Out of Context

On the book Jacques Derrida  re: language and the circumfession of Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington.

Geoffrey Hamilton
November 1997



Maurits C. Escher, through his wood cuts and lithographs, illustrated stairs that could be ascended infinitely in a loop, and water which obeyed concepts of gravity at variance to any experience which people have on earth. What is so intriguing about these illustrations is their effectiveness in naturalizing an impossibility, so that, at first impression, the image seems possible. What makes Escher's trick a pleasure is that we can see the whole picture, so, before we begin to play along, we can have some idea of the value of the game we are playing, and so we can know very soon what price (our effort) is worth paying for the admission. Derrida and Bennington, on the other hand, display a high price for admission before the value of their game can even be ascertained. This is true of Derrida especially, but also of Bennington. Together they ineffectively constructed a text that struggles to give an impossible illusion: Derrida's vision.

Like an Escher drawing, which constructs an illusion out of the elements of reasonable perception, these authors have appealed to the experience of readers. However, their skills fail their unconscious ethical needs and they resort to confusion in order to patch over their understanding of the universe and language in particular. It is essentially Derrida's illusion, so I will attempt to show where he is mistaken. I do not pretend to understand the whole of Derrida's work, but I would compare this situation to that which I have with J.R.R. Tolkien. I once read The Hobbit and can say that I do not know everything about it, but from that one reading I know that Tolkien cobbled together historical figures from the Goths and Celts, with various mythical stories, and with his own understanding of human experience, and created an illusion of something important. With Derrida's ideas, I have gotten much the same impression. He has created the illusion of an answer without even proposing an answer and this fake becomes his method.

The alternative type of method, the one I would have prefered to see here, is described by Bennington: "Analytic philosophy, for example, asks and resolves serious problems in short, clear, and clean articles, without getting lost in these quotations and commentaries, and can pride itself on real progress in understanding without making a fuss about it". This is put in an ironic context, and I do not think it is an entirely accurate method, but when compared to Derrida's, it sounds much more effective.

Derrida's method is to use what he considers an "absolutely private language" which is more of a journey than an arrival . It begins anywhere and ends nowhere. He proceeds "without navigational aids" and just follows his nose. But he has excused it all by believing he will never be able to demonstrate it and that there is a "fundamental and irreducible uncertainty [as] part of the essential structure of writing". At this point, if I believed what he seems to believe, I would stop writing. Something compels him to attempt the impossible, despite his lack of ability: ". . . the incessant return to the 'I want to kill myself' speaks less the desire to put an end to my life than a sort of compulsion to overtake each second . . . ". I think he is accidentally refering to a genetic motivation to play games with anything. I have explained this theory before so I will not repeat it in detail, but I think he believes that curiosity and the desire to exercise within aleatory activities is sufficient to continue life.

He needs to play games with whatever is interesting to him, however, that may not be interesting to very many people: he says: "non-knowledge is the only interesting thing". This is unfortunate, if he thinks passing "non-knowledge" on is generally interesting to people like myself who desire to find answers to questions. On the contrary, when it comes to philosophy, if he and I were the Odd Couple, he would be the messy one and I would be the fastidious one always trying to clean up his mess. Which is what I am going to try to do now.

Language is the subject under discussion and Bennington is only attempting to clarify and represent Derrida, so I consider both texts Derrida's theories regarding language. I consider the rules of particular languages irrelevant; and I am interested in discovering the 'universal' element of language, just as Derrida seems to be. Derrida also appeals to experience as a basis of his arguments and the logic he uses extends from there. However, in both cases he is inconsistent, especially around ethical concerns. I too appeal to experience and to a logic that extends from that. If I occasionally begin with logic, it will be defended by experience, not by any authority I may use, or by any appeal to the fallacies of ethics, ridicule, precedence, or any other mistaken tactic.

I will discuss the relativity of meaning formation as the heart of language and show, in contrast, how Derrida's ideas are not grounded on either experience or logic. Let me begin by tidying up Derrida's concept of absolutes.

When a bottle of vodka is called absolute it is a claim of purity, but it is also calling itself other things like superior, not related to anything and perfect. As an advertising idea the word has great power to manipulate people into believing that this name is referring to a pure alcohol, when it is just as likely to be referring to something not only unrelated to its name, but which cannot even exist. Under close examination the vodka in the bottle turns out to be related to a method of distillation that is only marginally different from other methods of distillation - so other types are differentiated by small dissimilarities of context. The contents of the Vodka will contain trace amounts of rodent fecal matter or agricultural chemicals, even the electrons of the glass bottle are flying around in the liquid, so it is not pure even according to its own arbitrary distinctiveness. Finally, there will always be someone who thinks there is a better Vodka on the market, so the loyal brand drinkers will constitute the standardizers of 'superiority', which is a very arbitrary standard.

When Derrida uses the term absolute it turns out to have the same problems and advantages: nothing is pure, superior, unrelated or perfect except by contextualizing the term within illusion. Once experience becomes the context, eventually the arbitrariness of these terms will come into view -- although they may still not be perceived.

Derrida uses absolute as a synonym for pure as casually as people who affirm that they agree with an idea 'absolutely'. I bring this up because, in the end, that is all that can be said about Derrida's absolute, that it is a conviction. And the sense of conviction of all people, even those who use that term, is so flimsy that if you place anyone in a situation where they are surrounded by other people who disagree with them, or who force them to believe something different, they will no longer absolutely agree and they, most likely, will no longer believe what they believed absolutely even when alone.

The word absolute comes close to being of the quality of an Escher in creating the illusion of an answer to everything -- so Derrida uses it, even to the point of calling some contingencies absolutes ("absolute subjectivity"). Call something absolute and you can forget about all the messy evidence you need, since an absolute does not owe its existence to anything outside itself. However, whatever is called an absolute owes everything to what is outside itself. And unlike an abstraction that actually exists in relation to a particular context (way) of looking at experience, an absolute need only exist in the way that Tolkien's characters do, as something imaginary and dependent on the imagination of people. This is Derrida's absolute.

For something to be absolute it must be one or all of a number of things like pure, perfect, and without contingency. Purity infers naturally occurring, in the sense that no one could disagree as to what constitutes its purity. Pure light, for example, would need to be constituted in such a way that everyone, without exception, could say that there is a state where nothing can be added or taken away from the quality of the light. Of course, the designation 'pure light' is contingent on someone seeing it, so blue light is no less pure then red light and so two people could agree that the light is pure and not even experience the same kind of light. Even if everyone agreed on what purity is, purity would still be contingent on that agreement. Purity is a context created illusion.

Perfection implies the quality cannot change for the better. If something is absolute in this way it would need to be perfect in all situations for all time. But what is better? Death is better at times and living is better at other times, how can one absolute be perfect if what is best changes? Perfection would still need to be contingent to a situation, a circumstance that is not an absolute, even if Derrida thinks it is.

Where and how is 'absolute' going to work if is not pure and perfect? The only use for the word seems to be regarding the idea that something is 'unchanging' and does not depend for its existence on an outside phenomenon. Here again it does not work. Not only does every facet of language depend on outside phenomenon, as Derrida agrees it does, but so do all referents -- as expressed by experience -- also depend on other referents for their formation, maintenance, and death.
For example, one might think there is an absolute zero temperature because it refers to the absence of atomic movement, but if atomic matter were reconfigured, the absense of movement would be a different temperature. Non-movement then becomes another arbitrary standard because it is dependant on the constuction. Nothing has ever been shown to be non-contingent and so, based on experience, one can argue everything is relative. I begin this way because relativism, in the broadest sense, is the only way to approach experience and language, and the only way to make a coherent explanation of both. Contexts, contingencies, relations, contrasts and many other words form a coterie of concepts related to an overall relativism.

The idea that language is a relative creation is an idea not far removed from Derrida's, and thanks to Bennington, Derrida's other ideas come to the surface with some degree of clarity once the concept of absolutes is shoved aside.

First, the definition of language needs to be agreed upon before proceeding with an explanation. Language is the use of conventionalized symbols that express thoughts and feelings between individuals: examples include, sign language, the Canary Island whistling language and the unique languages used between a dog and its owner. Language is relative to agreements, informal or otherwise or genetic. This includes the use of facial expressions which even as long ago as Darwin were shown to be a 'universal' language. Today, experiments have shown that, irrespective of culture and environment, people communicated a form of a language through their facial expressions. What this kind of language is is an agreement based on genetic instructions to express and understand facial movements as if they mean certain things.

This contingent language can also be found in various manifestations among most other animals. Cats who hiss, dogs that howl, insects that release hormones are all using languages that are contingent on genetic instruction -- agreement. But this is not the only way to gain a language -- whales, starlings and people, for example, have each developed languages that are conventions based on genetics but these ones are also modified by experience.

Experientially influenced languages can create complex meanings that are more specifically relevant to the unpredictable (aleatory) existence of life. For example, a chimp only using facial expressions could say: "I'm very unhappy with my portion of the meal." But with conventionalized sounds, used as a language, he can say: "I plan to steal it from you with the help of my friends if you don't give me more." This complexity sends comunication into imaginary events and outcomes and make it more playful.

If the complexity in language grows then there is a further departure from the directness of a facial language to transmit what people want. A confession by facial expression only expresses an idea, perhaps not even the true belief of the communicator. Derrida believes confession has no relation to truth ; perhaps the irrelevance of truth is expressive of the need for the aleatory activity. Nevertheless, an expression of something, anything, is attempted at a basic level.

As the complexity grows the truth would seem to be less and less relevant to the moment, but more relevant to whatever is more valued; something allows a value to be attached to an activity that grows less truthful in some ways and more arbitrary. It seems that the motivation to play the aleatory/'game of language' remains the same no matter what level of complexity is possible.

If it is the game that is valued, more then the truth, what is chosen would need to be two things: first, it must be arbitrary to the truth: second, it must be relevant to the values of the game (which I will get to near the end). Language functions both ways whether Derrida admits it or not.

Derrida has an entirely relativistic understanding of language yet he seems ashamed of that label. This is something like his overall view: there is no 'absolutely' justified beginning and reading has no end. There is always a context, but there is no natural necessity to prevent something being taken out of "its" context and placed into another. A context simply frames a text in order to communicate the text to the world and there is an arbitrariness to any beginning. Any point of departure is already in a context . Every element of a context is itself a text, and every text must be taken out of a first context and placed in a second context which makes sense of the text's relation to the first context.

From my position, Derrida is admitting that contexts are everywhere and they exist to create relations to other contexts, or texts, as you will. He knows that contexts and language are arbitrary and he implies that choice of context is value laden, but he still does not explicitly acknowledge this.

I believe, that universally, one cannot communicate anything without creating a relative situation. In people, the first stage in comprehending language is the attending to contrasts. The contrasts do not exist except as arbitrary distinctions, so the mind assumes distinctions and plays with them to see if they do something or not. An accurate black and white universe can be created by these means, but the contrasts are always relative to what works in an arbitrarily constructed language.

In children, up to eight months of age, the ability to gravitate fully into an arbitrary system of contrasts is genetically encoded and this encoding employs the playing of games with these contrasts. As time goes on, the ability to conform to the arbitrariness of language diminishes; and various stages of acquisition, once passed, cannot be restaged. We are made in a way that allows arbitrary contrasts to become meaningful while disallowing the arbitrariness to confuse us with the myriad of possibilities all our lives. So early on we are open to the arbitrariness, but once we have at least one system we close down to the possibility of more. Any language is enough to function socially so one is enough.

Within a language, something is only meaningful by a relationship, and it is the relationship which makes the something. For example, I could say "black", but until you or I supply any random, arbitrary context (like race, light, evil) it can have no use. Even a sentence needs that relationship to have any meaning (subject/object). It does not matter which context is used because any context will give it meaning -- and the 'author's' intended context need not be the one chosen, as Derrida admits.

Everything is contingent, so everything is relative, but this idea creates two problems: First, it makes ethics contingent and Derrida does not like that when it implies that his values are not universal and, secondly, it makes talking about language quite boring very quickly. His solution is to play "alea" through his understanding of metaphor.

Metaphor can be used to clarify a relationship between various abstract or literal ideas by using the familiar relationships of everyday things - divorcing them of the irrelevancies and allowing comparison of the relevant relationship. In general, the irrelevancies in the metaphor are not made relevant to the context in a successfully communicated metaphor; but, at times, the communicatee values a confusion of the thing with the relationship and so does not understand. Another problem is that the communicator may use a metaphor without establishing what it is relating to, so that it may appear to be a literal term. Poetry is often difficult to read because of this, but that is what people expect and understand in that game.

If a trope of any form has no clear referent in a prose work it could be taken literally. Also if there are too many tropes, then metaphor will not clarify but stultify the work. Both these are what Derrida does and it makes the obvious relativism of his ideas less obvious and more interesting to him.

He recognizes, as I do, the essential similarity in the quality of a metaphor and the original sign. However, because he characterizes metaphor differently from the way I did in the last paragraph, it allows him to argue that the use of metaphor is the same as the use of the literal sign. His use of metaphor removes the reader and possibly the writer, in this case, from the easier explanation; his metaphor is not intended to clarify but to mystify the subject by adding an unnecessary layer. This way the game of his explanation can go on indefinitely and his 'universal ethic of compassion', or whatever it is, can exist outside the light of his own relativistic conclusions.

The difference between language and thought is something Derrida fudges. At times language and thought are made coterminous and other times doubt is thrown in. I only address this because the use of context in thinking is identical to its use in language; and language is unnecessary to the function of contexts or in the creation of meaning.

There is no language that can create the Mona Lisa. The most astute art critic could never describe it in a way that represents it like a photograph. Not a thousand words, not a million words can represent the Mona Lisa. But the mind can think about it and does represent it, acts on it and becomes emotional about it without any words or language for that representation of the mind.

There is a system of thinking which, even though it is not communicated from person to person, and so is not a language, does what a language does but better and faster. Steven Pinker refers to it as 'mentalese' and he and many others can demonstrate that the mind thinks without language. Here are my own arguments based on standard science.

The nervous system and the brain have systems of communication which are far more complex than any language. These allow the sinking of basket balls, the automatic functions of the body, and just about every action that anyone does. If the action is new, the mind and body will play with the action until it is learned, and will not play with language, but will play through the whole body -- including the mind. For example, a gymnast will spend years learning how to move his body in every detail, one thought at a time, without ever instructing his body using language. However, like language, it is complex relativistic system.

Everything that is thought combines sensory information (experience) against the structures of the body -including the mind. These two elements are enough to construct thoughts. Using sensory information to think involves relating values against the imput of the sensory information. If you cannot value differently than something else then it cannot retain meaning and can even make you sick. Vertigo is caused when two pieces of information from the senses cannot be placed in order of importance because they are treated equally. For example, in a plane you cannot see movement, but your inner ear does sense it, so you become sick. It is the mind which is usually able to rank information by value then further contextualizes it in order to think about it again. With eye sight alone the mind contextualizes many different cues to compose a perception. The Gestalt cues and other cues work in relation to each other, so if one cue is in conflict with some others, the preexisting values help determine what is happening. Then this is contexualized further into the other senses and later into the emotional and rational contexts, and so on. But it will not work if the emotions cannot create the values in the first place.

The emotional context is very important to thought because emotions fundamentally evaluate all information in order to organize it in memory by its rank in the hierarchy. If our emotions no longer fuction, for example, by the severing of our emotional centres of the brain from the sensory centres, we can have no values, no memories, nor take any actions.

All the above, from the gymnast, to the Mona Lisa, to the causes of vertigo, is evidence that thinking can be accomplished without language.
Ironically The ability to think without language - even in relation to language - has been demonstrated by experiments on cats. The three parts of the letter A are thought of differently by a cat, in that different parts of the brain are activated by each line of a written letter A received visually by the cat. Whether the combination is more then the sum of its parts is hard to tell, but thinking is a measurable quality even without language.

Whether or not Derrida is only a linguistic Escher, something is still happening in our minds when we read him. We can still think about Derrida's ideas without Derrida being at all accurate, and I still do not mind his mistakes all that much.

In this paper I may be distorting every context to conform it to my emotional reaction to Derrida, but, as he himself said, there is no such thing as being out of context, so I have my get-out-of-jail-free card. There is no problem, as I see it, with Derrida being mistaken, or whether he confuses his reader and himself in order to avoid his own boredom and ethical uncertainty. I do not even think it is a mistake to make a mistake. My complaint is just that he ignored evidence from experience which contradicts his project and I want to point out it is a mistake to be that inaccurate.

GRH

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