50 pages • 1 hour read
Jacques DerridaOf Grammatology
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1967A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Deconstruction
Like many of his contemporaries, Derrida’s philosophy was reactionary, responding to the structuralist and modernist theories that dominated the first half of the 20th century. He recognized and was troubled by the way modernism attempted to create grand narratives and to solidify concepts through binary thinking. Derrida resisted seeing the world in absolutes. In language in particular, he saw nuances that structuralist arguments failed to explain.
In Of Grammatology, Derrida suggests that humans understand the meaning of the signified through its relationship to its binary opposite. That is, a word only makes sense when considered through its relationship to other words. For example, reason is understood through its relationship to passion, masculinity to femininity, profit to generosity, etc. One cannot fully understand what light is without also understanding the nature of darkness. The metaphysics of presence, in addition, always champions one side of the binary over the other. In the examples above, for example, reason, masculinity, generosity, and light have historically been ranked higher than their counterparts. Today’s readers may immediately question this hierarchy, as contemporary sentiments challenge the preference of one over the other. However, Derrida’s critique that privileging one side of a binary over the other is innately flawed was revolutionary during the mid-20th century.
Derrida proposes that by breaking the connection between the two signs, or by turning their logic in on themselves, he can reveal the instability of their hierarchical structure. For example, those who champion reason above passion may do so because they believe passion leads to violent or extreme behaviors. In response, a deconstructionist argument may point out that history is full of figures whose close adherence to reason led to violent behaviors. Josef Mengele, who tortured and murdered people throughout World War II in the name of medical science, illustrates this idea.
Derrida illustrates deconstruction in a few philosophical areas related to the privileging of speech over writing. In Tristes Tropiques, Lévi-Strauss claims that the Nambikwara people did not have a developed form of writing. However, Derrida challenges this claim, turning Lévi-Strauss’s text against him. Pointing out Lévi-Strauss’s reference to the Nambikwara people’s writing of lines, Derrida suggests that the dismissal of this writing is indicative of Lévi-Strauss’s own ethnocentric philosophy. Derrida further deconstructs Lévi-Strauss’s argument that writing is linked to violence by citing earlier references to violence in the text. In Part 2, Derrida deconstructs Rousseau’s theories about the origin of language and the evil of the written word as a formalization of the natural world. He uses Rousseau’s arguments to reveal that writing and speech have the same origination.
Derrida explains deconstruction as placing the exterior within the interior. With this transposition, deconstruction exposes the fragility of binaries and erases the dividing line. When Derrida argues that “there is no outside-text” (172), he means that the idea that any concept exists solely in the exterior is false.
The Instability of Meaning
Derrida explores this theme from the beginning of the work. He begins by challenging the lenses through which philosophers had long understood the world and the meaning of language. Plato presented the idea of essences, the theory that everything contains inherent properties that define them. Derrida challenges this theory by proposing that meaning changes. Language, too, is ever-changing and evolving.
Derrida demonstrates this instability by challenging logocentrism and revealing the unstable connection between language and thought, or between signifiers and the signified. One way he does this is by explaining how the distance between language and thought weakens meaning. A writer thinks of the word “faith,” for example. This writer’s understanding of the word “faith” is unique to her. She understands the word through her own specific lens of experience and belief. She may think of faith as something overtly religious—referring to God or to a specific system of beliefs. Regardless of whether she speaks or writes the word, there is a space between the thought and the signifier. The moment that word leaves her mind and enters the external world, she is no longer in control of its meaning. The distance between the thought and the signifier weakens its context. The reader then takes in the word and applies their own lens of understanding and experience to interpret it, further destabilizing meaning. The reader may think of faith as something that is universal and secular, or the reader may think of the word within the context of a different system of beliefs.
Derrida reveals how each sign has an infinite number of traces. Looking at the previous example, “cup” can encompass myriad concepts and images. Try closing your eyes and thinking about the word. What comes to mind? Is it a coffee mug, plastic cup, or something else? A person’s understanding of the word is influenced by personal experience. It is also influenced by time. The image of a cup to a person in the 16th century may look different to the image summoned by a person today. Each sign holds the weight of its history. The meaning of words becomes slippery when considered within these different contexts.
Derrida criticizes the tendency of philosophers to adhere to the metaphysics of presence, which restricts them to considering signs only through the lens of reality. Reality is only understood through past and present experience, so it fails to consider the future. Derrida proposes that grammatology must seek to understand this third element of metaphysics. One way to think about this idea is by imagining a child throwing a rock. A supervising adult will subconsciously take note of the origin of the rock, the child’s hand, and its current position. However, the adult will also look to the trajectory of the rock to ensure that it is not headed toward a window or another person. Adults consider the future as an important element of the present. Derrida argues that the same should be true of language.
The Rejection of Logocentrism
In Greek, logos refers to “reason” or “word.” It is often closely associated with the divine. Christian theology adds another layer, closely aligning language with God. The Bible speaks of the “Word of God” and emphasizes divine reason. Philosophers like Aristotle and Plato believed that reason was divinely originated, revealing God’s favor toward humans.
Logocentrism is built on this connection between the spiritual realm and language. It proposes that all thoughts, and all words, have a direct external connection. The word “cup,” for example, will have a direct correlative object in the external world. In the history of logocentrism, speech is often privileged over writing, because it is considered to have a closer relationship with the divine—reason and thought. The thread between an idea and a word, or “sign,” is short. One thinks of a cup and says the word “cup” in a nearly simultaneous instant. Writing, however, lengthens this line. Proponents of logocentrism argue that the written word is a representation of the spoken word, not the thought itself.
Derrida attempts to dismantle logocentrism by using its own logic against it. Throughout the text, he relies on the philosophical works of thinkers like Aristotle, Saussure, Hegel, Rousseau, Hegel, and others to flesh out his ideas. In many instances, he reveals how those philosophers who were proponents of logocentrism destabilized their own arguments. Derrida’s opening statements in the Exergue tackle the subject immediately, as he opens by quoting Rousseau and Hegel, both supporters of logocentrism. Rousseau’s quotation champions the alphabet, which Derrida later reclaims as evidence in support of writing’s importance and equal footing with speech. Hegel’s quotation makes a claim that seems to contrast with his logocentric ideologies: “Alphabetic script is in itself and for itself the most intelligent” (3). Utilizing their own words against them, Derrida applies deconstruction to dismantle their arguments from within.
However, Derrida does not claim that their statements about the alphabet mean that writing should be championed over speech or that the phonetic alphabet truly is the “most intelligent.” One of Derrida’s major arguments against logocentrism is its connection to ethnocentrism. The philosopher shows how logocentrism is based on the Western preference for speech and phonetic writing, a type of writing that connects letters to sounds. Chinese writing illustrates that sophisticated writing can function separately from speech. Logocentrism is a theory based on Western bias, and Derrida is quick to point out that the history of Western philosophy is one that centers European ideologies above all others. Another example is Lévi-Strauss’s account of his time with the Nambikwara people. Lévi-Strauss dismisses the Nambikwara form of writing as “zigzags” simply because it does not align with his Western view of what writing is.
Derrida’s final arguments against logocentrism attack its alignment with the metaphysics of presence. Derrida criticizes logocentrism for not considering the roles of space and time in any language. Rousseau’s theories about the origination of language and their logocentric ideologies reveal a blind spot in his framework. The moment a signifier is released, written or spoken, it loses its authorship and dissolves into a chain of representation, subject to interpretation and perception.
