Introduction to

Deconstruction
[1] Any attempt to discuss deconstruction in music immediately gives rise to two
fundamental questions: (1) what is deconstruction? (2) What is music? This page
addresses the former. The aim is to shed some light on the working and strategy of
deconstruction.
This overview is the result of a literature search on deconstruction in philosophical
discourse. My main interest has been the practices of deconstruction as elaborated by
Jacques Derrida. The texts in this section will not directly be related to music.
Two issues need to be addressed beforehand. First, this section is offered to introduce the
reader to deconstructive strategies in musical practices and discourses; in particular, what
knowledge is required in order to see deconstruction at work within music. The
information presented has, therefore, no pretense of being definitive; this is not an
exhaustive analysis of all that deconstruction might comprise (if that were possible at all).
Second, certain aspects of deconstruction will be addressed (more extensively) on the
pages that deal specifically with music.

[2] Derrida repeatedly and emphatically writes that he does not regard deconstruction as a
method or a theory for the analyses of texts. It is not possible to implicitly define, to fix,
deconstruction. However, when deconstruction is adopted into the musical praxis - which
is the goal of this site - it is at least presupposed that deconstruction can be described
(circum-scribed) in one way or another. In Deconstruction - Between Method and
Singularity, this issue is addressed in greater detail.
In a most general sense, deconstruction may be regarded as a reading strategy. This
strategy presents us with the impossibility of assigning an unequivocal meaning to a sign
or a text. Here, the ethics of deconstruction reveals itself in an openness to the
heteronomous or 'the other'. This idea is explained more extensively in Deconstruction -
An Affirmative Strategy of Transformation.
Several aspects of deconstruction may be distinguished. In a number of separate pages,
more attention will be given to some of these aspects: (a) the location of complementary
twin concepts where one term is subordinate to the other (Hierarchical oppositions); (b)
the location of concepts or words that harbor multiple, often constrasting meanings
(Undecidables); (c) the notion that the meaning of a text can never be completely
determined (Dissemination); (d) the notion that what seems additional, secondary or
marginal in a text often turns out to be of essential significance (Supplement); (e) the idea
that a context indeed determines the meaning of a text, but that a context can never be
clearly demarcated and that a text can be placed within different contexts (Context).
As a means of realization, each separate paragraph will include references to the text,
'Plato's Pharmacy', from Dissemination (p.61-171).
[3] This seems to be somewhat of a systematic run-down, but in fact it involves a
repeated new beginning at a constantly changing place in the Derridian labyrinth in order
to wind up at the same place again (which also turns out to be different each time). The
play of deconstruction.
Context
[1] 'A written sign, in the usual sense of the word, is a mark which remains, which is not
exhausted in the present of its inscription, and which can give rise to an iteration both in
the absence of, and beyond the presence of the empirically determined subject who, in a
given context, has emitted or produced it' (Margins, p.317).
What does Derrida mean here? A written sign has the structural ability to signify in the
absence of the addressee and independent of the (intention of the) sender. (According to
Derrida, whatever applies to writing, applies to every sign and to the whole field of
experience because it always takes place in chains of references.) In order to function as
writing, that is, in order to be legible, any written communication must remain legible in
spite of the absence of the addressee. A writing that would not be structurally legible -
iterable - beyond the absence (death) of the addressee would not be writing. The same
holds for the sender or the producer, and for the same reasons. 'For the written to be the
written, it must continue to 'act' and to be legible, even if what is called 'the author of the
writing' no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed,
whether he is provisionally absent, or if he is dead, or if in general he does not support,
with his absolutely current and present intention or attention, the plenitude of his
meaning, or that very thing which seems to be written 'in his name'' (Margins, p.316).

[2] A sign thus carries with it a force of breaking with its 'original' context. This force of
breaking is not an accidental consequence but the very structure of the sign. (What would
a sign be that could not be cited?) This applies to both the so-called real context - the
presence of the writer and his intention - and the internal semiotic context: one can
always lift a sign from the chain of signs in which it is embodied by inscribing it into
other chains. This force of rupture is due to the spacing that constitutes the written sign,
the spacing that separates it from other elements of the internal contextual chain.
In order for a sign to be able to signify, it needs to be repeatable in a different context. It
is an essential property of all forms of appearance to be able to appear at a different place
and a different time. Without repetition, without the return of the same in a different way,
there can be no matter of meaning or significance (cf. IJsseling, p.18). Even reading and
understanding can be regarded as a repetition, a resumption of what has been previously
written or said. It is a resumption at a different moment than the moment at which it was
written or said.
In order for a text to be read, the reader must extract it from the author's protection
(decontextualization). The same holds true for speech: once uttered, it becomes available
for interpretation, repetition, and reformulation even by those who were not actually
present at the time the words were uttered. Contexts thus constantly change. At the same
time, it requires that each signifier remains forever severed from any specific meaning
(cf. Neel, p.115). This is what Derrida calls dissemination.

[3] It is a property of every sign that it can be cited. 'Everything begins in the folds of
citation ... , the inside of the text will always have been outside of it, in what seems to be
serving as the 'means' toward the 'work'. This 'reciprocal contamination of the work and
the means' poisons the inside, the body proper of what was once called the 'work', just as
it poisons the texts which are cited to appear and which one would have liked to keep
safe from this violent expatriation, this uprooting abstraction that wrenches them out of
the security of their original context ... To try to resist the removal of a textual member
from its context is to want to remain protected against this writing poison. It is to want at
all costs, to maintain the boundary line between the inside and the outside of a context'
(Dissemination, p.316). Derrida calls the impossibility to prevent the removal of a
signifier from one context to another, a general iterability (the word 'iterability' alludes to
both the possibility of repetition and to the possibility of change and transformation or
distortion). Every sign can break with every given context and engender infinitely new
contexts. This does not suppose that a sign has meaning outside of a context, but on the
contrary that there are only contexts (cf. Margins, p.320-1). By grafting familiar terms
onto new contexts, those terms are indeed not separated from their 'original' meaning
(since they would then have no meaning), but room is made for other meanings. By
undermining the univocality of a term, concept or word in this way, room can be made
for that, which cannot be conceptually captured.

[4] Derrida seems to deploy a shift from the primacy of the text to the primacy of the
context as the complex of circumstances that affect the production and determination of a
certain meaning: there is nothing outside context! Nevertheless, some comments should
be made with regard to context. Or, as Derrida wonders: 'Are the prerequisites of a
context ever absolutely determinable? ... Is there a rigorous and scientific concept of the
context?' (Margins, p. 310). First, context itself is a text in the general sense (arche-
writing in Derrida's terms). Context is not simply a pre-linguistic given; it is just as
thoroughly textualized as the text itself. One cannot interpret a privileged text against
some 'harder' reality, for that 'reality' is itself constituted by other texts.
Second, any given context is open to further description. There is no fundamental limit to
what might be included in a given context. Science and philosophy aim to have complete
control over the context of their field of study. But total context cannot be mastered, both
in principle and in practice. Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless. Derrida:
'No meaning can be determined out of context, but no context permits saturation. What I
am referring to here is not richness of substance, semantic fertility, but rather structure,
the structure of the remnant or of iteration' (Bloom et al, p.81). Each sign, each text has a
context that determines the meaning. However, this context can never be completely
isolated. Post-structuralism in general argues that context is in fact unable to arrest the
fundamental mobility of signs for the reason that it harbors exactly the same principle of
interminability within itself, the impossibility of its closure. Context can always be
extended or augmented. Certainly there will be a cut-off point, which, for example, can
be determined by the conventions followed by the community of interpreters, but this is
always arbitrary.
Third, context is boundless in another sense. 'Any attempt to codify context can always
be grafted onto the context it sought to describe yielding a new context that escapes the
previous formulation' (Culler, p.124). Each sign and each text can be taken out of one
context and put into another context. In discussing the quote, 'I have forgotten my
umbrella', that appears in Nietzsche's Nachlass (unpublished writings), Derrida writes
that thousand possibilities will always remain open to interpret this sentence (cf. Limited
Inc., p.63). They remain open not because the reader can make the sentence mean
anything at all, but because other specifications of context are always possible. Surely
some contextual factors are less relevant than others; certain readings of Nietzsche's
sentence are less probable, but the point Derrida makes is that any demarcation of
contexts will always be arbitrary and debatable, and far from neutral when viewed from a
political or social perspective.
Fourth, it cannot be taken for granted that the evidence that makes up 'context' is going to
be any simpler or more legible than the text upon which such evidence is to operate. The
notion of context frequently oversimplifies rather than enriches the discussion, since the
opposition between a text and its context seems to presume that the context is given, that
it determines the meaning of the text and that it is ready to act upon the text to order its
uncertainties. But things are not that simple since it cannot be assumed that context is a
presumption or a simple natural ground upon which to base interpretation. Like a text,
context is not given, but produced; what belongs to a context is determined by
interpretive strategies. Contexts are just as much in need of elucidation as texts; and the
meaning of a context is determined by texts. The idea of context, posited as platform or
foundation, invites us to step back from the uncertainties of a text. But once this step is
taken, it is by no means clear why it may not be taken again; that is, context implies from
its first moment a potential regression without brakes.
Deconstruction - an
Affirmative Strategy of
Transformation
[1] What 'is' deconstruction? (The use of the quotation marks should make clear that the
question cannot in fact be posed like this. cf. Deconstruction: Between Method and
Singularity.) A first option for a description of deconstruction is offered by the
dictionary. In the French dictionary, Littré, the meaning of deconstruction progresses
along two lines. (1) Grammatical. Deconstruction means change, the disruption of the
construction or the composition of the words in a sentence with the purpose of producing
other, new meanings with the same words (i.e., not to deny them!). (2) Mechanical.
Deconstruction indicates disassembling, taking apart, dismantling, disintegrating (Derrida
often uses the word 'demontage').
The first description in particular shows that destructive and constructive aspects are at
work simultaneously. Deconstruction not only encloses and unlocks, it also gives access
to new spaces. Deconstruction means a dismantling in order to create something new.
The grammatical meaning puts more emphasis on the affirmative nature of
deconstruction than the mechanical meaning of the word.

[2] In the most simple and general terms, deconstruction in the Derridean sense means to
read a text according to a certain way or strategy, a precise and careful strategy, but also
one that shakes the ground under one's feet. It is a praxis in which Derrida specifically
aims to transform philosophical, linguistic, theological, or aesthetic texts. Deconstruction
shows us the possibility of continually ascribing different or additional meanings to texts;
it acknowledges the fundamental ambiguity of signs and texts and the impossibility of
controlling them. Deconstruction implies transplantation, the ability to remove a sign or
text from its present context to another context. In this way, deconstruction highlights the
heterogeneity of a sign or a text. It wants to show the impossibility of a (sign-)system to
close, to arrive at a definite meaning. Of course, attempts to demarcate meanings take
place all the time, but the demarcations are based on conventions and are always tentative
('for the time being').
Transplantation. But transplantation also always means transformation. Deconstruction
establishes a transgression, a shifting of meaning that in turn is never definitive. There is
no expectation of a final moment of truth. Rather, there is an ongoing process of the
shifting of rules that govern the relationships among (the elements of) systems. A short
example. We write, and in this writing there is a potential for rewriting. Transformation
implies that 'change' is a change in way of meaning - a becoming (cf. Game, p.189).

[3] Deconstruction disrupts a text from the inside out. This means that deconstruction
operates from within a text, from within the vocabulary of the text that it deconstructs. It
necessarily operates from the inside, borrowing all the strategic and economic resources
of the subversions from the old structure, borrowing them structurally (cf. Of
Grammatology, p.24). Derrida shows that every text is always permeated by multiple
meanings. But this heteronomy is relegated to the background by the author, by a reader
or by the context in such a way as to favor one meaning over another. Such manifestation
of power is revealed and questioned in deconstruction. For that reason, deconstruction is
not a discursive or theoretical 'play', but a practical-political affair; it is the taking of
responsibility (cf. Music, Deconstruction, and Ethics).
Derrida's major criticism on logocentrism (on Western thought, in general) is its
continuous attempt to control the other, (thereby) reducing it and merging it into the
same. The other inspires us with fear because it cannot be reduced to the same; and so it
needs to be counteracted. Derrida does not want to do away with traditional philosophy
and logical-discursive language altogether; he acknowledges the value of rational
discussion and the importance of reason. However, he wants us to be more susceptible for
realms outside of that rationality, for moments where the discursive order is broken and
invaded.
Derrida acknowledges that the desire to deconstruct may itself become a desire to
actively re-appropriate the text through mastery, to show the text what it 'does not know'.
He who deconstructs assumes that he at least means what he writes. But there is also an
opposite side to the desire for deconstruction. By inaugurating the open-ended
indefiniteness of textuality, we are given the pleasure of the bottomless, the joy of
freedom (cf. Of Grammatology, p.lxxvii).

[4] Derrida emphasizes the affirmative character of deconstruction, the ethics of

deconstruction. 'Deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness (a sort of gratuitous
chess game), but an openness towards the other ... an otherness that has been
dissimulated or appropriated by the logocentric tradition ... The very activity of thinking,
which lies at the basis of epistemological, ontological, and veridical comprehension, is
the reduction of plurality to unity and alterity to sameness ... To think philosophically is
to comprehend, to include, to seize, to grasp and master the other, thereby reducing its
alterity. Deconstruction may therefore be understood as the desire to keep open a
dimension of alterity which can neither be reduced, comprehended, nor, strictly speaking,
even thought by philosophy' (Kearney, p.123-4, my italics). The crucial 'methodological'
point is that it is possible to discern the operations of different ways of meaning
simultaneously. To think in multiplicity. Derrida's argument is that the unconditional
arises as the interruption, or non-closure, of any determinate context.

[5] According to Simon Critchley, the principle of alterity within a deconstructive praxis
can be found in the strategy of 'double reading'. 'If the first moment of reading is the
rigorous, scholarly reconstruction of the dominant interpretation of a text, its intended
meaning (vouloir-dire) in the guise of a commentary, then the second moment of reading,
in virtue of which deconstruction obeys a double necessity, is the destabilization of the
stability of the dominant interpretation' (Critchley, p.26). The second moment contradicts
the text with itself, opening its intended meaning to an alterity that goes against what a
text was purported to say or mean. (An example of a double reading in music can be
found in Gerd Zacher's Kunst einer Fuge [Art of a Fugue].) Derrida often articulates this
double reading around what is called undecidables.
Critchley claims that 'it is precisely in the suspension of choice or decision between two
alternatives, a suspension provoked in and through an act of reading, that the ethical
dimension of deconstruction is opened and maintained' (Critchley, p.88).
Deconstruction is characterized by the impetus to clear the way for an experience of the
other. An affirmative strategy. An affirmative strategy of transformation. Of transforming
and transgressing Western thought. To get ready for the coming of the other.
Deconstruction: Between
Method and Singularity
[1] In many of his texts and interviews, Derrida rejects those who try to define
deconstruction. Unrelenting, he calls into question the question 'What is deconstruction?'
This question seeks the invariable being or essence of deconstruction; it seeks a clear and
unequivocal meaning, an exact definition. However, does something like the
deconstruction exists? Rather, says Derrida, there are many forms of deconstruction.
Deconstructions. It is not possible to generate a fixed meaning that would remain
constant when applied to various contexts (cf. Oger, p.38). This implies that
deconstruction is not a method, system or theory in the traditional sense. Such concepts
generally refer to a set of rules and methods that can continually be repeated and
consistently applied. Derrida emphasizes that deconstruction is not a method because the
strategy of deconstruction cannot simply be repeated, that is to say, independent of the
(con)text that it addresses. 'To present deconstruction as if it were a method, a system or a
settled body of ideas would be to falsify its nature and lay oneself open to charges of
reductive misunderstanding' (Norris, 1982, p.1).

[2] Deconstruction does not develop a new philosophical or scientific framework after it
rejects metaphysical traditions as inadequate. This is why one cannot and should not
speak of deconstructivism, since this could indicate a movement that has a common
method as founding element. Many authors who are deterred by the destabilizing,
disorganizing, and mind-broadening nature of deconstruction try to normalize, regulate or
appropriate this kind of writing. They attempt to turn deconstruction into a manageable
method having a closed set of rules that are invariably applied to a variety of texts (cf.
Oger, p.54). Deconstruction is resistant to a mere set of general rules that can be applied.
In addition, the strategy of deconstruction does not lead to a new theory that would set
'everything straight'. Deconstruction does not elucidate texts in the traditional sense of
attempting to grasp a unified content or theme. It is not a theory that defines meaning in
order to determine how to find it.
Deconstruction is not a model for analysis either. Analysis means reduction. To analyze
means to dissect compound, confusing, or obscure concepts and ideas to their simple and
clear elements. The object of analysis is to completely unravel and resolve. However, the
elements that are exposed by deconstruction are not singular; they can, in turn, be
disassembled. Endlessly. Deconstruction has no end because the elements remain
obscure, multiple, and complex; a complete unraveling is impossible by definition. In
deconstruction heterogeneity, ambiguity, plurality, complexity, and multivocality are
respected.

[3] A systematic and complete exposition of the strategy of deconstruction is impossible.

It goes against deconstruction. It disobeys deconstruction. Nevertheless, there is a certain
coherence to Derrida's texts and (non)concepts. Notions such as 'trace', 'dissemination',
and 'différance' stand in a certain relation to each other and dynamically harbor a
communality that enable a different perspective on texts. Derrida admits that
deconstruction produces some methodological consequences because there are some
general rules that may be discerned from deconstruction and utilized in concrete
situations. Deconstruction is a strategy which has been reiterated and recognized in
various fields in the course of time; therefore, it may be called a method in this most
general sense.

[4] It would be senseless to object to methods or theories on the basis of a principle. After
all, thought processes can never fully escape methods and theories. But why then is
Derrida so reluctant to label deconstruction as a method or theory? His criticism
concentrates on the lack of attention in traditional methodologies for what is idiomatic or
unrepeatable. In their quest for general rules and patterns, they fail to render account of
the singular and the unique (the other). Derrida insists on an open mind for what is
specific and irreplaceable in texts. He wants to respect diversity and plurality, rather than
to submit to a fixed norm. In his endeavor to establish a relationship with a singular work,
Derrida employs means whose nature is just as singular as the work that is under
investigation.
At the same time, this (implicitly) calls such concepts as repeatability and regularity into
question. Still, Derrida indeed acknowledges the importance of repeatability since an
absolutely new word or concept could not be understood if it could not be repeated.
Without what Derrida calls iterability, a meaningful world could never be expressed. This
opens a 'double bind': the mere singularity (which precedes language) still needs to be
invoked by language. By capturing something in language, one fails to appreciate its
singular nature. However, it is the only means by which one can relate to the singular.
Derrida calls this an original violence in language: the singularity is always already
adopted into a generalized network. Incidentally, Derrida does not interpret this
negatively precisely because a generalizing set of meanings may give access to the
singular. The logical-discursive bases of meanings and our linguistic order are not devoid
of ambiguities and indeterminations in which the singular presents itself.

[5] How is the singular expressed in Derrida's texts? Can it be expressed? Does not the
singular always escape any expression, any (re)presentation? Perhaps it is better to speak
of 'traces' of the singular. Derrida can at best draw our attention to certain traces of the
singular, of what escapes generalities, conceptualizations, theories, frameworks, etc.
How? One example. Provisionally. Exploring. Derrida does not hold on to conceptual
master-words for very long. His vocabulary is always on the move. 'Différance',
'supplement', 'dissemination', 'parergon', 'pharmakon', 'hymen'; they do not remain
consistently important in subsequent texts. Most of these terms are not conceived by
Derrida himself; they are inextricably connected to the texts that he re-reads. He grafts
his texts onto the text that he is studying and departs from words in that text. In this
sense, Derrida's readings are exemplary, radically empirical and individual to the extent
that they are beyond any possible development of theory. While the case is at once
absolutely specific, it is also absolutely general in its significance because only one case
such as this creates all that Derrida needs. In a certain sense, each of the terms can be
substituted by the other, but never exactly; each substitution is also a displacement and
carries a different metaphoric charge.
Displacement
[1] The first moment of what may be observed as a deconstructive strategy consists of
tracing a hierarchical opposition. In 'Plato's Pharmacy' Derrida describes how Plato
assumes such a hierarchical opposition by stating that eidos (the father) precedes logos
(the son). The father symbolizes the origin of logos. In the second moment, Derrida
reverses the hierarchy by stating that eidos is not able to appear without logos. If the son
is what causes the father to become a father, then the son, not the father, should be treated
as the origin. By showing that the argument that elevates the father can be used to favor
the son, one uncovers and undoes the rhetorical operation responsible for the ordering of
the hierarchy and one produces a significant displacement. If either the father or the son
can occupy the position of origin, then origin is no longer originary (cf. Culler, p. 88).
This can be perceived as the third moment. Displacement. (Examples of displacements in
music can be found in the sections on John Cage (Cage and Noise), J.S. Bach
(Contrapunctus I), and John Zorn (Saprophyte).)

[2] Plato's Phaedrus presents itself as having no origin. It is merely the inspired
conversation overheard by Plato between two men in the countryside. And recorded.
Problem arise when we read the dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus as a textual, not
as a spoken construction, directed entirely by Plato. This is where the displacement of
origin begins. For example, Socrates then becomes a (fictitious) character (cf. Neel,
p.45).
To mask the origin of his thought as writing, Plato always uses the (prior) voice of
another, in most cases the voice of Socrates. This allows Plato to remain absent, always
and everywhere. Plato invariably makes his own monologue appear as a dialogue, usually
between Socrates and another person. Plato can thus be considered both absent and
present at all times. But this really applies also to Socrates. The voice of Socrates (he who
does not write) lives in the absence of the voice of Plato (he who says he does not write),
which in turn lives in the absence of Socrates' voice. The voice one hears is always the
voice of the other. To make things even more complicated: In Phaedrus Plato uses a
written speech by Lysias as the starting point for his own text. He assumes Socrates'
voice in order to destroy the sophistical writing of Lysias. But it is almost certain that
Lysias never wrote that speech. Plato did. Plato then gives up his own voice to two
'speeches' by Socrates (a displacement of Plato because he wrote them down) in order to
destroy his own writing (the forged speech by Lysias) (cf. Neel, p.20). We are caught
here in an endless chain of displacements in which the origin is lost or endlessly deferred.

[3] In Phaedrus, Socrates presents writing as the lost son of the father. This means that
writing can be regarded as the brother, the bad brother of the good logos or speech. This
brings Derrida to the conclusion that Socrates is led to the insight that logos is only
another sort of writing, just because they are brothers. Socrates indeed perceives this in
his statement that logos can be regarded as the inscription of truth on the soul. (Socrates:
'But now tell me, is there another sort of discourse, that is the brother to the written
speech? ... The sort that goes together with knowledge and is written in the soul of the
learner'.) Socrates thus calls the living, animate discourse an inscription of truth on the
soul.
Logos as a sort of writing. Of course, we can disregard this as a metaphor. But it is
nevertheless remarkable that Plato suddenly describes the so-called living discourse with
a metaphor from an order that he is trying to exclude (cf. Dissemination, p.149). Truth, as
Socrates says, is a kind of good writing in the soul. So writing, which has been pushed to
the outside, marginalized, is now suddenly seen as being in the very heart of the interior.
Plato saves writing by making it the medium for an internal journey toward truth. He
resorts to the notion of 'writing in the soul' in order to name the other of writing, the self-
present truth that speech is designed to convey. This throws the explicit opposition
between speech and writing askew. Phaedrus, which starts as a condemnation of writing
in the name of present speech, finally comes to light as a transformation into the
opposition between two kinds of writing: good writing (natural, living, internal), and bad
writing (moribund, ignorant, external). And the good one can be designated only by the
metaphor of the bad one. For Derrida, this seems to be the conclusion of Phaedrus.
Writing and speech have become two different species of one trace, which Derrida calls
arche-writing (cf. Music Is a Text). A displacement of the initial hierarchy.

[4] In Sophist, Plato teaches that any full, absolute presence of what is, or any full
intuition of truth, is impossible. This brings Derrida to the conclusion that truth or
presence must always come to terms with non-truth and non-presence. The lack of
attainment of presence or truth gives rise to a structure of replacements such that all
presences will be supplements that are substituted for the absent origin, and all
differences, within the system of presence, will be the irreducible effect of what remains
beyond 'beingness' or presence (cf. Dissemination, p.167). Non-truth is the truth. Non-
presence is the presence. This is what Derrida calls 'the movement of différance'.
'Différance, the disappearance of any originary presence, is at once the condition of
possibility and the condition of impossibility of truth … What is, is not what it is,
identical and identical to itself, unique, unless it adds to itself the possibility of being
repeated as such. And its identity is hollowed out by that addition, withdraws itself in the
supplement that presents it ... And there is no repetition possible without the graphics of
supplementarity' (Dissemination, p.168). All this is inscribed within a generalized
writing, an arche-writing. So on one hand, there would be no intelligible form of truth or
absolute presence without repetition. But on the other hand, repetition is the movement of
non-truth because in becoming apparent, in becoming perceptible for the senses, it
withdraws from ideality. 'These two types of repetition relate to each other according to
the graphics of supplementarity. Which means that one can no more 'separate' them from
each other, think of either one apart from the other, 'label' them; that in the pharmacy, one
can distinguish the medicine from the poison, the good from the evil, the true from the
false, the inside from the outside, the vital from the mortal, the first from the second, etc.
Conceived within this original reversibility, the pharmakon is precisely the same because
it has no identity. And the same (is) as supplement. Or in differance. In writing'
(Dissemination, p.169).
Truth and non-truth, presence and non-presence, inside and outside. Binary opposites in
which the first term is the dominant one. Derrida subverts the hierarchical relation
between the two terms; not by a simple reversal, but by showing that the opposition is
unstable, by a displacement of the conceptual order.
Dissemination
[1] Every reading of a text enables new meanings. Every reading places a text into a new
context. That context is open; it never absolutely determines one interpretation, nor a
clearly demarcated complex of interpretations. For that reason, a text can never be
completely exhausted; there will always be something more or something else that can be
said about it. Derrida introduces the term dissemination referring to this principle in
which he places polysemy opposite. 'Dissemination brings out the play between surplus
and lack within signification with no prospect of stabilizing or closing it' (Kramer, p.12).
From the very moment that a text is published, it is delivered up to a dissemination
without return. No archeology of a text is possible. One finds oneself indefinitely referred
to bottomless, endless connections and to an indefinitely articulated regress from the
beginning. A text never actually begins; it has always already begun. Dissemination
destroys the uniqueness of a text, its hegemonic center. It takes a text to its textuality, to
its 'plurality of filiations' which it has always carried within itself. Derrida: 'As for the
'plurality of filiations' and the necessity of a 'more differentiated perception', this will
always have been my 'theme' in some way, in particular, as signaled by the name
'dissemination'. If one takes the expression 'plurality of filiations' in its familial literality,
then this is virtually the very 'subject' of 'Dissemination'' (Points, p.224).

[2] What does dissemination mean? According to Derrida, '... this word ... has the power
economically to condense, while unwinding their web, the question of semantic
differance (the new concept of writing) and seminal drift, the impossible (monocentric,
paternal, familial) re-appropriation of the concept and of the sperm' ('Avoir l'oreille de la
philosophie', p.309, J.Culler's translation). The word dissemination implies a link
between the wasteful dispersal of semantic meaning and semen. Dissemination 'is' a
scattering of semen, seeds and semes, semantic features. 'We are playing on the fortuitous
resemblance ... of seme and semen. There is no communication of meaning between
them. And yet, by this floating, purely exterior collusion, accident produces a kind of
semantic mirage: the deviance of meaning, its reflection-effect in writing, sets something
off ... it is a question of remarking a nerve, a fold, an angle that interrupts totality: in a
certain place, a place of well-determined form, no series of semantic valences can any
longer be closed or reassembled ... the lack and the surplus can never be stabilized in the
plenitude of a form' (Positions, p.45-6).
Dissemination 'is' (about) the play of meanings; an unequivocal meaning cannot be
assigned to it. (Derrida insistently warns that if we say that dissemination is 'this' or 'that',
we are trying to reserve its meaning. And this means that we are immobilizing it and
stopping its own dissemination.) Rather, there is a dispersal of meaning because every
word, every concept, every text can be connected through all sorts of connotations with
other words, concepts, and texts. Dissemination refers both to a fertile dispersal of
meanings and to the dissipation or the loss of meaning. Every new context brings about a
new meaning, but at the same time, some of the old meaning is lost. The process of
acquiring meaning is not cumulative. (This becomes apparent in translations.)
No appeal to context or convention can possibly arrest the disseminating free play of
language. Dissemination is an attack on the notion that texts can be owned, controlled,
limited or appropriated in the name of some legitimate authoratitive source (cf. Norris,
1982, p.112-3). But rather than enabling a negative prohibition of all access to a kind of
truth, a unity of meaning, dissemination affirms the always already divided generation of
meaning (cf. Dissemination, p.268).

[3] How is dissemination at work in writing? In every text and in every word, other
meanings, words, and texts resonate, whether consciously or subconsciously, voluntarily
or involuntarily, wanted or unwanted. Ultimately, there is no way for the author to
prevent or contain the dissemination of a text. Derrida exemplifies this in 'Plato's
Pharmacy' using the word pharmakon: 'The word pharmakon is caught in a chain of
significations. The play of that chain seems systematic. But the system here is not simply
that of the intention of an author who goes by the name of Plato. The system is not
primarily that of what someone meant-to-say [un vouloir-dire]. Finely regulated
communications are established, through the play of language, among diverse functions
of the word and, within it, among diverse strata or regions of culture. These
communications or corridors of meaning can sometimes be declared or clarified by Plato
when he plays upon them 'voluntarily' ... Then again, in other cases, Plato can not see
these links, can leave them in the shadow or break them up. And yet these links go on
working by themselves. In spite of him? thanks to him? in his text? outside his text? but
then where? between his text and the language? for what reader? at what moment? To
answer such questions in principle and in general will seem impossible' (Dissemination,
p.95-6). One could say that every text differs from itself and thus counters every
authoritative interpretation. 'The text constantly goes beyond this representation by the
entire system of its resources and its own rules' (Of Grammatology, p.101). However,
Derrida is not only interested in derailing a chain of meaning. He intends to show that
laying down a meaning is at all times an arbitrary and provisional act based in a desire for
power and control. 'We are less interested in breaking through certain limits, with or
without cause, than in putting in doubt the right to posit such limits in the first place. In a
word, we do not believe that there exists, in all rigor, a ... text, closed upon itself,
complete with its inside and outside' (Dissemination, p.130).

[4] Dissemination is an attempt to disclose the contingency of meaning, not to decimate

it; it states the constructive nature of meaning, and, hence, the possibility for
deconstruction. This can be done in several ways: (a) through associative powers (b)
through multiple cohesions that do not always seem logical, such as grammatical
connections, anagrammatical games, and related themes (c) through allusions, by which
is meant a pluralization of references and voices (d) through an etymological texture:
words which resonate actually or implicitly through a text (an example of which is found
in 'Plato's Pharmacy' where the mythical figure Pharmacia and the absence of the word
pharmakos both resonate in the word pharmakon) and (e) through lateral associations: by
following all the senses of the word pharmakon in 'Plato's Pharmacy', Derrida brings
many other contexts into play in which the word is used by Plato (medicine, painting,
politics, farming, law, sexuality, festivity, family relations), thus folding onto the
problematics of marking off.
The aim is not to excessively dissolve everything, but to insist upon a more chastened
sense of the contingency of sense, of everything that calls itself universal or necessary,
transcendental or ontological, philosophical or scientific. The play of meaning is the
result of what Derrida calls 'the play of the world' in Writing and Difference, in which the
general text always provides further connections, correlations, and contexts (cf. Culler,
p.134).

[5] 'It is not enough to install plurivocity within thematics in order to recover the
interminable motion of writing. Writing does not simply weave several threads into a
single term in such a way that one might end up unraveling all the 'contents' just by
pulling a few strings' (Dissemination, p.350).
This is where Derrida situates the difference between dissemination and polysemy.
Moments of polysemy are moments of meaning. Polysemy always sends forth its
multiplicities within the horizon of a meaning that has been at last deciphered and made
present in the rich collection of its determinations. Ultimately, polysemy rests on some
integral reading that contains no absolute rift, no senseless deviation. It always testifies to
a past truth or a truth to come. 'The concept of polysemy thus belongs within the confines
of explanation, within the explication or enumeration, in the present, of meaning. It
belongs to the attending discourse. Its style is that of the representative surface. It forgets
that its horizon is framed' (Dissemination, p.351). Derrida has the opinion that the
meaningfulness of language by no means consists of a mere accumulation of meanings
that crop up haphazardly. Dissemination means that transformations of meaning no
longer hinge on any enrichment of 'history' and 'language', but only on a certain squaring
of the text. 'The difference between discursive polysemy and textual dissemination is
precisely difference itself, an implacable difference' (Dissemination, p.351).
Dissemination cannot be reduced to polysemy. 'Writing is read, and 'in the last analysis',
does not give rise to a hermeneutic deciphering, to the decoding of a meaning or truth'
(Margins, p.329). 'If there is thus no thematic unity or overall meaning to reappropriate
beyond the textual instances, no total message located in some imaginary order,
intentionality, or lived experience, then the text is no longer the expression or
representation (felicitous or otherwise) of any truth that would come to diffract or
assemble itself in the polysemy of literature. It is this hermeneutic concept of polysemy
that must be replaced by dissemination' (Dissemination, p.262). The heterogeneity of
different writings is writing itself.

[6] The page entitled Pharmakos gives a deeper understanding of dissemination and an
example of this from the work of Derrida. Examples of dissemination in music can be
found in (D)(R)econtextualization, Of Interpretation, and Gerd Zacher's Kunst einer
Fuge [Art of a Fugue]. Dissemination in relation to (music) education is discussed in To
Give a Music Lesson.
Hierarchical Oppositions
[1] Probably the most important strategy at work in deconstruction is the tracking down
of hierarchical structured oppositions. According to Derrida, it has been a characteristic
of the western philosophical and scientific tradition since the classical times to think in
binary oppositions. Presence opposes absence, speech opposes writing, philosophy
opposes literature, the literal opposes the metaphorical, the central opposes the marginal,
life opposes death, the real opposes the imaginary, the normal opposes the pathological,
etc. Derrida shows how one of the oppositional terms is always privileged, controlling
and dominating the other (dominating 'the other'). 'In a classical philosophical opposition
we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-à-vis, but rather with a violent
hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has
the upper hand' (Positions, p.41).

An example of a familiar philosophical opposition in which one of the terms controls the
other can be found at Logos Above Writing. All examples used on this page are taken
from 'Plato's Pharmacy' (Dissemination, p. 63-171).

[2] Derrida traces these hierarchically ordered binary oppositions and he radically
questions the dominance of the privileged term by reversing the hierarchy. The
opposition remains intact, but the attention shifts from the dominant term to the
dominated term, from the center to the margin. Margins. The margins of philosophy. The
margins of a text. To advance the margins involves many different operations, including
making comments in between the lines, revealing what is concealed by the text, tracing
any blind spots of the author, explicating subconscious presumptions in the text, bringing
up hidden contents and intentions, paying special attention to footnotes, tracking words
that harbor an unresolvable contradiction where one meaning is chosen above the other at
one time, while reversing that choice the next time, shifting the attention from an author's
main work to a small, unfamiliar and seemingly insignificant text, etc.
The violent reversing of an existing hierarchy comprises the second moment in a
deconstructive strategy. 'To deconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the
hierarchy at a given moment' (Positions, p.41).

For an example, see Writing Above Logos.

[3] One should not, however, leave it at this reversal, because the oppositions are not
undone by simply reversing them. To deconstruct the binary oppositions does not only
mean to reverse them, for to simply replace the central term with the marginal is to
remain locked in the 'either/or' logic of binary opposites. One should simultaneously take
note of the breach that occurs in the reversing. During the third moment, the oppositions
are unsettled. However, this is not done by stepping outside the oppositions, for example,
by introducing a third term as a means of attempting a kind of dialectic approach. Rather,
the task is to dismantle the metaphysical and rhetorical structures that are at work within
the text, not in order to reject or discard them, but to reinscribe them in another way. (The
entire structure of binary oppositions becomes particularly unstable and unravels in an
infinite play in the so-called undecidables.)
'Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed immediately to a neutralization [of the
hierarchy of oppositional terms, MC]: it must, by means of a double gesture, a double
science, a double writing, practice an overturning of the classical opposition and a
general displacement of the system. It is only on this condition that deconstruction will
provide itself the means with which to intervene in the field of oppositions that it
criticizes ... Deconstruction does not consist in passing from one concept to another, but
in overturning and displacing a conceptual order, as well as the nonconceptual order with
which the conceptual order is articulated' (Margins, p.329). To deconstruct an opposition
is to undo it and replace it, to reinstate it with a reversal that gives it a different status and
impact. When speech and writing are distinguished as two versions of a generalized
arche-writing, as two forms of a play of difference, the opposition has implications other
than writing that is seen as a technical and imperfect representation of speech. The same
holds for the distinction between the literal and the figurative. It works differently when
the deconstructive reversal identifies literal language as figures in which the figurative
nature has been forgotten instead of treating figures as deviations from proper, normal
literality (cf. Culler, p.150).

For an example, see Displacement. A reversal and displacement of an hierarchical order

in music can be found on these pages: Cage and Silence, Alt-Rhapsodie - J. Brahms, and
Saprophyte.

[4] Deconstruction works with this double movement; it situates itself both inside and
outside of previous categories and distinctions. Instead of claiming to offer firm ground
for the construction of a new order or synthesis, it remains involved in or attached to the
system it criticizes and attempts to displace (cf. Culler, p.150-1). Deconstruction operates
within the terms of a certain system with the intention of having this system derail. It
uncovers the contingent origin of the binary hierarchies, and it does so not with the
purpose of providing a better foundation for knowledge, but in order to dislodge their
dominance and to create a space that leaves room for difference, ambiguity, and
playfulness. This does not mean that deconstruction would revert to indifference. It
implies that the distinction between two terms can no longer be supported by or founded
in the priority of one of the two. Deconstruction is not so much a nihilistic criticism than
an articulation of other values (cf. Music, Deconstruction, and Ethics ).
Logos Above Writing
[1] Plato's Phaedrus ends with the myth of Theuth. In this myth writing is offered as a
kind of present to King Thamus. The king, who in fact represents Ammon, king of the
gods, receives this gift from the demigod Theuth. But it is the king who will give this gift
its value in the act of receiving or rejecting it. According to Derrida, '... the value of
writing will not be itself, writing will have no value, unless and to the extent that god-the-
king approves of it' (Dissemination, p.76).
King Thamus does not know how to write and he has no need to write. He speaks, he
dictates, and his word suffices. If a scribe writes down the words spoken by the king - a
supplementary transcription - this is always in essence secondary. Writing is secondary. It
comes after speaking.
God-the-king rejects the offering of writing; he does not need it and prefers speech, or
logos, above writing. Writing does not produce truth. It does not produce anything;
rather, it reproduces. 'Written logos is only a way for him who already knows to remind
himself of the things writing is about. Writing thus only intervenes at a time when a
subject of knowledge already possesses the signifieds, which are then only given to
writing on consignment' (Dissemination, p.135). This is the difference between
knowledge as memory and non-knowledge as rememoration, a repetition of truth versus a
(dead) repetition of the repetition. Writing stands for an oblivion that veils. Presented in a
simple dichotomy, logos thus means presence, the good or the true, whereas writing can
be associated with absence, the bad or the untrue.

[2] Plato understood writing as a sign of a sign, that is, a sign of the spoken word that, in
turn, is the sign of a meaning that is expressed. Writing is therefore a two-step
representation. It is in the service of logos as the living speech act. Writing is an
exteriority that is subsequently added to the inner purity of the concept, the essence, the
signified, the soul, the spirit. Since writing can only repeat, it does not add anything
essential and could therefore be considered unnecessary. Nevertheless, Plato presents
writing as dangerous and threatening. Writing is dangerous because it kills the living
meaning and presence of the consciousness to itself; it forms a threat to the inner purity.

[3] Derrida draws our attention to the fact that Platonism assigns the origin of logos to the
paternal position. The speaking subject can be conceived of as the father of his speech.
Speech or logos is his son. The specificity of logos would thus be intimately bound to the
presence of the father. Logos is alive because it is inspirited by its father (the one who
speaks), who can constantly explicate, supplement, explain, etc. The spoken word is not
only positioned opposite writing, it is also considered superior because it is associated
with presence, whereas writing may indicate a double absence (of both author and
reader). The hierarchical relation that privileges the spoken word to the written word is
based in the human desire for presence and origin. Writing is connected with the absence
of the father. It is an orphan, a lost son. Writing no longer knows who his father is. On
one hand, it escapes and undermines parental authority. On the other hand, it can be
attacked, bombarded with unjust approaches. It is open to a multitude of
misunderstandings and, in principle, an infinite number of interpretations that only the
father could dissipate, thus assisting his son, if he was not absent.
The hierarchical relation might be clear: logos, living speech, is superior to writing, 'that
dangerous supplement'.
The Pharmakon
[1] No single word in English captures the play of signification of the ancient Greek
word, pharmakon. Derrida traces the meanings assigned to pharmakon in Plato's
dialogues: remedy, poison (either the cure or the illness or its cause), philter, drug, recipe,
charm, medicine, substance, spell, artificial color, and paint. The word pharmakon is
overdetermined, signifying in so many ways that the very notion of signification gets
overloaded. A translation problem? Yes and no. In choosing one meaning translators
often decide what in Plato's texts remains undecidable. But as indicated above, the
problem is inherent in its very principle, situated less in the translation from one language
to another, than already within the Greek language itself. And adopted within
philosophical discourse, pharmakon does not suddenly become unambiguous, ready and
suited for dialectic operations. (In Phaedrus, Socrates tries to distinguish between two
kinds of words, the unambiguous - words about which we all agree - and the ambiguous -
words about which we are at variance. In Plato, Derrida and Writing, Jasper Neel argues
that in fact there are no unambiguous words.) Instead, words like pharmakon threatens
the philosophical process, threatens dialectics from within. Plato's text itself is thus
already the battlefield of an impossible process of translation.
Plato's systematic and pure reasoning (followed by Platonism and the entire Western
tradition of philosophy) experiences great difficulty with this undecidability. It wants to
put a stop to this constant shift from one meaning to another and back again. Still, Plato
cannot escape the ambiguity of pharmakon either. In Phaedrus, writing is first presented
as a useful tool, a beneficial drug (pharmakon). It later proves to be a harmful substance,
benumbing to the soul, memory and truth, a poison (pharmakon). In Phaedo, the reverse
happens: first, the hemlock is presented to Socrates as a poison (pharmakon). Yet it is
transformed, through the effects of the Socratic logos, into a cathartic power
(pharmakon), helpful to the soul that it awakens to the truth of eidos.

[2] In Phaedrus, the god Teuth presents writing as a recipe (pharmakon) beneficial for
memory to King Thamus. But the King refuses the gift saying that it will produce
forgetfulness; it is not a remedy for memory, but for reminding. Writing is a poison
(pharmakon) and Teuth has passed a poison off as a remedy. The pharmakon thus
produces a play of oppositions: remedy-poison, good-bad, true-false, positive-negative.
According to Derrida, this means that far from being governed by these oppositions, the
pharmakon (writing) enables the coming into play of oppositions without allowing itself
to be fully encompassed by them, without being subsumed under concepts whose
contours it draws (cf. Dissemination, p.103).
Writing is an external supplement to internal memory. But even if it is external, it affects
memory and touches its very inside. That is the effect of this pharmakon. The pharmakon
is 'that dangerous supplement' .

[3] Socrates puts his most effective medicine (pharmakon teleotaton), living knowledge,
opposite the other pharmakon, writing. 'Philosophy thus opposes to its other this
transmutation of the drug into a remedy, of the poison into counterpoison', says Derrida.
This is only possible due to the ambiguity of the pharmakon; it already bears its own
opposite within itself. Presenting itself as a poison, it may turn out to be a cure. 'The
'essence' of the pharmakon lies in the way in which, having no stable essence, no 'proper'
characteristics, it is not, in any sense (metaphysical, physical, chemical, alchemical) of
the word, a substance ... It is rather the prior medium in which differentiation in general
is produced' (Dissemination, p.125-6).
This undecidability or doubleness of the pharmakon does not mix two separate elements
together. 'If the pharmakon is ambivalent, it is because it constitutes the medium in which
opposites are opposed, the movement and the play that links them among themselves,
reverses them or makes one side cross over into the other (soul/body, good/evil,
inside/outside, memory/forgetfulness, speech/writing, etc.) ... The pharmakon is the
movement, the locus, and the play: (the production of) difference. It is the differance of
difference' (Dissemination, p.127). In this undecidability, in this non-substance and non-
locality, the pharmakon places itself outside the dialectical system and opens a labyrinth
or an abyss. This does not turn pharmakon into a transcendental. It is not above the play
of delay and difference, rather it is permeated by these. Pharmakon is not the name for
the other, but the place where the other is evoked.
When, during translation or exegese, one chooses the word 'pharmakon' to have a single
meaning (for example, 'remedy') while the same word also signifies its exact opposite
(poison), the choice of only one of the meanings will have the effect of neutralizing the
textuality of the text. 'Textuality being constituted by differences and by differences from
differences, is by nature absolutely heterogeneous and is constantly composing with the
forces that tend to annihilate it' (Dissemination, p.98). The translation of 'remedy' is not,
of course, incorrect; but it is incomplete. 'Such an interpretative translation is thus as
violent as it is impotent: it destroys the pharmakon but at the same time forbids itself
access to it, leaving it untouched in its reserve. The translation by remedy can thus be
neither accepted nor simply rejected' (Dissemination, p.99).

[4] (The working of) the word 'pharmakon' as related to the music of John Zorn is
detailed on the pages entitled Saprophyte and Zorn's Pharmacy.
Pharmakos
[1] The chain, pharmakeia-pharmakon-pharmakeus, appears several times in Plato's
texts. A word not directly or literally used by Plato is pharmakos, which means
'scapegoat'. According to Derrida, that it is not used by Plato does not indicate that the
word is necessarily absent. Certain forces of association unite the words that are 'actually
present' in a text with all the other words in the lexical system, whether or not they appear
as words in such discourse. The textual chain is not simply 'internal' to Plato's lexicon.
One can say that all the 'pharmaceutical' words do actually make themselves present in
the text. 'It is in the back room, in the shadows of the pharmacy, prior to the oppositions
between conscious and unconscious, freedom and constraint, voluntary and involuntary,
speech and language, that these textual 'operations' occur' (Dissemination, p.129). Derrida
places the opposites, presence-absence and inside-outside, under great pressure. If the
word pharmakos that Plato does not use still resonates within the text, then there can be
no matter of a text being closed upon itself. What do 'absent' and 'present' mean when the
outside is always already part of the inside, at work on the inside?

[2] In ancient Athens, the character and the ritual of the pharmakos had the task of
expelling and shutting out the evil (out of the body and out of the city). The Athenians
maintained several outcasts at the public expense. When plague, famine, drought or other
calamities befell the city, they sacrificed some of the outcasts as a purification and a
remedy. The pharmakos, the scapegoat, was led to the outside of the city and killed in
order to purify the city's interior. The evil that had affected the inside of the city from the
outside, was thus returned to the outside in order to protect the inside. But the
representative of the outside (the pharmakos) was nonetheless kept in the very heart of
the inside, the city. In order to be led out of the city, the scapegoat must have already
been within the city. 'The ceremony of the pharmakos is thus played out on the boundary
line between the inside and the outside, which it has as its function ceaselessly to trace
and retrace' (Dissemination, p.133). At the same time, the pharmakos is on the borderl
between sacred and cursed, '... beneficial insofar as he cures - and for that, venerated and
cared for - harmful insofar as he incarnates the powers of evil - and for that, feared and
treated with caution' (Dissemination, p.133). He is the benefactor who heals and he is the
criminal who incarnates the powers of evil. The pharmakos is like a medicine in that he
'cures' the impurity of the city, but he is, at the same time, a poison, an evil. Pharmakos.
Pharmakon. Undecidables. Both words carry within themselves more than one meaning.
Conflicting meanings.

[3] Pharmakos does not only mean scapegoat. It is also synonymous for pharmakeus, or
wizard, magician, poisoner. In Plato's dialogues, Socrates is often portrayed as a
pharmakeus. Socrates is considered as one who knows how to perform magic with words.
His words act as a pharmakon (as a remedy, or as a poison?) and permeate the soul of the
listener. In Phaedrus, he fiercely objects to the ill effects of writing. He compares writing
to a pharmakon, a drug, a poison: writing repeats without knowing. Socrates suggests a
different pharmakon, a medicine: dialectics, the philosophical dialogue. This, he claims,
can lead one to true knowledge, the truth of the eidos, that which is identical to itself,
always the same as itself, invariable. This is the message of Socrates to the city of
Athens. He acts as a magician (pharmakos) - Socrates himself speaks about a divine or
supernatural voice that comes to him - and his most famous medicine (pharmakon) is
speech, dialectics and dialogue that will lead to knowledge and truth.
But Socrates also becomes Athen's most famous 'other' pharmakos, the scapegoat. He
becomes a stranger, even an enemy who does not speak the proper language of the other
citizens. He is an other; not the absolute other, the barbarian, but the other (the outside)
who is very near, who is already on the inside. According to several prominent
Athenians, he was of bad moral and political influence. His constant criticism
undermined the faith in democracy of many Athenians. In 399 BC, Socrates was charged
with introducing new gods and corrupting the young and sentenced to death. Having
accused him as a force of evil, Athens killed him to keep itself intact. Athens kills the
pharmakos (both the magician and the scapegoat).
Plato's Supplements
[1] After the dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus has essentially come to a
conclusion in Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates relate the myth about Theuth. This myth thus
appears as a kind of encore, an epilogue, an hors-d'oeuvre (literally: outside the work), a
supplement. But what starts as a supplement, is found to be the most essential part of
Phaedrus. It is an accusation against writing since writing would replace living memory
for a mnemonic device. Plato presents writing as the sign of a sign. Speech remains in
animate proximity, in the living presence of mneme. Writing, which imitates and
reproduces living speech, goes one degree further. 'The boundary (between inside and
outside, living and non-living) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as
an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a
monument' (Dissemination, p.108-9). The difference between mneme and hypomnesis.
The problem starts where the mneme, instead of being present to itself, is supplanted by
archives, lists, notes, tales, accounts, chronicles: memorials instead of memory. But, as
Derrida indicates, the 'evil' slips in within the relation of memory to itself, in the general
organization of the mnesic activity. Memory always needs signs in order to recall the
non-present, with which it is necessarily in relation. The line between mneme and
hypomnesis becomes barely perceptible because in both cases it is a matter of repetition.
Memory is always already contaminated by its first substitute: hypomnesis. The outside
(the replacing sign) is already within the work of memory. What Plato dreams of is the
possibility of a memory with no sign; that is, with no supplement (cf. Dissemination,
p.109).
Plato considers writing to be external to internal memory - hypomnesis is not in itself
memory. Derrida, however, points out that Plato has to admit that writing or hypomnesis
penetrates the very core of speech and mneme; it affects and infects memory. Writing is
'... that dangerous supplement that breaks into the very thing that would have liked to do
without it yet lets itself at once be breached, roughed up, fulfilled, and replaced,
completed by the very trace through which the present increases itself in the act of
disappearing' (Dissemination, p.110).

[2] In the myth, the god Theuth offers writing as a pharmakon to King Thamus of Egypt.
It is a recipe for both memory and wisdom. Who is this Theuth, Plato's god of writing?
Derrida shows that Plato's Theuth has much in common with two other gods of writing,
the Egyptian god, Thoth and the Greek god, Hermes. In Egyptian mythology, Thoth often
calls himself the son of the sun-god, Ammon-Ra. Ammon: 'the hidden'. The hidden sun,
the father of all. He allows himself to be represented by Thoth. Thoth speaks in the name
of Ammon-Ra. Thoth is the language through which Ammon-Ra enters the human world.
In Derridian terms, this means that the father needs language in order to appear. Like his
Greek counterpart, Hermes, Thoth is the messenger-god, an intermediary. But he can
only convey what has already been thought by Ammon. Language is thus considered to
be a representation of a more original thought. 'The message itself is not, but only
represents, the absolutely creative moment. It is a second and secondary word'
(Dissemination, p.88). Thoth, Hermes, and Theuth: the gods of writing are subordinate
characters. They are but servants and executors. Never the authors or initiators of
language.
But Thoth is also the substitute for Ammon-Ra, supplementing him and supplanting him
in his absence. Thus, the written word of Thoth replaces the spoken word of the father.
'As a substitute capable of doubling for the father, the sun, and the spoken word,
distinguished from these only by dint of representing, repeating, and masquerading,
Thoth was naturally also capable of totally supplanting them and appropriating all their
attributes' (Dissemination, p.90).
This brings into play a strange kind of logic. Thoth is opposed to its other - the father, the
sun, speech, origin - but at the same time he is the only one capable of supplementing and
supplanting it. Thoth extends or opposes by repeating and replacing. He distinguishes
himself from his opposites, but also imitates them, replaces them by becoming their sign
and representative. He is different than the sun and the same as the sun, different than the
good (because he writes) and the same as the good (because he is the word of the father).
The figure of Thoth takes shape and takes its shape from the very thing it resists and
substitutes. But it thereby opposes itself, passes into its other. He is at once the father, the
father's other and the subversive movement of replacement. This messenger-god, this god
of non-identity, this supplement, is a god of the absolute and continous passage between
opposites: an undecidable! (cf. Dissemination, p.92-3).
Supplement
[1] We make use of signs to refer to something that is not directly present. A sign
replaces something else. It is a substitute, a representative of something other than itself.
A sign is a supplement, a supplemental aid that can be deployed when the presence itself
falls short. (A score can be regarded as a supplement. A consideration of this idea can be
found on the page entitled No (-) Music - D. Schnebel.)
The sign evokes the ideal of a presence without signs, a direct contact with what is
represented by the sign. It is considered an imperfect and incomplete surrogate that is
expected to substitute for something that is only temporarily absent. It is an exteriority, an
outside, a material signifier that is added afterwards to the inner integrity of a signified.
The signifier only represents the signified. Unfortunately, however, something of the
original richness of the signified always is lost in its representation. That is why the
supplement is preferably considered as inessential, a non-required surplus that really
should not need to be added to the pure fulness of the interior. 'What is added is nothing
because it is added to a full presence to which it is exterior. Speech comes to be added to
intuitive presence (of the entity, of essence, of the eidos, of ousia, and so forth); writing
comes to be added to living self-present speech' (Of Grammatology, p.167). The sign as a
supplement is thus in a hierarchically subordinate position to the essential or the present.

[2] However, a sign is not merely an subordinate substitute. This is shown in the double
meaning that may be assigned to the term supplement. Supplement means both
replacement and addition, that which at once supplements and supplants. It can mean the
adding of something to something that is already complete in itself; or it can mean the
adding of something to complete something (cf. Of Grammatology, p.144-5). And the
shadow presence of the other meaning is always there to undermine the distinction. This
'dangerous supplement' (Rousseau) is therefore an undecidable, an unsettled concept.
A supplement is a substitute for something else that is unable to be present. Supplements
are called in precisely because there is a lack in what is supplemented. However, a
supplement also adds something; it is a surplus. (If a supplement is both added to
something and replaces that same thing, it means that they are neither strictly opposed to
one another, nor equivalent to each other.)
If a presence needs a sign in order to appear, then it follows that it is always already
permeated from the inside by a shortage, a lack. If it cannot do without the supplement,
then the supplement becomes the precondition for the presence of the present (cf. Of
Grammatology, p.184). The originality of the signified is only afterwards produced with
and within the supplement; it appears only afterwards in and through the sign. The sign
therefore becomes a prerequisite for the signified to appear. At the same time, however,
the sign postpones a direct contact with the origin, with that what is represented, both
temporarily and spatially. On one hand, the supplement is an exteriority, outside of the
signified and outside of itself because in its quality of being a sign it represents
something different than itself. On the other hand, however, a supplement enables an
interiority and produces the inside. Every supplement postpones that which it installs.
And every signified is, in fact, an effect, a trace of a signifier.
(Derrida's point of interest is the difference between the represented and that which
represents. Something remains hidden in every representation, something is forgotten,
suppressed, or excluded. This could be called 'the other'. Every perspective that makes
use of language fails to cover all aspects and to address all matters concerned; this is what
Derrida calls to our attention.)

[3] Writing is the supplement of thought. Writing should serve as the vehicle to carry
thought.
The first problem is that thought cannot appear outside writing. This, in fact, means that
everything starts with supplementation. Without this supplementation there would only
be silence. Something at the core of thinking seems to be missing. Thought needs the
supplement of writing in order to be whole, and thus thought without writing is not (fully)
itself.
The second problem is that writing, instead of serving as a transparant medium to carry
thought adds itself to thought and then substitutes itself for thought. What should be
merely a means of expression affects or infects the meaning it is supposed to represent.
What began as a supplement to help thought to present itself becomes a replacement that
threatens the integrity of what it intends to replace. Thought cannot exist without writing.
A signified cannot appear without a signifier. This means that a supplement cannot
simply represent the absent signified. Because the signified can only be(come) present
through a signifier, each signifier can only be substituted for another signifier that
maintains another relation with the deficient presence. 'The supplement is always the
supplement of a supplement. One wishes to go back from the supplement to the source:
one must recognize that there is a supplement at the source' (Of Grammatology, p.304).
A process of substitution of supplements is thus started to which there is no beginning
and no end.

[4] Plato's Supplements offers an example of the working of a supplement in a text by

Derrida. In Teaching a Supplement, the double meaning of supplement is related to the
teaching of jazz music.
Undecidables
[1] One of the objects of deconstruction is to undermine hierarchical structured binary
oppositions within a text. This implies that a deconstructive strategy pays special
attention to words or concepts that cannot be adopted into such a binary logic. They may
be termed as undecidables, unsettled concepts. These words or concepts need to be
elicited from the text that is being deconstructed (that deconstructs itself). If they would
remain exterior to the text, the text would remain untouched. This means that such
undecidables are not universal concepts: in each text, new and other undecidables will
present themselves.
Undecidables are characterized by their virtue of being able to function within certain
oppositions that are essential for a certain argumentation, but undermine these
oppositions at the same time because of their double meaning. Derrida describes
undecidables as verbal properties that can no longer be included within philosophical
(binary) oppositions; they resist and disorganize such oppositions without ever
constituting a third term and without ever leaving room for a solution in the form of
speculative dialectics, a Hegelian Aufhebung (cf. Positions, p.43). Undecidables mark the
points of what can never be mediated, mastered, or dialecticized. A few examples:
pharmakon (this means both poison and remedy), supplement (addition and replacement),
difference (distinction and deferral), communication (oral presentation and transmission
of messages). Undecidables graft one meaning onto another; they take up a key role as
they bring together and separate possible meanings at the same time. Their meaning
cannot be presented as 'this and that' or 'this or that'. It is 'and' and 'or' at the same time.
The pharmakon has no proper or determinate character; rather, it is the possibility of both
poison and remedy. It is ambivalent because it constitutes the element in which opposites
are opposed, the movement and play by which each meaning relates back to the other.
Undecidables are the movement, the locus, the play of difference. An operation that at
once brings about a fusion or confusion between opposites, and stands between opposites.
A double and impossible operation (cf. Culler, p.145). According to Derrida, words of
this type '... situate perhaps better than others the places where discourses can no longer
dominate, judge, decide: between the positive and the negative, the good and the bad, the
true and the false' (Points, p.86).

[2] Translations in particular often fail to accurately reproduce the ambiguousness of an

undecidable in its flowing and floating meaning. By attempting to assign an
unambiguousness meaning to an undecidable, its surprising dynamics becomes lost. By
interrupting the transition of the opposite meaning, the moving and playful web of a text
becomes neutralized.
Derrida inscribes his own texts on the places of these undecidables in order to
demonstrate or provoke their differentiating function. But he goes on to say that the
undecidability is not really due to the various meanings of pharmakon, supplement,
difference, etc; they can only produce their undecided effects through syntax, the
placement and grammatical status of a word in a sentence. The shift of the meaning of a
word, this back and forth shift in the syntax causes the non-binary logic: neither/nor, that
is simultaneously either/or. It is the formal and syntactic praxis that composes and
decomposes the lexical richness and semantic openness of a word or concept. There is an
irreducible excess of the syntactic over the semantic (cf. Dissemination, p.220).

[3] Undecidability cannot be confused with simple indecision, a pure paralyzation by the
play of signifiers. On the contrary, undecidability is the condition of a possibility of
acting and deciding; it is a determinate oscillation between possibilities that are
themselves highly (pragmatically) determined in strictly defined situations. There would
be no undecidability if it were not between determined poles. But whenever a decision is
really a decision, whenever it is more than programmability or calculability, it is because
it has passed through the ordeal of undecidability; it depends upon undecidability, which
gives us something to decide. Deciding is thus a possibility sustained by its impossibility.
The undecidability is never set aside, never over and done with (cf. Limited Inc., p.116
and p.148).

[4] Thinking in oppositions means that each of the opposed terms must simply be
external to the other. The opposition between the inside and the outside can thus be seen
as the matrix of all possible oppositions. However, undecidables have no proper place
within such a frame of thought. They indicate the impossibility of a definitive separation
between inside and outside. (Consider, for example, the quotations with which some of
these pages open. They cease to be quotations, pinned to the outside of the text by
position and material form, from the moment they work inside the very body of the text.)
On one hand, it is the undecidables that enable or activate the opposition; on the other
hand, they are themselves capable of escaping it. Thinking in opposites is taken to a limit
at which point a certain displacement of the series of oppositions takes place. 'We cannot
qualify it, name it, comprehend it under a simple concept without immediately being off
the mark' (Dissemination, p.104).

[5] On the page entitled Pharmakon, an example of an undecidable that occurs in

Derrida's text 'Plato's Pharmacy' (Dissemination, p. 63-171) is elaborated upon. Examples
of musical undecidables can be found on the pages Of New Musicology, Music and/as
Disorder and Hymen.
Writing Above Logos
[1] The speaking subject can be considered the father of his speech. The father is the
origin and cause of logos. Derrida's criticism is centered on this idea. It would imply that
the father resides outside of language. 'The father is not the generator or procreator in any
'real' sense prior to or outside of all relation to language ... it is precisely logos that
enables us to perceive and investigate something like paternity. If there were a simple
metaphor in the expression 'father of logos', the first word that seemed the more familiar
would nevertheless receive more meaning from the second than it would transmit to it ...
Living beings, father and son, are announced to us and related to each other within the
household of logos' (Dissemination, p.80-1). The idea of a father preceding his son
cannot be maintained with respect to a text that is preceded by a speaker because he is not
outside of language. We should not conceive of language in the light of a comprehensive
'fatherly' instance that produces, governs, and directs it. It is precisely language that first
enables this kind of thinking and such concepts as father and son; we are always already
in logos.
Derrida shows that the father needs logos to be able to appear at all. Without the presence
of a supplement, the origin cannot appear, which means that the supplement, logos, needs
to precede the origin, the father. Thus, the hierarchical relationship between the father
and his son is reversed. Everything begins with the supplement. Everything begins with
the play of differences that makes the sounds and meanings (that makes the difference
between 'father' and 'son', or 'logos'). But this play of differences in speaking is the same
as the play of differences in writing. So why not say that speaking is like a form of
writing?

[2] In Plato, Derrida and Writing, Jasper Neel argues about how Plato (who says not to
write at all) defines himself in writing and that he knows he has to do so in order to be
'heard'. Although he condemns writing, he cannot escape it.
Plato condemns writing as a derivative and dead repetition of the living spoken word.
This is what Plato leaves us with after Phaedrus. He is free to devalue writing because he
has exempted Phaedrus from writing by making it dialectic, writing's privileged opposite.
Plato can be considered the pharmakos who guides us out of the morass created by
writing, and into the realm of truth.
But he leaves us with what he himself leaves: a divided, diseased inscription. What
happens if we choose not to read Phaedrus as dialectic, but to call it what it is, writing?
Plato wants to give us truth, but he cannot. He has to replace it with what it is not,
namely, writing: 'What seems like a dialectical movement toward truth in his dialogues is
really a written text whose end is known at the beginning and whose every aspect is
managed through the revisionary, recursive process of writing' (Neel, p.70). Plato's desire
is to escape writing through writing; and the harder he tries to master writing in writing,
the more he is caught inside writing. Such platonic ideas as truth and soul find themselves
in writing. Plato's Socrates describes them as the opposite of writing, but he has to
describe them in writing.
What makes Plato important in history is precisely his writing so that his ideas remain
open for all time. Plato's writing is revolutionary because he represents the invention of a
literate culture in the middle of an oral culture. Plato knew Platonism was only available
through writing. He knew that all Socrates speeches were preceded and enabled by
writing. Dialectics was enabled by writing.

[3] Socrates dismisses writing as nothing more than amusing play. Plato succeeds in
escaping from writing if we accept Socrates' devaluation of writing. But was writing
really a trivial pastime for Plato? We know that Plato himself constantly revised his
dialogues. Writing for him was a very serious, if not the most serious, affair. In fact, one
could say that he was addicted to it. Writing was his pharmakon; it was a poison to him
because writing turned out to be using him, and it was a cure because he loved what it
allowed him to do. The source of his sickness was the source of his life (cf. Neel, p.56-
78).