Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 14:19:54 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Rooney <rooney-AT-tiger.cc.oxy.edu>
Subject: Is d+g's notion of writing inspired by Derrida's? (was: Dialectic)



I have excerpted the core issue to spare us all
the endless cascades of banter:

On Sat, 30 Jan 1999, michelle phil lewis king wrote: 
>
> I am the
> one sticking close to d+g's actual texts.. consistently having to
> correct your impression that Guattari dismisses Derrida's contribution
> when rather he specifies that there is a difference between a
> non-signifying and a signifying arche ecriture, specifying that the
> signifying arche-writing is the basis of empire while the other (in
> Derrida's sense) "engenders all semiotic organisation".
>
> "(b) Semiologies of signification. On the other hand, all their
> substances of expression (of sound, sight and so on) are centred on a
> single signifying substance. This is the 'dictatorship of the
> signifier'. That referential substance can be considered as a written
> arche-writing, but not in Derrida's sense: it is not the matter of a
> script that engenders all semiotic organisation, but of the appearance-
> datable in history- of writing machines as a basic tool for for the
> great despotic empires."m.r pp75      

You are misreading the passage.  The "it" after
the colon refers to how "that referential substance
can be considered as a written arche-writing",
i.e., not as a script organizing semiosis (i.e.,
"not in Derrida's sense"), but as a historical
phenomenon (of writing machines).

This is probably, as others have noted, a misreading
of Derrida.  But it (along with the rest of the
passage, which goes on to criticize the "retrospective
illusion" of a Derridean archi-ecriture, or many   
other remarks of Guattari's about Derrida) clearly
gives the lie to your claim that d+g's practice of
writing is inspired by Derrida's archi-ecriture.  


Cordially,

M.