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Johnson - Derrida and Science
Johnson - Derrida and Science
REFERENCES
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DERRIDA AND SCIENCE
Christopher JOHNSON
(1) See for instance Lévi-Strauss's remarks on Sartre in Didier Eribon, Conversations
with Claude Lévi-Strauss, translatée! by Paula Wissing (Chicago : University of Chicago
Press, 1991), pp. 118-19.
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478 CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
(2) "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", in Writing and
Différence, translated by Alan Bass (London : Routledge, 1978), pp. 284-5.
(3) Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore and
London : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. 9.
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DERRIDA AND SCIENCE 479
(4) "Du graphème au chromosome", Les lettres françaises 1429 (29 March 1972), 7.
(5) Writing and Différence, pp. 196-231.
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480 CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
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DERRIDA AND SCIENCE 481
(9) Anthony Wilden, System and Structure. Essays in Communication and Exchange
(London: Tavistock Publications, 1980), p. 398.
(10) Ibid., p. 138.
(11) Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine Books,
1972), p. 381.
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482 CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
period, which deals with différences, forms and relations. While many
critics of Freud point to the weakness of his bioenergetic and deter
ministic explanations of mental processes, Wilden and Derrida show
how this traditional substantialist-materialist perspective is in Freud's
text also coupled with a semiotic understanding of such processes.
Derrida's médiation of Freud in "The Scene of Writing" is not,
however, restricted to the aforementioned conceptual parallels with
modern science ; as was noted above, the theoretical advances in the
informational and cybernetic sciences in the post-war period are also,
irreducibly, technological advances. In Derrida's essay on Freud the
question of technology becomes increasingly central as he explores
how Freud's early neurological and anatomical descriptions of psychi
cal processes are superseded by spéculation of a more metaphorical
kind, more precisely by spéculation involving the use of scriptural
metaphors. This metaphor of writing becomes a working model when
it is combined with the machine in the example of the Mystic Writing
Päd. The Mystic Päd, with its ingenious laminated structure, is
superior to Freud's previous models in that it accounts for the dual
capacity of the psychical apparatus for both rétention and infinite
reception of Stimuli, the mental functions of perception and memory
which Freud believed to be mutually exclusive. It is easy to under
stand Derrida's interest in Freud's model. With its combination of
system and writing, machine and code, it is an infinitely more
sophisticated simulation of psychical processes than the traditional
metaphors of soul or psyché as inscribed wax tablet. As a complex
system of inscription it integrates the différent aspects of facilitation
and psychical apparatus explained above: ephemerality and discon
tinuity, stratification and non-simultaneity.
Typically, however, Derrida is not content to indicate the heuristic
advantages of Freud's model, and this is where he parts Company with
Freud. Freud's use of the analogy of the Mystic Päd is in the final
instance a purely instrumental one ; like the Lévi-Straussian bricoleur,
he adopts the model insofar as it is approximate to the object he
wishes to describe, but discards it when it no longer serves that
purpose. Freud concédés that the model of the Mystic Päd fails to
imitate the actual opération of human memory to the extent that it
does not possess the autonomy of the human psychical apparatus, that
is, it does not dispose of and use the capacity of cathexis. It is at
this point, as Freud articulâtes the limits of his analogy, that Derrida
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DERRIDA AND SCIENCE 483
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484 CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
(16) "Le modèle linguistique en biologie", Critique 322 (March 1974), 195-205.
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DERR1DA AND SCIENCE 485
(17) Glas, translated by John P. Leavey Jr and Richard Rand (Lincoln and London:
University of Nebraska Press, 1984), pp. 27-3la; 116a.
(18) Dissémination, translated by Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1981), p. 304.
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486 CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
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DERRIDA AND SCIENCE 487
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488 CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
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DERRIDA AND SCIENCE 489
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490 CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
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DERRIDA AND SCIENCE 491
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492 CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
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DERRIDA AND SCIENCE 493
University ofKeele, UK
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