Summary:
Jacques Derrida's essay "Structure, Sign and Play" deals with the relationship between structure sign and play and how they interconnect with language.
Noncenter[losscenter] By: Omer Zalmanowitz
Response prompt on Jacques Derrida
How to determine something not to exist, or its nonexistence other than the loss of its existence? How to determine history other than being an intermediary between two presents? How to determine nature and culture simultaneously, since opposition exists between both, how to bridge their opposites into a mutual toleration"
Regarding Structure, sign, and play, three elements in various settings; Structure: thinking about structure, structurality of structure, constitution of structure; Play: the play of repetition, and the repetition of play; Sign: Concepts of signs. Take a myth, or a mythology, or a mythopoetic, first, anything can be ad infinitum, and either too long or too brief; regarding the myth itself, its structure can be itself infinite, or too long or too brief, as well as the sign of myth can be infinite or finite, as well as play can be the same. The structure of a myth can be it falling into a template, a draft, a code, a mannerism, a way to work within language, or the fact of their reciprocity. In fact, sign and play can be in that position as well, the codes of language, signs, can be translated from myth to myth, thus being of symbolic value, representing perhaps a face value, or perhaps concrete point from which to proceed hither and thither. The sign supplements, and the sign concurs movement, as play does as well. Play moves as well, play can be transmuted, and play can be amplified, play creates presence and the disruption of presence. These three elements perhaps can befall a great occurrence: they become similar, and the way they become similar is by a remarkably small number of sentences? if one sentence which is part of structure, also a part of sign, and also a part of play, overlaps the lot of them, this sentence binds them, thus makes them part of the same whole, and relates them to one another. In the infinite field there is a finite play. Within sum of language there are structures and signs and play. Or in structures, signs and play there is language.
Absence- the three concepts can be viewed in the aid of absence. Let structure be a center, let sign be a subject, let play be an author. Absence of center is absence of subject is absence of author. In this light, all three elements are somewhat interrelated.
Be it that in music, the audience are the silent performers; be it that in writing the readers are the silent authors. About de-center, or non-center or loss center, and center elsewhere, as much about unnamable proclaiming birth, and as much about species of nonspecies, and mainly about totalization: center of totality, whilst 'totality has its center elsewhere'.
This is the complete article, containing 468 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
