Of Grammatology

“By a slow movement whose necessity is hardly perceptible, everything that for at least some twenty centuries tended toward and finally succeeded in being gathered under the name of language is beginning to let itself be transferred to, or at least summarized under, the name of writing.”

In this passage, Derrida suggests that speech has dominated the hierarchy of the binary opposites of speech and writing for centuries. Prevailing thought suggested that speech had greater value because it was closer to thought. Writing presented a unique problem to meaning. The word on the page signified a spoken word that signified a sign, creating more space between language and meaning. However, Derrida suggests that this perception is changing, and the written word is becoming more directly associated with meaning.

“The order of the signified is never contemporary, is at best the inverse or the subtly discrepant parallel—discrepant by the time of a breath.”

In his development of his argument for The Rejection of Logocentrism, Derrida explains that it is impossible for a signifier to have a meaning that is clearly defined by its relationship to the outside word. As soon as the thought is translated into a signifier, there is too much space between the mind and language to create a stable connection.

“The movements of deconstruction are not interested in structures from the outside. They are not possible and effective, they cannot take accurate aim, except by inhabiting those structures.”

Deconstruction utilizes the technique of dismantling a concept from within. This approach is the origin of Derrida’s famous and often misunderstood assertion that there is no meaning outside of context. Rather than relying on the relationship of binaries or the metaphysics of presence, Derrida turns logic on itself, revealing the gaps or negations in its reasoning. He argues that emphasizing the relationship between internal and external structures limits understanding.

“It is clear that the concepts of stability, permanence, and duration, which here serve to think the relationships between speech and writing, are too lax and open to every uncritical investment.”

This quotation further emphasizes the unstable nature of meaning. In this section of the chapter, Derrida outlines Saussure’s argument that speech and writing should be examined separately and that signifiers have a connection to the external world. Derrida casts doubt on the stability of language and argues that the metaphysics of presence keep philosophers like Saussure from casting a critical eye on their own understanding of language.

“From the moment there is sense there is nothing but signs. We think only in signs.”

Derrida emphasizes the infinite nature of language and signs. Each word begets another word. For example, if one considers the word “father,” it conjures a never-ending succession of other concepts, including “mother,” “paternal,” “God,” etc. Derrida proposes that this richness is what makes deconstruction of a trace so challenging. One can never fully uncover the infinite traces that mark a sign. This complexity contributes to the ever-shifting nature of meaning.

“The trace is not only the disappearance of origin, it would say here—in the discourse that we use and according to the trail that we follow—that the origin did not even disappear, that it was never constituted except as a back-formation by a nonorigin, the trace, which thus becomes the origin of the origin.”

Trace forms one of the pillars for Derrida’s argument that meaning is naturally unstable and complex. He suggests that a word can never be separated from its present or past or from its association with other words. These associations represent the trace that deconstruction attempts to uncover. However, Derrida proposes that deconstruction can never fully uncover the trace of any sign.

“The hinge (brisure) marks the impossibility that a sign, the unity of a signifier and a signified, be produced within the plenitude of a present and an absolute presence.”

Derrida proposes that deconstruction is the attempt to uncover and examine the trace in language. In this passage, he argues that signs can never be attached to concrete meaning. They are informed by their presence—what exists in the external world—and their trace—their association with other signs and internal experience.

“Logocentrism is an ethnocentric metaphysics, in an original and non-’relativist’ sense, it is linked to the history of the West.”

As Derrida continues with his critique of logocentrism, he brings in a discussion about alphabets and writing from non-Western origins. Derrida explains that a preference for speech in language is an entirely Western ideal. Chinese writing is independent of phonetic spelling and speech, for example. Philosophers who adhere to logocentrism fail to recognize that their arguments are, in fact, ethnocentric, meaning they attempt to apply a phenomenon unique to their own cultures to the rest of the world.

“Between rationalism and mysticism there is, then, a certain complicity.”

One of Derrida’s critiques of Western logocentrism is its inability to separate rationalism from the spiritual. The foundation of logocentrism is the alignment of speech with the divine. This assumption undermines the projected rational logic of logocentrism.

“Metaphysics has constituted an exemplary system of defense against the threat of writing. What links writing to violence?”

In this chapter, Derrida uses his technique of deconstruction to examine how philosophical thought has aligned violence with writing, which he argues is one of the tenets for privileging speech. Lévi-Strauss’s analysis of the Nambikwara people serves as the text for Derrida’s deconstruction. Derrida turns Lévi-Strauss’s own words and philosophies on themselves, thereby dismantling the association of writing with violence.

“Up to what point is it legitimate not to call by the name of writing those ‘few dots’ and ‘zigzags’ on their calabashes, so briefly evoked in Tristes Tropiques.”

Derrida criticizes Lévi-Strauss’s ethnocentrism in his work Tristes Tropiques. Lévi-Strauss refers to “primitive” forms of writing, revealing a racism that blinds him to the reality of the people he observes. Their form of writing does not align with the phonetic alphabet championed by logocentrism, so Lévi-Strauss fails to see their writing as legitimate.

“To name, to give names that it will possible be forbidden to pronounce, such is the originary violence of the language which consists in inscribing within a difference, in classifying, in suspending the vocative absolute.”

Derrida pushes back against Lévi-Strauss’s argument that the origination of violence in the Nambikwara tribe was the introduction of writing. Instead, Derrida proposes that violence was a part of the culture of the Nambikwara people from the beginning, because violence is a natural part of the human condition. Whenever humans classify and distinguish themselves into different groups, violence always ensures. Furthermore, Derrida asserts that the presence of Lévi-Strauss contributed to the violence, creating a framework for revenge.

“To say that a people do not know how to write because one can translate the word which they use to designate the act of inscribing as ‘making stripes,’ is that not as if one should refuse them ‘speech’ by translating the equivalent word by ‘to cry,’ ‘to sing,’ ‘to sigh’?”

In this passage, Derrida vehemently challenges Lévi-Strauss’s assertion that the Nambikwara people lack a written language. Once more, Derrida connects logocentrism to ethnocentrism. He argues that Lévi-Strauss is only examining the tribe through the lens of his own experience. Their form of writing is different from his own, so he devalues it.

“That is why, straining toward the reconstruction of presence, he valorizes and disqualifies writing at the same time.”

In this passage, Derrida shows the connection between Rousseau’s argument and the metaphysics of presence. He views writing as a chain of supplements for the signified, which he believes establishes a gulf between the written word and authentic experience.

“Rousseau considers writing as a dangerous means, a menacing aid, the critical response to a situation of distress.”

Rousseau perceives writing as a chain of cheap and inauthentic supplements, so he views it as dangerous. His argument mirrors Lévi-Strauss’s assertion that writing is linked to violence. It is important to note, however, that Lévi-Strauss viewed Rousseau as a founder of anthropology and admired his ideologies.

“The sign, the image, the representation, which come to supplement the absent presence are the illusions that sidetrack us.”

Rousseau suggests that anything that stands in for another idea or signifier leads the reader further away from the authentic origination. Derrida, however, argues that the chain of supplements, or what he refers to as “différance,” serves to contextualize and enhance meaning.

“There has never been anything but writing.”

This quotation forms the foundation of Derrida’s methodology of deconstruction. Often misunderstood, Derrida’s statement suggests that a text provides everything a reader needs to extract meaning.

“Alteration in the language and in pronunciation is thus inseparable from political corruption.”

Rousseau sees any evolution in language as a part of a series of supplements. Like his views about government, Derrida sees representation as a divergence from the natural and divine center of humanity. Each supplement is a diversion from purity and authenticity. Therefore, what he sees as the evolution of the decline of language is interwoven into the decline of society.

“The logic of the supplement—which is not the logic of identity—makes it possible, simultaneously, for the acceleration of evil to find at once its historical compensation and its historical guardrail. History precipitates history, society corrupts society, but the evil that links both in an indefinite chain has its natural supplement as well: history and society produce their own resistance to the abyss.”

Derrida challenges the logocentric idea that the written word creates a series of supplements, only confusing meaning as a result. Instead, he suggests that these supplements reveal a necessary part of the human condition, the need to evolve and change. This creation of supplements is as natural to humanity as any other process.

“The taste for and power of imitation are inscribed within nature.”

In this passage, Derrida challenges Rousseau’s argument that imitation is the antithesis of what is natural. Rousseau suggests that imitation is a supplement for the authentic version. An actor on a stage is one in a series of representations attempting to imitate something that is more authentic, natural, and divine. However, Derrida argues that imitation occurs in nature. Birds mimic one another. Moths try to camouflage themselves to look like tree bark. Imitation and supplementation, seen as part of the exterior, are a part of the interior.

“Our language, even if we are pleased to speak it, has already substituted too many articulations for too many accents, it has lost life and warmth, it is already eaten by writing.”

Derrida explains that writing and speech have the same origins. Both are a facet of representation. Speech is so complex and diverse that it contains its own series of supplementations, which Derrida suggests is proof of its association with writing.

“How is writing, like pity, for example, both in nature and outside it? Like the awakening of imagination before this, what does the awakening of writing signify here, if it belongs neither to nature nor to its other?”

These questions, posed by Derrida in response to Rousseau’s contradictory writing, form the heart of deconstruction. The questions challenge absolutes by daring to interrogate whether binaries even exist. The inquiry is not whether writing or speech is more natural. Instead, Derrida asks whether it is possible that writing and speech are neither natural nor cultural. He suggests that it is possible that writing and speech have more to say about the human condition than a simple juxtaposition of opposites.

“Such is the situation of writing within the history of metaphysics: a debased lateralized, repressed, displaced theme, yet exercising a permanent and obsessive pressure from the place where it remains held in checked.”

In this passage, Derrida admonishes the metaphysics of presence, explaining that the reliance of logocentrism on presence is evidence of its willful ignorance. Derrida suggests that Rousseau’s argument is clumsy because it stubbornly tries to fit conflicting ideas into a cohesive theory of logocentrism. His consistent rejection of logocentrism emphasizes logocentrism’s failure to recognize the role of absence and negation in the communication of language.