Few things. First, sorry if I seemed cranky earlier. No explanations--just sometimes my email demeanor isn't what I'd like.
>
> 1) I am a trace - I am never really present because I, my environment and
> my utterances are as much an infinite mess of absences as apparent
> presences. My intention is not really present to me, either, so I must
> take care not be clear because to appear to be clear is to perpetrate the
> logo/phallocentric myths that only a very limited scope of meanings is
> present in the social enunciation of a statement and/or that the sign
might
> represent a referent and/or that I know what I mean when I think I'm
> meaning to say it.
Where does Derrida say that subjects are traces? The point, to summarize at the risk of being really reductive, of Derrida's bit about the trace is that "it"--the trace or mark; he also calls it "differance," "dissemination," "pharmakon," "glas,""parergon," "+R" among others--is the *condition* of communicability, of information, of writing conventionally understood. Put differently: it is the phenomenological condition of *the intention to say something.* Derrida never says that your intentions (or anyone's intentions) aren't clear to you or anyone else, only that those intentions don't circumscribe the meanings that can be made of your statements.
Put differently: Derrida says that, instead of "deformations" of your intentions being marginal or accidental--deformations such as "lies" or "deception," "taking someone's words out of context"--the possibility of lying, deception, or taking someone's words out of context is "built-in" to the structure of utterances. That is, they are not "accidents" against which there is some "normative" mode of enunciation. They are as much a part, tho not necessarily more a part, of "communication" as "good intentions," "clarity," "non-irony," "saying exactly what you mean," "meaning exactly what you say" and so on. All constructions of meaning (not just lies, deception, and taking someone's words out of context) are conventional, historical, and depend on the agreement, the AGENCY of people ("speaking subjects," in the lingo) involved.
>
> 2) These myths, which tyrannise us so, don't recognise that neither
> 'intention' nor the 'context' within which the 'statement' is 'enunciated'
> determine 'meaning' - or so do I understand 'differance'.
>
Yes, sort of. Intentions and contexts do not *simply* or *finally* determine meaning.
> 3) My propositions are not propositions, but rhetoric, metaphor and bits
> of evidence to which I myself am blind - and can be exposed as such by a
> deconstruction of my text.
While I think there are some good reasons why people take Derrida for saying this, he doesn't, in my mind, say so, at the end of the day. First of all, he never says that propositions are "just" rhetoric or metaphor, anymore than he says that "engineering" is "just" bricolage (making due with whatever is ready-to-hand). Rather, he says that the distinction between a proposition and rhetoric (like that between "engineering" and "bricolage") is always historically, contingently determined. He does not say that that is necessarily a bad thing--only that, those distinctions needn't be taken for granted.
As for deconstructing your text, Derrida, you'll note, almost always sticks to literary, philosophical, and aesthetic objects, with a few exceptions. Although there is a trans-disciplinary aura to his work, he doesn't, for instance, question the ways that economists, sociologists, historians and so on go about their work--although his work has had implications for the last. In fact, in _Of Grammatology_, he says that he supports scientific research, and that it is not his intention to reduce it to textual games, etc. Others have done so in his name, for sure.
>
>
> I may not even query Derrida, as to do so is to afford him a presence to
> himself he cannot have, and to assume my understanding is decisively a
> function of his intention and its context, which it cannot be.
Well, no. He'd never say that. For a good example of him insisting on his presence and the presence of his intentions, and conventions of reading and writing, you could see his response to Rob Nixon and Anne McClintock, "But Beyond . . ." in _Race, Writing and Difference_. Like _Limited Inc._ a very clear statement of his views about reading and sense-making.
> Oh, and I don't deny that Derrida does some good things - just that this
is
> no thanks to the actual content of the 'theory' that made him socially
> salient.
>
I don't get this comment. Could you explain?
All best, Christian
P.S. How 'bout those Americans down under at the Aussie Open? Whohoo!