You thoughts on Derrida, or as Jamie likes to call him Jackie.
Update: For those who asked here is the link to the Wikipedia article. (It is relevant to “The Book to Come.”)
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You thoughts on Derrida, or as Jamie likes to call him Jackie.
Update: For those who asked here is the link to the Wikipedia article. (It is relevant to “The Book to Come.”)
I remember reading Derrida last semester and it seems his writing has not become any easier to discern for me.
Nevertheless, there is a very short excerpt I found interesting in the dialogue from Strange Institution. The question and answer on page 72 and 73 were quite intriguing. Specifically, the part I am referring to is where Derrida states, “No internal criterion can guarantee the essential literariness of a text.” He does a good job of explaining and defending his statements, but ultimately it makes me curious to know just how much we try to define and categories any kind of work (games, film, poetry, etc.) to try to better understand them. It is hard for me to imagine how much perspective is lost by all of the effort we make to try and focus on “understanding” a piece of work. Perhaps even more disturbing is how much those categories and rigid standards effect our creativeness when we make an effort to be original in our own work.
Reading Derrida reminds me that I should take nothing to be sacred. Even though he does defend the book and it sounds as if he believes the book will never completely disappear, I have to wonder just how much his judgments are biased from living a life surrounded by the book. No one knows with absolute certainty if the future generations will adhere to a combination of traditional books and digital material or if they will favor one media over another. I would be surprised if the codex disappeared, but again I wonder how much of my opinion has been persuaded from looking at literature from just my own very narrow perspective.
I wonder what life would be like without “frames”. Fewer headaches and more sleep?
The Labyrinth metaphor for me continues in Derrida’s article. Below are several opposing words used in the same sentence?
PG 57 – Undeconstuctilbe or Deconstructible
PG 58 – Conservative or Anarchist
PG 58 – Institutional or Counter-Institutional
PG 60 – Too Easy or Too Hard
PG 60 – Too Close or To Distant
PG 61 – Loving or Violating
PG 61 – Success or Failure
PG 61 – Proximity or Competition
PG 61 – Nihilist or Not Nihilist
PG 61 – Outside or Above the Text
PG 66 – Similar or Different
PG 66 – Logic or A-Logic
As I continue down the path — I am still standing at the intersection of the fork trying to figure out which direction would be “right” to proceed down? This article seems to be another place where I “think” I “hear” an argument for both the institution of literature and for the fall or maybe deconstruction or reposition of the institution, which supports literature? This class seems to make me question the “rightness” of literature as an aspect of my life. I even feel like I should place some moral judgment on it. It brings about feelings of uneasiness in all honesty. (That probably plays a role into my psychology, which is of course, is imperfect and mostly unconsciously driven).
I guess I find reading, whether something that someone has classified as literature or tabloid to be a pleasurable and worthwhile endeavor in my life. There are many aspects of my life where I have to “trust” another human being and take them at their word. Literature as well as reading in all the forms upon, which I have grown accustom are ways for me to grow as well as contract. Literature shapes my belief system, expands my knowledge base and helps me to make decisions on a day to basis. Ultimately, the use of language creates meaning for me and I feel meaning is necessary in order to derive purpose in my life. Without it, I would feel lost. I enjoy the institution as with all intuitions’ that are constructed they are fallible, after all they were created by humans and I have yet to meet one that is perfect, have you? The article left me with an understanding that I like a strange institution that is called literature.
The order of my readings was the drunken party at Laguna Beach (I imagined a drinking game ensued where every mention of “adolescent” required a shot or a beer) followed by the infinitely more accessible to the non-english-major, and somewhat shorter The Book to Come. I mention the order as this influenced my thinking, which was at first critical and in the end appreciative.
The historical object book is a duality of empowering and sanctioning, releasing and restricting due to it’s evolved nature as institution. Peering through the beach party haze aided with the lens of a Wikipedia cross-reference to Deconstruction text emerges as a power struggle and evolutionary force, which continues. The promise of the Internet is freedom of information, but there are many threats such as copyrights, digital rights management (DRM), proposed transmission preferences, political firewalls (e.g.: China), spying and key-logging by governments, by commercial interests and by criminals, and the very hazards of some of the content itself. (I have visited the EFF website several times this week.) No longer the halcyon days of merit badges for “Best Site of The Day,” locating a text on the web does not merit an imprimatur for truth, beauty and justice, most readers consider the source. There is opportunity as we know however, for misdeeds massively distributed and erased, possibly in seconds.
Of deconstruction, what is the value of reducing everything to the irreducible? If you are the FDA finding the melamine in the pet food is important, but re-examining the molecules that define melamine will not spare Fluffy. To a point deconstructing is informative, but beyond is only selectively useful. At some point the tentative meaning, the negotiations, must arrive a conclusions for as long as those conclusions remain useful. (But now I am hating myself as I flip back to the bizarre two page excerpt from A Throw of the Dice and find I like it – but I had wished to strike it down with my wooden club of conventions.)
So what is the digital narrative take-away. Perhaps the sacred book is not so, perhaps “what you think I said is not what I meant,” perhaps what we really need are some new questions. And whose narrative is it, really?
While I agree with Derrida’s dissension with the “neo-Hegelian model of the great total book, the book of absolute knowledge,” which, as far as I can tell, means that we can have perfect and total knowledge, once and for all, about the world and all of the things in it, I must disagree at a particular point (The Book to Come, 15). On the one hand, it is clear to see that absolute knowledge is so high a thing that it is unlikely for any human being, in himself, to claim it, even in a small specific area of knowledge. (People try all the time, to add to this abstract “book” of total human knowledge, to speak authoritatively on a subject, etc. But the fact that this kind of thing happens doesn’t speak to the actual authority or truth or indefatigability of such knowledge. The question of whether they are adding to such a “book” remains.) But the counter point lies behind the curtain of the previous claim, for one that makes a claim such as that is, with one hand, shattering the piggy bank of total human knowledge while, with the other, simultaneously trying to make a deposit. If there isn’t a piggy bank, or “book,” then shatter it. The trick (I call it a “trick” because I do not think it is possible without trickery) is to do it in such a way that you aren’t depositing into it: you aren’t adding to “the book of absolute knowledge.” (Else, all we have is a piggy bank with one deposit that says there is no piggy bank.) But if no deposit is being made, what are you saying? Why should we listen? You have chopped off the branch you are sitting on.
My humble take on the problem is that, yes this idea of a “total book” is overly grandiose, and necessarily overwrought. Instead of getting rid of the whole project, however, I propose that we must delegitimize the entire project a bit. What this basically involves is putting an asterisk on everything that says, “Not perfect knowledge. Subject to change or removal.” I believe that this works within the framework that we find ourselves in, and my claim can have the same asterisk on it as well, so my claim can work within its own rules.
(I end by saying that I am not claiming to understand Derrida in the least, and much of what I have said or claimed about his views may be incorrect. His writing may even completely agree with my point, for all I can tell.)
Following Derrida’s and Dave’s arguments on the literary and the institution of literature: Derrida contends that the literary is an unstable, highly editable event without essence or internal criteria. He further contends that the “reality” and duration of these events is never assured. Literature, as a historical institution, in being mutable, pushes the limits and allows for ruptures and the breaking of rules, for if it didn’t, wouldn’t it die? Throughout history the institution, because of its nature, has enveloped and embraced the ruptures, thus allowing for legitimation or licensing of new forms and ensuring its own continuing survival. Does this characteristic then allow it to open itself up to incorporate the digital narratives of electronic hypertexts and video games? It seems to me that this would be the case if the law of literature “allows one to say everything,” that also means that it “allows one to say everything” in an infinite number of different formats, media, or systems of support.
“Books,” literature, and each literary event, have ancestors and descendants. Are electronic hypertexts and video games then, as iterations of the “book to come,” descendents of the novel, especially hypertextual novels such as “Lolita” and others we’ve discussed in class, just as these hypertexts in codex form and even the traditional hard-bound novel are the antecedents or ancestors of electronic hypertexts and video games? Dave suggested last week that these digital narratives are the novel of the 20th and 21st centuries in that they caused “a similar media frenzy that we could equate to what video games go through now.” Do the interactive learning or teaching games geared for children reflect or parallel the early idea that the novel had to be used a tool for moral instruction in order to be accepted and legitimated? If so, then electronic hypertexts and video games are simply another kind of “book” that inhabit a new literary space within the institution of literature. And, if this is the case, then wouldn’t it be reasonable and appropriate to judge them by the rules of and hold them accountable to the standards and conventions—in modified form, reflecting the new narratives—of the institution of literature?
As I posted on Twitter, Derrida makes my eyes cross. He writes about literature, and that there is no literature, but literature is still everything, even though it’s nothing, and so on, and so forth. To put it simply, I feel like I’ve followed The Yellow Brick Road down its outward spiral and hit the field of poppies. Only there is no snow coming to wake me. Is there literature or not? Obviously we think there is. We do give out degrees in literature, after all. But since we can’t really define literature, or what constitutes its being, doesn’t that make it a bit imaginary? Heck, we can describe Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny down to their bags and baskets, and we have yet to major in studying them, right?
The same goes for the Jackie D’s (thank you Jaime!) thoughts on the book. Are the hundreds of objects on my shelves books? They are paper bound in embossed covers, newsprint bound in glue and paper backing and random diaries, but according to JD they aren’t really books because we can’t limit the definition of a book to the presentation anymore. So all of the e-books I’ve downloaded are books. Or maybe they aren’t books because they are on the screen. Wait, that goes back to delivery method. As Charlie Brown would say, “Arrrrrrgh!”
What the combination of this week’s texts comes down to, at least for me, is Derrida’s frustration with the language of our time. He saw objects out-evolve their descriptors to the point their descriptors no longer descried them. (There’s that spiral again.) But what I didn’t see in either article (and this, I guess, is my frustration) is him acknowledge the human ability to accept a descriptor as able to grow and encompass evolutionary offshoots of an original item. It seems to me Derrida tears language down to the point that it no longer has any meaning. The sign/signifier/signified issues are complex, but after reading this week’s texts they should no longer have value. From what I’ve gathered, we have no valid way to use our language to describe our world. We just mumble incoherently about things that don’t, or shouldn’t, exist. There must be a huge field of noise between his sending the message, whatever it is, and my receiving it. What did I miss?
Derrida by Kristen Shear
Like several who posted before me, I found Derrida to be quite a bit overwhelming. I can’t say that I understood much of anything in this reading, but it definitely made me question my own idea of what literature is and isn’t.
What I found most intriguing, though, was a passage near the end of “The Strange Institution Called Literature.” In it, Derrida says, “By definition the reader does not exist….The dream we were talking about concerns what it is in the work which produces its reader, a reader who doesn’t yet exist, whose competence cannot be identified, a reader who would be ‘formed,’ ‘trained,’ instructed, constructed, even engendered, let’s say invented by the work.”
This idea that the reader doesn’t exist seems to be both extremely insightful and painfully naïve.
Insightful because authors never really know exactly who they’re writing for. As a reporter, I never knew exactly who would read my work, so everything had to be extremely generic and clear enough for someone who read on a seventh to eighth-grade level to comprehend.
At the same time, though, I had a general idea of who my audience was and what I could and couldn’t get away with in terms of linguistic style. I knew that a large chunk of my readership was educated and lived a middle-class or better lifestyle. I knew that some topics would be ignored, while others would be e-mailed between friends for weeks on end.
That’s where I think that Derrida is naïve. Most successful writers have at least some sense of the type of person most likely to pick up their work. They may not be able to come up with a definitive list of names of readers, but they know enough about their audience to ascertain what they will and won’t overlook.
Again, I could be completely misreading Derrida’s statement, but I think it’s a stretch to say that readers don’t exist before a work is completed. After all, who wants to write something that nobody will ever read?
To be honest, the two articles were a bit hard to comprehend but from what I gathered from Derrida,he explains the complexity of classifying the term book and literature especially now with the advent of text, poetry and narrative evolving into digital formats. The identification of these two terms have become much more muddled then in the past.Derrida quoted in his article “The Book to Come”, that the unity and identity of the thing called “book” is incompatible with these new tele technologies.
In this article, Derrida questions the status of the book and what will become of it in the coming years. Will it evolve? will it go extinct? will it conform? will it completely transform? The article kind of gave me an idea of what he was trying to explain. For example, Amazon.com is selling a computer notepad where you can download and read all forms of “literature”. The Kindle, as it is called, makes reading text more convenient and transportable.Now, the question is: Are the stories downloaded onto the Kindle considered “books” or just digital information? We have always considered books of having tactile properties such as covers and pages to flip through but if it is converted into data information will the identity change as well? The story hasn’t changed just the means of reading it. If Derrida knew about the Kindle,he
might reference this particular article. The identity of the book might evidently change structurally to conform with new modes but the idealogy of the book will never cease to exist.
I would definetly recommend Professor Nadin’s Civilization of Illiteracy as an alternate source of reading. Because of his studies in semiotics, it is possible that books might alter to this course as well.
Here is a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pa1pS7ert8&feature=related
I had an excruciatingly difficult time slogging my way through the Derrida interview. Upon finishing the interview I thumbed back through it and scanned a few things, re-read other parts, paused to scrunch together some thoughts, and now have resorted to serious head-scratching. I also did a quick search and came up empty-handed on finding an Idiot’s Guide to Derrida. Somebody help me!
I would like to know more about what the deconstructionist theory is all about. I’d also like to explore more of Derrida’s duality in how he sets up his arguments. (See Becky’s post, above. Thanks for noting all of these, Becky!)
One take-away I did manage to grasp occurs on page 69 – where Derrida the concept of singularity. He states that, “the Romeo and Juliet which bears Shakespeare’s signature, takes place only once.” Again, I balk at actually stating a groundbreaking set of new thoughts here. But I’ll give it a go nonetheless. Does Derrida mean that once the play is written (as in Shakespeare’s own ink) that the play is never the same, never in its ideal form? That is actually and only occurs in this “single, first and last time?” I don’t quite fully grasp this concept. Furthermore, what is it, exactly, that constitutes my countersigning response? I understand it as my reproduction or derivative work of his piece. But does that include my comments about it in passing conversation (or my blogging about it, and dare we call this literature)?
“Does not every text , every discourse, of whatever type – literary, philosophic and scientific, journalistic, conversational – lend itself, every time, to this reading?” [page 7]. I kept getting aggravated with this text. It is a fantastic idea and it is nothing. It’s like reading about someone who wants to change the world, but then tell me there is no world at all to change. I am fascinated with the idea of being able to write everything that has happened, including ideas and events that I was not aware of, when I was writing what I was aware of. It is like the idea of capturing a scene with a camera to view it later. Then as the photographer knowing, much more is in “this image” than the image that I captured. However, Derrida believes that the image only exists, in that it can be viewed multiple times. The image, and in comparison text, exists in that it was written, not, I believe, in that it will be read.
“In the content of literary texts, there are always philosophical theses.” [page 9].
“Nothing is ever homogenous.” [page 11]
“A counter-institutional institution can be both subversive and conservative.” [page 14]
“…This is an author to whom I feel very close, or to whom I would like to feel myself very close: but also too close. Precisely because of this proximity, it is too hard for me, too easy and too hard.” [page 15].
i picked these other four excerpts as points that peeved me. I tried to gather where I was being taken. Was I to believe that Derrida considered all ideas and texts to be “incomplete”, in that they could not contain all necessary data to form a complete literary work? He believes in a “wholeness”, but that wholeness must contain all that is whole and that which is void. He wrote that literary texts always contain philosophical theses, but he also said that nothing is ever homogenous. To which leads, that not all works are homogenous, because not all literary contain philosophical thesis, as we are to believe Lolita has no philosophical theses. Which goes to the idea that all things are relative to their contexts. It could be easy to say. “Everything is nothing”…so long as the context is that the word, everything, has not, a definite definition.
I’m with jduff on this one. You know the classic Warner Brother’s Looney Toons with Road Runner and Wild E. Coyote? I feel like I’m Coyote. Whenever I think I finally understand what Derrida is saying, I trip over a rope and an ACME anvil drops on my head. Of course when I finally get what he’s harping at, the point makes a lot of sense. But Derrida likes to lead you around in circles, jerking you in an endless cycle and then you sit back and wonder what the heck one paragraph meant…ranting after last semester’s experience. Smart man but a pain to read.
“The Book to Come” is asking “what is a book?” The book as a concept and not as a physical object. We shouldn’t associate the book with writing, as an interactive medium (pg6 in Paper Machine). Ultimately getting to the main thesis that the concept of the book is not being replaced. Could almost say that it’s being remediated, but I don’t know how Derrida likes Bolter and Grusin. That’s about the jist of what I can figure out and what I remember from last semester reading these articles. What I like is that Derrida is honest about his thesis about the book concept as not changing. We’re living in a time where people are attempting to redefine what the book is. And we’re approaching the problem from the wrong angle. While the physical medium of the book may be changing, the theory of the book will remain the same. Derrida’s words refocus the issue into the right direction. Again, I get lost in his writing really fast, but when I finally understand the thesis, it makes a lot of sense.
*calling this the random post since I don’t know what to focus on*
I had a really good time trying to decipher Strange Institution, so maybe it’s best to blog about “The Book To Come”. I really liked Derrida’s —deconstruction?— of the support of books (although I learned from another source that Derrida did not consider “deconstruction” to be a philosophical approach) when he discussed the concept of a biblion. A quick look in my Liddell & Scott Greek Lexicon showed that sure enough he was right; biblios is the inner bark of the papyrus. This brings to the forefront that what is considered a book in our time was not always so. And it indicates to us that the book to come may not be made of paper at all, as it already is and isn’t.
He combines this with the function of a library, a location where we place books (traditionally, and correspondent with the Greek bibliotheke, a book case), which doesn’t have to be a library in the way that we think of one now. The library found at Qumran was a bunch of scrolls placed in large jars in a cave, so we know it wasn’t anything like today’s libraries, nor will it be necessarily so in the future. As Derrida points out, the library becomes a space “for work and reading and writing that was governed or dominated by texts no longer corresponding to the book form: electronic texts with no paper support…”
So the book to come, how it is interpreted, read and understood could be something very different from what we know. Derrida seems preoccupied with the shift that occurs with time, text and technology and how it affects us, perhaps moreso how we define anything. I read that Derrida once said that there is no “transcendental significant”, that each of us determines significance by a self-referential system. I think that in light of this, The Book to Come was a little easier to read.
In focusing on “the book to come,” Derrida mentions that the scroll has not exactly been replaced by the bound pages that are commonly referred to as a book, just as a “book” will not be replaced by its digital counterpart. It made me think of how scrolls are now considered a sacred object, a fetish object, in some ways, and I think the codex style of book is becoming a fetish object, though for some admirers, it always has been. I love cracking open a book, handling its pages- just having something to hold offers comfort that digital texts can’t really offer. There is such a difference in viewing the work of an artist online, and viewing that same work in a tangible format.. books are often autographed, and these books and special first editions are collected and can last for ages, while the digital format seems fleeting-often I try to go back to an article I saved, only to find the link is no longer good. But there are books I have had for years, and all I need to do is reach over and pick them up, and there is such a comfort in knowing they are “mine”, and they are there for me if I should ever want to open them. There is a lasting quality there that will never diminish for me, and I am sure I am not the only one who feels that way.
On the Book to Come.
(Or the return of the curse of the son of the ghost of the mummy of the Book to Come, just to differentiate it from the previous On the Book to Come)
With such a title, it’s easy to expect a lot from this text (on the other hand, it’s also easy to be disappointed, and let’s face it, the second hand is far more probable). But disappointments aside, once you’ve read the text (and regardless of whether you understood, you think you understood, you understood only partially, you understood something -but that something has nothing to do with what you read-, and whatever other possibilities you can imagine) and you’re faced with the task of writing something about it, anything. That is when fun things start to happen (hence the subtitle and the story that follows).
As I read and read and read and re-read some more, to see if I was missing something, I kept wondering: perhaps I got it all wrong (it’s rather likely, but nonetheless, I’ll carry on), perhaps Derrida is deliberately going round and round this subject, stopping here to turn there, to jump somewhere else, to go back once more to where he started from, going on and on about the book to come with one clear goal in mind: making some time for the book to come to actually arrive!
Ding-dong.
“Who is it?”
“It’s the book to come!”
“Say what!”
“I think you’ve been expecting me.”
Derrida opens the door, and takes a good look at it.
“You’re not the book to come, go away!”
“Now wait a minute…”
“What?”
“Why do you say I’m not the book to come?”
“Well, duh… You’re here.”
“So…”
“Well, if you were the book to come you wouldn’t be here, now would you?”
The book to come hesitates.
“I took a cab!”
“And…”
“The driver knew all the shortcuts to avoid traffic, that’s why I’m a bit early, you see.”
“Impossible!”
“Unlikely yes, but not impossible.”
“No, what I mean is that it’s simply impossible for you to be the book to come for the reason I’ve already mentioned.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I know these things, now go away, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“Wait a minute, I’ve traveled from miles and miles just to be here, the least you could do is offer me a drink!”
Derrida agrees and the book to come finds its way into a comfortable chair in the living room. Where the argument resumes.
“Why do you keep saying that I’m not the book to come? To tell you the truth I find it a bit insulting, after all, how would you like it if I told you you were someone else, eh?
“Who would I be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Now, come on, tell me!”
“It doesn’t matter!”
“Of course it matters, everything matters!”
“Okay, you’re Marilyn Monroe.”
“I don’t look anything like Marilyn Monroe!”
“I know you don’t, it was just an example. I’m sure with a few more of these -he says, signaling to the drink he’s having- you could.”
“After that comment, believe me, there will be no more of those.”
An awkward silence follows.
“Let’s assume for a moment that you were the book to come, although I don’ believe you are, not even for one minute, but in case you were, tell me something about yourself.”
“I can’t, you have to read me.”
“And how do you suppose I would do that?”
“You don’t know?”
“Well I…”
“Oh, what a waste of my time! To come here from so far away, thinking you would be able to read me.”
“I would be able to read you if you tell me how, even tough if I could read you, I still wouldn’t believe you are the book to come.”
“Maybe you don’t know how to read me because you’re not prepared to do so, which would prove I am the book to come!”
“Okay, you leave me no other choice. I didn’t want to tell you this, but there’s another reason why you can’t be the book to come.”
“What?”
“There’s no such thing as the book to come.”
“Oh, I feel a little lightheaded, I think I’m going to faint.”
“Be careful, don’t let go of the glass! You’ll ruin the carpet!”
“Who cares about your stupid carpet? What do you mean there’s no such thing as… me!”
“Well it’s not just you, it’s this whole thing… what should I call it? This strange institution called literature, hey that sounds catchy!”
“I’d like to put you in an institution.”
“What?”
“Nothing, go on.”
“As I was saying, this thing we like to call literature, well, we’ve been studying it for so long, ever since it was invented. We’ve studied its history…”
“So…”
“Well, its history is constructed like the ruin of a monument which basically never existed. It’s the history of a ruin, the narrative of a memory which produces the event to be told and which will never have been present.”
“What does that mean?”
“I have no idea what it means, but it sounds great doesn’t it? Hey, what are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m leaving!”
“Wait, you can’t leave, I’ve got more of this stuff: the book contains what it can’t contain! Literature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere! Wait, don’t go!”
But it’s too late. The book to come has left the building!
I recognize that what I’ve written has nothing to do with the aims of the class, but in my defense, it’s the best I could come up with. So please forget everything you’ve read and do find it in your hearts to forgive me.