Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

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180 I. Munday To show how Derrida provides a critique of phonocentrism and logocentrism, it will be helpful at this point to introduce Saussure and his theory of the linguistic sign. The sign is made up of the signifier – an ‘acoustic image’, and the signified – a concept. Language is a structure made up of signs. For Saussure, the signifier is in an arbitrary relationship with the signified – there is nothing ‘dogish’ about the word ‘dog’. Language is structured according to differences – cat is different from bat by one letter and this difference in the signifier leads to two completely different signifieds. It should be noted that Saussure’s theory is clearly phonocentric. In every case, the voice is closest to the signified, whether it is determined strictly as sense (thought or lived) or more loosely as thing. All signifiers, and first and foremost the written signifier, are derivative with regard to what would wed the voice indissolubly to the mind or to the thought of the signified sense, indeed to the thing itself ...(ibid.) For Saussure, the signified belongs to/is located in the mind. Because the voice seems more immediately connected to our thoughts, it is closer to the signified. Consequently, the ‘notion of the sign always implies within itself the distinction between signifier and signified, even if, as Saussure argues, they are distinguished simply as the two faces of one and the same leaf. This notion remains therefore within the heritage of that logocentrism which is also a phonocentrism: absolute proximity of voice and being, of voice and the ideality of meaning’ (ibid., p. 12). Derrida’s reading of Saussure is not wholly critical. He agrees with Saussure that the linguistic sign is arbitrary, but argues that Saussure fails to account for the implications of this. Having seen that there is nothing dogish about the word dog, Saussure turns away from the more radical possibilities that accompany this recognition and turns towards the logocentric assumption that there is some fullness of meaning that exists behind the sign, which is then embodied in speech. Derrida argues that if we take Saussure’s argument to its logical conclusion, then the arbitrariness demonstrated by the latter exposes a dislocation, a fundamental otherness that characterises the relationship between the mark of the signifier and the ‘content’ of the signified – in this sense the signified is in an original sense, absent from the mark. To go one stage further, if we can only think in words, and yet our words as referents bear no necessary relationship to their meaning, then the logocentric hierarchy (thoughts – spoken words – writing as supplement) is in a sense inverted. It would seem that the mark comes first. If we take this logical reordering seriously then it would seem that ‘full presence’ is in fact an illusory effect of language/something produced by language. Meaning is not out there waiting to be worded. Rather, words as they come into being word the world. Consequently, the signifier does not represent the signified, but brings it into ‘presence’, into being as an effect. Therefore, the figure of the linguistic sign (with its unity linking signifier and signified) is no longer adequate to the task of understanding how language works and Derrida replaces it with the ‘mark’. The ‘mark’ is an indicator of absence rather than presence. It exists in the form of the trace, the graphic representation of the word prior to its signification. The account as it has so far been developed strips language of its otherness in regards to metaphysical/logocentric truth. Truth as such is produced by language
12 Performativity, Statistics and Bloody Words 181 rather than being anterior to it. Therefore, notions of difference understood in essentialist terms have been undermined, as truth must now be conceived of as a linguistic ‘performance’ of some kind. Let us briefly return to Saussure. As we have seen Saussure locates difference in accordance with the distinction between different signifiers and their related ‘signifieds’. Once we see that these differences no longer reflect some metaphysical ordering then difference must be understood as something internal to language. Words/concepts differ as effects of language. Therefore, what a mark/word is depends upon all the other marks/words that it is not. Consequently, every word is ‘haunted’ by what it is not – and must therefore in one sense be radically dislocated and ‘other’ to itself. Derrida refers to this general difference, prior to all subsequent differences as differance. The difference between difference and differance only works in French because in that language the distinction is inaudible. In choosing to spell the word differently, Derrida is making a point about the priorness of writing (conceived of in the new way described earlier). So far we have considered a synchronic picture of language. The other dimension of differance can only be accounted for if we move beyond this to a diachronic picture of language in use. As Derrida notes, for words to mean anything at all they have to be repeatable and repeated, iterable and reiterated, they have to be ‘used’ and used over time. For Derrida, words are subject to an internal force and movement. It is not the case that any single context determines the force of words. Rather, an unlimited number of possible contexts are internal to the words themselves. Therefore, the word or concept is never at one with itself, it is always other to itself. Derrida insists that he is not referring to the polysemy of language but its iterability. If we perceive the forces in language to be external, then the context determines meaning. By showing that words carry their contexts with them, Derrida demonstrates that the fullness and completeness, the presence ascribed to the speech situation is never fully realised; never mind the force of the present context, the words will not allow it: ... a written sign carries with it a force that breaks with its context, that is, with the collectivity of presences organizing the moment of its inscription. This breaking force (force de rupture) is not an accidental predicate but the very structure of the written text... by virtue of its essential iterability, a written syntagma can always be detached from the chain in which it is inserted or given without causing it to lose all possibility of functioning, if not all possibility of ‘communicating’ precisely. One can perhaps come to recognise other possibilities in it by grafting it onto other chains. No context can entirely enclose it. Nor any code, the code here being both the possibility and impossibility of writing, of its essential iterability (repetition/alterity). (Derrida, 1988, p.9) 12.4 Language, Numbers and Statistics Having provided a short account of Derrida’s philosophy of language, I now want to explore the role of statistics in performativity more directly and the ways in which the utilisation of statistics involves doing something with words. Numbers (and this is something we possibly forget) are words and moreover they are iterable – we
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Educational Research: The Ethics an
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Earlier Volumes in this Series Educ
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viii Contents 10 The Good, the Beau
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42 M. Depaepe Schneider, J. (2010).
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44 J.J.H. Dekker (see Section 4.4).
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46 J.J.H. Dekker from their own par
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48 J.J.H. Dekker a cohort study tha
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