Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 14:51:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Rooney <rooney-AT-tiger.cc.oxy.edu>
Subject: RE: Is d+g's notion of writing inspired by Derrida's? (was: Dialectic)




On Sun, 31 Jan 1999, michelle phil lewis-king wrote:

> > I have excerpted the core issue to spare us all
> > the endless cascades of banter:
> 
> (banter which reveals your own nurgatory position)

Oh, please.  The only thing this thread has
revealed is your inability to read (or spell).  
But if you really wish to continue, I shall 
post my full reply to your previous tissue of 
non sequiturs and evasions immediately.


> > 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",
> 
> No, that referential substance is the writing machine..
> the basic tool of the despotic empire.

Like, duh.  Of course it is.  But that doesn't
dispute the manifest sense of the passage, which 
is to say that "that referential substance" is
a written arche-writing -- not as a Derridean
script but as a historical writing machine.  I.e.,
archi-ecriture is NOT what Derrida thinks it is,
i.e., Derrida is wrong.


> It is an arche writing but not in Derrida's sense of
> arche writing. I am not misreading because the same distinction is made in
> A.O.

Nothing you are saying here is supporting your
position.


> > 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.
> >
> The retrospective illusion refers to that non Derridean signifying arche
> writing which takes the place of 'his' non signifying,  non referential
> writing. 

You have yet to offer the slightest evidence
for this hypothetical "non-Derridean signifying
arche-writing".  I mean, when someone uses the
term archi-ecriture, who else are they referring
to but Derrida?  The comment about retrospective
illusion clearly takes a Marx-vs.-Hegel-style,
materialist-criticizing-the-idealist jab at the
metaphysical nature of Derridean archi-ecriture.


> - Guattari actually gives some kind of credit to Derrida in
> Chaosmosis for his  shedding light on the relative autonomy of an
> a-signifying regime.
> 
> "The different current of structuralism have given neither autonomy nor
> specifity to this a-signifying regime, although authors like Julia Kristeva
> or Jacques Derrida have shed some light on the relative autonomy of this
> sort of component."c. pp4

Damning with faint praise.


> My claim that D=G base their notion of primitive process on Derrida's
> general notion of  'writing' is based on reading them say it in
> anti-oedipus. As this notion is crucial to their development of desire as a
> force ( after Lyotards figure - matrix..) and that their writing is an
> operation and experience of desire I don't at all feel 'given the lie'.
> 
> I am still waiting patiently for some examples of Guattari's remarks about
> Derrida to back up your 'impression'. I am genuinely interested.

Since you can't seem to read the above,
here are some more examples:

See, e.g., his remarks near the beginning of
the chapter in Chaosmosis entitled "Schizo-
Modelization" (I don't think that title is
right, but I don't have any Guattari lying
around).  He slyly digs at "differance" as
a form of neurosis.

Or, in "Towards a Micro-Politics of Desire"
(as Clifford Duffy recently posted):

"Short of appealing to some divine agency - such as Derrida's myth
of the 'complicity of origins' established at the level of a signifying
arche-writing - there is no means of conceiving the conjunction of words
and things other than by resorting to a system of machinic keys that
'cross' the various domains we are considering." 

The above very clearly reinforces the 
critical attitude expressed in "The Place
of the Signifier".

Or, ask Charles Stivale about Guattari's 
less-than-loving personal relationship to
Derrida, stemming from the academic politics
of the International College of Philosophy.

I patiently await your response.  No doubt
it will live up to the high standards you
have consistently maintained throughout this 
exchange.


Cordially,

M.