Abstract
Deconstructing the Platonic presence/sign, memory/archive hierarchies; the Derridean situation; memory’s inherent contamination by writing; the metaphysical pipedream of purity and pure presence; originary impropriety; deconstruction of metaphysics’ constitutive dyads; the sign as supplement; the logic of alterity; original difference, trace, and doubling: violence of difference and violence of identity; metaphysics’ exclusion of the Other, Derridean repatriation of the Other; extending hospitality to the sign; deconstruction of selfhood; from binarity to doubling; contamination as ethical; writing as omission, absence, reduction, castration; the ethical imperative to write.
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- 1.
On Derrida’s hauntology, see, e.g., Derrida (1994, 1–60).
- 2.
As the ghost of Hamlet’s father is referred to in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1; see Derrida (1994, 11).
- 3.
Derrida develops his account of the supplement in discussing Rousseau in Of Grammatology . The discussion adduces the dyad nature/culture, and its plethora of linguistic, educational, and sexual expressions (Derrida 1974, 141–64). Derrida takes the supplement to be another name for différance. Much of Derrida’s theoretical point in “Plato’s Pharmacy” (Derrida 1981) is based on identifying the Platonic pharmakon as a kind of supplement. The chapter of Dissemination (Derrida 1981) that follows “Plato’s Pharmacy” is devoted to identifying the supplement with another notion, that of the hymen, which is developed in a discussion of the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Although the hymen is not mentioned explicitly in “Plato’s Pharmacy,” it is alluded to in the context of describing the difference between signifier and signified as the membrane of virginity that both is and is not subject to being pierced (Derrida 1981, 209–25).
- 4.
Here Derrida is playing with the dual meaning of the verb “speculate.” On the one hand, it connotes thought and pondering, the emphasis being on the ‘speculative’ nature of the thoughts in question—their uncertainty, the possibility of their refutation. On the other hand, it connotes transparency and reflection, since a speculum is a mirror. This ambiguity highlights the representational, reflective dimension of thought, that is, the view that thought is a representation and reflection of reality, which is consistent with Derrida’s basic claim in this passage.
- 5.
On the ethical status of deconstruction , see Critchley (1992, 4–20).
- 6.
See, e.g., Lacan (1977, 67).
- 7.
The figure of the Titan god Cronus, as it appears in Greek mythology, was drawn from an earlier god figure, probably the god of corn. See Daly (2004, 33–34).
References
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Pimentel, D. (2019). Presence Under Erasure. In: Heidegger with Derrida . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05692-6_5
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