Geoffrey Bennington on Derrida and Deconstruction (Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series)
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- Опубликовано: 8 окт 2017
- The Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory at UIUC presents Geoffrey Bennington (French & Italian, Emory) on "Derrida and Deconstruction" as part of the fall 2017 Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. The lecture was presented on October 3rd in Lincoln Hall, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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![Rick Roderick on Derrida - The Ends of Man [full length]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LvAwoUvXNzU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Rick Roderick on Derrida - The Ends of Man [full length]](/img/tr.png)
I e-mailed Professor Bennington to ask for the reading list that went with this lecture, and he responded with the following (for all the three people who are interested):
"The readings I had suggested for those attending the lecture were: Chapter 2 of Of Grammatology, a later sub-section of that same book entitled “The Exorbitant: Question of Method,” and the interview “Semiology and Grammatology” in the little book entitled Positions."
And when I said I was reading "Spectres of Marx" and some secondary literature he added the following:
"I might also recommend to you the essay “Signature, Event, Context” in a book called Margins of Philosophy, and the book on Husserl entitled Voice and Phenomenon. I think and hope that some of the later work (including the book on Marx) becomes more accessible in light of this relatively early material."
I hope this will be helpful for some people.
If he knew Wikipedia existed, he would have had you begin there. A bad writer or a poor translation will completely screw this field of study up, corrupting the signs themselves that are attempting to study signs in general, and rendering the whole field inaccessible, if not incoherent, as is the reference paragraph in the lecture. For example you do not motivate a trace - that is not English, and it does not 'have communicate' - no one talks like that, and to add 'within the same possibility' is simply incoherence. The possibility of what? This is bad translation of a muddled thinker.
Now, think (please) - and ask, what does humanity need more, an abstract understanding of the nature of signs in intentional and instinctual communication and understanding, or an over-arching life-guiding philosophy to live by, and which humanity has never had (hence continued vanity, envy, xenophobia, prejudice, hate, war, crime, fashionable ignorance, depravity, the three mental pathologies of greed, manipulation, and domination, apathy, despair, depression, cynicism, and suicide)? What philosophers have been doing is hiding from this critical survival need, either in history, or in semantic parlor games, or in applied philosophies (economics, politics), spinning their wheels in a subjective-value haze, or in this - micro-deconstructions, which is fine, but not when humanity is still suffering from Continued Universal Cluelessness, and is still not adequately secure in a harsh and deadly universe. To pursue this without securing yourselves is suicide. Congratulations on avoiding what is really needed and leaving it to someone else to solve (and someone just did, read the Philosophy of Broader Survival). THEN you can pursue the general laws of signs (which can be quickly summed with an IF/THEN perspective and from how the mind/sense apparatus works in living organisms, but you would have had to have knowledge about computer programming, cognitive science, and biology to make those connections, which begs for multi-discipline knowledge, which philosophers fail to do, to their own weakness and ridicule). If you plan on becoming lost in semiotics (and you will become lost without external perspectives), you are doomed (meaning you will not make any connections with reality, which adversely affects your survival prospects).
This is a good example of academia protecting itself in an impenetrable, pretentious, and snobbish mental cocoon, unless this is just bad philosophizing by innocently weak thinkers, hoping that someone else (from outside of (the stultifying confines of a pretentious and weak) academia) is taking up that slack (there was). Continue deconstructing, but do not ignore survival, and especially Broader Survival (see the new philosophy that addresses it), which has not only been ignored, it had not even been conceived of (to your peril, and the peril of your deconstructions).
@@wbiro Naive. I'm glad philosophy has left this way of thinking behind in the ash heap of history.
@@wbiro you are a fucking idiot
@@wbiro are you taking meth? No offense, your comment is unintelligible. I read secondary sources about Derrida including the preface of Spivak on "Of Grammatology" but I still understood the influence of Nietzsche and Hegel to the development of Deconstruction. Sorry but you don't understand the theory. The mere fact that in the very beginning you are telling others to read entries in Wikipedia tells something about your inability to carry out serious academic engagement.
Thank you for sharing it. 🌹
i taught political philosophy for over 2 decades. damn, this is the gold standard of lectures.
Aha!!! Finally I understand Derrida. I mean, as an amateur philosopher, I had always thought I understood him well enough, but there was never this clarity in simplicity, which, frankly, even the most alien philosophy can be cast in, but takes a clear minded interpreter to paraphrase a work into the clarity of accessible terms and Prof. Bennington is just this. Thank you Prof. Bennington!
I come back to this lecture every now and then. Am a biochemist without much background in this stuff, but I feel like I pick up something valuable from this video each time.
The illustration of the concept of the trace using the example of the letter B is the most helpful I have come across. Thank you for your careful and humble presentation of these difficult ideas.
The keys on a typewriter as one writes is also suggestive of this concept.
So far the most illuminating talk on Derrida I’ve heard
So good! Gratitude, I am a ski and snowboard instructor, and a kind of guide, mentor or "coach" Occasionally I witness a student catch the spark, and the feeling is so powerful for them and for me. This teaching is such a spark, for me in my understanding of Derrida. This, a dawn long in coming. (Still fumbling in the shadows around C.S. Pierce, but inspired anew to learn. Happiness to you, all. Always, Erik
Amazing content. Thanks for making it available!
With a trace of a transcendental signified implied in quotations the mind of the other is almost engaged in the desire for self-realization as a form of encounter with the pleasures of the lecture.
Amazing! Thank you so very much!
Thanks for posting. It clarified some issues for me. Wish I could attend a course by Bennington on Derrida. Any possibility of publishing the reading list, Bennington refers to?
That was a nice AC Grayling impersonation on par with that of GA Cohen's Grayling
I wonder if Derrida had ever read what Jaspers wrote about 'the cipher' and 'the cipher script of being'.
This session seems like the best general introduction to Derrida I've found, regardless of format. I think Bennington manages to convey clearly something of the kinds of experiences from which Derrida was writing, as well as to clear up the usual misunderstandings promulgated by his (Derrida's) detractors, for all who are ready to listen. The Q&A at the end is as important as the rest.
I guess I have more patience than Bennington does for Judith Butler. Her recollections of working with Maurice Natanson published in Philosophy Today left me more favorably disposed. I liked (those chapters I read of) her Althusser/Foucault book, difficult though it was. She's perhaps more easily approached through her interviews than her books.
I'd be suprised if he hadnt read jaspers, but probably not super deeply. I've always suspected Derrida's german wasn't very solid, he makes elementary mistakes when commenting Benjamin and Heidegger. Generally speaking, I think most big-shot french philosophers have subpar German, whereas Germans intellectuals often speak pretty good French
This is a really excellent presentation of some very difficult material. It demonstrates that understanding the intellectual background of the French 'sciences humaines' in Saussure and structuralist theory relies on a thorough understanding of language theory, something that is missing in many enthusiastic followers of Derrida, such as Judith Butler, who consistently misuses the term 'structuralist', demonstrating that she doesn't know what it means, which in turn means that she doesn't understand Derrida at all. Bravo.
Indeed. Bennington himself wrote an unfavourable review of Butler here: lareviewofbooks.org/article/embarrassing-ourselves/
I took Butler’s seminar on speech as a grad student at Berkeley. I am pleased to be able to report that she understands the philosophy of language, structuralism, and Derrida quite well indeed. If you can cite a specific example of something you believe she has wrong, that’d be interesting.
@@pinverarity Let me steer you towards this assessment of Butler's understanding. Can I ask a simple question. Do you read French well enough to read Derrida? If not, I wonder how you know that Butler understood these things? I know she thinks she does, but that's not the same thing.
lareviewofbooks.org/article/embarrassing-ourselves/
Being just enthusiastic amateur lover of Sophia I can't express well enough how precious this lecture was.
Oh, and perhaps it is just me, but on many specific moments Professors appearance was eerily similar to that of Wittgenstein! Unrelated to topic, but still.
49:19 important … b is b because of traces but they are “absent”. B is not really “present”. Nothing really is present or absent. This interplay is differance.
A lot of what was discussed here compares with string theory. Very interesting.
I see Derrida's style as reading much like Nietzsche's. He even wrote that book, Spurs: Nietzsche's Style, which I haven't looked at for years, but I have The Derrida Reader left, which as I read it, sounds to me like Nietzsche, the sound I mean. But, as far as the construction of his sentences goes, I truly believe that he works on many sentences at once, skipping ahead in the middle of one, filling in part of another, assembling them with a goal in mind to discover how far he can push the limits of the matter of the subject he is discussing while remaining grammatical and somewhat reasonable to comprehend.
52:49 everything is textural, interwoven. No distinction between language and world. Differentiating web of traces allowing differential effects of presence.
38:14min Saussure explains inheritance in one way. In what way does Derrida explain the rise, and hegemony of "inheritance".?
The lecture is great because it confirms my hunch- by arguing correctly that there is no signified- in absurdly complex and pretentious ways- Derrida is saying no more than later Wittgenstein- who said it pretty clearly without the need for mystification.
We could maybe summarise some of this explanation by saying: any given tagmeme is outlined by the negative space given by the limit of sum of the terms which it is not.
Brown is the negative space left by the sum of all other colours, the more colours you involve the more accurate your approximation of brown is.
As we collect more and more terms that carry distinction information about what an object is not, the object implied by the negative space reveals itself in higher resolution, but not explicitly.
Wow he's a great teacher!!
I totally agree. I came here because Richard Rorty mentioned Bennington on a chapter on Derrida in Rorty's book, Truth and Progress. This professor does a great job helping to explain Derridian thought.
Brilliant. 🌹
God-damn-post-modern-neo-marxist-trickster-figure-frankfurt-school-conspiracy-evil-sith-lord be turning the freaking frogs gay up in here. Jokes aside, that oxford immitation was brilliant, and thanks for a wonderful lecture. Means a ton that they are put online.
You had the first part right?
I wish you would re-state the question so we could hear it.
If language is symbolic, then where do you place symbolism between the signifier and the signified?
36:16 So, in order to be different they must be identical first?, because Saussure already establishes a difference, could be wrong, but a difference between speech and writing holds for him.
Around 20:40, this is the step I never quite understand. The argument is made that we don't need the "signified", which turns out to be just relationships between signifiers. But Sausssure's very idea is that signifiers themselves are just relationships too. So why do signifiers have any more substance than signifieds?
@@Brewmaster757 Thanks so much for your reply. I see what you're saying, but - and I hope I'm not being pig-headed - what you pick out from Bennington seems to me to encapsulate the problem rather than dispel it. Bennington's joke about the impossibility of "showing" a signified seems to be establishing a worldview where signifieds are absent, while signifiers can be present. And that distinction between presence and absence is what goes out the window due to the differential nature of value, and traces and whatnot.
So, like, the P-ness of the P is both in and out of the A-ness of the A?
Cool
Dudes rock
But Saussere´s point is not that dismissable: when people discover something the may debate what to call it, each product advertised, each invention, your kids. It is output, but also the beginning of language
35min But is not difference a "relation" an "x" understood to be a relation?
53:16min "Across the whole web..." that is a macro statement. A meta-narrative about his object of study. It seems to me.
Don't you think Derrida through his theory of Deconstruction enabled the readers to become creative?
After finishing this video I tried to start it over to watch it again. But I couldn’t find the beginning, which means I never finished watching it either
1:25:00
"writing before the usual distinction between writing and speech has even kicked in", so like an intermediate stage before they individuated? It looks like a generative point of origin where differences did not exist. That is what it sounds like. "Implying that writing came before speech, but nothing like that". Ok, but he knows for sure that it is "new", but the resonance of the battery of signifiers from the tradition make too much noise, as it were so that they get in the way of the new things he is trying to demonstrate? He knows it is not his writing, because he has checked. He has been able to isolate it to the tradition. Does he go into an analysis of the nature of this "x" he has, and is sure acts as a causal agent?
If we were not subjective we would not invent reading as extention of thinking.We must see the true nature of perception before reading s way to know what is written.
Deconstruction had to be from French intellectual tradition. After all Derrida finished what Ludwig Feuerbach started, the tradition of not exceeding the limits of human thoughts!! David Hume also comes to my mind but he seems too linear!!
There are countless examples that Our mind(brain) does not faithfully construct the external world(For example the same geometrical straight line appears longer/shorter depending on what sorrounds it). It creates approximations adequate to get by most of our survival needs.It definitely misrepresents on many occasions , but then it is the price to be paid for better efficiency. After all I don't need to know all the pores on your face to recognise your face.
Since language is an extension of the same construct of the mind(brain), we can advance this logic to language to claim that "Approximate representation of the meaning is adequate to get by most of our needs". In fact it is desirable to avoid heavy computational taxing on the brain!! However, Derrida's central claim/concern is valid especially in cases of abstract ideas spread over large span of space and time. Derrida's "trace " is true. The question , however, is one of what is an acceptable trace that constitutes "adequate meaning" vs the theoretical pursuit of "accurate meaning" with zero trace. Having said that , I totally appreciate Derrida's project which is not at all illegitimate neither I'll founded. The very fact that people find it hard to agree with one another is a testimony to Derrida's concern. On the other hand the fact that we have not destroyed eachother so far is a testimony to our capacity to work with approximate representation of the world/language of our minds!!!
By the way I spent two decades as a mechanical engineer in a research& engineering firm. We, engineers live and die by our approximations. There can be nobody on earth who appreciates the value, efficiency and effectiveness of approximations better!!! Well, we also appreciate it's limitations and perils!!!
Mathematicians know very well how small errors (traces) can accumulate over time/space becoming big enough to hijack the solution if you don't have contingency plans to handle them!! Is a similar situation possible with Language? Derrida thinks it is possible. Do we have contingencies to avoid such singularities? Well, Our experience so far shows that we have managed to get by relatively unharmed!! What about future?? While you can't absolutely be sure of anything about future, all that we can do is to be aware of this susceptibility of language and be ready with redressal mechanisms!!
I have a question for you since you are an engineer. Do you construct things, say a railroad, on a curve or a straight line?
Deconstruction seems somewhat Zen. Like Zen Koans. Like Bodhidharma and Huang Po
This is philosophy as model train set.
Isn't onomatopoeia a 'signified'?
I had to think about that a minute; but no, it's a conflation of signifier and referent.
David ferguson-taylor thanks. Not sure I get any of this stuff. Gonna have to research more
Here's what I'm wondering; isn't the word "I" a signifier and signified simultaneously?
......and now to punctuation as dramatic function of expression ; hardly philological ,though a subtraction - at least- from that attempt at philosophical device which he has termed , "trace".
Mere thought ,on my part.
Ha !
Actually the linguistics of Saussure was and Is science.
Derrida then is basically Donald Davidson if he jettisons truth, not just language.
58:05min Examples of people telling you how to think? anyone, that insists some "x" statement qualifies as being true? are they bordering on the totalitarian? is it ok to make truthful statements? or is this something he avoids? preferring returning back, or having his self-reflexive loops, return, always, back to zero? in order, so nothing may be said about nothing? if so who is he addressing then: in his books?
He's showing you that your desk isn't actually solid, it consists mainly of empty space. But he isn't saying it doesn't exist, nor that you shouldn't use it.
Where does he do that? Where does he explicitly state such, or, is uncontroversially the generative result of a claim he has made?
@@gonzogil123 This is an extrapolation of his thinking. I'm equating deconstruction with quantum theory - both explore the formerly forbidden hinterland beyond what Dawkins termed 'Middle World.'
It can also be linked to complexity theory, which itself is a form of 'exploration of the edges'...
"...a postmodern perspective does not necessarily imply relativism, but that it could also be viewed as a manifestation of an inherent sensitivity to complexity."
@@F--B Again you insisted that “He's showing you that your desk isn't actually solid, it consists mainly of empty space.” He seems to be very acquiented with the sciences. And postmodernists usually insist that what is of great deal of interest to them is engage in the practice of “deconstruction of metaphysics” the latter, because (this must be the case), it is false, and given that it is so it does not make empirical epistemological contributions to oneself. There may be other reason to deconstruct metaphysics, but they may have to elaborate upon them.
"This is an extrapolation of his thinking. I'm equating deconstruction with quantum theory - both explore the formerly forbidden hinterland beyond what Dawkins termed 'Middle World.'"
You can equate them. That is fine. I have yet to see the set of scientific advances their concentration upon ideological symptomatic foundations of science have led to. Again the latter is something they insist to be concentrating on
"...a postmodern perspective does not necessarily imply relativism, but that it could also be viewed as a manifestation of an inherent sensitivity to complexity."
That is fine, but I fail to see how the extent of their specific modality of relating to the extent of their ignorance has led to advances. They may be potently uninhibited by registering their inability to fully represent reality in the most exhaustive of ways to the point of reaching a meta-linguistic position, or, being asphyxiated by the prospect of failing to reach so. Either way I have yet to see empirical advances that other philosophers, like Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Godel have been able to make, on the postmodern end.
@@gonzogil123 "postmodernists usually insist that what is of great deal of interest to them is engage in the practice of “deconstruction of metaphysics” the latter, because (this must be the case), it is false, and given that it is so it does not make empirical epistemological contributions to oneself. "
That depends on what you mean by 'false'. As I see it, deconstruction doesn't imply falsification. To see through the desk (i.e. it is 'really' a bunch of atoms) doesn't make it any less real (in Middle World).
Why should deconstruction result in scientific advances?
But there is a bottle on the table...
and?
Depends on what scale you view it.
Linguistic sign is arbitrary = cause and effect do not exist (or things happen miraculously, for no reason at all). Prove me wrong.
nobody has ever claimed that the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign has anything to do with cause and effect. moreover, as pointed out in the lecture, de saussure and derrida go much further than saying "linguistic sign is arbitrary", as that is a rather trivial claim already made by the ancient greeks and completely unremarkable.
@@genghis_cohen I claim that arbitrariness of the sign is the same as denying cause and effect , alright? And it is an idiotic notion, whether it was said by ancient Greeks, Locke or Saussure.
It's like saying Eskimos developed to be stout and have narrow eyes, while people near equator to have dark skin and more long-limbed body structure by dint of chance.
This is an axiom upon which they build their (misguided) theories and it's idiotic.
@@genghis_cohen Moreover, it causes absurdities when applied to Saussure's very work - is his naming scheme for phenomena he perceives arbitrary? How trustworthy is it then? Oh, it's defined by the structure of the language. Great, so to understand what he says I need to understand ALL of (endlessly mutating and growing) language, lest there's some rule or usage that doesn't properly differentiate his terminology from similarly arbitrary terminology, and so on.
What a mental dead end. Thank God he's almost entirely supplanted by other schools.
what the fuck are you on about? why would the fact that the word tree has no intrinsic connection to actual trees or the concept of trees have anything to do with causality? the naming scheme you refer to is not de saussure's though it is arbitrary, as noted by its proponents such as john locke. it's also a fiction and mostly useful for defining de saussure's project by contrast.
de saussure never claims that you need to understand all of language to make use of it. if you genuinely think he does, i'd suggest taking your head out of your ass. it's only that you need to already be within language to make sense of it. the word "tree" can't fully be understood without understanding "leaf", "root", "forest", "birch" and all other sorts of signifiers within some proximity of the word. this is in fact a view that is very open to the endless mutating and growing you describe as it takes the unrootedness of language almost as an axiom.
@@genghis_cohen you don't need to know anything about roots to have names for trees, for starters.
Furthermore to say that the word tree doesn't have any intrinsic connection to the tree is like to say "the tools this tribe makes, their customs, the material they make their clothes with are arbitrary and have no connection to the concrete material reality they inhabit and their history down to most minute experience."
You're not too thick to get this, I hope.
Language is arbitrary,isn't it?
What makes you think that?
Taking language to the level of mysticism! D being “traced” by his own deconstruction to the point of nihilism which leave him with non - duality as a way to understand himself. His shadow in not excepting his own mystical experience which is non dual. Deconstructing always comes from angry you, destroying language is the prove. The way you deconstruct is the same “trace” - trace based on anger and disappointment leads to resentment and hate, revenge and bloody future.
There comes a time, a point in history, that men talk for the sake of talking. To be heard, to spout things that the truly intelligent can keep to brevity. I don't know if this is philosophy, be deconstructing the alphabet in this manner sounds like jargon attached to philosophical excess.
It's quantum philosophy.
@@F--B Sounds like the philosophy that's destroying youth and sending out these kids out to destroy in kind. I've come across deconstruction use enough as of late to understand this is where it came from, if not the critical theory part not being enough.
All it seems to amount to is breaking things down to a point of nihilism, if not where things have no rhyme nor reason.
@@blumiu2426 It's an analogue of quantum physics. If Derrida is a criminal, then his partner in crime is Einstein.
@@F--B No. It is not even false.
😆 your characterization couldn't be less fitting for Derrida and his contributions.
12min Too desperate to argue against Saussere with a whole set of absence of reasons replaced with conclusions about how Saussere is problematic because the presenter has been unable to come up with reasons to support his degree of inability to support Saussere´s views,
This is the jackpot of “air-quote porn”. Which is, of course, in itself, simply a sign of a sign of a sign ( ad infinitum…./?+)
Somehow, somewhere, philosophy took a wrong turn and we get nitwit talks like this
Agreed
Derrida = bollocks, language gone on holiday
great nickname, I get the reference
@@mentalitydesignvideo watch from 1:00 to see where the "nickname" originates:
ruclips.net/video/UEiMv4mCI1g/видео.html
I said, I know the reference