| It is with great sadness that I note the passing of Jacques Derrida, who died on October 8th, 2004 in a Paris hospital of pancreatic cancer. He was 74 years of age.
"Jacques Derrida, the son of a salesman, was born on July 15 1930 into a Jewish family living in El Biar, in French Algeria. At the age of 10 he was expelled from school after being told by a teacher that "French culture is not made for little Jews". He then attended a Jewish lycee, where he was a disruptive but gifted student and dreamed of becoming a footballer."telegraph.co.uk 11/10/02 |
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Works Cited (in order of appearance).
Jacques Derrida:
"Semiology and Grammatology: an Interview with Julia Kristeva". In: “Positions”, by Jacques Derrida; translated by Alan Bass. Copyright 1981 by The
Scott Watson:
“Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of Modern Canadian Landscape Painting”, in “Semiotext[e]
Gilles Deleuze:
“Proust and Signs”, copyright 2000 by the Regents of the
Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari:
“What Is Philosophy”, translation copyright 1994 by Columbia University Press.
Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari:
“A Thousand Plateaus”, copyright 1987 by the University of Minnesota Press.
Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari:
“Anti-Oedipus”, English translation copyright 1977 by Viking Penguin Inc.
Gilles Deleuze:
L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, avec Claire Parnet
(Gilles Deleuze's ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet)
Directed by Pierre-André Boutang (1996)
Overview prepared by Charles J. Stivale, Romance Languages and Literature, Wayne State University.
http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/D-G/ABCs.html
Gilles Deleuze:“Bergsonism”, copyright 1988 by Urzone, Inc.
Gilles Deleuze:
“Difference and Repetition”, translated by Paul Patton. English translation copyright 1994 by The Athlone Press Limited.
“Language, Thought, & Reality”, copyright 1956 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
webmaster@OriginOfWriting.com
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http://www.powerretouche.com/index.htm
Additional material on the topic of "The Origin of Writing" can be found at my first website, which is located at:
http://www.geocities.com/loncayeway/index1.html
This site includes (among other things):
- "Interpreting Non-Metrical Image Writing", which presents a conversion of semiological concepts (as outlined in Felix Guattari's "The Role of the Signifier in the Institution", from MOLECULAR REVOLUTION) into grammatological concepts (which are derived in part from Deleuze/Guattari's "What Is Philosophy"); located at:
http://www.geocities.com/loncayeway/AAAnMET2.html
- an application of my interpretive methodology, which is used to reconstruct a conceptual persona (using virtual points to define diagrammatic features, and partial objects to define intensive ordinates... which, taken together, define the 'substance of being' of the person who produced the example of non-metrical image writing so examined); located at:
http://www.geocities.com/loncayeway/AAAAnMET.html
- and, "Bute Inlet, 1861: What Actually Happened?", which investigates a previously undocumented atrocity through which an entire Aboriginal village just disappeared... with some nasty implications regarding a Northwest Coast-wide smallpox epidemic the following year; located at:
http://www.geocities.com/loncayeway/AAAbute.html
Since my old web site was constructed on a one-hour-per-day basis over the course of one year+, it tends to be a bit "bloggy" in character. I will eventually update and transfer the information from that site to this one; but for now, if you'd like to visit it, you can 'cut and paste' the links I've supplied into your browser's address bar.
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"We humans certainly have a passion for stringing things together: words into sentences, notes into melodies, steps into dances, narratives into games with rules of procedure. Might stringing things together be a core facility of the brain, one commonly useful to language, storytelling, planning, games and ethics? If so, natural selection for any of these talents might augment their their shared neural machinery, so that an improved knack for syntactical sentences would automatically expand planning abilities, too. Such carryover is what Charles Darwin called functional change in anatomic continuity, distinguishing it from gradual adaptation...
"As improbable as the idea initially seems, the brain's planning of ballistic movements may have once promoted language, music, and intelligence. Ballistic movements are extremely rapid actions of the limbs that, one initiated, cannot be modified. Striking a nail with a hammer is an example... These movements are integral to toolmaking and hunting, which in some settings were probably important additions to hominids' basic survival strategies...
"For sudden limb movements lasting less than one eighth of a second, feedback corrections are largely ineffective because reaction times are too long. The brain has to determine every detail of the movement in advance, as though it were silently punching a roll of music for a player piano...
"Hammering requires scheduling the exact sequence of activation for dozens of muscles...
"If mouth movements rely on the same core facility for sequencing that ballistic hand movements do, then enhancement in language skills might improve dexterity, and vice versa."
William H. Calvin, "The Emergence of Intelligence": pages 88-89 in 'Becoming Human: Evolution and the Rise of Intelligence'; Scientific American Special Edition, Volume 16, Number 2, 2006.