Derrida's Plato's Pharmacy: Writing does not allow to transmit the truth

Derrida's Plato's Pharmacy is an essay that dialogues with one of Plato's dialogues (Phaedrus) about writing to show that speech has more value than writing. The French philosopher announces in the introduction of this essay that he will be discussing writing through a very close-reading analysis that he does of Phaedrus. From the very beginning, Derrida identifies writing with the term Pharmakon, which is a term that was used by Socrates in Plato's dialogue to referred to texts. This term allows Derrida to provide characteristics to writing that are not very possible, especially when these texts or pharmakon become (an) orphan/s, that is, a pharmakon abandoned by the father of logos, “the speaking subject,” looses its value. 

The author claims that “[w]ithout his father, he would be nothing, but in fact, writing”. Then he goes on to establish a system of opposites constituted by the following categories: good and bad. Of course, the father is placed under the first category, which he calls agathon. Throughout the essay the number of metaphors created to show the weakness of writing is amazing. Thoth is another of the metaphors to represent writing that becomes manifested in the following quote: “It is not in any reality foreign to the 'play of words' that Thoth also participates in plots, perfidious intrigues, conspiracies to usurp the throne” (434). In this scenario the author is claiming that writing is taking over the speech and usurping or replacing it which is presented as something bad. The substitution of the living matter (speech) for what is death (writing). (The essay becomes some type of dramatic play where the good and the bad are fighting against each other to win the throne. And lets remember that the good and the bad are also represented by the father and son relationship, which I think, it might allow for a Freudian reading...) 

Later we are presented with a son-death-writing with no identity and this is why it needs to imitate the father to be able to exist: It becomes an imitation of the father (!) but, at the same time, it becomes its antithesis. (I imagine like an evil clone of an individual). What at one point writing seemed to be a good thing to do (not in this essay, of course), the author is claiming the opposite. He says: “The pharmakon produces a play of appearances which enable it to pass for truth, etc” (437). Writing is external, productive of belief and pure appearance, to sum up, it's bad! (…) 

I think it would be interesting to see what truth means but even if this is an abstract term, the essay does not seem to suggest that the truth can be captured in writing. But I supposed by truth the author is referring to the actual meaning of the message conveyed and this is why it is so important to have the subject to explain it, and not a third person interpreting, which is what really happens with translations... and, maybe, this is also why the author also points out the issue with translating texts....Ok, this can go on.....

Taking the realness away

Myth Is Language

Barthes says that "Myth is language," and looking at it from that perspective, then, if language is a system of signs, in a myth, what would be the equivalent of the signifier and what would be the equivalent of the signified? Now, going back to Saussure, for him a sinifier (the sound) refers to the concept and not to the thing itself, and by a signified, he means the image. Lets looks at the article “Toys”. Barthes says that he want to identify what-goes-without-saying, that is, the ideological  abuse, as he calls it (I'm going to need help here, so feel free to correct me and make suggestions): 

The signifier would be: A little girl playing with dolls (dolls with the ability to walk, eat, drink...)

The signified would be: ...this something ( A little girl playing with dolls) is always entirely socialized, constituted by the myths or the techniques of modern adult life: the Army, Broadcasting, the Post Office, Medicine (miniature instrument-cases, operating theatres for dolls), School, Hair-Styling (driers for permanent-waving), the Air Force (Parachutists), Transport (trains, Citroens, Vedettes, Vespas, petrol-stations), Science (Martian toys). p. 53

French toys always mean something: Imitation. In this case “[t]his is meant to prepare the little girl for the causality of house-keeping, to 'condition' her to her future role as mother” (53).

As Barthes points out in the Preface of this book, myths make Nature indistinguishable from History (social constructs).

Human Experience vs The Experience of a Human 

 

After reading some of the essays included in Mythologies (1957), it got me thinking about the difference between Human Experience and The Experience of a Human (I'm making these up). By human experience I mean experiencing things (life) through a more empirical process, where things that are experienced are not controlled or even expected to happen. The latter, on the other hand, refers to those experiences planned and controlled by the human. For example, traveling. A tourist might plan a trip to BC and s/he might arrive to the city with a “things-to-do list” (an itinerary) in her/his pocket. That is to say, it is a more programmed process of experiencing things. Now, what I think is interesting is that this tourist is going to leave the city with a certain idea about it and to her/him that IS what the city IS about. S/he will provided the meaning to the city based on her/his own experiences. Therefore, the person provides meaning to things (This is also stated in “The Death of the Author”). Now, it seems humans have the freedom to create their own world based on their own interpretation of it. Right? Or is the tourist using the “general semiology of our bourgeois world” to interpret the meaning of the city (10)? Therefore, if this last statement is true, when we experience something, we don't really provide meaning to that experience but we're attributing a meaning that is expected to be attributed. Is this the purpose of the experience of the human, where not only the interpretation is already given, but it is also organized for him/her? In the article “Blue Guide” as well as in the article “Striptease” the ultimate myth seems to be the perpetuation of the idea that the "costumer is always right" allowing to keep alive the industry and a happy consumer...

Althusser...

      Althusser's essay is, as announced in its title, about “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses on the Reproduction of the Conditions of Production”. His essay consists on revising/revisiting Marxist tradition and places special emphasis on the production of means of production. He analyzes reproduction employing the same terminology used by Marx and shows particular interest in discussing the power held by economy and how it influences everything around it to the point of creating a deterministic system dependent on it (society, ideology...). Or on top of it, to use the analogy of the building he gets from Marx to refer to the dynamic between infrastructure, structure ad superstructure: “upper floors could not 'stay up' (in the air) alone, if they did not rest precisely on their base” (135). This is a direct reference to the Marxist Dialectical Materialism and Marx's Levels of Culture Model. Infrastructure is represented, as Althusser clarifies, by “'the unity' of the productive forces and the relation of production,” that is, population, basic biological need, and resources (134). 

 

      He decides to “take the point of view of reproduction ” to analyze Law, State and Ideology to show “the point of view of practice and production on one hand and from that of reproduction on the other” and analyze their basic function (136). In the Marxist tradition the State is referred to as State Apparatus, which is formed by Government, Administration, Army, the Police, the Courts, Prison, etc. but the French philosopher decides to call this “Repressive State Apparatus”(143). And what Althusser calls State Apparatus Ideology (SAI) is “a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialize institutions”: Religious ISA, Educational ISA, the family ISA, the legal ISA, the trade-union ISA, the communications ISA, the cultural ISA (144). They all belong to the private domain in contrast to the Repressive State Apparatus. It is through these 'realities' that the hegemonic ideology prevails and helps to maintain the State Power. By “ideology” the author means “the system of ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group” (158).

…

Ideology has no history
Ideology is nothing insofar as it is a pure dream

Ideology is eternal, exactly like the unconscious

• Ideology represent the imaginary relationship to their real conditions of existence
  • they constitute an illusion
  • they do make allusion to reality
  • they need to be 'interpreted' to discover the reality
    • the is a cause to the imaginary transposition of the real conditions of existence: The cause is the existence of a small number of cynical men who base their domination and exploitation of the 'people' on a falsify representation of the world, which they have imagined to slave other minds by dominating their imaginations

I...Once one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person's dream that is self awareness...” WL