derrida

Rabbit Holes /  by Justin Harrison

In thinking and researching about ‘Belonging’, ‘Boundaries’, ‘Transformation’ ‘Formation’

I have been looking at Derrida a lot, his exploration of ‘Differance’ ‘Trace’ Deconstruction’, ‘Spectres’ and ‘Hauntology’. I have now discovered Homi Bhabha. I see similarities of thought and approach, descriptions and models. I don’t know either work well enough to specifically state what exact differences or similarities they share. However I do feel the readings I have already made around Derrida - help me to being to approach Bhaba’s work.

I am also aware that Bhaba criticises Derrida’s work in falling short and failing to address Ethnocentricity and yet…

I do find the exploration of Space more specifically the third space and linguistics very interesting and return to my own enquiries to the language of art, navigation of change and the liminal.

Translation, Afterlife, Ghosts.

It’s a Rabbit hole I fear to go down, the depth of both authors work feels beyond me.

Translating transformation by documenting change. Looking back at the afterlife.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVQcdbSV6OI

 

Caputo and Derrida /  by Justin Harrison

Just documenting and collating key quotes for research- don’t worry about reading unless you really want to….

leaking

overflowing

contaminating

Density of language

The granular

Khôra

Differance

Leaking

Atolysis

Emptying out

Container

Liminal

Thoughts

Transform

Passage

“Transcendental conditions nail things down, pin them in place, inscribe them firmly within rigorously demarcated horizons; quasi-transcendental conditions allow them to slip loose, to twist free from their surrounding horizons, to leak and run off, to exceed or overflow their margins. The problem in a transcendental philosophy is how to establish communication across the borders; the problem in a quasi-transcendental philosophy is how to keep things from running into each other and contaminating everything. But a quasi-transcendental condition is a condition of or for entities, not an entity itself; a condition under which things appear, but too poor and impoverished, too unkingly, to dictate what there is or what there is not, lacking the power to bring what is not into being, lacking the authority to prohibit something from being. So différance describes the possibility and the impossibility of a language that addresses God, of positive, onto-theo-logical languages, like that of Thomas Aquinas, and the extraordinary languages of mystical theologians like John of the Cross, of mystical poets like Angelus Silesius, with all their paradoxes and paralogisms, detours and dissonances. Différance describes the languages of faith and prayer which, as Derrida's Work evolves, prove to be not just particular examples of language, but wemplary uses that exceed linguistic categorization and tend to coincide with language itself, to become the very yes, or amen, of language to what Is happening. That is why deconstruction is not ultimately neutral. Even diftrance describes the possibility and impossibility of the language in which God is coldheartedly denied by Hume of Bertrand Russell, excortpied by Nietzsche for all of It’s failings, or brushed off with a shrug by kon'y, who does not see why we need bother to talk like that,_Dilitance is altogether too meager and poor a thing to settle the quiete” Caputo Payers and Tears of Derrida p12-13

I wonder does Derrida provide the conceptual context for where transformation can occur - the passage way?

 

Response to Assessment Feedback /  by Justin Harrison

The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida. Religion without religion. By John D Caputo

After processing my feedback, I’m attempting to refine my plans for the next year. Have realistic making goals// In parallel my research/conceptual enquiry needs refining, my areas of reading and research, I did receive advice not to get too consumed with existential theory. ( Although saying this I did just start another book on Derrida). But in my defence it’s a very different one from the usual analysis, the writing is almost prose at times and has some beautiful phrases. I know I want the technical insight but I don’t want to depart from the creative either, and I find the prose helpful.

The feedback from the assessment was very encouraging, reminding me to continue with the free documentation of thoughts and ideas through mini deadlines and making multiples that can be edited later.

I am also mindful of questions raised about engaging with 'smaller, quieter and less visible changes, especially in the context of Derrida', - rather than the more noticeable motif of death. I agree and in thinking around this - I am reminded of a line form a song - "Who are you great mountain that you should not bow low?" (“Never Lost'' was written by Catherine Mullins & Rita Springer) some how it re-addresses value systems for me. Micro and macro. Mustard seed and tree. The still small voice that can level mountains.

We look for the dramatic- the grand and the impactful yet miss the same impact that can come from the small. It's not just an inversion though...there is a different understanding of dynamics and binary. Is this where 'differance' can come into view if only for half a moment?

There is a warning again about getting trapped in conceptual theories and the perfectionism of making. I see the truth with both these points and need to carefully consider what ideas I am going to pursue and how they are going to be made. Perhaps I need to identify some common threads that appear and which I connected to creatively.

///////////////////

  • Am tempted to look at:

  • Quick 10 mins sketches in porcelain and black clay?

  • Quick fabrications in cardboard.

  • Drawings made on discarded paper (It stops me getting precious with my drawings)

  • Multiple drawings.

  • Slip casting?

  • Set some hard mini deadlines.

 

Initiating a pact with the impossible /  by Justin Harrison

 

There is a place. 

Outside. 

Impossible to find but always here.

Formless.

Where from nothing, comes something. 

Birthed.

I thought I was alone.

Mistaken.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“Sans savior, sans avoir, sans voir”

“Initiating a pact with the impossible”

Caputo J - The tears and prayers of Jacques Derrida - p xx

 

Dislocated /  by Justin Harrison

Transformation at my shoulder. (Image my own)

Reading Derrida’s ‘Structure Sign and Play’ is hard work. But then I didn’t expect it to be easy. I’m looking for something in his writing that I don’t even know if it’s there. I will push into some other peoples writing on him but I also wanted to look at his work firsthand.

There are some interesting phrases and I’m not sure that I properly grasp what he is investigating however I find it’s slow burn with him, that fragments gradually become more apparent and useful as I mulch over them.

Some key points/quotes for now:

  • The impossibility of the centre of a structure being inside the structure. (Paraphrase)

  • “The centre had no natural locus” Derrida ‘Structure sign and Play’ p2

  • “We have no language - no syntax and no lexicon - which is alien to this history; we cannot utter a single destructive proposition which has not already slipped the from, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest” Derrida ‘Structure sign and Play’ p2

  • Evasion of the binary. Ideas and articles occupying more than one position at the same time.

  • “without the risk of erasing difference [altogether] in the self identity of a signified reducing into itself it’s signifier, or, what amounts to the same thing, simply expelling it outside itself”

  • “had been dislocated, driven from it’s locus, and forced to stop considering itself as the culture of reference.” Derrida ‘Structure sign and Play’ p3

  • “language bears within itself the necessity of it’s own critique” Derrida ‘Structure sign and Play’ p5

  • “The superabundance of the signifier, it’s supplementary character, is thus the result of a finitude, that is to say, the result of a lack which must be supplemented.” Derrida ‘Structure sign and Play’ p11

  • There is something about when reduction occurs, that it cannot but help be generative. Distillation seems impossible because that the act of it, creates the new. Similar to the decomposition of a body. The reduction is infinitely more generative. Death as a creative force.