My Problems with Derrida

(Series: Post-Modernist Subversivism)

Anyone would agree that sign-systems do exist. But will you agree that all that exists is nothing more than sign systems? This ‘Chinha Satyam Artha Mithya’(Only signs have ontological status, meaning does not have)  is position taken by Derrida & Co. They do this by using a fact of life which strategically convenient to them. Whatever we try to say about the huge non-linguistic aspect of life, we have to say it in a language. So they catch us using signs & pull back the discussion in semiotics. (highly sophisticated linguistics)  

Sign has two components namely signifier & signified. Whatever object that is presented qua sign is signifier & whatever that it stands for or represented by it, is the signified. So far so good! But the main thesis of Derrida is that anything that is signified, in its own turn becomes a signifier which signifies something else. So we are lost in jungle of signifiers leading to each other without ever getting a signified (called the transcendental signified) such that, it does not turn out to be a signifier again. ‘Meaning’, then becomes something like a wet ellipsoidal soap-cake, harder we try to grab it, quicker it shoots out of our hand.

We all know that this is simply not the case as we do live in a world of meanings when we do use signs or when we don’t have to use signs. (will see later in detail)

First & foremost blunder made by Derrida is that he confuses between symptoms & signs. There are black clouds in the sky is not a ‘sign’ of ‘it is going to rain’ but a symptom from which possibility of rain can reasonably be inferred. Therefore neither black-clouds are signifiers nor is rain, the signified. Inferences can be drawn by concomitance, cause, effect, association or similarity. The move from (signi)fier to (signi)fied can be much real & not based on mere convention. Making conventions is indeed a great feat achieved by mankind so that we don’t have to depend upon cause, effect, symptom, analogy or any such extra-semiotic links & this increases our power to represent to a huge extent. But convention is not the only link which generates meaning. All inferences are not based on convention. Derrida’s indiscriminate use of the terms signifier/signified, obscures the bases of communication other than convention.

Significance & Signigence

Let us put it in some other way. When something turns out to be a signified it does have some significance to us & there is a live-relevance-system in us, which is leading us from one significance to the other. Thus significance does not lie at end of the chain of signifiers but is already accompanying the chain. The ‘transcendental signified’ is already there & not unreachable as Derrida claims it to be.

 On the other hand when we employ something as a signifier we choose it because of its signigence (my term: contextually emergent quality of an object which makes it employable qua signifier. For example, redness of flag/light is indicative of danger by association with blood). Signigences can be other than convention-structures like symptom, cause, analogy etc. furthermore no singular signifier will have its signigence alone. It is the amorphous contextualization of various signifiers with each other that gives them signigence, & not ‘structural or post-structural’ analysis of them, made by formal linguists. Furthermore when a pair is successfully employed as signifier-signified its success mutually rejuvenates their significances & signigences.

Derrida forgets that when one is hungry he is not hungry to represent the fact that he needs nourishment. Primordial experiencing is obscured by Derrida behind sign-systems. By leaving out the important categories of significance, relevance, contextualization, non-conventional-signigence etc, Derrida has achieved the feat of ‘all that exists is a jungle of signifiers’.

Experiencing Each-Other & Experiencing Together

Another important point which remains neglected is that there exists pre-signitive communication on which we can successfully build sign systems. I am not suggesting gestures & postures because they too can be subsumed under ‘sign’.

Suppose two persons are arms wrestling with each other each one directly knows how much force the adversary is applying through his/her motor feedback. The ‘force’ in physics is a primordial given. Four persons are together carrying a log of wood they all come to know as to who has started shirking via the changed burden coming to them & the shirker knows a moment earlier! In various human practices like fighting, co-operating in labor, in sexual or erotic encounters and in child rearing, humans happen to experience each other which is a first-hand experience already shared and needs no signs to communicate.

It is true that under pressure of convention we give rather inauthentic expressions including conventional smile. But the very fact that we feel inauthentic about them is proof of our knowing true expression. Baby birds are yelling for food in a nest and parents instinctively respond. This is not a convention for sure. Being presented to each other in intimate ways does not call for further representation unless there is a failure in pre-signitive communication.

We also get experiences of non-human world when both of the experiencing partners are present along with the thing that is being co-experienced. We look at it. Look at each other and again look at it, as it were to confirm the same expression we saw in each others face. For example “ Oh! Yes it is dangerous!” We conclude and flee or fight as the case may be. How can we mimic other’s expression? When we see the face as it is visually appearing, immediately the contortions from within our face muscles are present to us. Even this is a too much of an analysis one has already mimicked much before thinking about it.

How do we generate ostensive definitions of objects which are to be recognized as the case may be? We do it by pointing index finger and uttering. If semiotic fanatics object that index finger is also a sign, I have no issues if some tribe points elbow to it!

Transanimation (experiencing each other and not just resuscitating someone whose breathing has stopped) and co-experiencing are too important facts to be ignored, or else we would not have survived quite up to Derrida.

Language for as important as it is, Life comes before language, supports, it sustains it and modifies it.

Unscandalizing the triad: ‘Binary-Opposition-Hierarchy’

Deconstruction does not mean any conversional operation to be carried out on a ‘text’ and coming out with product called ‘deconstructed text’. It means bringing out the three culprits hidden in it. The three terms which have been scandalized due to the omni-semiotic obsession are ..1)Binary,  2)Opposition,  3)Hierarchy. 

 I think that treating this triad as some evil but non-eliminable predicament, is incorrect, misleading and detrimental to possibilities of rational consensus amongst humans hence the title.

I can see nothing particularly western or metaphysical in the triad. When any decision is being made (not even by a human but say a Cheetah whether to chase the prey unto last breath or to leave it alone to save its own energy) obviously the second best option is being forgone. As decision involves at least two alternatives i.e. binary, they are competing with each other for the favor of the maker of the decision i.e. opposition and one of them is deemed better than the other i.e. hierarchy. So the triad binary-opposition-hierarchy is firmly rooted in the firmware of any animal, humans included

First let us consider the self-referential paradox that typically accompanies such ( i.e. relativistic) doctrines. Binary and non-binary is itself a binary. Then opposition V/S non-opposition is itself an opposition. That non-hierarchy is better than hierarchy is itself a hierarchy. Derrida himself does not prescribe such reversals nor does he claim that it is humanly possible to abandon the triad. His task remains that of bringing out and exposing the triad hidden in any human endeavor. Had this been a mere statement of a fact about humanly possible way of thinking, it would have had no critical import. But for him the triad is imposing a western metaphysical rigidity on all of us. No way out is suggested except of a perpetual postponement of judgment of any meaning by itself. I see the triad as neither western, metaphysical, rigid nor imposing but a valuable resource that we humans are endowed with. This resource is being unnecessarily scandalized and I am trying to unscandalize it.

If there is going to be any discernment( Sans. Viveka) whatsoever, emerging difference is going to be a difference ‘between’ and hence the ‘pairs.’ In other words binaries are inevitable. Binaries need not be dichotomies. Two aspects of same thing, if seen as such, can also constitute a binary.  

Opposition need not be antagonistic, unless it is the case. Two closest synonyms can stand before each other as antonyms, if subtlety of the problem at hand requires so. Meaning of ‘opposition’ varies in various oppositions of meanings. I am going to elaborate this later. Magnetic north pole has nothing against magnetic south pole. In fact  they attract each other.

If we are going to have any preferences whatsoever, emergence of Hierarchy   is inevitable. Egalitarians have taught us to confuse all inequalities with disparities. Parity always refers to some node in some hierarchy and a legitimate hierarchy always refers to ceteris paribus conditions on the basis of which it is legitimate. Particular hierarchies can be reversed or eliminated. However annihilating Hierarchy per se in the world of meanings, would be analogous to completed entropic heat death in the physical world!

Binaries although being discrete by themselves do not necessarily negate the continuum or interpenetrating of their senses. Shades can be differentiated may be at the cost of introducing new binaries. There is nothing scandalous about this.

 Even the third notion of the triad i.e. Hierarchy earns an oppressive ring because of the preceding notion of antagonism, which it has to supposedly, oppress. Otherwise Hierarchy can enjoy a benign axiological and not the necessarily oppressive sense. Thus the main culprit of the scandalization is the implied equation viz. ‘opposition is equal to antagonism’. Therefore I am going to focus upon enormously varying senses in which the pairing terms of a binary stand ‘opposite’ to each other.

Antonyms plurality: Many senses of opposition

Two very close synonyms can be posed as antonyms if the subtlety of the problem at hand requires so and antonyms on the other hand show multitude of senses in which we use the term ‘as against’. For example ‘Guest’ can have three different antonyms viz. host, intruder, regular member

1)    Natural: artificial, cultural, abnormal, super-natural, formal(languages)

2)    Subject: object, predicate, king, g k

3)    Punishment: reward, amnesty, indemnity, revenge, compensation

4)    Solid: liquid, plane, hollow

5)    Pain: endurance, relief, pleasure, discomfort,

6)    Wise: naïve, stupid, foolish, silly, idiotic

7)    Wild: tamed, pet, domestic, livestock, somber, plausible(guess)

8)    Doubt: verification, certitude, belief, trust, faith

9)    Noise: silence, signal, distinct sound, soothing sound, melodious sound

10)           Curvature: straightness, angularity

11)           Generous: miserly, calculative, strictly reciprocating, divine-merit-earning, redeeming,

12)           Peaceful: warring, uneasy, in turmoil, suppressed, silenced, 

13)           Kind: cruel, degree

14)           Addiction: aversion, de-addiction

15)           Guest: host, intruder, regular member

16)           Culprit: innocent, suspect, accused, aggrieved, prosecutor,

17)           Accused: prosecutor, plaintiff, approver(witness of prosecution)

18)           Victim: persecutor, rescuer

19)           Child: parent, adult

20)           Righteousness: wickedness, opportunism, gullibility, prudence, benevolence

21)           Passion: restraint, moderation, asceticism, equanimity, detachment, action, volition, cold-heartedness,  

22)           Ideology: critic, vested interest, arbitrary evaluative judgment, conformity

23)           Authority: responsibility, brute power, obedience, insubordination

24)           Spirituality: materialism, hedonism, ritual, religion, therapy, Psychology

25)           Right: left(anatomical), left(political), wrong, duty, acute-obtuse(angle)

26)           Continuity: interruption, change, discreteness

27)            Insecure: secure, fearless, careless, hardened, courageous, surrendered to fate,

28)           Love: lust, hate, indifference

29)           Pure: impure, applied

30)           Real: apparent, imaginary, ideal, official.

31)           Beauty: ugliness, utility, pleasing-ness, satiating, agreeability to taste

32)           Fair: Unfair, rough, dark 

33)           Synthetic: Analytic, Catabolic, Natural

34)           Receiver: Emitter, Giver, Sender

35)           Respiration: Suffocation, Photosynthesis   

36)           Integration: Disintegration, differentiation, segregation, compartmentalization

37)           Patient: Doctor, Impatient, Accompanying Person, Attendant

38)           Radical: superficial, moderate, compromised, Reformist, Alleviator,    

39)           Odd: Even (Numbers), strange, abnormal, unusual, out of the ordinary atypical

40)            Even: smooth, flat, level, flush, and  ‘yet’ like in ‘even though’ ‘even if’ etc

41)           Insecurity: Protection, Courage, Fearlessness, surrender

42)           Wrong: Correct, Right,  unison, predetermined,   

43)           Pertinent: irrelevant, trivial, misleading, diffusing

Phonocentrism a Bane or a Boon

 It is a simple fact of life. When we utter something we simultaneously get audio-feedback, motor-feedback of vocal effort, meaning to be communicated.  All is simultaneously presented to us. This creates a sense of truth, verity. Derrida etc are bent upon destroying or nipping in bud the sense of truth for their subversive agenda.

Written matter, by contrast is some scribing in front of us. The reader recognizes it as a script and then language and then message that writer might have intended to give. Writer is absent, reader is ‘free’ to play around with the new plaything he has got and it is called a text. This ‘absolute’ freedom of interpretation is lacking in a dialogue. So phonic is bad  and inscription is good! Co-presentation is basis of all verification. But the subversives want to destroy the very notion of verity, because it enslaves us to some sort of true saying and ultimately Logos, the center of gravity of normative discourse. Subversives are out to ‘emancipate’ us from any such basis to hold on. This is how phonocentrism has become a bad word.

I feel that we are fortunate to have such experience of myself-talking. I can sometimes fool others but not myself. We are fortunate to have been endowed with axiomatic intuition, a-priory to anchor our thinking.  We share before we speak or write. We have theoretical as well as practical bases for communicative action and objectivity. What is the point in denying all this and start a pursuit of meaninglessness?

These are my problems with Derrida. If Derrida is right than everybody is right, myself included. But am I right even when it is possible that something can be wrong? Or simply anything goes?