[lbo-talk] Theory Hotline

[Christian Gregory]

>Sigh.  Not only do you put words in my mouth, you put well worn ones at 
that.  I did say, in effect, that you can't say anything without using 
words.. you dispute this?  It would seem self evident.  I did not say that 
this means "...the world is nothing but a text..."   That's your.. well,
borrowing.  It does not necessarily follow, but it serves the purposes of 
those who would prefer not to deal with the possibility that humans aren't 
as grounded in the real as some wish to think (and that's all it is: a wish

Actually, you can say things without words, although words are different from signifiers--ie "body language." And, it should be  noted, all the business about whether there is a world outside the text comes from, among other places, a deliberate misreading of _Of Grammatology_, where Derrida says, with the help of a French pun, "there is no outside text" AND "there is nothing outside the text." He means (1) there is no master text, if what we are talking about is whether there is some key to textuality as such; and (2) the text IS NOT simply discourse, but the process of differance, history, unfolding, ex-propriation (as opposed to Heideggerian Er-eignis), etc.  Reality is textual, but it doesn't mean that it's all discourse or language. The problem for Derrida is that he never really followed up on this second part of the argument, but stuck to reading texts.

Christian