What Can we Learn from Postmodern Theories of

Meaning and Truth?

Dr. Mark AlfinoPhilosophy Department

Gonzaga UniversityMarch 26, 2012

Jacques Derrida

July 15, 1930 – October 9, 2004

Postmodern Slogans

There is nothing outside the text.

Man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing an end.

Language speaks us.

Opening Lines of “Structure, Sign, and Play…” by Jacques Derrida

Opening Lines of “Violence and Metaphysics” by Jacques Derrida

Postmodern Slogans

There is nothing outside the text.

Man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing an end.

Language speaks us.

Word of the Night: Semiosis

Semiosis

The general processes of meaning formation and change studied by semiotics.

Ferdinand de Saussure,1857-1913

Saussure’s Concept of the Sign

Image for the Arbitrariness of the Sign in Saussure

What makes the 8:25 Geneva to Paris train the 8:25 Geneva

to Paris train?

The “UPS” theory of meaning

Signifier or Signified?Lamborghini Murciélago Spyder, 300-400K

“Structure, Sign, and Play” “the play of differences involves syntheses and

referrals that prevent there from being at any moment or in any way a simple element that is present in and of itself and refers only to itself. Whether in written or spoken discourse, no element can function as a sign without relating to another element which is not simply present. This linkage means that each “element”—phoneme or grapheme—is constituted with reference to the trace in it of the other elements of the sequence or system. This linkage, this weaving, is the text, which is produced only through the transformation of another text. Nothing, either in the elements or in the system, is anywhere simply present or absent. There are only, everywhere, differences and traces of traces.” Derrida, Positions p. 26, in Culler p. 142.

Key Terms

Metaphysics of PresenceLogocentrism - Phallogocentrism

Phonocentrism Deconstructive Reading

Postmodern Claims about Meaning1. There is nothing outside the text.

2. Postmodernism readings defamiliarize ideas.

3. Language speaks us.

4. Presence of meaning is either an illusion or a careful construct.

5. Stability of meaning requires more explanation than meaning difference and drift.

Postmodern Claims about Truth (and Philosophy)

1. The history of Western philosophy is riddled with a logocentric, phoncentric, phallogocentric, metaphysics of presence which perpetuates the illusion of the possibility of philosophical truth.

2. In light of postmodernism’s critique of meaning and truth, philosophy remakes itself as a post-metaphysical participant in knowledge work and cultural criticism.

What Can we Learn from Postmodern Theories of

Meaning and Truth?

Dr. Mark AlfinoPhilosophy Department

Gonzaga UniversityMarch 26, 2012