Part II of Notes on Derrida's _Dissemination_

Part 2 : Plato’s Pharmacy
Section I: Derrida “begins” (a loaded term we see, because even the space between the “Outwork” and the start of the explication of Plato is occupied by an epigram, and unnamed sort or mini preface, followed by another prefatory note before the first section) with the claim that Plato’s text is fissured not only through each individual reading ,which produces different interpretations, but from within the words of the text themselves. The entry point for this exploration of linguistic ambiguity: pharmakon, I word I mentioned above simultaneously means “remedy” and “poison.” While the word itself already harbors polysemy within it, we note that any attempt to translate the word “erases” these “resources of ambiguity” and makes “more difficult, if not impossible, and understanding of the context” (97). Derrida highlights the “irreducible difficulty of translation” and makes the claim, “with this problem of translation we will thus be dealing with nothing less than the very problem of the passage into philosophy” (72). What does he mean by this? Derrida’s critique of Western metaphysics will hinge on a questioning of a “metaphysics of presence”—the belief in the primacy of presence over absence and the desire for (and possibility of) immediate access to meaning. So when we look at the process of translation, we see that the translator must make an either/or decision about the “meaning” of a word following a binary logic that neutralizes the play of differences already built into each word. A translation should make us aware of the ABSENCE of the so-called “original” word, and thus the impossibility of such unity in the word itself, but instead translation masquerades as the presence of some unified meaning. This is the problem of Western metaphysics according to Derrida.

Importantly, in the _Phaedrus_, Socrates compares Phaedrus’ written texts to a drug (pharmakon) as we see in Derrida’s reading of the myth of Thoth that Socrates uses to respond to Phaedrus. I won’t recount the myth here (it would be worthwhile to check out this section of _Phaedrus_ or even Derrida’s inclusion of some parts), but an important aspect to become familiar with is that Thoth, the god of writing, brings written letters to the King, and the King denounces writing as inferior to speech, in that speech is the “living” word and is the mechanism of true “memory”, while writing is more like witchcraft and gives only the appearance of true knowledge. Thoth introduces difference into language and “it is to him that the origin of the plurality of languages is attributed” (88). Derrida then traces how the myths surrounding Thoth make him the god of substitution, as when he is called forth to “substitute” or “stand in” for the god Ra. But this process of substitution or supplementation is always one touched by violence: “ Thoth also frequently participates in plots, perfidious intrigues, conspiracies to usurp the throne. He helps the sons do away with the father, the brothers do away with the brother that has become the king” (89). What Derrida sketches out for us, is that—the the act of writing that he presides over as god—Thoth has no essence; he is total supplementarity in both senses that Derrida employs the term: “ The figure of Thoth is thus opposed to its other (father, sun, life, speech, origin, orient etc) but as that which at once supplements and supplants it. Thoth extends or opposes, by repeating or replacing. By the same token, the figure takes shape and takes its shape from the very thing it resists and substitutes for. But it thereby opposes itself, passes into its other, and this messenger-god is truly a god of the absolute passage between opposites” (92-3). It is worth noting that Derrida reminds us writing, as opposed to the “living word” of speech, also becomes associated with death, as Thoth is not only the King’s Master of Books but the keeper of the records of the dead.

The fourth section of Part I, in which Derrida explores the vast web of meanings of the word pharmakon is helpful in approaching the question of author’s intent and agency that has long been a question in “deconstructive” readings. What Derrida makes clear, is that Plato’s “intent” is immaterial because the word pharmakon (and every word for that matter) is part of a complex and diverse system, “among diverse strata and regions of culture” (95). Because all reality is constituted by language, and Plato is of course a member of this reality, then we are simply not able to ask questions about whether the differences implied by the word pharmakon are “involuntary” or “voluntary.” To ask what is the “cause” of these differences or in what “place” they happen actually only points to a problem in the question itself: the question follows a metaphysics of presence that seeks immediate unified meaning and effaces the play of differences inherent in the system of language, of which we are all apart, whether we are conscious of it or not.

In a discussion of “memory” vs. “memorial” (visa vis Plato’s _The Sophist_), Derrida points out that while speech is supposed to be the mechanism of true knowledge via memory, versus the writing of the Sophist who only “mimes” true knowledge in writing, memory itself is already the manifestation—not of presence—but absence: “ memory therefore already needs a sign in order to recall the non-present, with which it is necessarily in relation” (109). That is, memory (read: speech) is already a trace. So why is the idea of memorial or of the supplement so “dangerous” (109)? We will recognize a similar discussion to this one from the explication of Rousseau in _Grammatology_: “ It’s slidings slip in and out of the simple alternative presence/absence. That is the danger” (109). Once the supplement is introduced, the “inside” opens up and a whole chain of replacements is introduced; the unity of the whole is destroyed. And writing, the supplement par excellance, is especially dangerous because it is “the supplement of a supplement, the signifier, the representative of a representative” (109; note, this seems to be Plato’s argument against the 3 times removed truth of poetry in the _Republic_). Derrida notes that “Platonism” is built then on the distinction between signifier and signified and from this opposition constitutes itself as contrary to sophistics, so that “ philosophy and dialectics are determined in the act of determining the other” (112). Here again we see the logic of supplementarity at work.



Section 2
We often make a distinction between “early” Derrida that is more interested in language so to speak, and the “later” Derrida that seems to make a move toward more political issues, though of course this distinction is tenuous at best ,since Derrida never really gives us a concrete political program. However, I would argue that language/writing is ALWAYS political for Derrida, and we see glimmers of this in _Dissemination_. In Plato, Derrida claims, the pharmakon or writing threatens unity, because of its supplementary nature discussed above. Writing, which should have been just an accessory or “excess” has to be put back outside of the system (speech as full presence) that it ruptures. The remedy for Plato is the logos, or dialectics. However, and this is key, dialectics must “call upon the very thing it is expelling, the very surplus it is putting out” (128). What Derrida is getting to here, and what he will show in this section, is that while condemning “myth” or writing as opposed to the true knowledge Plato must always use writing; not in the obvious sense that the dialogues have been recorded and passed down in written form, but that Plato needs poetic language along with the dialectic. He needs metaphor. Derrida does not mention this in his discussion of _Republic_ in this text, but I think we can use this idea to understand why Book X ends in myth, the myth of Er. Plato needs to re-write myth, and this myth blots out the intellectual dialogue that has brought the reader to the end of the text, only to bring her—essentially—back to the beginning . In order for the dialectic to point beyond itself as Plato wishes, it must have recourse to its “opposite” in myth, but in this relationship we see that there is no real opposition between them. Derrida’s reading of _Phaedrus_ could apply to the end of Book X in the _Republic_:
“Socrates ties up into a system all the counts of indictment against the pharmakon of writing at the point at which he adopts his own, in order to uphold it, interpret it, make it explicit, the divine, royal, paternal solar word…Transforming mythos to logos” (134).

But back to politics. In the same way that dialectics needs its other of myth to secure its identity, the city must banish that what threatens its unity, and specifically in this section, we are talking about Socrates’ trial and death. This discussion will remind of the later writings of Agamben in _Homo Sacer_, in which the homo sacer is he who can be killed but not sacrificed, who is completely outside of the law yet constituted by it, and he who through his exclusion allows the state to affirm is identity by contrast. The city’s “body proper thus reconstitutes its unity…by violently excluding from its territory the representative of an external threat or aggression” (133). This sort of sounds like Nazi Germany, doesn’t it? Yet while the city needs to violently oppose the outsider in order to reaffirm its own laws and thus unity, “the representative of the outside is nonetheless constituted, regularly granted its place, by the community…the very heart of the inside” (133). It is also worth noting that Derrida points out that the invective against writing is implicitly a directive against democracy. He cites J.P. Vernant who claims that the development of writing is contemporaneous with the mobilization of democracy, because writing allowed the masses access to knowledge. Plato calls democracy “ orgy debauchery, flea market, a ‘bazaar of constitutions where one can choose the one to make one’s own” (145). The fear of democracy is that it allows for excess not hierarchy, and has no real “essence” of truth but rather allows for “free” choice.

Contra Plato and the Enlightenment/rationalist view, we see that while dialectics is always directed toward truth itself, the truth must always come to terms with its own relation to non-truth: “ The disappearance of truth as presence, the withdraw of the present origin of presence, is the condition for the manifestation of truth. Non-truth is the truth. Nonpresence is presence. Différance, the disappearance of any originary presence, is at once the condition of possibility and the condition of impossibility of truth” (168). Because of this supplementarity, this failure of the ability to retain a unified original presence, the binaries between inside and outside the system cannot hold. Pharamakon really does “mean” both “poison” and “remedy” simultaneously.

As I noted above, it is interesting that at the end of Book X of _Republic_ Plato has recourse to myth. Here, at the end of this section, Derrida too tells his own myth: an imagined scene of Socrates before his death. Why? I can’t be sure, but I would argue that part of the function of this textual addition shows how easily dialectic and myth can slide into each other. Derrida uses an imagined narrative, interwoven with—what looks like—moments of a Platonic dialogue, and notes several times that Socrates “tries to distinguish between two repetitions”, which we are not sure are coming from inside or outside of his cell. Socrates monologue (is it spoken or just thought?) is stammering, following an almost incoherent string of etymologically- related words. The brief narrative ends with “knocks from without…” (171), which I think points this text beyond itself—the goal of Platonic dialogue as well as the re-inaugurated myth that ends Book X. I would argue that Derrida includes this strange textual moment, one that we can not pin-point as either dialogue or myth, or true (based on a true event) or false (but is there evidence this happened? It could have, right?) to demonstrate the ideas he has been describing up unto this point. And this takes us beyond the text, points to that which we don’t know. This, ironically, is also the project of the Plato whom Derrida has just critiqued.