Deconstruction For Beginners by Jim Powell

Author:Jim Powell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For Beginners
Published: 2013-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

Twain: But isn’t this horse liver, or preface, or whatever you call it before the rest of the book?

Uma: Yes, that is part of its irony. Derrida is poking fun of Hegel’s aspiration to achieve Total Knowledge in his philosophy.

The Glorious Glorious Bliss of God’s Phallus: Well, what is wrong with knowing everything?

Uma: Because Hegel also loves to write prefaces. But if his philosophy WERE total—then why would it need a preface?

Following Derrida’s preface or “Hors Livre,” there are three essays in Dissemination. They are all concerned with presence, presentation, representation and illusion. The first of these essays is “Plato’s Pharmacy.” Here Derrida deconstructs Plato’s bad-mouthing of writing. In the Phaedrus, Plato uses the term pharmakon (or poison) to describe the evils of writing. Writing for Plato is secondary (to speech), creates illusions and perversions, is dead knowledge and the tool of the ignorant Sophists. Yet, Derrida points out that pharmakon can also mean “cure.” Derrida seizes upon the undecidable “pharmakon” to deconstruct Plato’s attitude. He also points to Plato’s ambivalent attitude about writing. For although Plato declares that writing is a perverse poison, he also states that it is the very inner voice of the soul itself. This is an important move for Derrida, because philosophy has always pretended that in philosophical language undecidables don’t exist. In fact, philosophy, in order to remain philosophy rather than literature, DEPENDS upon maintaining this pretence. Otherwise, its language, which is supposed to be about truth, would degenerate into mere word-play. When Derrida, however finds that even the foundational texts of Western philosophy are not immune to the play of language—to the play of undecidables—it shakes not only the Phaedrus and all the rest of Plato but the whole foundation of Western philosophy!

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