More remarks

Trace


Following on from my previous remarks here is another entry from Wikipedia

Trace is one of the most important concepts in Derridian Deconstruction. In the 1960s, Derrida used this word in two of his early books, namely “Writing and Difference” and “Of Grammatology”. The English word “trace” was first used by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; in her famous preface to “Of Grammatology”, she wrote “I stick to ‘trace’ in my translation, because it “looks the same” as Derrida’s word; the reader must remind himself of at least the track, even the spoor, contained within the French word”^[1]. Derrida, however, does not positively or strictly define trace, and denies the possibility of such a project. Indeed, words like “différance”, “arché-writing”, “pharmakos/pharmakon”, and especially “specter”, carry almost the identical meaning in many other texts by Derrida. His refusal to apply only one name to his concepts is a deliberate strategy to avoid a certain sort of metaphysics.^{[citation needed]} For detailed analysis, check “Of Grammatology”, Translator’s Preface.^{[citation needed]}

Trace can be seen as an always contingent term for a "mark of the absence of a presence, an always-already absent present", of the ‘originary lack’ that seems to be "the condition of thought and experience". Trace is a contingent unit of the critique of language always-already present: “language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique”^[2]. Deconstruction, unlike analysis or interpretation, tries to lay the inner contradictions of a text bare, and, in turn, build a different meaning from that: it is at once a process of destruction and construction. Derrida claims that these contradictions are neither accidental nor exceptions; they are the exposure of certain “metaphysics of pure presence”, an exposure of the “transcendental signified” always-already hidden inside language. This “always-already hidden” contradiction is trace.

Metaphysics, Logocentrism, Differance and Trace

To this day, the best way of learning about Deconstruction is to read Derrida in original. Still, we will try to present a short exposition of what “trace” is and it relates to the whole Derridian project.

Derrida’s philosophy is chiefly concerned with metaphysics, although he does not define it rigorously, and takes it to be “the science of presence”. In his own words:

The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. Its matrix—if you will pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being so elliptical in order to bring me more quickly to my principal theme—is the determination of being as presence in all the senses of this word. It would be possible to show that all the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated the constant of a presence--- eidos, arché, telos, energia, ousia, aletheia, transcendentality, consciousness, or conscience, God, man, and so forth.^[5]

Derrida finds the root of this metaphysics, which he calls “metaphysics of pure presence, in logos, which is internal to language itself. He calls this “Logocentrism”, which is a tendency towards definitive truth-values through forced closure of structures. In his belief, it is the structure of language itself that forces us into metaphysics, best represented through truth-values, closures, speech as valorized by Socrates in Phaedrus. In fact, according to Derrida, Logocentrism is so all-pervasive that the mere act of opposing it cannot evade it by any margin. On the other hand, Derrida finds his Nietzschean hope (his own word is “affirmation") in heterogeneity, contradictions, absence etc. To counter the privileged position of the speech (parole) or the phonè, he puts forward a new science of grammé or the unit of writing: grammatology. Unlike structuralists, Derrida does not see language as the one-to-one correspondence between signifier and signified [for a detailed critique of the structuralist project, read Sign, Structure, and Play in Human Sciences, at [1]; to him, language is a play of identity and difference, an endless chain of signifiers leading to other signifiers. In spite of all the logocentric tendencies towards closure, and truth-values, language, or text for that matter, always contradicts itself. This critique is inherent in all texts, not through a presence, but an absence of a presence long sought by logocentric visions. Influenced by some aspects of Freudian psycho-analysis, Derrida presents us the strategy of Deconstruction, an amalgamation of Heidegger’s concept of Destruktion and Levinas’s concept of the Other. Deconstruction as a strategy tries to find the most surprising contradictions in texts, unravel it, and built over it. Instead of finding the truth, the closure, the steadfast meaning, it finds absence of presence, loophole, freeplay of meanings etc. (For a more detailed analysis of Deconstruction, read the Wikipedia article Deconstruction). It is this absence of presence that is termed as ‘trace’ by Derrida.

Gallery reject

This is a proposal I sumitted for Window Gallery but they rejected it. A show that was erased before it even existed. "you never saw me.......only the trace of me as I was leaving"

A first remark

Brief One

Starting at the top. Debbie's brief was as follows:

Make a work in response to this quote:

"The gesture of sous rature (putting under erasure) implies 'both this and that' as well as 'neither this nor that', undoing the opposition and the heirachy between the legible and the erased"

The quote is from Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology and used in relation to Ari Kakkinen's work. His photographs feature places, spaces, objects, and human beings covered by white cloth, only the shape of what was there before remains.

The quote is part of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Translator's Preface to Of Grammatology. The words are taken from footnote 54. The quote also appears on the home page of Ari Kakkinen's website. It concerns a passage in Edmund Husserl's introduction to Phenomenology.

54. Cartesianische Meditationen, p. 6o; Cartesian Meditations, p. 6o. It is a common error to equate the phenomenological reduction, "putting out of play," and the sous rature, "putting under erasure," (see, e.g., Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism [Princeton, 19721, p. 216). The distinction is simple: The gesture of bracketing implies "not this but that,' preserving a bipolarity as well as a hierarchy of empirical impurity and phenomenological purity; the gesture of sous rature implies "both this and that" as well as "neither this nor that" undoing the opposition and the hierarchy between the legible and the erased.

Whilst Husserl is concerned with:

"putting out of play" of all positions taken towards the already-given Objective world, and in the first place, all existential positions . . .

Spivak deals with a distinct position evident in Derrida's work concerning direct empirical engagement with existence which does not require a bracketing of 'data' and existential positions but rather an act of erasure that allows a very practical deletion of words that at the same time allows qualities assocated with their 'present usage' and presence to stand. Taking the "concept" of Being as an example, it is possible to differentiate between the concept in use within speech or writing and that Spivak calls the "precomprehended question of Being". It is a question that bores into the fabric of the territory where language and the words it draws upon touch upon traces of 'beingness' beyond the limits of signification.

To use an analogy it might be possible to talk about a heart of darkess within my direct and immediate experience of life into which language can not penetrate but without which there would be nothing to describe its boundary - a boundary upon which my own sense of myself is construed.

So I will take as a point of departure Wikipedia's entry for sous rature.

Sous rature

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sous rature is a strategic philosophical device originally developed by Martin Heidegger. Usually translated as 'under erasure', it involves the crossing out of a word within a text, but allowing it to remain legible and in place. Used extensively by Jacques Derrida, it signifies that a word is "inadequate yet necessary";[1] that a particular signifier is not wholly suitable for the concept it represents, but must be used as the constraints of our language offer nothing better.

Sous rature has been described as the “typographical expression of deconstruction”[2] which is a movement in literary theory that seeks to identify sites within texts where key terms and concepts may be paradoxical or self-undermining, rendering their meaning undecidable.[3] To extend this notion, deconstruction and the practice of sous rature also seek to demonstrate that meaning is derived from difference, not by reference to a pre-existing notion or freestanding idea.[4]

History

Sous rature as a literary practice originated in the works of German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). The practice of placing words or terms under erasure first appeared in Heidegger's work in a letter he penned to Ernst Jünger in 1956 titled "Zur Seinsfrage" (The Question of Being), in which Heidegger seeks to define nihilism.[5] During the course of the letter, Heidegger also begins to speculate about the problematic nature of defining anything, let alone words. In particular, the meaning of the term ‘Being’ is contested and Heidegger crosses out the word, but lets both the deletion and the word remain. “Since the word is inaccurate, it is crossed out. Since the word is necessary, it remains legible.”[6] According to the Heideggerian model, erasure expressed the problem of presence and absence of meaning in language. Heidegger was concerned with trying to return the absent meaning to the present meaning and the placing of a word or term under erasure “simultaneously recognised and questioned the term’s meaning and accepted use”.[7]

French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) adopted this technique and further explored the implications of Heidegger's erasure and its application in the wider setting of deconstructive literary theory. Derrida extended the problem of presence and absence to include the notion that erasure does not mark a lost presence, rather the potential impossibility of presence altogether - in other words, the potential impossibility of univocity of meaning ever having been attached to the word or term in the first place. Ultimately, Derrida argued, it was not just the particular signs that were placed under erasure, but the whole system of signification.[7]

Brief 3

Brief 5

Ahh, it is down a dark alley we shall meet
to voice our bugbear's
then retreat.

Brief no 6 courtesy of Raewyn

.......the idea of John Dee advising Queen Elizabeth  on propaganda, consciousness, management and image magic... techniques used for perception distortion by modern advertising.....

 

 

Brief 1

Make a work in reponse to this quote:

"The gesture of sous rature (putting under erasure) implies 'both this and that' as well as 'neither this nor that', undoing the opposition and the heirachy between the legible and the erased"

The quote is from Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology and used in relation to Ari Kakkinen's work. His photographs feature places, spaces, objects, and human beings covered by white cloth, only the shape of what was there before remains.

Spice - Brief no 4

Develop your own concept of spice and respond to it in using materials and medium of your own choosing. 

This is the fourth brief in the series.

All Fullblown Tuesday members are asked to write a brief to bring to the next meeting to gift to another person.

The purpose of this idea is to engage together on individual projects that are part of our collective - we are equally giving input and creating output. It also is an interesting concept in itself in relation to the idea of the gift. Not only will the outcomes that will result be of interest but also the process we will all engage in by creating briefs, gifting them, working on the brief we have received and it's possible relationship to the gifter and the response to the work created from the brief we have written. 

Fullblown Briefs should be short eg: 100 words approx or the equivalent in visuals or youtube clips etc.

Responses will be presented to the group at the following meeting in one months time.