Jacques Derrida's 'Of Grammatology' (Part 1/2)

In this episode, I begin my two-part presentation of "Of Grammatology," Jacques Derrida's inaugural text to place him among the ranks of Foucault, Bourdieu, Lefebvre, Deleuze and others.

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[YellowWallArt]

You're my 2023 Teacher of the Year, congratulations! 👏👏🎉🎉🎉 You made a lot of texts more accessible to me while I was struggling against time, illness, deadlines, expectations, exams, God-knows-what-the-hell professors... my brain couldn't handle all of them at once without your help, thankyou and God bless you! 💝

[elel]

6:59 logo centrism—speech, truth, law —all relates to the word of God
9:20 is there a science to writing?
13:30 signified itself is part of the text
18:22 signified is real? They’re both subject to ordering principles in a society
21:01 if you write something down, you will lose cognitive potential?
22:42 speaker is godlike in giving life to words in their thoughts—weld thoughts and speech—write—might be interpreted in another way
24:30 bad and good writing — specific (written) vs universal (speaking)
27:00 Socrates poster boy for logocentrism
30:43 science—
31:49 not located in the logos but comes about from the logos
38:21 speaking represents an abstract thought in brain..all language, including speaking, is writing
41:10 arche writing …no exteriority

[SK-legm]

In the elaborate footnotes of the novel “infinite jest”, there is a fleeting reference to “Militant Grammar Riots at MIT”. I think that David Foster Wallace was referring to this. Thanks 🙏🏽

[digitaurus]

Thank you for an excellent piece. I am currently working through "Of Grammatology' and have found your discussion very valuable. Derrida realised that the low-level structural representations outlined by Saussure for la langue are not grounded. The internal mental representation ('signified') of, for example, a word (a signifier) are a set of values ('valeurs') emerging from the relationship between that word and its neighbours (i.e. other word signifiers). So la langue is like a house of cards, with the signs dependent on each other for their meaning and with no reference to the outside, the 'natural' world or indeed any world at all. Fundamentally, at this level of representation at least, Saussure's model of language is NOT logocentric and does away with the need for the logos. For people who work with computers this is no big deal; the 'signified' is just a data structure being used to represent some feature. But Derrida was a philosopher and the idea of a signified that just contained references to other signifiers (the signifieds of which in turn just pointed to yet more signifiers) seems to have blown a gasket in his mind and led to an obsession with "differance", the endless deferral of meaning, and so forth.

Derrida accuses Saussure of shying away from the non-logocentic implications of his own model and in this I think he is probably right. Certainly, Saussure's characterisation of speech v-a-v writing is muddled and unnecessary for his theory. In Saussure's defence, it is possible Saussure wasn't as dogmatic in person as his interpreters made him on the page and in life the man was clearly troubled and concerned that he hadn't yet thought it all through. It is also possible, as Derrida implies, that this mistaken mindset prevented Saussure from pursuing his ideas to their logical conclusion.

[Han-rpzm]

Richard Feynman once said: "IF YOU CANNOT EXPLAIN TO ME WITH CLARITY WHAT YOU KNOW, THEN YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING." That is a lesson Jacques Derrida NEVER learned; and I know, because I took a course with him at Yale

[elel]

2:13 speaking is another form of writing; speech is more privileged
3:53 deconstruction — binary isn’t real? The two objects are contingent on one another

[MikiDeFacto]

This has been very accessable, having Derrida's obscureness in mind. Thanks for the explanations and bringing these ideas closer

[adaptercrash]

The blackholes of grammar and we aren't sure they work and it's all about your mind and how you perceive reality.

[alexsidney]

hello the past. I thought it was pronounced like archaeology.

[kenjohnson]

Is there a confusion here with signifier and referent? Or do the terms just dance around, taking position when the music stops? Anyway, someone, clarification, please.

[limoreperetzwoloshin]

Chinese is not a phonetic language, yet the written materials had great and wide influence over a long time and space

[kakistocracyusa]

Lots of time spent on Cliff's Notes depth here.

[magpiecritic]

Please be my professor! Ur the best at explaining

[kenjohnson]

Great example that, the grass, clarifies something important for me, and I'm now looking forward to hearing more. Still, I thought the signified and signifier (concept) were the sign, and the sign is supposed to designate the "real" referent -- the thing in the world.

[stephenhogg]

'Demonstrating that a binary opposition isn't real'. So, what is?

[matth]

Can't wait to let to listen to this David, hope you have been well!

[santiagogarrido]

This is great, thanks! Looking forward to part 2

[lostintime]

is Chomsky a king or a peasant?

P.s. Great video, thank you.

[satishmeetei]

Now I see why people say Derrida speaks so much nonsense.

[moments]

with all due respect you are simply repeating Derrida's terminology however writing vs speech have very specific meanings . whats more you're misinterpreting Derrida and hence misrepresenting him.Logo means 'words of God' seriously? Logo has a wider meaning in the context of western philosophy