Webinar 27: Viral Principle

Interesting to think about what is “normal” is this moment in time. I read something in Tricycle about language that I thought was appropriate (or not).

Derrida’s work builds on structuralism, which argues that words do not have meaning in and of themselves. The meaning of any linguistic expression always depends upon some other expression, and that “other expression” is also dependent on something else. Meaning is therefore relative and always in flux, part of a chain of reference that never comes to an end. Whatever we think we understand right here and now always presupposes something else that is not present.

A simple example is thinking that gets caught in antithetical concepts: success and failure, good and evil, and so forth. We distinguish between such opposing terms because we want one rather than the other, yet the meaning of each depends on the other. If it is important for me to live a pure life (however I understand purity), then I will also be preoccupied with impurity–that is, with avoiding it. We cannot feel that we are good unless we are fighting against some evil–ironically, often creating more evil in the process. In his close reading of texts, Derrida shows how philosophical claims usually involve excluding some meaning that returns in such ways to unsettle the intended meaning.