Speech and System

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Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997 - Foreign Language Study - 381 pages
In this investigation, creative writing and philosophy are shown to be specific types of language games, distinct from speech as used in communicative interaction between individuals. The author deals with thinking, speech and systems, respectively. (I) Thinking is understood as a soliloquy preceding any kind of creative activity and any kind of writing. The author analyses thinking as a subject's listening to its own voice, with a split between "I" and "me", close to Derrida's notion of "difference" as a condition for the production of meaning. (II) Analyzing - with reference to Benveniste, Austin and Searle - what speech is, the author deduces the so-called "pragmatic subject" (in contrast to the first section's reflective). In its elementary speech act the pragmatic subject does constitute itself in rudimentary ways. (III) In dealing with the product of reflective activity, the author finds the so-called textual inconsistence or logical aporias inherent in any logical or pseudo-logical system to be in line with Goedel's incompleteness theorems, and he rejects the tendency to use deconstruction to understand these aporias, as is usual in Western metaphysics. - The author's philosophical position is closest to that of Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida, but on crucial issues he advances his own ideas on the relationship between speech and writing, also establishing a criticism of metaphysics that may be more radical than what has previously been developed.

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Contents

General Introduction
11
3 Thinking and Speech
17
5 Conclusion
25
3 The Difference Between the Reflective and the Pragmatic Capacity of
31
2 The Reflective and the Pragmatic Subject
41
Intentionality and Creative Production
50
3 NonIntentionality and Unconsciousness
60
3 Translation as Method
74
Identity Thinking and Speech
135
2 Constitution of the Subject in Language
141
4 Richard Ohmann and the Lack of an Illocutionary Component in Literary
149
3 Derridas Deconstruction of the First Investigation
162
4 Deconstruction as Suspension of Theory
172
2 Intentionality in Austins SpeechAct Theory
180
3 Absence Difference and Reiteration in Derrida
184
4 SpeakerIntentionality and SpeechActIntentionality
200

4 Thinking and Deception
88
3 The Diary of a Seducer and Unhappy Love
106
3 The Principle of Generalized Writing and its Limitations
119
Speech and Thinking Enunciation and Reflectivity
122
3 Writing as Playing
128
5 Metaphysics at Every Turn
206
2 Oedipus the King as Example of Construction of Meaning
219
3 The Construction of Meaning and Truth
226
2 The System Ultimately Cannot Justify Itself
232
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About the author (1997)

Peter Bornedal is professor at the American University of Beirut.

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