This blog title of course refers to the book by my hero, Jacques Derrida. A little history. I was drawn into Derrida when a professor of mine gave me a booklist for a class he was teaching and a project that he invited me to participate in. I could not join his project, sadly, because of other commitments. I did decide I wanted to read the booklist which he gave me. The first name on the list was Jacques Derrida. I never really had heard of him, I knew he was a philosophic "bad boy," rejected by most people. However, this was my heavy Nietzsche phase, so I went out and bought one of his books. Acts of Literature. Wonderful expose, I absolutely loved it from page 1 to the next. The books he read in his youth were those I had read in my youth. His blurring of distinctions, questioning the question itself. The framing, all things needed to be examined, nothing could be taken for granted. How the frame became a part of the picture and thus always same.
I enjoyed it to say the least. The major thing I loved about Derrida and still love is that he is a reader. Some philosophers, even most, will take a abstract "tool" into a problem or a text and just apply this tool, make it fit. Unfortunately, Zizek is very guilty of using Lacan and Hegel like this which is why Derrida and he didn't get along...among other reasons. But, Derrida read the text, he found his terms in the text. Dissemination and Plato's Pharmakon gave his Plato's Pharmacy, the Pharmakon, dissemination--all stories from Plato, the Phaedrus, Phaedo, etc. The to differance all of his readings of Levinas and Heidegger, of Celan and Valery. His works were not just dead tools ,they were readings, good, deep critical readings that generated the texts that followed.
Nothing is worse than a topographical reading. It is anathema to me. It kills me. To make the story a parable about the life of the author. Or to attack the text as a journey though the woods like a New Critic. Perhaps we never even know the meaning we impart into a text when we write it or speak it. The author dies with the birth of the text, thus the birth of the reader and reading says Barthes. Topographical readings imprison the text, they disallow it to live to fall into existence, to be born. But far worse, if a topographical readings just gives text one meaning and thus disallows future reading, the whole creative process dies with it.
Read. Seek to understand. Read all the words, the texts and their subtexts, the language and the metalanguages.
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3 comments:
There is an error :
'The books he read in his youth were those I had read in his youth.'
Different writers have their opinions. I guess this is what makes the individual. This is excellent.
All of a sudden I'm having trouble catching up with your posts... On reading - I agree with your dislike for topographic approach to reading, on a very basic, non-philosophical level, I hate it when someone tells me what I SHOULD read in the text... that's why I always had mixed feelings about my literature classes until I relaxed and started treating them as guidance rather than commandments.
Apologies for this rather lay comment to your post. I'm still waiting for my Critchley book to arrive, you see, for me, Derrida is still to be discovered (how exciting! but fear not, I know of him, only not of his work in any great detail...)
Also, I like your previous post. I already said that, albeit probably not in any clear way, I think people are not designed to exist in isolation from others...
Y- Thanks for the catch.
I am a big fan of 'Death of the Author' where even the author might not know what he said, or understand his meaning, once it enters into language. But there has to be a balance between New Critical Thought and Total Reader Response.
Polly- Never apologize for anything. Your posts are always very intelligent and on par with any thought I might make.
Literature classes have a tendency to skew meanings and priviliage one reading of the text. I have been trying to work against that for the longest while, but people love absolutes, that want to know just one aspect and that be it. That search is a search for a truth that ends, that folds itself up and you can through it into you backpack. It is very difficult to acknowledge that more than one meaning may exist and the text itself is what guides this discussion.
Living with people is absolutely wonderful.
Let me know when you get the Critchley book, I would love to talk about it if you want to.
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