Dissemination

Every other book I've read by Derrida I've loved and found tremendously illuminating. I appreciate the thoughts here on citationality and the text-- but this tome might be the man's Finnegan's Wake, without the latter's fantastic wrap-up at the end.

My first book of the infamous Derrida. I picked this one specifically because I heard it was one of his easier essay collections.

I admit that the writing style went well over my head. That is simply how he is. However, I kept getting the feeling that very little was being said. If there was something interesting, the point was repeated and hammered to death. It is almost stereotypically dense philosopher-prose. The dense language is used to make the threadbare analysis of language seem more meaningful.

(I didn't read the whole book, just "Plato's Pharmacy" (and the translator's introduction)). Subterranean presence of pharmakos haunting Phaedrus. Taking grave matters lightly, at play in the field of signs, getting the nothingness back into words?

Uh, huh!

12/12/21

> Ce recueil d'essais de Derrida contient "la pharmacie de Platon", un essai riche, complexe et brillant sur la notion de "pharmakon" introduite par Platon dans Phèdre.
—Danieljean (Babelio)