More on Derrida's playful "passage between opposites"

by Steve Rodgers

To illustrate this further, I've chosen two passages: one from Chapter 3 of "Plato's Pharmacy," the other from the "Envois" to The Post Card. In these passages Derrida takes two things that seem diametrically opposed and then meshes them together. He shows us how, despite that they seem disconnected, and despite that one seems to have clearly come before the other, they are actually constantly at play with one another: they substitute for each other, add to each other, and become each other.

In the section from "Plato's Pharmacy," Derrida does a couple things: he parses out, quite rigorously, the similarities between Thoth, the god of writing in Egyptian myth, and Theuth from Plato's story in Phaedrus; and he shows how Thoth, by filling in for or even supplanting his father Ra (substitution), and by appropriating all his father's attributes (addition), becomes "his father, his son, and himself" ("Dissemination" 93).

Here Derrida's game is to collapse a series of binaries: Theuth and his father, and by implication, writing and speech; Plato's story and the Egyptian myth, and by implication, philosophy and mythology. Hence, a passage between opposites, rigorously explained.

He plays the same game in the passage from "Envois" to The Post Card. Inspired by a post card which shows Socrates writing at a table and Plato standing behind dictating to him (the reverse of what we'd expect), Derrida plays out all its implications--in fragments of letters written on the backs of postcards (written to whom, we have no idea. to us?).

In the passage Derrida suggests that maybe, in some way, Plato has called upon Socrates's words, summoned them, and as the post card suggests, dictated them--to himself. Maybe Plato has, in Derrida's words, "'sent' himself" Socrates (490). This is a confusing idea, and it sends us in circles. Again, Derrida intends it to. What he's suggesting is that maybe the way we customarily and unquestioningly see things--Socrates precedes Plato and "speaks to" him, Plato "writes" what Socrates says; the letter sender precedes the letter receiver; and the subject, "S.," acts on and comes before the predicate, "p."--maybe all this needs to be challenged or reversed. Here is yet another passage between opposites, a message that travels in both directions or, when "S." is "p.," travels no where at all.

It's easy to see how the passage between opposites in "Plato's Pharmacy" is rigorously argued, but in the "Envois" the argument is more veiled, less linear, and thus it works its magic on us in a slightly different way. But it is an argument about philosophy, not simply a series of free-associative fantasies about philosophers as Rorty would have us believe. And, I would argue, the "Envois" is not as intimately personal as Rorty would have it, either. There is some pedagogic or public use to be made of it; Derrida has, after all, "sent" it to us, even indirectly, and maybe we have "called" it as well--maybe we have "sent ourselves Derrida."

Derrida's argument, however, takes time to coalesce into a "point," it comes at us from many angles, from underneath, slowly and in fragments. But these many fragments, when seen as a whole, do have an inherent logic to them--not just artistic logic (how should I arrange this so that it works aesthetically?), but philosophical logic as well (how can I get my point across in a new way?).

Here, one could argue that many artists do in fact organize their works with a philosophical, pedagogic, or political purpose in mind. This, I think, is what Derrida wants us to realize. Thus, the distinction between philosophy and literature collapses even further.

These two passages, then, demonstrate a form of communication, a communication of play, with play, in play, that not only crosses over certain conceptual walls, but tears them down. We're left asking ourselves (re-asking ourselves) what these things really are and which of them came first after all. And yet, in both sections, Derrida, in a slightly different manner, logically, carefully--methodically, I'd say--opens up this world of play to us.