Ron Burgundy, 11/22

This week we discussed one of the most complicated theorists, Derrida, and his concept of difference vs. differance. While reading the text I had an extremely difficult time understanding the points that were being made. In class Dr. Rog helped bring clarity to the concepts not only behind this single text, but to Derrida's theories as a whole. One of the most interesting things that we looked at in class was the idea of the "ur", or the beginning. Specifically we looked at the the "ur-text" which questions if we can trace a word or concept back to its beginning. We did this exercise to test this continually looking up terms in order to figure out the definition of "board". As we did this exercise we discovered the complexities of language, specifically english, where it is extremely difficult to get a complete understanding of a single concept. This is because the words that describe them often have several definitions and include concepts that when looked up, contain the same word we were originally trying to find. The dependency of language, words, on one another in order to understand, describe, them reminds me of Macherey's concept of intertextuality. According to Macherey, texts are only understood through their comparisons with other texts, their meaning is dependent on one another. We use other texts to understand the particular text we are reading, just as Derrida says we use other words, which are ambiguous signs, to understand a particular word. It seems difficult to grasp, and it is. But in a sense, a word is just a sign loaded with other words that explain its meaning. The english language is often the hardest language to learn because of this principle and the fact that most words in the english language have several meanings. Their correct meaning therefore, is only found through putting it in context, among other words. This once again connects to intertextuality as meaning is found through explanation of other words and among other words.