Jeremiah wrote:
>Comments on the role of language and text in Derrida and Foucault:
>
>In my opinion Derrida is both a critique and extension of certain
>notions development with the field of the linguistic science- semiotics,
>which relies upon the notion of the sign and signifier. In the Order of
>Things Foucault traces the epistemic breaks with in the sciences of
>language- renaissance, classical and modern. Language during the
>renaissance was consistuted primarily as ?the language of being? and
>pre-science in which the ?words? characterized the essence or
>ontological being of the objects or things they named. The Renaissance
>episteme?s came to language as an attempt to recover the Gods original
>language before the fall of Babel.
>
>Classical:
>
>the configuration of knowledge which Foucault terms the
>classical episteme there came about a shift in which language or words
>served as an arbitrary function which on the one had reduced itself to
>mere description and tool which made a whole range of cataloging
>techniques possible, while on the other hand exhibited itself in a
>general grammar and etymological histories. It was concerned with pure
>rules of grammar which served the task of language?s classification into
>certain families. The history of language in terms a cataloging of
>certain families. And the tracing of certain
>words reaching back into the Sanskrit. More of less with the
>Enlightenment thinkers in general, who adopted the
>methodology set upon achieving empirical Truth, rejecting the
>renaissance notion of language as ?divination? and championed a notion
>of language as descriptive tool, language became something that is
>?useful? in describing a world of ?proven facts? to which it no inherent
>ontological relation.
>
>But I am losing my train of thought , Oh yes what I wanted to say in
>this that linguistics in the or language grammar and the current and
>past science that have come to be called more or less linguistic today
>serve and integral function in the modern configuration of knowledge. In
>fact it along witheconomics, and biology are the formers or constructors
>of ?man? in the modern episteme. The Order of Things addresses semiotics
>as well but in an entirely different fashion than Derrida, I the sense
>that Foucault does not give language in privileged potion among the
>sciences of ?man? in the modern episteme, but rather speaks of the
>danger of a return to language. If we take the arguments put forward in
>the Order of Things seriously the striving toward a post ?man? , post
>?modern configuration of knowledge? or post ?modern episteme? is a total
>rejection of the sciences which posit ?man;? linguistic being one of
>them. Rather than raise to the status of semiotics? critique to a new
>delayed, and deferred and self canceling play of being, Foucault
>dismisses language as yet another science of ?man?. But this is a solely
>archeological approach to language which was given off, for genealogy. I
>somebody could try and relate how genealogy could be used in a critique
>of Derrida.
>
>Jeremiah
I write: This subject is perhaps a very interesting one but it would depend
on how it is handled. Having got that platitude out of the way, let me say
that the relation between Derrida and Foucault is on the one hand
interesting only to those involved in academic discourses while, on the
other hand, Derrida goes to great pains not only to distinguish himself from
Foucauldian techniques but considers it, how should I say, "vital"
"essential" "critical" to understand that he is critiquing not only
Foucauldian strategies of historiography but all historiographies while at
the same time he remains tied and concerned with many of the same issues of
power and economics that Foucault devoted so much energy to outlining the
history of....
Anyway, it would be interesting to see if someone could write something
intelligent about the relation between these two thinkers works that did not
appeal only to the insiders of the academy.
[The sport of understanding is a game without rules, forever demanding that
we make them up as we go...
Chris Daly]
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