Abstract
A critical study of the Course in General Linguistics is here expanded to include Derrida’s influential interpretation of this canonical text. It develops a critique of the philosopher’s own critical reading of Saussure’s linguistics, and it reveals a profound rapprochement between their respective views. The chapter re-examines relevant sections of the Course, approaching them through the lens of their deconstructive reading by Derrida in Of Grammatology (2016) and Glas (1986), and considering them in conjunction with relevant sources from Saussure’s Nachlass. The goal is not simply to dismiss Derrida’s insightful reading of Saussure. Instead, it turns out that general linguistics and deconstruction are closer than usually thought, and they can be productively combined in contemporary studies of cultural signification. For both Derrida and Saussure, cultural signification is mediated by the plexus of differences within the language system, and it is shaped by the so-called extralinguistic world.
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Notes
- 1.
The relevant passage in the Course reads: “writing obscures our view of the language. Writing is not a garment, but a disguise” (2013, [52] 34).
- 2.
The relevant passage in the Course reads: “Although the connexion between word and written form is superficial ….it is none the less much easier to grasp than the natural and only authentic connexion, which links word and sound” (2013, [46] 29).
- 3.
The relevant passage in the Course reads: “Anyone who thinks he can construct a language not subject to change, which posterity must accept as it is, would be like a hen hatching a duck’s egg” (2013, [111] 88).
References
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———. 1986. Glas. Trans. John P. Leavey Jr. and Richard Rand. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
———. 2016. Of Grammatology. Fortieth Anniversary Edition. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Introduction by Judith Butler. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Engler, Rudolf, ed. 1989. Cours de linguistique générale, by Ferdinand de Saussure. Vol. 1. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. First published 1967–68.
Godel, Robert. 1957. Les Sources manuscrites du “Cours de linguistique générale” de F. de Saussure. Geneva: E. Droz.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1993. Troisième cours de linguistique générale (1910–1911): d’après les cahiers d’Emile Constantin/Saussure’s Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics (1910–1911): From the Notebooks of Emile Constantin. Ed. Eisuke Komatsu. Trans. Roy Harris. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
———. 2006. Writings in General Linguistics. Ed. Simon Bouquet and Rudolf Engler, with Antoinette Weil. Trans. by Carol Sanders, Matthew Pires, with Peter Figueroa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. First published in French 2002.
———. 2013. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Roy Harris. Introduction by Roy Harris. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
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Stawarska, B. (2020). Derrida and Saussure: Entrainment and Contamination. In: Saussure’s Linguistics, Structuralism, and Phenomenology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43097-9_7
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