Work #111

Of Grammatology

De la grammatologie — Derrida's foundational deconstructive analysis of writing and presence

Jacques Derrida · 1967 · French · Two-part philosophical treatise (theoretical + reading of Rousseau)

Tradition: French post-structuralism / deconstruction

There is no outside-text — and the metaphysics of presence that privileges speech over writing is undone by writing's own structure

Of Grammatology is the founding text of deconstruction and one of the central works of late-twentieth-century continental philosophy. Across two parts — a theoretical analysis of writing in the Western tradition (Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Saussure) and a long reading of Rousseau's Essay on the Origin of Languages — Derrida argues that the Western philosophical tradition has systematically privileged speech over writing because speech seems to deliver immediate presence (the speaker means what she says, here and now). The deconstructive argument is that writing's features (difference, deferral, supplementation, the absence of the writer) are constitutive of all meaning, including spoken meaning. The book shaped literary theory, philosophy, and the humanities across the late twentieth century.

Editions cited

Of Grammatology (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Johns Hopkins, corrected ed. 1997)
De la grammatologie (Éditions de Minuit, 1967)

Compare this work

School Embodiments

Postmodernism · 50%

Structuralism · 15%

Phenomenology · 10%

Relationalism · 10%

Nihilism · 5%

Constructivism · 5%

Pyrrhonism · 5%

Postmodernism 50%

Of Grammatology is the founding text of deconstruction and one of the central works of French postmodernism.

"Il n'y a pas de hors-texte" — "There is no outside-text." (Of Grammatology II.II)

Structuralism 15%

Derrida's engagement with Saussure makes the work a critical extension of structuralism, from which it both derives and departs.

"There is nothing outside-the-text." (Of Grammatology, central thesis)

Phenomenology 10%

Derrida's early work — his dissertation on Husserl, his early Speech and Phenomena — situates him in the phenomenological tradition he critically extends.

"The signifier of the signifier... is the movement of language." (Of Grammatology I.II)

Relationalism 10%

Différance — Derrida's doctrine that meaning is constituted by differential relations and temporal deferral — is one of the most rigorous statements of philosophical relationalism.

"Differences are produced — deferred — by différance." (Of Grammatology I.II)

Nihilism 5%

Derrida's deconstructive method has been criticised (and sometimes mistaken) as nihilist. His own response: deconstruction opens rather than closes possibilities of meaning.

"Deconstruction is not a method." (Derrida, standard formulation; consonant with the Of Grammatology project)

Constructivism 5%

The constructivist instinct — that meaning is constituted rather than discovered — is developed in Of Grammatology with unusual rigor.

"All language is a system of differences without positive terms." (Of Grammatology, citing Saussure)

Pyrrhonism 5%

A typological connection: Derrida's destabilisation of all stable philosophical positions has structural parallels with ancient Pyrrhonism, though the philosophical machineries differ.

"Trace, archi-trace, archi-écriture..." (Derrida's technical vocabulary in Of Grammatology)

Internal Tensions

Derrida's readers have split sharply on whether the work is a profound philosophical achievement or a rhetorical-philosophical evasion. Searle's 1977 critique and the subsequent Derrida-Searle exchange is one of the central episodes in the analytic-continental divide. Modern reception (Christopher Norris, Geoffrey Bennington) has worked to make Derrida's philosophical content more rigorously accessible.

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I. Time

Différance: temporal deferral is constitutive of meaning. Time is real and relational; no presence is ever fully self-present.

Attributes

Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Relational Grain: Continuous Freedom: Deterministic Traversability: Linear Direction: Uni-directional Dimensionality: One

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II. Space

Relational and non-local: the trace is everywhere, no presence is genuinely local.

Attributes

Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Relational Curvature: Undefined Dimensionality: Three Locality: Non-local

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III. Matter

Material writing is the privileged scene of deconstructive analysis.

Attributes

Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Relational Conservation: Conserved Dimensionality: Three Locality: Non-local

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IV. Observer

The Derridean observer is decentred by the différance that constitutes its meanings. Plural, embodied, largely passive to the structure of différance.

Attributes

Time Instance: Single Space Instance: Single Knowledge Extent: Immediate Knowledge Retainment: Immediate Physicality: Embodied Agency: Passive Number: Plural Metaphysical Agency: None

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V. Energy

The play of differences is the energetic principle.

Attributes

Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Relational Conservation: Conserved Dispersibility: Irreversible

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VI. Information

No substantival information; only the relational play of signifiers. Personal information not conserved.

Attributes

Ontological Status: Relational Cosmic Conservation: Non-conserved Personal Conservation: Non-conserved Granularity: Continuous

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