BubbaNub 4/10

  I believe, after Thursday's class, that Derrida would view the dictionary as the pinnacle of differance.  The only way we give things meaning is by describing them in relation to what they are not.  This example, carried over from De Saussure and Barthes, was executed in class as we searched through a number of dictionaries in an attempt to define Cookie.  From cookie, we immidiately went to dough, and then went on from there to flour/flower.  I found this particularly interesting as we incorporated the previous notion of ghoti and the problems that arise phonetically within the trivial association of words and sound.  

Not only does Derrida tie together a bunch of older readings/concepts, he also goes farther into a theory he describes as the metaphysics of presence.  "We want desperately to believe in presence, that we can lock down the meaning of something, but that is an illusion" (127).  Derrida believes that we cannot cement the concept of presence, because contrary to Saussure and Barthes, he believes that the gap is not only found in the center but also borders every word and association that goes along with it.  These tometic intrusions all begin with a gap, an outline, a mere trace of context.  However, it seems as though this is where Derrida runs out of answers as he questions how we are able to see the outside of the text (139).  Being as the very nature of its being is to "threaten the authority of the as such" it becomes itself, unnamable.