Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 11:28 AM PST

In one of the first scenes, Derrida is crossing the street. The camera man filming him trips and Derrida steadies him, looking directly at the camera. He remarks that it is similar to a philosopher staring at the stars who falls in a hole. Discuss.

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 11:38 AM PST

Research:
Find some web sites about deconstruction. Then post a link here.

Discussion:
Beneath the link, give a short review of the site and a definition of deconstruction.

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 11:39 AM PST

Discuss Derrida's obsession with falsity and artificiality. What does this have to do with art in general?

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 7:02 PM PST

A philosopher stares into the stars becuase he questions the heavens about interworkings and purposes of life. Though the heavens might not necessarily directly refer to God, they are often viewed in refrence to the ultimate power or reference of thigs. The stars are the focus of the philosopher and they also give the philosopher meaning; without the stars (structure to life, wonderment, purpose,creation) the philosoher would have nothing to philosophize. His focus on the stars would cause him loose sight of his surroundings and thus fall, making him even farther from the stars.

The camera man was much the same way. By looking at the "star" of his show, Derrida, he isn't paying attention to his surroundings, and so he trips. By tripping he ruins the movie by jolting the picutre and becoming metaphysical. He moves away from the thing that gives him purpose as a filmaker by tripping.

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 7:23 PM PST

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction

Camile Paglia would like some of the references in this article which makes it a perfect supplement to our English class.

Apparently it is impossible to define deconstruction because it wants to get out of everything? It is a specific type of analytical reading. but it also appears to a philoslophy.

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 7:25 PM PST

i can't hyperlink. If you really wanna look at the wikipedia cite, you can make the effort of tying it.

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 7:39 PM PST

Derrida did not want to mistake reality with fiction. He did not want his viewers to think he was doing/saying something real so he told us it was artificial. (I was a little confused about the distinction he wanted to make. I thought it was distinguishing the documentary from real life or something like that, but that was probibly just a clever twist of the film editor).

Art is a depiction of something else. It cannot be original; therefore, it will always be fake. It can reveal truth, but it will never be truth.

Perhaps Derrida was saying that deconstruction (or his philosophy in general) are not truth themselves, but they are trying to depict truth and reveal it to others. This would be why it is so hard to define.

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 7:43 PM PST

"In the context of religious studies Paul Ricoeur difines decstruction as a way of uncovering the questions behind the anwsers of a text of tradition." -- This makes more sense to me than the other definitions from the link.

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 10:31 PM PST

The act of tripping is one of the basic facts of life. Some people trip because they are distracted; others because they are just generally uncooridated. Most all of us have had or continue to have this experince. It is for this reason most people might miss this little exhibition; howevor there are the astute few (Mr. Helms, Derrida, and others)who can turn it in to a parallel of man's inability to balance the search for divine revelation with basic survival.

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 10:38 PM PST

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Jacques%20Derrida%20-%20LAT%20page.htm

We are living in the times of another literary genious. Derrida has uncovered one of the major inherent truths of all literature. All authors contradict themselves.

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 10:44 PM PST

At one point Derrida references how people in America walk like they are being filmed. In some sense all of our actions are inhibited by the thought we are being watched by someone or something. It goes back to the whole "If a tree falls in a forest..." issue. We can never truly re-create anything in it's entirety accurately. Our thoughts taint the truth before it is even communicated or acted upon.

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 11:19 PM PST

http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/deconstruction.html

Too lazy to hyperlink it..

Derrida specifically says that "Deconstruction is inventive or it is nothing at all" and that "deconstruction loses nothing from admitting that it is impossible".
Maybe deconstructionism is not possible, that's ok. The point is, is that is already there, whether is it possible for us to use it or not.

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - 11:27 PM PST

I really have no thoughts about the whole philosopher staring at the stars who falls in a hole except that, people who are philosophers seem to hate being boxed in. They're stuck in a hole staring up and at the stars, wondering why they are in that stupid hole in the first place.
Ok, what I really wanted to bring up is that Derrida actually speaks directally to the camera man. Derrida is trying to make a point that this is a video! It's not like some reality tv show, where the people pretend there aren't cameras. It's the whole meta-textual thing again. He's pointing out within the video, that this is a video.

Friday, 17 March 2006 - 12:34 AM PST

I have absolutely no idea how to post a linking device of any sort...so here is the address...http://jamesfaulconer.byu.edu/deconstr.htm

Deconstruction is not the same thing as “destruction”. It’s a term used to describe a specific literary analysis method where the reader picks apart the text looking to find its binary oppositions. Over the course of time the meanings and interpretations of words or whatnot are altered, so as a result there can be no such thing as a single signification, proving that all texts in some way are contradictory.

Friday, 17 March 2006 - 12:45 AM PST

While art is at times intended to reflect a specific event, person, culture, ex. in the end every form of art, from literature to painting, in reality will always reflect more about it’s creator than it will the original subject matter. The creator (in this case the film makers, editors, cinematographers and so on) get to decide which parts of reality to reveal, “Which Jacques Derrida” they want to present to the public. They expose what they feel people should ultimately see and except as the “truth” about Derrida. In that sense all art is in some way false/artificial because it presents a single “truth” fashioned merely by one individual’s perception.

Friday, 17 March 2006 - 8:38 AM PST

metaphysical? do you mean metatextual?

Friday, 17 March 2006 - 8:51 AM PST

I think what Derrida is telling us here is that instead of focusing on him and his life in a philisophical context, we should also be wary of our own lifes and the philisophical theories we can pull from it. Derrida is here making himself to be somewhat of a knowledge super "star" that we all gaze upon. He knows of the danger of neglecting the wisdom we can reap from our own lives while too closely observing him.

Friday, 17 March 2006 - 8:56 AM PST

http://merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deconstruction

a method of literary criticism that assumes language refers only to itself rather than to an extratextual reality, that asserts multiple conflicting interpretations of a text, and that bases such interpretations on the philosophical, political, or social implications of the use of language in the text rather than on the author's intention

Friday, 17 March 2006 - 9:28 AM PST

Derrida has spent his entire life seeking the meaning of truth and virtue. So naturally he has sorted through a great deal of falsehood and artificialness. Art itself is the essence of truth expressed throgh the artist, if it's purest form. Therefore the only absolute truth can come from within one's own self.

Friday, 17 March 2006 - 10:01 AM PST

I think Derrida talked about the philospher story just because of the irony. The philosopher is distracted and so is the camera man. Both are looking at the stars, although the star who the cameraman is looking at is just Derrida, the star of the film. Maybe Derrida mentions this because he is still feeling akward about the movie, and doesnt think people should distract themselves by looking at him.

Friday, 17 March 2006 - 10:24 AM PST

http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/EngLit/ugrad/hons/theory/Ten%20Ways.htm

This website goes over the ten ways you can look at deconstruction, but now I'm just more confused. It talked about books, like, everything, nothing has frames. Therefor, if there are no frames, there is no metatextual context. To call it metatextual would be displacement. It also talked about deconstruction being the study of ghosts, it having two stages, and other things. Deconstruction isnt tearing soemthing down, or destroying it, deconstruction is always there, there is nothing outside of the text. If someone is reading a text, they can only understand what the text means, it's impossible not to. ahh, I'm just very confused.

Friday, 17 March 2006 - 10:30 AM PST

I'm not sure where this question is coming from, but perhaps this has something to do with Derrida talking about how he wears pajamas in his house usually. In one scene he is adressing a bunch of people and talking about how usually biographies are not truthfull because they're written after , from an outside source. This leads the viewer to assume that Derrida, the biography, is completely truthful and that all you see on the screen is what his life is exactly. But then in the next scene, Derrida talks about how the documentary isnt even true, because usually when he's at home, he walks around in pajamas and a bathrobe. Is there any escape from the falsity of art?

Tuesday, 21 March 2006 - 2:50 AM PST

Perhaps philosophers are so busy staring up at the stars trying to discover the meaning of this life they forget to see the obvious, therefore missing the very thing they were searching for...I'm pretty sure that makes sense.

Wednesday, 12 April 2006 - 8:42 PM PDT

http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lectures/derrida/deconstruction.html

This site has a compilation of quotes and their references that serve as an intro to deconstruction. Also the link on Derrida explains more about how the theory was developed, the cirlce of philosophies with which it is connected and how it is linked with the post-modern movement.

Wednesday, 12 April 2006 - 9:26 PM PDT

From what Derrida says we might conclude that he thinks the the camera man might be better off if he were focused on where he was going instead of focusing on the "star" of his film. Yet this comment does not make those filming Derrida turn away from trying to understand a man with his eyes on the stars. In the same way that the philosopher continues his pursuit of higher knowledge and if the stars were to tell him to look at the little things, he would simply be using them to see something greater.

Wednesday, 12 April 2006 - 9:28 PM PDT

http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lectures/derrida/deconstruction.html

This site has a compilation of quotes and their references that serve as an intro to deconstruction. Also the link on Derrida explains more about how the theory was developed, the cirlce of philosophies with which it is connected and how it is linked with the post-modern movement.

P.S. sorry i posted this twice.

Monday, 8 May 2006 - 5:41 PM PDT

When Derrida references falsity and warns us about something not being real he has a good point! No he’s not just obsessed for no good reason, what he means is that the mode of “expression” we observe in art; whether it be a painting, sculpture or any form of literature; is the reality of it. Most people approach art and language as a way of getting to reality, of expressing reality and yet for us the only “real” things we can know in our lives is always a form of “text” or language. Thus, “there is nothing outside the text” and ergo, art is reality.