Of Grammatology

Of Grammatology by French philosopher Jacques Derrida introduced the world to deconstructionism. Derrida believed that the world had committed itself to binary oppositions and that words were only understood by their connection to their inverse. Deconstruction challenges these binary oppositions and the emphasis that is often placed on one idea over another. In Of Grammatology, Derrida uses deconstruction to challenge the binaries of speaking and writing, and he uses the arguments that privilege speaking over writing to dismantle this logic from within. The philosopher reveals how each part of a binary is dependent on the other and that each can be used to disassemble, or deconstruct, the other. Deconstruction is an important application for scholars and philosophers, because it challenges accepted thought and reveals the problems with classical, binary logic. Derrida continues to be an influential and controversial figure in the history of philosophy.

This guide utilizes the 2016 Fortieth Anniversary Edition from Johns Hopkins University Press, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

Content Warning: In his examination of language, Derrida utilizes examples from the works of Rousseau and Lévi-Strauss. It is important to note that their work uses outdated and racist terms when comparing the ideologies and practices of Western society to other cultures. For example, Lévi-Strauss’s examination of the Nambikwara, an Indigenous group in Brazil, employs words that are no longer considered acceptable and that prejudice European practices and ways of life above other cultures.

Summary

Building on the work of Rousseau, Saussure, and other philosophers, Derrida develops an argument in Of Grammatology that challenges early 20th-century philosophical methods and movements like modernism and structuralism. The philosopher challenged the prevailing idea that humans were part of a grand narrative, something larger than themselves. In following this idea, people adhered to binary oppositions. In each pair of binaries, one side was always privileged over the other. For example, good was privileged over evil, and masculinity was privileged over femininity. Derrida believed that these binaries could be broken apart by using their own logic, leading to an important form of analysis called Deconstruction. In this work, Derrida applies deconstruction to pursue The Rejection of Logocentrism, a binary that champions speech above writing. Derrida thereby reveals The Instability of Meaning.

In Part 1, Derrida introduces several key concepts. He challenges the prevalence of logocentrism in Western philosophy and denounces it as ethnocentric. Derrida argues that humans tend to see the world in binaries: love and hate, dark and light, etc. He also suggests that humans always privilege one half of a binary over the other. His methodology of deconstruction dismantles these binaries and reveals their dependence on one another and the fragility of their construction. He applies his methodology in Of Grammatology to the binary oppositions of speech and writing. Derrida argues that philosophers have historically privileged speech above writing; instead, philosophers should view the two as having equal footing and should develop a science of writing. Derrida also examines metaphysics and criticizes its adherence to binary oppositions and what he refers to as the “metaphysics of presence.” The urgent search for meaning leads philosophers to ignore the important component of absence, or negation, in human experience. He proposes that philosophers’ eagerness causes them to fail to recognize the biases that inform their ideologies.

Part 2, Chapters 1-2 utilize deconstruction to examine the metaphysical connection between writing and violence. Derrida turns his technique on Lévi-Strauss, challenging his study of the Nambikwara people. Derrida argues that culture and nature, which Lévi-Strauss presents as opposite poles of a binary, are neither exclusive nor opposing. Instead, culture and nature work together to form the human condition. Lévi-Strauss dismisses the culture of the Nambikwara people, claiming that they lack a form of writing and are more innocent than Western people. Derrida uses Lévi-Strauss’s own account to dismantle these arguments and reveal the ethnocentrism that drives this logocentric perspective.

The philosopher then turns his attention to Rousseau, who was critical of writing in comparison to speech. Rousseau adhered to Plato’s philosophy that writing is a supplement to speech rather than a signifier of the signified, and he denounced writing as inauthentic. Derrida pushes back against these arguments. He proposes that the endless chain of supplements that appear in writing both refine meaning and defer it. This is the core of his theory of “différance.”

In Part 2, Chapters 3-4, Derrida constructs his final arguments against Rousseau’s theories about writing and the origins of language. Rousseau asserts that writing is evil, leading people away from the authentic and natural. Derrida asserts that writing and speech have the same origination, and that supplementation is natural. Rousseau aligns the decline of language with the decline of society, but Derrida counters that language evolves in order to better society. The philosopher critiques Rousseau and others for focusing exclusively on metaphysics of presence while ignoring the space and time involved in all forms of language.