Grammatology

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Grammatology ( Greek γράμμα gramma , German 'letter' + Greek λόγος logos , German 'teaching' ) is the science of writing . Depending on the interpretation, grammatology includes sub-disciplines of different sciences: script linguistics , palaeography and epigraphy as well as typography and calligraphy .

Linguistics (yellow)

The term was not, as repeatedly claimed, introduced by the orientalist Ignace Gelb , who anyway only used it in the first edition of his standard work on the font A Study of Writing from 1952 in the subtitle "The Foundations of Grammatology". In 1792 the orientalist and philosopher of language Johann Gottfried Hasse, Kant's table companion and his successor in the Senate of the University of Königsberg, published an attempt at Greek and Latin grammatology for academic teaching and upper classes in schools . 1847 followed Karl Ernst Prüfer's critique of Hebrew grammatology and in 1863 Joseph FP Massé Grammatologie Française . Derrida writes in the Grammatologie 1967 unequivocally: "As far as we know, this word has only been used by IJ Gelb in recent years to designate the design of a modern science." The Koreanist André Eckardt used "grammatology" as early as 1965 in his philosophy of writing .

Philosophy (Derrida)

The philosopher Jacques Derrida adopted the term grammatology in his main work of the same name from 1967 and made it more widely known. In it he advocates the thesis that in Western thought writing is unjustifiably degraded to a mere auxiliary form of spoken language. Derrida aims to revalue writing and the science of writing, whereby grammatology for Derrida crosses the contrast between linguistics / writing science and linguistics / semiology and belongs to neither of them, but is more general than these. Where Saussure still had massive problems to differentiate linguistics from written science and both from numerous other sciences, Derrida uses grammatology to mark a science that absorbs the despair already occurring in the linguist Saussure and plays it off against itself:

“We see: from whichever side we approach the question, nowhere does the subject of linguistics present itself to us as a closed whole; everywhere we run into the same dilemma: either we cling to one side of the problem at hand [...]; or we examine language [langage] from several sides at the same time - then the subject of linguistics appears to us as a confused mixture of heterogeneous things without any connection. If one proceeds in this way, one opens the door and gate to various other sciences - psychology, anthropology, normative grammar, philology, etc. - which we want to sharply delimit from linguistics, but which, of course, only thanks to an incorrect method, language [langage] could claim as falling within their jurisdiction. [...] The language [langage], taken as a whole, is multiform and heterogeneous, overlaps into several areas, combines the physical, psychological and physiological; and then it belongs equally to the realm of the individual and to the realm of the social. It cannot be assigned to any category of human relationships because one does not know how to recognize its unity. "

In fact, for Derrida, grammatology is the subject matter of this confused mixture of heterogeneous things, which Saussure still prevented, without any superordinate context of a language as a system (langue) of all systems (langage). It simply encompasses the entire area of ​​experience as a differentiated and differentiating differentiation ( differance ), which is not even limited to the human aspect and which goes beyond the writing sciences in terms of yellow, hatred and co. In other words, grammatology in Derrida's sense deals with world events in space-time itself.

Derrida wins as the new "basic elements" of grammatology, so to speak, from which it is composed:

  1. the gramma as the "smallest unit" (although there is no longer any such unit in grammatology), which is neither a significant ( signifier ) nor a significant ( signified )
  2. the mark as the non-unit of a no-more-sign and its no-more-referent, which is composed of a gramma as "ex-signifier" and another gramma as "ex-signified" and thus the phone- oriented, Saussure's idea of ​​the unity of the two sides of the sign like a sheet of paper
  3. writing as a non-closed order of differences from grammata or marks, which replaces Saussure's distinction between linguistics ( langue ) as a closed, absolutely delimitable system of signs and literary science ( langage ) as its partial expressions or appearances of this system of signs
  4. the text as the effect or result of the writings composed with grammata or marks, which emerges through the differentiated and differentiated elements composed of grammata and marks in the world or deposits (Derrida therefore, following Freud, also provides the setting, so the place of the script as similar to a wonder pad before)
  5. the "original script", which as another name (for the differance) indicates the generalization and anti-metaphysical radicalization of all script studies in the narrower sense and replaces linguistics as a privileged system of differences

In summary, it can therefore be said in grammatological terms that texts are written using fonts that are made up of brands whose supposedly smallest link makes up the gramma, while with Saussure, paradoxically, the hierarchy from smallest to largest is still based on the order signifier / signified <sign <language (langage as a subsystem) < Syntagma <Language (langue as an all system) runs. A gramma can be auditory, visual, haptic, gustatory, olfactory, vestibular or otherwise. Furthermore, a font can contain and combine a wide variety of haptic, visual, etc. elements, which means that Derrida z. B. also various dance ("step writing", "movement writing"), political ("power writing"), biological ("gene writing"), physical ("atom writing", "quantum writing") or machine ("bit writing", "html writing") There are writings and texts whose prerequisite is a non-closed order of mutually referring differences. The name "grammatology" stands for a practice taking place in this new horizon of the original script. But because Derrida itself still questions this hierarchization of the proportions (from the gramma to the original script), and the original script itself can only be part of a gramma, Derrida tends to start talking about differences, since everyone Grammatological terms are in themselves as in others only differences (differance). Finally, with the collapse of every superordinate system (linguistics), there is also a collapse of every subordinate system (literary science).

All of this serves Derrida to criticize ideology: the mere auxiliary function of writing is based on logocentrism and on a phonocentrism connected with it . This should be countered by deconstruction , whose playing field, which extends through and beyond all classical scientific disciplines, is grammatology, but without itself - in the strict sense - being a "science" in the service of an infinite, absolute and supra-historical truth. Therefore, as a result of the creation of grammatology, Derrida's work also deals with a wide variety of topics, which - in classic terms - range from art theory and economic theory to epistemology and political theory to biological and physical issues.

He also emphasizes that Derrida's generalization of scripture to grammatology is truly revolutionary:

  1. a certain overcoming of any linguistic ethnocentrism , however constructed , since in the horizon of derridistic grammatology there are no longer any societies without writing and thus often despised as "backward", "underdeveloped" or "cultureless" in colonial, racist, speciesist and even ethnocentric narratives exist or the assertion of such proves to be completely untenable
  2. the radical rejection of any reductionist understanding of writing and reading, since Derrida rejects both the writing tools (especially: hand, breath / voice, gesture) and their reading tools (especially: ear, eye, touch / skin) that are predominant in the occidental tradition and replaced by an understanding of enrollment and reading that was generalized along with writing, to which in a way there are no longer any limits (a popular example of this can be found in the life of the deafblind Helen Keller , whose understanding of space and time through her double exclusion from seeing and from Among other things, hearing was very much characterized by differences in smell, which, in contrast to almost all linguistic approaches, is only problem-free in the context of grammatology, since it is non-ableist everyday)
  3. the abandonment of any linearism (i.e. a directed sequencing) of writing and reading in favor of a multi-dimensional organization and simultaneity of all writings and texts

Overall, Derrida's grammatology, with its reception in and inclusion in literary studies, has experienced an adequacy that has hardly been achieved in its consequences, because the rule of the unequal separation of signified and signified in the sense of Saussure still has a strong effect.

Gramma and Letter

The direct and indirect controversy between Derrida's Gramma and Jacques Lacan's Letter , both of which refer to and originate from the letter, is of particular importance in the history of science . While Derrida understands and conceptualizes the gramma as almost infinitely divisible, which he illustrates using the word differ_nce with a or e (the difference cannot be heard within the limits of linguistics and can therefore never be clearly defined), Lacan understands the letter expressly as indivisible and thus also finally definable. This dispute went so far that Derrida, in response to Lacan's assertion that tearing a letter (the letter), would not affect the original indivisibility of the letter (i.e. the letter of the letter), wrote two publications in the form of postcards in response, in a gesture of maximum challenge to Lacan's metaphysics in the form of the letter (as a system of all systems or code of all codes, because for Lacan the letter simultaneously embodies a unit of the subsystem of a langage and an all-system of a langue) a ceaseless text machine against an ultimate interpretation to build a final meaning, a final reading, etc. Derrida's postcard broadcasts are betting that they will resist any conclusive approach in every respect because, although they are too sensible to be considered pure nonsense, both the sender, the recipient, the message content and the circumstances of a possible interpretation practically arise always remain unclear and open to other connections and interpretations. In addition, Derrida also combats a graphocentrism attached to Lacan's letter , which in turn wants to install the graph in the form of the letter as the last instance of truth. If Lacan were to be proved right, Derrida's postcard mailings would have to be conclusively interpretable. Based on the current state of research and the perplexity of most scientists about the two postcard publications Derrida, Derrida can, at least so far, be considered the tendentious winner of this furious dispute. In addition, the dispute about the letter also touches on profound set-theoretical questions, first and foremost those about the difference between a set and a subset and their relationship to one another.

The problem of the discussion between Gramma and Letter can also be explained particularly well on the basis of facts such as the Rosetta Stone or the Voynich Manuscript : While Lacan's Letter emphasizes that there is a system or a code of well-differentiated elements (the letters), the makes it possible to decipher these phenomena, Derrida's Gramma aims to ensure that, despite possible deciphering effects such as a better understanding of facts, it remains impossible to conclude a text such as the Rosetta Stone or the Voynich manuscript and thus a supra-historical and once and for all unshakable truth to be able to determine.

literature

  • Johannes Bergerhausen, Siri Poarangan: decodeunicode: The characters of the world . Hermann Schmidt, Mainz 2011, ISBN 978-3-87439-813-8 (all 109,242 digital characters according to the Unicode standard).
  • Jacques Derrida : De la Grammatologie . Minuit, Paris 1967.
  • Jacques Derrida: Grammatology . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1974.
  • Jacques Derrida: Semiology and Grammatology. Conversation with Julia Kristeva . In: positions . Vienna 1986, p. 52-82 .
  • Jacques Derrida: Semiology and Grammatology. Conversation with Julia Kristeva . In: Peter Engelmann (Ed.): Postmodernism and deconstruction . Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, p. 140 ff .
  • Ignace Jay Yellow : A Study of Writing. The Foundations of Grammatology . Chicago 1952.
  • Marc Wilhelm Küster: An orderly worldview. The tradition of alphabetical sorting from cuneiform to EDP. A cultural story . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2006, p. 19-20 .
  • Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy: The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan. State University of New York Press, New York 1992.
  • Tore Langholz: The problem of "always" in Derrida's script philosophy. Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2016.

Web links

Wiktionary: Grammatology  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Writing linguistics  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jacques Derrida: Grammatology . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1983, p. 13 .
  2. ↑ Tore Langholz: The problem of the "always already" in Derrida's writing philosophy . Passagen, Vienna 2016, p. 216 f ., fn. 17 .
  3. ^ Saussure: Grundfragen , Reclam, Stuttgart 2016, p. 9f., Extract available at: https://www.reclam.de/data/media/978-3-15-018807-1.pdf