After reading Derrida, I noticed one specific line that caught my attention. There was mention that "there is no substance in language". This line reminded me a lot of what Locke was trying to convey because without proper communication and knowledge of a specific word, there really is no substance in language. He goes on to explain that "form" is something external and shapes material into something specific. Everyone talks about form or writing or language and this also made a lot of sense to me. Each form of language is, essentially, "different".
Derrida says that difference is neither a word or a concept. There should be a clear understanding of it therefore two words are formed, with slightly different definitions. Derrida goes on to say that all things are signs and all reality is "textual". I think what he means by this is that all parts relate to other parts. I also think he means that all words, can relate to other words or link them together. And all other languages relate but are not exactly the same.
As he goes into describing the verb "differ" he says that it differs from itself. I found this paragraph to be a little bit confusing and I am not entirely sure on how to elaborate from it. As I got further into the reading, he talks about the web and how it is linked and webbed from other things bonded together. Everything on the web comes from something else and is linked to a million other things. This helped me better understand the concepts he was trying to convey and reminded me of Locke because everything he tries to explain, he explains through example.
As much as I liked Derrida, it was difficult for me to read for some reason. I wish there was more examples so that I could better understand his concepts and further analyze his theories better.
I personally had to disagree with Derrida's notion that "there is no substance in language." We as humans have evolved so substantially over the years that language has in turn evolved with us. Although there are still so many things for us to learn about language and writing, I think saying there is no substance in language kind of puts down all the advances humans have made in language. I agree with Locke and what you stated about needing proper communication and knowledge of the words you are trying to convey, but at the same time I don't think that means there is absolutely no substance in language at all. Language is full of substance and it provides communication to so many people in so many different ways.
ReplyDeleteI also noticed the link between Locke and Derrida in their insistence that language lacks substance and that words have no meaning on their own. I think what they mean by this is that ideas are the basis for language and we make words to represent ideas, but those words mean nothing on their own; it is the ideas that have meaning. Words are just noise, as Locke put it. As for Derrida's notion of differance, he actually separates the term "difference" from his term "differance" which is effectively the same word only with an A instead of with an E. It serves as an example of itself because his term differance is meant to explore how we gather identities from things based on how they differ from all other things. In a way, differance means the origin of differences or the differences between differences (I know this is a super convoluted subject and I'm not sure if I understand it correctly). Because we can recognize on a textual level that differance is a letter away from difference, we have identified both terms based on their differences to each other which is exactly what Derrida set out to prove we do.
ReplyDelete-Kayla Goldstein