“The first consequence to be drawn from this is that the signified concept is never present in itself, in an adequate presence that would refer only to itself. Every concept is necessarily and essentially inscribed in a chain or a system, within which it refers to another and to other concepts, by the systematic play of differences” (127).
While digesting Derrida’s writing I found myself injecting myself into situations that I could compare to his thoughts. While reading this quote I pictured myself in different situations where I came in contact with a concept, image, or text. For example seeing an advertisement for milk seems like something that everyone would interpret in the same way. As Derrida explains the advertisement can never refer to just itself. When I see the advertisement my mind can not help but to draw connections to previous experiences I have had with milk or similar milk ads. There is no way for my mind to forget these previous thoughts or stop my mind from connecting them with the current image. A different person who is looking at the same image will have their own chain of thoughts and connections being made in their mind. We may both associate the milk with warm cookies that our mom made when we were little; however, there is no way that our entire chain of connections could be exactly the same. As Derrida states earlier in his piece:
“We provisionally give the name difference to this sameness which is not identical” (120).
While I could easily be having a similar chain of thoughts while I look at the milk advertisement it is impossible that it will be identical to anyone else. As Derrida explains I will not know how different our thoughts actually are. Attempting to put myself in the position of the other person I will need to rely on the similarities in our thoughts.
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1 comment:
Great post. I liked your process of understanding the reading.
-Starfish
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