Of Grammatology

Derrida, Jacques

Of Grammatology

Key Terms: Signifier, Signified,

-      ''Sous Rature'', term for ‘under erasure.’  To take a word, cross it out, and then print both word and deletion. (Since the word is inaccurate it is crossed out. Since it is necessary, it remains legible.) xiv

-      Builds upon Heidegger- problem of definitions is in order for nature of anything in particular to be defined as an entity, the question of Being in general must always already be broached and answered in the affirmative. That something is, presupposes that anything can be. Xiv

-      Being is the final signified to which all signifiers refer. Xvi

-      Heidegger says it is impossible to articulate presence, Derrida says by articulating we are defining what a sign is NOT as much as what it is. Xvii

-      Trace is not only the disappearance of origin, …it means that the origin did not even disappear, that it was never constituted except reciprocally by a non-origin, the trace, which thus becomes the origin of the origin. Words (signifiers) end up transforming the signified. Xviii

-      Derrida is building on Nietzsche’s idea of metaphor, but critiques Nietzsche: what Nietzsche deciphers he holds decipherable and because metaphor (or figure) so vastly expanded could simply become the name of the process of signification rather than the critique of that process. xxiv