a more complete answer click here and read James Phillips's account.

Deconstruction subverts the idea of Platonic forms in that Derrida overthrows traditional hierarchies in favor of "reversals" that stand  structural accounts of reality upside down. Deconstruction is a way of encountering our traditions and realities with the intent of looking for the not-so-obvious, the hidden, the underside or the alternate view. It is also a method of challenging traditional absolutist conceptions of reality that insist upon essential, unshakable truths. Deconstruction is anti-foundationalist, anti-constructivist and anti-essentialist in its approach to understanding reality. In one sense, we are left with the impression that all we have is our own perspective on reality which is no less real than anyone's else's...

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Notes

Post-structuralism and Post-Modern Theory

Russell's Philosophy for Laymen

Resource Links for this week's assignment:

Understanding Deconstruction:

• Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia in the Humanities and Arts: Deconstruction - this is Richard Rorty's fine attempt to summarize the central concepts of deconstruction. Richard Rorty is an excellent American philosopher who is also a contemporary of Derrida. Thus, I believe this resource is of the highest quality!

• Villanova University held a roundtable discussion with Derrida in 1994; click here to read the transcript.

• Here is a link to Peter Krapp's "Derrida" site where you'll find various resources and talks by Derrida.

• Last, here is Stanford University's Derrida page where you'll find links to invaluable resources describing deconstruction.

Applications:

Read John Searle's most recent interview in which he details his chief criticism of Derrida's work.  Here Searle challenges the notion that there can be no stability of meaning across the horizon of consciousness.

Per our in-class discussion of various theories of truth, here is the book review of TRUTH: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed, by Felipe Fernández-Armesto. Mary Lefkowitz's review originally appeared in the New York Times on 1/23/2000. 

Guide Questions:

The following questions are designed to fine tune your understanding of the reading. Although I will not collect or check to see if you've completed them, the subject matter and answers to these questions form the basis of what you will be required to know for exams.

Reading:

1. Derrida argues that to prefer either alternative in sets of opposite ideas is to give priority to a set of arbitrary meanings.(144)  Why is logocentrism considered by Derrida to be anti-philosophical?

2. Is speech somehow purer, and hence, more truthful than writing? Can the situation be reversed as Derrida suggests? Is writing pure?(146)

3. Derrida calls the speech/writing pair a “violent hierarchy” because one element is subordinate to the other.  If deconstruction truly reverses the traditional hierarchal relationships, then how does that change our view of the pairs (concepts) themselves.  For example, if good really does come after evil in the violent hierarchy of theology what is the significance of the Fall from Eden?(147)

4. If speech and writing are dislodged from the anchors of stabile meaning, what are the potential consequences for communication?

5. How might the repeatability and context of speech acts be related?  Are there pure locutionary, illocutionary or prelocutionary acts?

Interview:

1. How does Derrida describe deconstruction?

2. How might we take responsibility by recalling our traditions and reinterpreting them?

3. If deconstruction is not a tool, method, or technique (4), then how will we know when we are doing deconstruction?  List some possible criteria.

4. Derrida states that it may be necessary to get close that which we desire to understand.(5)  In this case, how should we treat unpopular social organizations?  Should we create the conditions for an underground to flourish if we seek to understand difference?