Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

considers the Greek logos (i.e., λόγος -- the Greek term used variously for speech,
thought, law, reason) the central principle of language and philosophy, speech, not
writing, is central to language. He then used ‘grammatology’ -- his terminology for the
science of writing -- to suggest that our writing can become as comprehensive as our
concepts of speech. Derrida goes on to criticize the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de
Saussure and the structuralist theory of Claude Levi-Strauss for promoting logocentrism.
He argues that Levi-Strauss’ theory in particular, promotes a misunderstanding of the
relation between speech and writing.
Derrida often used the term, ‘logocentrism,’ something he believed Plato established,
which gives language privilege over nonverbal communication, and prefers speech to
writing. Derrida believed that in the Western tradition, language follows the thought
processes, which produce speech, and that speech produces writing. According to
Derrida, logocentrism takes the position that the Greek logos rests in speech, not the
written word, and is more central to language as such.
For Derrida, deconstruction is a linguistic and literary methodology. It is a process of
revealing meaning, knowledge and thought, especially so that these tools cannot be used
to empower its users to impose their thinking on others, revealing the moral and political
dimension of deconstruction. Where literary truth and knowledge can be shown to
contain subjective motivations, they can be unveiled, or deconstructed. Deconstruction
views all writing as a complex, historical and cultural process. Texts are inter-related and
‘controlled’ by tradition and institutions. Derrida wrote:
The privilege of the phone does not depend
upon a choice that could have been avoided.
It responds to a moment of economy... The
system of “hearing (understanding) -oneselfspeak”
through the phonic substance -- which
presents itself as the nonexterior, nonmundane,
therefore nonempirical or noncontingent
signifier -- has necessarily dominated the
history of the world during an entire epoch,
and has even produced the idea of the world,
the idea of world-origin, that arises from the
difference between the worldly and the nonworldly,
the outside and the inside, ideality
and nonideality, universal and nonuniversal,
61
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa