The Derrida Virus - Perspectives

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Todays lecture was on a theory called the Derrida virus.


Research

  • Jaques Derrida - philosopher
  • Nikos A Salingaros- The Derrida Virus, 2003
  • Christopher Butler - Postmodernism: A very short introduction
  • Judith Butler - Gender is performative

Definitions

  • Ideology - a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture
  • Binary Opinions - one thing OR another (eg. M/F, X/Y, Straight/Gay, White/Black
  • Normativity - phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good or desirable or permissible, and others as bad or undesirable or impermissible
  • Binary Opposition - A pair of mutually-exclusive signifiers in a paradigm set representing categories which are logically opposed and which together define a complete universe of discourse. 
  • Deconstruction - a method of critical analysis of philosophical and literary language which emphasises the internal workings of language and conceptual systems, the relational quality of meaning, and the assumptions implicit in forms of expression
  • Difference - the impossibility of any sign within a system of signs having a fixed meaning; the process by which meaning is endlessly deferred from one sign to another within such a system.
  • Reinscribe - to reestablish or rename in a new and especially stronger for a context
  • Cognitive Dissonance - the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change. 

  • Derrida was denounced as corruption of all things structures
  • “Virus’ that introduces disorder into communication
  • Deconstruction depends on relativism
  • Relativism - language is inheritantly unreliable. It is needed to create an idea, and therefore the understanding of an idea is completely dependant on “cultural baggage”
  • Units of data that we use are variable and reflexive, so that nothing can really be fixed down.
  • We live not inside reality, but inside our representations of it
  • Final or true definitions are impossible and can’t be trusted. 
  • Derrida said one of the Binary Oppositions is always privileged, controlling and dominating the other.
  • We live inside Idiologies
  • Postmodernism is power
  • Derrida dismantled 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. 
  • Undecidables
  • Deconstruction seeks to problematise - showing falsely constructed and bound up with structures of power and exclusion

Funny Games US



Reasons the film is postmodern:

  • 4th wall breaks
  • Uses the same music in the movie as for the title sequence
  • Names all the reasons people usually give for killing
  • Addresses viewer as “Audience” during their actions
  • Rewinds the narrative using the TV remote in the room and changes the outcome
  • The two killers openly discuss reality vs simulation

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