DOCSLIB.ORG

SPECTRES of a CRISIS: READING JACQUES DERRIDA AFTER the GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS of 2008 by JOHN JAMES FRANCIS a Thesis Submi

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
SPECTRES of a CRISIS: READING JACQUES DERRIDA AFTER the GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS of 2008 by JOHN JAMES FRANCIS a Thesis Submi SPECTRES OF A CRISIS: READING JACQUES DERRIDA AFTER THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 2008 by JOHN JAMES FRANCIS A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Modern Languages School of Languages, Culture, Art History, and Music College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham JUNE 2019 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis investigates a theoretical response to the question of what constitutes the political implications of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. This thesis, working within the tradition of critical and cultural theory, undertakes a sustained engagement with the works of Jacques Derrida to theorise the traditions, norms, and practices that inform a response to an event such as the crisis of 2008. This thesis works with his proposals that: the spectre of its limitations haunts politics; that this has led to the ‘deconstruction’ of the meaning of politics through complex textual frameworks; and that this dynamic leads to a tension between the arrival of new political possibilities on the one hand and new forms of political sovereignty on the other. After examining the significance of Derrida’s approach and secondary literature debating its interpretation, this thesis deconstructs the political implications of the crisis from politics in the traditional sense of the nation- state, the textual politics of scholarship, and finally the politics of the media, the domain, I argue, that incorporates the most discrete and sophisticated forms of sovereign decision-making. Finally, this thesis opens up its findings to secondary literature that suggest contrasting arguments. For Phoné ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis has been made possible by the expertise and guidance of my supervisors, Dr Joanne Sayner and Dr Ross Abbinnett, by the support and encouragement of my family, friends, and colleagues, and by the kindness and patience of my partner, Phoné. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 1 1. ‘WE MUST BEGIN SOMEWHERE, BUT THERE IS NO ABSOLUTELY JUSTIFIED BEGINNING’ ................................................. 1 2. OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS .............................................................................................................................................................. 9 CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................... 14 1. CRITICAL AND CULTURAL THEORY ....................................................................................................................................... 16 2. DERRIDA AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DIFFERENCE ............................................................................................... 25 3. TOWARDS A POLITICS OF SPECTRES ..................................................................................................................................... 35 4. A CERTAIN SPIRIT OF DECONSTRUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 45 CHAPTER TWO: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ................................................................ 60 1. APPROACHING SPECTRES ....................................................................................................................................................... 62 2. THE POLITICS OF THE NATION-STATE ................................................................................................................................. 72 3. SCHOLARSHIP ........................................................................................................................................................................... 81 4. THE MEDIA ............................................................................................................................................................................... 89 5. REFLECTIONS ............................................................................................................................................................................ 97 CHAPTER THREE: THE POLITICS OF THE NATION-STATE ........................................... 107 1. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE POLITICAL ............................................................................................................................... 109 2. INHERITANCE AND THE PHANTASM OF THE SOVEREIGN ................................................................................................. 116 3. HOSPITALITY AND AUTOIMMUNITY’S SPECTRALITY ........................................................................................................ 124 4. DEFENDING THE NATION-STATE (IN CERTAIN CONDITIONS) ......................................................................................... 132 CHAPTER FOUR: SCHOLARSHIP ............................................................................................ 143 1. SOVEREIGNTY AND SCHOLARSHIP ....................................................................................................................................... 145 2. TALKING WITH GHOSTS ........................................................................................................................................................ 153 3. SCHOLARSHIP AND CONTEMPORARY SPECTRAL EFFECTS .............................................................................................. 161 4. A NEW HUMANITIES (AND CULTURAL STUDIES) ............................................................................................................. 169 CHAPTER FIVE: THE MEDIA .................................................................................................... 180 1. FILTERING, SELECTING, PRIVILEGING ................................................................................................................................ 182 2. TELE-TECHNOLOGY, THE GOOD NEWS, AND THE SECRET ............................................................................................... 189 3. TELE-TECHNOLOGICAL SOVEREIGNTY ................................................................................................................................ 197 4. TELE-TECHNOLOGICAL DISSONANCES ................................................................................................................................ 205 CHAPTER SIX: REFLECTIONS .................................................................................................. 216 1. RICHARD BEARDSWORTH: HOSPITALITY AND COSMOPOLITANISM .............................................................................. 218 2. BERNARD STIEGLER; SCHOLARSHIP AND EDUCATION ..................................................................................................... 229 3. MICHAEL NAAS: UNDERWORLDS ........................................................................................................................................ 240 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 253 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................... 261 INTRODUCTION In 2007 the bubble in the US subprime housing market burst. Housing markets have always gone through cycles of boom and bust, but the repercussions of this crash were so widely unexpected, so fast, and so catastrophic that their spectral afterlives can be traced in business, politics, policy, society, and culture today. Why then was it so catastrophic? On this occasion the financial industries were blindly investing in the continued growth of the subprime market. Loans had been offered at extremely low interest rates and then repackaged, rebranded, and sold as derivatives and securitisations, with the risks of investments masked by their complexity and savvy industry marketing. These packages proved so lucrative that even the most prestigious of financial institutions invested heavily, drawing in funds from outside the United States to keep growing. When the subprime bubble burst interest rates started to skyrocket, and money stopped flowing. During this “credit crunch” phase governments around the world offered emergency loans, but when the US government decided to draw a line with Lehmans in September 2008 global financial panic ensued and the ‘Global Financial Crisis’ was born. Despite governments pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial sector, the crisis triggered the ‘Great Recession’, the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s (Ciro, 2012; Blyth, 2013; Fulcher, 2015). The unthinkable had happened; a global collapse in the credibility of capitalism. For Slavoj Žižek the crisis indicated that ‘the time for liberal-democratic moralistic blackmail is over. Our side no longer has to go
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Choreographies: Jacques Derrida and Christie V. Mcdonald Author(S)
    Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTERVIEW CHOREOG RAPH IES ................... JACQUESDERRIDA and CHRISTIEV. MCDONALD MEE-5_- 44~-i~il"':?ii':iiiii ":-:---iii-i Question I' MCDONALD:Emma Goldman, a maverickfeminist from the late nine- teenth century,once said of the feministmovement: "If I can'tdance I don't wantto be partof yourrevolution." Jacques Derrida, you havewritten about the question of woman and what it is that constitutes 'the feminine.' In Spurs/Eperons(Chicago and London:The Universityof ChicagoPress, 1978), a textdevoted to Nietzsche,style and woman,you wrotethat "that which will not be pinneddown by truth[truth?] is, in truth,feminine." And you warnedthat such a proposition"should not... be hastilymistaken for a woman'sfeminin- ity, for female sexuality,or for any other of those essentializingfetishes which . :-?i- .l . .... mightstill tantalize the dogmaticphilosopher, the impotentartist or the inexpe- riencedseducer who has not yet escaped his foolishhopes of capture." Whatseems to be at playas you take up Heidegger'sreading of Nietzsche is whether or not sexual differenceis a "regionalquestion in a largerorder which would subordinateit firstto the domain of general ontology, subse- .......
    [Show full text]
  • What Remains of the "Between" and of the Space That Divides, the Seam That Touches Both Borders? Between Literature and Philosophy? Between Texts and Readers? Between
    1 What remains? What remains of the "between" and of the space that divides, the seam that touches both borders? Between literature and philosophy? Between texts and readers? Between Glas and CA?1 "What remains of the 'remain(s)' when it is pulled to pieces, torn into morsels? Where does the rule of its being torn into morsels come from? Must one still try to determine a regularity when tearing to pieces what remains of the remain(s)? A strictly angular question. The remain(s) here suspends itself. Let us give ourselves the time of this suspense. For the moment time will be nothing but the suspense between the regularity and the irregularity of the morsels of what remains."(Glas, 226a) There are too many questions remaining. But how, precisely, is that possible? How do they "remain?" What "past" do they mark as "remains?" How does one deal with remains? What is the work of mourning and interrment, the glas-work, the work announced even as it is made impossible by Glas? Can this be the mark of a reading? A Writing? A "critical discourse?" What is it, finally, "to remain?" This is the fundamental (post)-ontological question that Glas ceaselessly recites even as it tears the fabric of such a question, the texts that appear to posit it (the texts of Sa, the Phenomenology of Spirit), and those that disseminate it through a celebration of the partial and the signature (the texts of the thief, the prisoner, the homosexual) into pieces. In approaching these questions of what can (possibly) remain, Glas continually reminds me that the number most often written into Sa, the Hegelian number parexcellence , is three.
    [Show full text]
  • Derrida, Logocentrism, and the Concept of Warrant on the Semantic Web
    D. Grant Campbell — University of Western Ontario Derrida, Logocentrism, and the Concept of Warrant on the Semantic Web Abstract The highly-structured data standards of the Semantic Web contain a promising venue for the migration of library subject access standards onto the World Wide Web. The new functionalities of the Web, however, along with the anticipated capabilities of intelligent Web agents, suggest that information on the Semantic Web will have much more fl exibility, diversity and mutability. We need, therefore, a method for recognizing and assessing the principles whereby Semantic Web information can combine together in productive and useful ways. This paper will argue that the concept of warrant in traditional library science, can provide a useful means of translating li- brary knowledge structures into Web-based knowledge structures. Using Derrida’s concept of logocentrism, this paper suggests that what while “warrant” in library science traditionally alludes to the principles by which con- cepts are admitted into the design of a classifi cation or access system, “warrant” on the Semantic Web alludes to the principles by which Web resources can be admitted into a network of information uses. Furthermore, library information practice suggests a far more complex network of warrant concepts that provide a subtlety and rich- ness to knowledge organization that the Semantic Web has not yet attained. Introduction The concept of warrant in traditional library science has been a cornerstone of our under- standing of, and our training in, the major tools of subject access, including the Library of Congress Subject Headings, Library of Congress Classifi cation, and the Dewey Decimal Classifi cation.
    [Show full text]
  • Derridean Deconstruction and Feminism
    DERRIDEAN DECONSTRUCTION AND FEMINISM: Exploring Aporias in Feminist Theory and Practice Pam Papadelos Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Discipline of Gender, Work and Social Inquiry Adelaide University December 2006 Contents ABSTRACT..............................................................................................................III DECLARATION .....................................................................................................IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................V INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1 THESIS STRUCTURE AND OVERVIEW......................................................................... 5 CHAPTER 1: LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS – FEMINISM AND DECONSTRUCTION ............................................................................................... 8 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 8 FEMINIST CRITIQUES OF PHILOSOPHY..................................................................... 10 Is Philosophy Inherently Masculine? ................................................................ 11 The Discipline of Philosophy Does Not Acknowledge Feminist Theories......... 13 The Concept of a Feminist Philosopher is Contradictory Given the Basic Premises of Philosophy.....................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Tracing Noise: Writing In-Between Sound by Mitch Renaud Bachelor
    Tracing Noise: Writing In-Between Sound by Mitch Renaud Bachelor of Music, University of Toronto, 2012 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Department of French, the School of Music, and Cultural, Social, and Political Thought Mitch Renaud, 2015 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee Tracing Noise: Writing In-Between Sound by Mitch Renaud Bachelor of Music, University of Toronto, 2012 Supervisory Committee Emile Fromet de Rosnay, Department of French and CSPT Supervisor Christopher Butterfield, School of Music Co-Supervisor Stephen Ross, Department of English and CSPT Outside Member iii Abstract Supervisory Committee Emile Fromet de Rosnay (Department of French and CSPT) Supervisor Christopher Butterfield (School of Music) Co-Supervisor Stephen Ross (Department of English and CSPT) Outside Member Noise is noisy. Its multiple definitions cover one another in such a way as to generate what they seek to describe. My thesis tracks the ways in which noise can be understood historically and theoretically. I begin with the Skandalkonzert that took place in Vienna in 1913. I then extend this historical example into a theoretical reading of the noise of Derrida’s Of Grammatology, arguing that sound and noise are the unheard of his text, and that Derrida’s thought allows us to hear sound studies differently. Writing on sound must listen to the noise of the motion of différance, acknowledge the failings, fading, and flailings of sonic discourse, and so keep in play the aporias that constitute the field of sound itself.
    [Show full text]
  • Jacques Derrida MAR G in S of Philosophy
    Jacques Derrida MAR G IN S of Philosophy rranslated, with Additional Notes, by Alan Bass The( · University of Chicago Press Contents Jacques Derrida teaches the history of philosophy at the Ecole normale superieure, Paris. Four of his other �orks Translator's Note vii have been published by the University of Chicago Press · Tympan ix in English translation: Writing and Difference (1978); Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles Eperons: Les styles de Nietzsche (bilingual Differance 1 edition, 1979); PositionsI (1981); and Dissemination (1981). Ousia and Gramme: Note on a Note from Being and Time 29 The Pit and the Pyramid: Introduction to Hegel's Semiology 69 The Ends of Man 109 The Linguistic Circle of Geneva 137 Form and Meaning: A Note Y.on the Phenomenology of Language 155 The Supplement of Copula: Philosophy before Linguistics 175 White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy 207 The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 Qual Quelle: The Harvester Press Limited, Brighton, Sussex Valery's Sources 273 1982 by The University of Chicago Signature Event Context 307 All© rights reserved. Published 1982 Printed in the United States of America 89 88 87 86 85 84 83 82 5 4 3 2 1 This work was published in Paris under the title Marges de Ia philosophie, 1972, by Les Editions de Minuit. Libraryof Congress© Cataloging in Publication Data Derrida, Jacques. Margins of philosophy. Title. I82-11137. v rranslatorIs Note Many of these essays have been translated before. Although all the translations in this volume are "new" and "my own" -the quotation marks serving here, as Derrida might say, as an adequate precaution-! have been greatly assisted in my work by consulting: "Differance," trans.
    [Show full text]
  • Jacques Derrida Law As Absolute Hospitality
    JACQUES DERRIDA LAW AS ABSOLUTE HOSPITALITY JACQUES DE VILLE NOMIKOI CRITICAL LEGAL THINKERS Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality presents a comprehensive account and understanding of Derrida’s approach to law and justice. Through a detailed reading of Derrida’s texts, Jacques de Ville contends that it is only by way of Derrida’s deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence, and specifi cally in relation to the texts of Husserl, Levinas, Freud and Heidegger, that the reasoning behind his elusive works on law and justice can be grasped. Through detailed readings of texts such as ‘To Speculate – on Freud’, Adieu, ‘Declarations of Independence’, ‘Before the Law’, ‘Cogito and the History of Madness’, Given Time, ‘Force of Law’ and Specters of Marx, de Ville contends that there is a continuity in Derrida’s thinking, and rejects the idea of an ‘ethical turn’. Derrida is shown to be neither a postmodernist nor a political liberal, but a radical revolutionary. De Ville also controversially contends that justice in Derrida’s thinking must be radically distinguished from Levinas’s refl ections on ‘the Other’. It is the notion of absolute hospitality – which Derrida derives from Levinas, but radically transforms – that provides the basis of this argument. Justice must, on de Ville’s reading, be understood in terms of a demand of absolute hospitality which is imposed on both the individual and the collective subject. A much needed account of Derrida’s infl uential approach to law, Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality will be an invaluable resource for those with an interest in legal theory, and for those with an interest in the ethics and politics of deconstruction.
    [Show full text]
  • Vo» the RHETORIC of POSTHUMANISM in FOUR TWENTIETH- CENTURY INTERNATIONAL NOVELS DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Counci
    /vo» THE RHETORIC OF POSTHUMANISM IN FOUR TWENTIETH- CENTURY INTERNATIONAL NOVELS DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Lidan Lin, B. A., M. A., M. Ed. Denton, Texas August, 1998 Lin, Lidan, The Rhetoric of Posthumanism in Four Twentieth-Century International Novels. Doctor of Philosophy (English), August, 1998,195 pp., works cited, 182 titles. The dissertation traces the trope of the incomplete character in four twentieth-century cosmopolitan novels that reflect European colonialism in a global context. I argue that, by creating characters sharply aware of the insufficiency of the Self and thus constantly seeking the constitutive participation of the Other, the four authors E. M. Forster, Samuel Beckett, J. M. Coetzee, and Congwen Shen all dramatize the incomplete character as an agent of postcolonial resistance to Western humanism that, tending to enforce the divide between the Self and the Other, provided the epistemological basis for the emergence of European colonialism. For example, Fielding's good-willed aspiration to forge cross- cultural friendship in A Passage to India-, Murphy's dogged search for recognition of his Irish identity in Murphy; Susan's unfailing compassion to restore Friday's lost speech in Foe; and Changshun Teng, the Chinese orange-grower's warm-hearted generosity toward his customers in Long River-all these textual occasions dramatize the incomplete character's anxiety over the Other's rejection that will impair the fullness of his or her being, rendering it solitary and empty. I relate this anxiety to the theory of "posthumanism" advanced by such thinkers as Marx, Bakhtin, Sartre, and Lacan; in their texts the humanist view of the individual as an autonomous constitution has undergone a transformation marked by the emphasis on locating selfhood not in the insular and static Self but in the mutable middle space connecting the Self and the Other.
    [Show full text]
  • Styling Against Absolute Knowledge in Derrida's Glas Jessica Marian
    parrhesia 24 · 2015 · 217-238 styling against absolute knowledge in derrida's glas jessica marian Jacques Derrida’s Glas (1974) is written entirely across two parallel columns, the left column focussing on a reading of selected works by the G. W. F. Hegel, the nineteenth-century philosopher of what Derrida will refer to as ‘savoir absolu’ (absolute knowledge), and the other column, on the right, concentrating on a selection of the fiction and plays of Jean Genet, one of France’s most avowedly marginal authors, a self-confessed “traitor, thief, informer, coward and queer.”1 Glas is one of Derrida’s most stylistically experimental texts, disregarding linear argumentation and citation standards in favour of an approach which draws upon such elements as word-play, aural resonances and textual interruptions or supplements referred to as “judases”. Glas is regularly grouped with Éperons: les styles de Nietzsche (1978) and La Carte postale: de Socrate à Freud et au-delà (1980) as roughly contemporaneous texts written in a non-traditional, somewhat literary style. In his 1980 thesis defence, Derrida located this group of three works within a “continued pursuit […] of the project of grammatology”, “an expansion of earlier attempts”, whilst also alluding towards a felt need to attempt to develop a different style and performance of writing which would turn “towards textual configurations that were less and less linear, logical and topical forms, even typographical forms that were more daring, the intersection of corpora, mixtures of genera or of modes, changes of tone […], satire, rerouting, grafting, etc.”2 In this paper I read Glas with an eye towards exploring precisely this linkage between Derrida’s philosophical project and Glas’ highly experimental style—I argue that Glas’ style is intimately linked with its philosophical project.
    [Show full text]
  • Jacques Derrida Dissemination Translated, with an Introduction
    Jacques Derrida Dissemination Translated, with an Introduction and Additional Notes, by Barbara Johnson The University of Chicago Press Contents Translator's Introduction VlI Outwork, prefacing 1 Plato's Pharmacy 61 I 65 1. Pharmacia 65 2. The Father of Logos 75 3. The Filial Inscription: Theuth, Hermes, Thoth, Nabfr, Nebo 84 4. The Pharmakon 95 5. The 'pharmakeus 117 II lW 6. The Pharmakos 128 7. The Ingredients: Phantasms, Festivals, and Paints 134 8. The Heritage of the Pharmakon: Family Scene 142 9. Play: From the Pharmakon to the Letter and from Blindness to the Supplement 156 The Double Session 173 I 175 II 227 VI CONTENTS Dissemination 287 I 289 1. The Trigger 290 2. The Apparatus or Frame 296 3. The Scission 300 4. The Double Bottom of the Plupresent 306 5. wriTing, encAsIng, screeNing 313 6. The Attending Discourse 324 II 330 7. The Time before First 330 8. The Column 340 9. The Crossroads of the "Est" 347 10. Grafts, a Return to Overcasting 355 XI. The Supernumerary 359 Translator's Introduction All translation is only a somewhat provisional way of coming to terms with the foreignness of languages. -Walter Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator" What is translation? On a platter A poet's pale and glaring head, A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter, And profanation of the dead. -Vladimir Nabokov, "On Translating 'Eugene Onegin'" Jacques Derrida, born in Algiers in 1930, teaches philosophy at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. His tremendous impact on contemporary theoretical thought began in 1967 with the simultaneous publication
    [Show full text]
  • 41219 Manuscript
    This article is downloaded from http://researchoutput.csu.edu.au It is the paper published as: Authors: Russell Daylight Title: The passion of Saussure Journal Title: Language and Communication ISSN: 0271-5309 Year: 2012 Volume: 32 Issue: 3 Pages: 240-248 Abstract: Perhaps the best known and most influential of Jacques Derrida’s early, linguistically- oriented critiques concerns the relationship between writing and speech. This inquiry is directed towards a certain thread in the history of philosophy in which priority is given to spoken language over the written. It is Saussurean linguistics in particular that allows Derrida to posit the interdependence of phonocentrism, or the privilege of speech over writing, with logocentrism, or the desire for a true and universal experience of the world in the mind prior to the introduction of language. However, a close reading of this engagement suggests that Saussure might be phonocentric but not logocentric, and indeed, that it is possible to be phonocentric but not logocentric. URLs: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2012.04.003 http://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/R/-?func=dbin-jump- full&object_id=41219&local_base=GEN01-CSU01 Author Address: [email protected] CRO Number: 41219 1 Title: The Passion of Saussure Author: Russell Daylight Lecturer in English Charles Sturt University Panorama Avenue Bathurst NSW 2795 Australia Tel. +612.6338.4028 Fax. +612.6338.4401 [email protected] Abstract: Perhaps the best known and most influential of Jacques Derrida’s early, linguistically-oriented critiques concerns the relationship between writing and speech. Derrida’s inquiry is directed towards a certain thread in the history of philosophy in which priority is given to spoken language over the written.
    [Show full text]
  • Print This Article
    Book Review Russell Daylight, What if Derrida Was Wrong About Saussure? (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 224 pp. Marco Altamirano Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy - Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française, Vol XX, No 1 (2012) pp 147-152. Vol XX, No 1 (2012) ISSN 1936-6280 (print) ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/jffp.2012.545 www.jffp.org This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. This journal is operated by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program, and is co-sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy | Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française Vol XX, No 1 (2012) | www.jffp.org | DOI 10.5195/jffp.2012.545 Book Review Russell Daylight, What if Derrida Was Wrong About Saussure? (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 224 pp. The short answer to the question posed as the title of Daylight’s book is: “Yes, Derrida was wrong about Saussure, in many ways.” Daylight spends the majority of his book counting them, the most salient of which are interrelated: (1) Derrida identifies Saussure’s phonocentrism as a logocentrism too hastily by imputing Husserl’s primordial intuition, or pre- expressive substratum of sense, to Saussure’s mere privileging of the voice over writing; (2) Derrida claims that Saussure employs a transcendental signified, a static referent independent of signifiers, when Saussure’s Course repeatedly states that there is no signified without a signifier, thus dismantling the possibility for such a transcendental signified, whether real or ideal; (3) Derrida misconstrues Saussure’s terms by casting them within a metaphysics of presence, thus forcing Saussure into a mold amenable to his broad critique of classical metaphysics.
    [Show full text]