Personal+public+notes

Wednesday Sept. 5, all day

Week 1:::::Structure+Sign+Play+Nietzsche+Genealogy+History+ 6 September

Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass. London: Routledge, pp 278-294 at sign-play.html

structure-or rather the structurality of structure-although it has always been involved, has always been neutralized or reduced, and this by a process of giving it a center or referring it to a point of presence, a fixed origin. The function of this center was not only to orient, balance, and organize the structure-one cannot in fact conceive of an unorganized structure-but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the //freeplay// of the structure.

//Qua// center, it is the point at which the substitution of contents, elements, or terms is no longer possible. At the center, the permutation or the transformation of elements (which may of course be structures enclosed within a structure) is forbidden.

the necessity, the force, and the legitimacy of his act cannot make us forget that the concept of the sign cannot in itself surpass or bypass this opposition between the sensible and the intelligible. The concept of the sign is determined by this opposition: through and throughout the totality of its history and by its system. But we cannot do without the concept of the sign, we cannot give up this metaphysical complicity without also giving up the critique we are directing against this complicity, without the risk of erasing difference [altogether] in the self-identity of a signified reducing into itself its signifier, or, what amounts to the same thing, simply expelling it outside itself.

The //paradox is// that the metaphysical reduction of the sign needed the opposition it was reducing. The opposition is part of the system, along with the reduction. And what I am saying here about the sign can be extended to all the concepts and all the sentences of metaphysics, in particular to the discourse on "structure."

One can in fact assume that ethnology could have been born as a science only at the moment when a de-centenng had come about: at the moment when European culture-and, in consequence, the history of metaphysics and of its concepts-had been //dislocated,// driven from its locus, and forced to stop considering itself as the culture of reference. This moment is not first and foremost a moment of philosophical or scientific discourse, it is also a moment which is political, economic, technical, and so forth. One can say in total assurance that there is nothing fortuitous about the fact that the critique of ethnocentrism-the very condition of ethnology-should be systematically and historically contemporaneous with the destruction of the history of metaphysics. Both belong to a single and same era.

In the //Elementary Structures//, he begins from this axiom or definition: that belongs to nature which is //universal// and spontaneous, not depending on any particular culture or on any determinate norm. That belongs to culture, on the other hand, which depends on a system of //norms// regulating society and is therefore capable of //varying// from one social structure to another.

On the one hand, structuralism justly claims to be the critique of empiricism. But at the same time there is not a single book or study by Levi-Strauss which does not offer itself as an empirical essay which can always be completed or invalidated by new information. The structural schemata are always proposed as hypotheses resulting from a finite quantity of information and which are subjected to the proof of experience.

There are thus two interpretations of interpretation, of structure, of sign, of freeplay. The one seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering, a truth or an origin which is free from freeplay and from the order of the sign, and lives like an exile the necessity of interpretation. The other, which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms freeplay and tries to pass beyond man and humanism, the name man being the name of that being who, throughout the history of metaphysics or of ontotheology-in other words, through the history of all of his history-has dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of the game. The second interpretation of interpretation, to which Nietzsche showed us the way, does not seek in ethnography, as Levi-Strauss wished, the "inspiration of a new humanism" (again from the "Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss"). There are more than enough indications today to suggest we might perceive that these two interpretations of interpretation-which are absolutely irreconcilable even if we live them simultaneously and reconcile them in an obscure economy-together share the field which we call, in such a problematic fashion, the human sciences. Michel Foucault, â€œNietzsche, Genealogy, History,â€ at ngh.pdf


 * except functional history, which should be capable of determining these outcomes.**

[|Semiotics for Beginners], especially 1-6, 9.\ I am reminded here of an observation by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss that in the case of what he called //bricolage//, the process of creating something is not a matter of the calculated choice and use of whatever materials are technically best-adapted to a clearly predetermined purpose, but rather it involves a 'dialogue with the materials and means of execution' |(Lévi-Strauss 1974, 29). In such a dialogue, the materials which are ready-to-hand may (as we say) 'suggest' adaptive courses of action, and the initial aim may be modified. Consequently, such acts of creation are not purely instrumental: the //bricoleur// '"speaks" not only with things... but also through the medium of things'

//For the scholars in the readings of this week there seem to be further parallels. In the case of Joan Scott we see a perspective on the historical conflation of gender, divergent perspectives on sexuality and the ambiguity of biology in determining what is the sign that represents and helps make comprehensible the differences between men and women.// //From the short work on Freud and Lacan we read:// “Psychoanalysis began as a kind of virtuoso improvisation within the science of medicine; and free association is itself ritualised improvisation. With the invention of psychoanalysis Freud glimpsed a daunting prospect: a profession of improvisers. And in the ethos of Freud and his followers, improvisation was closer to the inspiration of the artists than to the discipline of scientists.” //Is it reasonable to call this a profession? Are their theoretical underpinnings to these investigations or are there simply methods of allowing the improviser to extract information from signs and positions themselves in the role of diverse signifiers// //Do we then dispense with the structures of education that limit the artistic freedom and virtuouso scenarios that embolden psychoanalysists and post-structuralists the opportunity to break new ground and treat new situations as uniquely situated? If the methods of such things as professionals of history are truly ignorant of their approach to making sense of human existence, as Foucault suggests, should we not avoid professionalizing any aspect of post-structural thinking or semiotic inquiry? Perhaps the salons of// //France// //are more appropriate venues for furthering the breakdown of traditional thinking, rather than institutionalizing Sausser, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida and others.//**
 * //Is semiotics simply the ultimate interdisciplinary field? The author suggests that there is no science of signs, which seems important since the closest “discipline” to semiotics is art, a field not known for its concrete, universal theoretic foundations. Continuing the metaphor (is this a metaphor?) semiotics seems closer to art than any social science. If the methods employ a communication with the medium considered and a breadth of knowledge that extends from understanding of the technological production and design of particular items and systems, it seems that semiotics is much like the artists combining disparate tangible goods into a form in which the form and function of the social is further elucidated or at least becomes conflicted.//

Joan Scott, "Fantasy Echo:History and the Construction of Identity," //Critical Inquiry//27(2):

If you really want to begin analysis with/of Lacan you should start [|with Shoshana Felman], but this is shorter and works OK and maybe all you care to know.

Lacan borrows some ideas of linguistics that Freud did not have access to. As we have seen, Saussure showed that a sign is not necessarily something that connects a word or name to a thing, but is in fact something which connects a sound or image to a concept. The sound or image is called a signifier. The concept is called a signified. Meaning is produced not only by the relationship between the signifier and the signified but also, crucially, by the position of the signifiers in relation to other signifiers (in a given context). When Saussure’s theory is put together with Freud’s it is not difficult to see that the movement of signifiers, which generates meaning, must remain fundamentally unconscious. Meaning may only have a place in what Lacan calls “the signifying chain.” So the signifier has primacy over the signified, which means that meaning is generated not by the normal meaning of a word but by the place the word has in a signifying chain. The libido is thus a kind of undetermined force that becomes bound by the various kinds of restriction, paradigmatically the Oedipus Complex, that represent the institutions of culture and society. “Psychoanalysis began as a kind of virtuoso improvisation within the science of medicine; and free association is itself ritualised improvisation. With the invention of psychoanalysis Freud glimpsed a daunting prospect: a profession of improvisers. And in the ethos of Freud and his followers, improvisation was closer to the inspiration of the artists than to the discipline of scientists.” So we can already glimpse the point of psychoanalysis for critical theory: a confluence of separate traditions—scientific and artistic—produces something new—psychoanalytic theory. //Do we then dispense with the structures of education that limit the artistic freedom and virtuouso scenarios that embolden psychoanalysists and post-structuralists the opportunity to break new ground and treat new situations as uniquely situated?//
 * The Unconscious is structured like a Language**

Gilles Deleuze, "How Do We Recognize Structuralism?"






 * Oh, and the fact that there isn’t a third section. Ha ha, funny joke. About as good as this is not a pipe.**

LINK TO MIKES NOTES

Thursday Sept. 6, 9:28 am [|Check out May 1968 uprising] -existentialism begins to die (French intellectual tradition) -critique of educational system, knowledge, philosophy -student and worker alliance (initially), eventually sold out by French communist party

"Signs are crypts that have to be plundered" -mike on (book on cryptics)

Deleuze as chameleon (becomes his critique while critiquing)

Hegel: ...

[|Peirce]: and pragmatism (and not a bad pragmaticist/semiologist)

[|Saussure]: Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of: The //sign// is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified ([|Saussure 1983, 67]; [|Saussure 1974, 67]). The relationship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as 'signification', and this is represented in the Saussurean diagram by the arrows. The horizontal line marking the two elements of the sign is referred to as 'the bar'. If we take a linguistic example, the word 'Open' (when it is invested with meaning by someone who encounters it on a shop doorway) is a //sign// consisting of:
 * a 'signifier' (//signifiant//) - the //form// which the sign takes; and
 * the 'signified' (//signifié//) - the //concept// it represents.

A sign must have both a signifier and a signified. You cannot have a totally meaningless signifier or a completely formless signified ([|Saussure 1983, 101]; [|Saussure 1974, 102-103]). A sign is a recognizable combination of a signifier with a particular signified. The same signifier (the word 'open') could stand for a different signified (and thus be a different sign) if it were on a push-button inside a lift ('push to open door'). Similarly, many signifiers could stand for the concept 'open' (for instance, on top of a packing carton, a small outline of a box with an open flap for 'open this end') - again, with each unique pairing constituting a different sign.
 * a //signifier//: the word **open**;
 * a //signified concept//: that the shop is open for business.