Document Type
Article
Abstract
[Sixth paragraph]
So my main topic is a word. Detour. This word leads me astray towards other words that share with it a certain movement, or a tendency to movement, or something else, which I will try to uncover. I want to talk about ellipsis, about circles and about différance. Yes, of course these words are related to Jacques Derrida, as words tend to (related also in the sense of a relation through kinship). I am going to start with the essay "La différance" in the book Margins of Philosophy (1882). Reading it, I noticed detour, which caught my eye. Derrida mentions the word a few times and relates it to the workings of the pleasure and the reality principles as they are explained by Sigmund Freud in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle." However, detour has ramifications in a certain philosophical context, which Derrida doesn't fully acknowledge. How so? To begin with, Derrida, despite what some would like to believe, does not break with the tradition of Western metaphysics. "Such a break with tradition … is the best tradition of philosophical thought" [2]. Instead, he does something much more subtle and constructive. He engages through debate and exchange with such a tradition in order to exhibit its inconsistencies and gaps.
Repository Citation
Mella, Barbara. "Derrida's Detour." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 2, no. 4, 2002, pp. 1–31. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol2/iss4/3