Dissemination
A Criticism, Cultural, European Literature book. Still less, despite appearances, will it have been a collection...
"The English version of Dissemination [is] an able translation by Barbara Johnson . . . . Derrida's central contention is that language is haunted by dispersal, absence, loss, the risk of unmeaning, a risk which is starkly embodied in all writing. The distinction between philosophy and literature therefore becomes of secondary importance. Philosophy vainly attempts to control the irrecoverable dissemination of its own meaning, it strives—against the grain of language—to offer a sober revelation of truth. Literature—on the other hand—flaunts its...
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- Filetype: PDF
- Pages: 400 pages
- ISBN: 9780226143347 / 226143341
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More About Dissemination
Let us being again. To take some examples: why should literature still designate that which already breaks away from literatureaway from what has always been conceived and signified under that nameor that which, not merely escaping literature, implacably destroys it? (Posed in these terms, the question would already be caught in the assurance of a certain fore-knowledge: can what has always been conceived and signified under that name be considered fundamentally homogeneous, univocal, or nonconflictual?) To take other examples: what historical and strategic... Still less, despite appearances, will it have been a collection of three essays whose itinerary it would be time, after the fact, to recognize; whose continuity and underlying laws could now be pointed out; indeed, whose overall concept or meaning could at last, with all the insistence required on such occasions, be squarely set forth. I will not feign, according to the code, either premeditation or improvisation. These texts are assembled otherwise; it is not my intention here to present them. Jacques Derrida, Dissemination A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its laws and rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception. Jacques Derrida, Dissemination
I LOVED the preface of the book. The ideas inspired me to play with and look at language. After that, I got deeply lost (and not in a good way) in Derrida's complex language and ideas and felt I never could catch up. There were some gems along the way, but for the most part this book was well over my head. I found myself while reading... Honestly, as many other have said, this is worth it for "Plato's Pharmacy" alone. Derrida follows the various translations that translators have used for translating the greek word to pharmakon: the greek word conveys senses of remedy, poison, drug, narcotic, magic potion, love philtre, and cure. Derrida shows how the various translations... This was assigned to me in grad school in the 90s and it did me terrible damage, peeling back the skin of unexamined unities and making me feel naive and lazy in every particle and motion of my existence. It paralyzed my own writing by infecting me with a terribly self-conscious need to stave off simplistic certainties with annoying...
