From: Dace (edace@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon 28 Mar 2005 - 02:12:30 GMT
It occurred to me while reading a tribute to Derrida in The Philosopher's
Magazine (issue 29) that there's a distinct memetic component to the concept
of deconstruction. This is Alan Montefiore on what he learned from Derrida:
"First and foremost perhaps-- though I doubt whether he would have put it
this way-- that the meanings of terms... never come as it were in hard
nuggets, but that under pressure they tend always to spread out in all
directions, to 'disseminate,' as he himself might indeed have said. Thus
one is always at risk of finding one's own meanings sliding away from
oneself-- as, indeed, we have been taught from another, but not totally
other, perspective by Freud and his diverse followers.
"Second, that within these spreading entanglements, if we follow them
through far and diligently enough, we shall (almost?) always find elements
of mutual contradiction which, when set free to work as such, may, like some
disseminating cancer, threaten the very discourse in which they are embedded
with reduction to a kind of self-destroying incoherence."
"And third, that one should not hope or pretend that even the very discourse
within which one may attempt to formulate these insights could maintain any
claim to a securely superior status..."
Seems that the memes we launch from the head come back to bite us in the
ass.
ted
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