Of Grammatology

Philosophy 157

G. J. Mattey

©2002

A New Epoch

• Nietzsche and Heidegger mark the turn to a new epoch in Western thought

• They broke away from the “metaphysics of presence” that dominates philosophy

• This metaphysics makes the logos (the signified) more basic than the signifier

• The logos is said to be present to pure thought• Heidegger, though, interpreted Nietzsche as

remaining within the old metaphysics

Nietzsche

• Reading and writing a text are “originary” and not an uncovering of a present logos

• Heidegger understood Nietzsche as promoting a less naïve metaphysics

• Derrida sees him as being more naïve• Nietzsche remains within metaphysics to

the extent that he must in order to deconstruct its meaning

Heidegger

• Heidegger’s deconstruction of the tradition would reinstate the logos as the primary signified

• A transcendental signified, being, is the basis of the signifier/signified distinction

• Being is heard in a voice, conscience• This voice is pure auto-affection• It effaces the signifier • In its greatest purity, it is the experience of being

Being

• For Heidegger, ‘being’ is an “originary word” that all language presupposes

• As such, its scope is universal• It is supposed to be an irreducible unity• Modern structuralist linguistics would pull this

unity apart• So Heidegger deals with it in the confines of an

old linguistics, which shares presuppositions with the old metaphysics

Breakthrough

• A linguistics of being would go beyond the merely ontic (what is conceptualized)

• It would also test the limits of ontology on a global, not regional, basis

• If it managed to deconstruct the unity of being, it would achieve a breakthrough

• Psychoanalysis also shows promise for breaking through the old thinking

The Fate of Ontology

• Heidegger’s work threatens his own project• He must break through traditional classifications,

thus putting being in jeopardy• So he says that the voice of being is silence• Heidegger transgresses against presence while

remaining with it• Still, he never took being to be pure signified• Being is not “primary” (scholasticism),

“fundamental” (Kant), or “transcendental” (Husserl)

The Real Message

• Heidegger eventually renounced the project of ontology

• Being is originary, conceals itself, is different from the entity

• This all indicates that “nothing escapes the movement of the signifier”

• There is no difference between signifier and signified

Effacing Being

• Heidegger deconstructs being by showing the domination of grammar

• He effaces it by crossing it out after writing it

• This shows that it has been overcome, but that its trace remains

• This is the first writing that delimits the metaphysics of presence

Différance

• The sense of being is that of “a determined signifying trace”

• “All is not to be thought at one go”• Différance is most “originary” (though not

“origin” or “ground”)• It can be thought of as ontico-ontological

difference, but erased• Nietzsche and Heidegger wrote hesitatingly

because they had to inhabit the old structures in order to destroy them

Deconstruction

“Operating necessarily from the inside, borrowing all the strategic and economic resources of subversion from the old structure, borrowing them structurally, that is to say without being able to isolate their elements and atoms, the enterprise of deconstruction in a certain way falls prey to its own work.”

The Problematic of the Trace

• There is no such thing as “full speech,” in that one part ends when another begins

• The origin of speech is in difference

• This gives rise to the problematic of the trace

• One’s use of terms must always be justified against an orientation in space and time

Trace and Presence

• Derrida adapts the word ‘trace’ from Levinas and Heidegger

• It undermines “the meaning of being as presence and the meaning of language as the full continuity of speech”

• This is the goal of the present book• Presence is felled along with consciousness,

by emphasis on the trace

Writing

• Philosophers from Plato on devalued writing

• The trace belongs to the very movement of signification

• So signification requires writing, which is “exterior”

• This opens up the possibility of an inside to an outside: “spacing”

Dualisms

• Philosophy traditionally has tried to reduce one side of a duality to a fundamental presence

• Duality, “play,” is characteristic of the trace• It can only become in the metaphysics of presence

by making presence infinite• This is the meaning of Hegelian Aufhebung• The logos sublimates the trace theologically• “Infinitist theologies are always logocentric”

Time

• The vulgar conception of time conceives it as spatial movement (Heidegger)

• It has dominated philosophy since Aristotle

• It explains why writing is considered a form of linearized speech

• This is found in Saussure

The Sign

• The metaphysics of presence supports the distinction between the signified and signifier

• The signified is thought and spoken through signs in the eternal presence of the divine logos and is not a trace

• It has no need of a signifier• So the concept of sign as signified/signifier

(having two faces) must be deconstructed• The signified is already in the position of the

signifier

Grammatology

• Grammatology is a science of “writing”• Its results threaten to undermine its status as

a science• So it will be treated provisionally• Under what conditions is it possible?• Through the discovery of the origin of

writing• Still, there is no simple origin

Where and When?

• These questions may be treated empirically, as open to historical investigation

• They seem to presuppose the answer to the question of what writing is (Plato)

• But investigation of the trace has shown that we must not seek for essences

• So this will be avoided as well

“Before” the Linear

• Linear, phonetic writing suppressed an earlier form of non-linear expression

• Leroi-Gourhan calls this the “mythogram”• The symbols are not restricted to succession

of words or the order of time• There is a unity of technics, art, religion,

economy• This is all fragmented by linearization

“After” the Linear

• The line is only a model (the “epic”), but as such it is hidden from sight

• It reveals itself only as it breaks down in its favored domain, science

• It is coming to an end, and a new age of writing is beginning

• This marks the end of the book, even though that form is still used

• It is not regression to the mythogram• It leaves man, science, line behind

Arche-Writing

• The breakdown of linearization takes place outside of the realm of “knowledge”

• It occurs in literature, as with graphic poetry (Fenellosa)

• Science, religion, politics, economy, technics, law, art, all have their origin in phoneticization

• “This complicity of origins may be called arche-writing”

The Incompetence of Science

• The alliance between linear writing and all areas of culture attests to their failure

• Science and philosophy are incompetent to think• The real of “knowledge” becomes closed• But the difference which underlies them can only

be understood from within them• Thinking, and grammatology, can only be

broached with “science”