The Confusion of Derrida

It makes sense as to why we would move to Jacques Derrida after reading John Locke. Locke's connection of ideas as signs sort of overlaps Derrida's idea of difference. Locke states that words are ideas not things, and that these ideas can be abstract (modes) or simple (substances). For Locke, words/ideas had no exact meaning. As for Derrida, he seemed to believe that ideas were "generated by difference" (Rivkin and Ryan 278). He then coins the term deconstruction (a term needed to understand differance) to "show that words are only the deferred presence of the things they 'mean'; that every meaning invokes others in a never-ending connotation; and that the meaning of words is grounded in both their difference from and relationship to other words" (Murfin and Supryia 113). If this is so, questions then arise: do people differentiate differently?

Since all our ideas are based off our individual experiences, does our process of differentiating differ because of these experiences? Or are our processes the same since there is always a "trace of other things" within "all ideas and all objects of thought and perception" (Rivkin and Ryan 278). These are questions that have me stumped and because of Derrida's abstract way of writing, it hard to answer them.

Derrida

Being completely honest up front, I had some trouble interpreting Derrida’s message (or several messages?) throughout his essay. I feel that Tuesday’s lecture will clear some things up for me, though I can only hope. As I read Derrida’s essay, confusion aside, I felt that Derrida and Locke would have an interesting bit of dialogue. Would Derrida and Locke agree upon Locke’s assertion that language restricts communication, often causing misinterpretation based on personal experience? I feel that Derrida would reinforce some of Locke’s notions that language cannot be universally interpreted. Just in the two terms that are being discussed (difference / difference – still need more explanation beyond this text on these) Locke would confirm that these two terms can quite easily be mistaken for each other, based on the difference of just a single letter – a, and not the literal meanings of the terms.

In his essay titled “Difference,” Derrida goes about describing what he sees as a process of temporal and spatial movement that he believes makes all thought and all reality a possibility. The “form” is introduced as an external element that shapes material into a specific or particular identity. All elements of language have what we label as “identity,” and that each element will itself consist of differentiations. Derrida set about demonstrating that ideas are units of language and are generated by difference; or that they have no substantial contrast apart from the networks that generate them as effects. But what does this really mean? Does Derrida mean that language and the processes that we use to generate language do not have a presence? Something palpable and graspable? According to Derrida, like in forms, they are completely empty and non-present.

What I Got From Derrida on Differance

What is a word? How can a simple mistake, incorrect spelling, or a change of one letter in a word displace the meaning of this word? As I was reading this article "Differance" by Jacques Derrida I was utterly confused and was not able to attain anything had written; my mind was tangled up in the jargon of the difference rather than the differance. It was not until I found that he was speaking on two different words in his text, difference and differance, that I believed or hoped believed that I understood the complex issue he was stating, and that is the idea that words of similarity can obtain different meanings and produce similar meanings at the same time.  

Let us say I am giving a speech, a speech on making a difference in the world, and instead of pronouncing the word difference I say differance. In speaking this, some may assume that I am making a grammatical error or, "the a of differance... is not heard; it remains silent, and discreet, like a tomb" (Derrida, 280), this could be a problem. Looking back at John Locke's "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" he states, "the chief end of language in communication being understood, words serve not well for this" (Locke, 817), meaning it could be said that by me saying the word differance rather than difference I am trying to portray another meaning in my speech. What if the idea I am trying to state has nothing to do with difference, but to me is a completely different idea. This would end with the chaos of language.

Mixed Modes are Impossible

Multiple times throughout John Locke’s piece, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” I felt like he was trying to physically hammer things into my head. For example, the statement, “If the signification of the names of mixed modes be uncertain, because there be no real standards existing in nature to which those ideas are referred, and by which they may be adjusted” (Locke 820).

That statement seems awfully familiar to when Locke talks about mixed modes:

“the names of mixed modes for the most part want standards in nature, whereby men may rectify and adjust their significations therefore they are very carious and doubtful. They are assemblages of ideas put together at the pleasure of the mind, pursuing it’s own ends of discourse, and suited to it’s own notions” (Locke 818).

The only real difference I can see between both statements is that the first is an introduction regarding the different reasons why substances are a doubtful significance. The second statement is helping explain the seventh proposition. So in a way they’re the same thing but are serving different functions. Granted, he’s expanding on all of the ideas that he introduces in the beginning of the essay so he’s trying to really show what he’s thinking and why. Even though the process is annoying to read, it is incredibly effective. When I finished reading his piece, I remembered his ideas and his reasoning behind them.

What is Knowledge?

In this class, we have defined rhetoric as “a way of making knowledge in the world,” but just what exactly is knowledge? And how is it made?

From my understanding, knowledge is simply what you know to be true. Knowledge is acquired through life’s experiences.

Plato described knowledge as being absolute, perfect, infinite, and transcendent. He believed that rather than learning new things (making new knowledge), we are simply remembering knowledge. Rather than subscribing to the notion that Knowledge is transcendent, if we simply hold on to the idea that knowledge is infinite and already defined in the universe, then knowledge cannot be made, only discovered. Which raises another question – can knowledge be made?

Ecoporn's Influence on Culture

Welling’s article on issues concerning ecoporn struck me as a rather interesting.  Unlike other theorists that we have read, Bart H. Welling took special care to help ensure that his audience understood what they were reading so that they could put his text into conversation with other related texts.  Welling specifically provides a myriad of definitions to explain words that his audience would most likely find confusing.  This explanation of writing is what theorist Walter Ong would refer to as audience construction.  In other words, Welling set out to write his piece knowing what audience he was writing for thus helping him to know which words or concepts needed further explanation.

“If the writer succeeds in writing, it is generally because he can fictionalize in his imagination an audience he has learned to know not daily life but from earlier writers who were fictional lysing in their imagination audiences they had learned to know in still earlier writers, and so on back to the dawn of written narrative.”  (Ong 11).  It is important that the concept of ecopornography was examined with a great level of detail due to its youth.  The term ecoporn has not been around for very long and the power of the word is just now being understood.

Greenwashing

With Greenwashing, I think Welling introduces a fresh argument about how we are being fed a false image of what nature really is. Especially with this contemporary audience being progressive, I think it questions not the theory, but us as the consumers. How naive are we really when it comes to social issues? Do we not spark our own thoughts or opinions and process information cautiously?

What’s really happening is that individuals are automatically supporting environmental issues based on a glamorized or dressed-up ad that they see.
 

ON LOCKE

Upon reading Locke, I always catch myself admiring how modern his theories are. I'm not quite sure anyone could get away with telling intelligent people that they have absolutely, fundamentally, no clue of what they are discussing about with one another even today. The implications run wild when one asserts that language is incredibly unstable, arbitrarily created and enforced, and that practically no one agrees with you on the definitions you have, up until that point in your life, found nothing wrong with. At some point though, and I think it is the fate (the doom) of every rhetorically analytic person, he comes to an impasse. What he believes the perfect, philosophical language should embody is clarity. That clarity is supposed to be rooted in Natural examples and standards. The problem with that, is that anyone could have an extremely emotionally charged reaction to practically anything they've dealt with in their life. I could just see a different shade of yellow than you when we look at the same color simply because I have different genetics. You might point to a tree and state simply that it is dying, death and decay being a natural circumstance in life which is observable, but if I am not a tree scientist I might think it is healthy and prospering just because it has green leaves on it.

Do We Truly Know, Or Can We Only Know the Gist?

We are transitioning from our theories of the Agent/cy paradox and moving over to talking about Anti/Signification. But before we start talking about that, I want to ask a hard question that ties into Ecoporn in a way:

"Can a human being truly be the agent of 'animal agency'?" 

I borrowed the term animal agency from Prof. Graban. I think the perplexity of the term can be explained by referring to Karlyn Kohrs Campbell's definition of agency: "the capacity to act, that is, to have the competence to speak or write in a way that will be recognized or heeded by others in one's community" (Campbell 3). I know humans do not interact with animals in the same way as they do with other humans, but I'm not merely hinting at that fact when I ask my initial question. I'm more concerned with our ability (or inability) to truly represent animal behavior via experimentation, observation, and writing (or any text).

Locke

After reading Locke on the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, I must admit that I am somewhat puzzled at his outlook on words and the effectiveness of using words. As a EWM major here at Florida State we are taught in rhetoric that a person words are a type of perfection that allows the "Rhetor" to communicate effectively with the audience. Now we have Locke that is now explaining that our words have no meaning and no real significance in accordance with the actions and reactions from human understanding. I think I do understand somewhat that words would never have any value or significance if we didn’t give words a specific meaning. For example, the words love, polite, food, cat wouldn’t mean anything to us if some had not already placed meaning to those words and then taught us what the meaning was and how it correlates to the word. But is this all because of human understanding/nature or philosophical/ theoretical aspect?
 

Locke and the Abuse of Language

When reading Tuesday’s reading assignments, Locke’s An Essay on Human Understanding particularly intrigued me, because I have always wondered where words originated from, how they derived their meaning, and how one word can have multiple meanings.  According to Locke, these are all examples of the abuse of language.  A word doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone because of these abuses.  The six abuses he describes are:

• People use words without really knowing what they mean
• People use words inconsistently, constantly contradicting themselves
• People try to recycle old words and apply them to current circumstances without defining them
• People believe words represent actual things and not ideas
• People purposefully use words incorrectly and try to give them new meaning
• When exploiting the 5 abuses above, people assume that others know what they are saying

Locke and Human Understanding

Locke’s idea that words come with an incomplete and inaccurate idea and connotation is something that truly fascinates me. How in one language, a concept or idea could be so clearly understood, but its origin is lost in translation is baffling. How can a world so complex as ours not is able to narrow an idea down to the root and find the ability to deliver the same message in all different languages, mediums, ideas, etc. Equally interesting is the concept that certain experience can have the same impact on an individual, which another person could have a different opinion on the matter.

Locke explains the concept well in his line “Moreover, complex ideas are formed by the connections among simple ideas; words are attached to these complex ideas to keep connections from being merely personal and ephemeral and to allow us to communicate them with others.” My thought is, what if these simple and complex ideas are different for each person?
 

Erasure of Individuality

Ellen L. Barton's "Textual Practices of Erasure" is one of the most fascinating texts that I have encountered in this class thus far.  The concept of erasure, which means to cancel something out, and its connection to agency is an important one to make.  So what role does erasure play in agency?  In this post, I will seek to answer this question as well as the implications of erasure on individuality.  Barton is on to something and it reaches far beyond people with disabilities.

After reading this text, I started to think about the negative effects of erasure on a larger scale.  For example, anything that is written could have the risk of erasure. While it is obvious that not every text has this characteristic, the potentiality of it is mind-boggling.  United Way's campaigns were not trying to employ erasure but it was an unforeseen consequence of their advertising strategies.  This was not a hidden agenda of United Way for they were only trying to help people with disabilities through the act of fundraising.

Mixed Modes and Daily Experience

Locke's conception of words is that arbitrary signification is a daily reality.  From person to person the signs of the word itself varies immensely.  However, the problem of words only presents itself in conversation with other people.  Our inner discourse is directly connected with our ideas so there is no room for misunderstanding in either the words or in the way that someone else would interpret the words.

 Wouldn't this then mean that our own discourse is the most true discourse?  If talking to others only muddles true ideas shouldn't we only discuss important issues with ourselves?  This is not the case since we can be forced to consider other viewpoints by the presentation of others.  Our inner discourse then reasons us to a point where we believe concretely.  However, this raises the other point of how words affect our daily realities.  For the most part when we speak we don't actively acknowledge the words that are transmitting the ideas.  Rather we directly understand the concepts that are being told to us.  This allows for the ambiguity of language to unnoticed and for us to let this imperfection go uncorrected.

Locke & The Significations of Words in Context: What Does the Word Love Mean?

According to John Locke, “the very nature of words makes it almost unavoidable for many of them to be doubtful and uncertain in their significations” (Locke, 817). Locke’s idea then makes communication between people using any particular form of discourse difficult and almost unreliable. If there is a word with more than one meaning how can we know what we are actually saying to a person if the person we are talking to will not receive our meaning with the same intentions we were giving? Locke does not delve specifically into discourse, but focuses on words that have simultaneous meanings, words he calls “mixed modes”. In this blog I will be focusing on one word, which may seem to have a variable amount of meanings to it; this is the word love. I will look at various concepts of love defined by Plato in his dialogue Phaedrus to have a base root for the word as Plato defines. Through these definitions I will prove the point that Locke is right in conveying that words have “mixed modes”, but also I will argue that despite the mixed significations of the word, one usage is superior than the other usage in the context of discourse, which gives the word signification.