One of the essential arguments of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is that mixed modes are difficult to understand because the concept must be learned after the word is. A child cannot experience sacrilege but it can know the word. Therefore when the concept is finally understood it has it's own biases that are not rooted in the concrete plane. I think this is one of the reasons that Derrida's essay "Differance" was so difficult for me to initially grasp.
He starts by teaching you a new word that is alarmingly similar to a word that you already know. The construction of Derrida's idea must be pushed through our initial understanding of the original word. Realizing this made Derrida's argument more effective for me. It asserts his idea language being a web of ideas that must be untangled to be understood. I think that the idea of mixed modes also backs up his idea that there is no correlation between sign and signified.
Like he says, "The signified concept is never present in itself, in an adequate presence that would refer only to itself. Every concept is necessarily and essentially inscribed in a chain or a system, within which it refers to another and to other concepts, by the systematic play of differences. For the same reason, differance, which is not a concept, is not a mere word; that is, it is not what we represent to ourselves as the calm and present self referential unity of a concept and sound" (Derrida 285, 286).
He starts by teaching you a new word that is alarmingly similar to a word that you already know. The construction of Derrida's idea must be pushed through our initial understanding of the original word. Realizing this made Derrida's argument more effective for me. It asserts his idea language being a web of ideas that must be untangled to be understood. I think that the idea of mixed modes also backs up his idea that there is no correlation between sign and signified.
Like he says, "The signified concept is never present in itself, in an adequate presence that would refer only to itself. Every concept is necessarily and essentially inscribed in a chain or a system, within which it refers to another and to other concepts, by the systematic play of differences. For the same reason, differance, which is not a concept, is not a mere word; that is, it is not what we represent to ourselves as the calm and present self referential unity of a concept and sound" (Derrida 285, 286).
If a word is learned before a concept then the idea is by nature independent from the word. Just because the idea becomes signified it does not change into a different idea. It continues to exist in the way that it developed before it was given a sign. Therefore the idea and the word are only correlated by arbitrary association and not by any systematic deliberacy.
Works Cited:
Derrida, Jacques. “Différance.” Literary Theory: An Anthology, Second Edition. Ed. Julie Rivkin and
Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Wiley/Blackwell, 2004. 278-288.
Locke, John. “From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, Second Edition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 814-827.
Title: "Locke Meets Derrida and Thinks, 'What's the Différance'"
ReplyDeleteWhen I was reading Jaques Derrida's "Différance," I realized that what Locke says about words is exactly the same as what Derrida says about them, or it's similar, or it's different, or sometimes it's the same and sometimes it's not, or maybe it used to be different and now it's the same. If you are confused by what I just said, it's because this whole article by Derrida can be confusing. But the sentence I made that might be somewhat confusing can make sense. It has to be "disentangled."
(For the life of me, I cannot find the reference to the disentanglement of the meaning of words that I was looking for—if there is one in the first place.)
Derrida treats words like infinities; words have many possible meanings. So does Locke.
Referring to Derrida's theories: "[A] single word, or signifier, can connote any number of different signifieds." (Murfin 113)
"The imperfection of words is the doubtfulness or ambiguity of their signification, which is caused by the sort of ideas they stand for." (Locke 817)
He also says that words are associated to things or concepts through experience...or was it Locke that said that? Both!?
"We take up or give signs; we make signs." (Derrida 284)
"Words having naturally no signification, the idea which each stands for must be learned and retained, by those who would exchange thoughts, and hold intelligible discourse with others, in any language." (Locke 818)
The last two quotes above basically say that words are made, specifically made by people. How they are interpreted is based off of connotations that were created by people. Derrida tried to make a word (i.e. différance) that would not be a word—thus absent of connotation. "Différance" is paradoxical. It is a word, but it isn't. It's also a concept, but it isn't (Derrida 279). It is an "'assemblage'" (Derrida 280). I took from Derrida, by the word "assemblage," that "différance" is the very essence of words/signs. It is prior to words/signs. It is before. It is before concepts as well.
Works Cited:
DeleteDerrida, Jacques. “Différance.” Literary Theory: An Anthology, Second Edition. Ed. Julie Rivkin and
Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Wiley/Blackwell, 2004. 278-288.
Locke, John. “From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, Second Edition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 814-827.
Murfin, Ross, and Supryia M. Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, Third Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.