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Personality in Letters

Last weekend saw the passing of French philosopher Jacques Derrida; father of the critical strategy known as deconstruction. While there have been numerous interpretations and applications of deconstruction within many areas of activity, at this moment I would like to share a personal reverie rather than engage in bad philosophy.

Upon arriving in New York, one of my frequent haunts was the comparative literature section in St. Mark’s Bookshop. When I first flipped through Derrida’s Of Grammatology, I landed on a footnote for the section on the rebus which had great resonance in my junior designer soul. In this note, I saw the origins of our typophilia, particular assesments of various fonts, and other ‘phantasies’ of composition. I also recognized in it a certain correspondence with my own approach to the Sacred Mysteries of Layout.

Appropriately for a book on deconstruction, it was a quotation; written not by Derrida, but the Austrian psychoanalyst Melanie Klein.

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For Fritz, when he was writing, the lines meant roads, and the letters ride on motor-bicycles — on the pen — upon them. For instance, ‘i’ and ‘e’ ride together on a motor-bicycle that is usually driven by the ‘i’ and they love one another with a tenderness quite unknown in the real world. Because they always ride with one another they become so alike that there is hardly any difference between them, for the beginning and the end — he was talking of the small Latin alphabet — of ‘i’ and ‘e’ are the same, the Gothic letter ‘i’ and ‘e’ he explained that they also ride on a motor-bicycle, and that is is only a difference like another make of bicycle that the ‘e’ has a little box instead of the hole in the Latin ‘e’. The ‘i’s are skillful, distinguished and clever, have many pointed weapons, and live in caves, between which, however, there are also mountains, gardens and harbours. They represent the penis, and their path coitus. On the other hand, the ‘l’s are represented as stupid, clumsy, lazy and dirty. They live in caves under the earth. In ‘L’-town dirt and paper gather in the streets, in the little ‘filthy’ houses they mix with water a dyestuff brought in ‘i’-land and drink and sell this as wine. they cannot walk properly and cannot dig because they hold the spade upside down, etc. It became evident that the ‘l’s represented faeces. Numerous phantasies were concerned with other letters also. Thus, instead of the double ‘s’, he always wrote only one, until a phantasy afforded the explanation and solution of this inhibition. The one ‘s’ was himself, the other his father. They were to embark together on a motor-boat, for the pen was also a boat, the copy-book a lake. The ‘s’ that was himself got into the boat that belonged to the other ‘s’ and sailed away in it quickly upon the lake. This was the reason why he did not write the two ‘s’s’ together. His frequent use of ordinary ‘s’ in place of a long one proved to be determined by the fact that the part of the long ‘s’ that was thus left out was for him as though one were to take away a person’s nose.’ This mistake proved to be determined by the castration-father and disappeared after this interpretation.

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There is a French verb (almost spelled the same), dérider, which can translate to ‘to cheer up’. Often, when I overhear someone speak of ‘deconstructing typography’, I think of this passage and smile.

Or, to use some beginner French in making a pun, je me dérrida.

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PUBLISHED ON Oct.15.2004 BY m. kingsley
WITH COMMENTS
Comments
debbie millman’s comment is:

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On Oct.15.2004 at 09:44 AM
marian’s comment is:

I have never in my life looked at typography that way, but I'm glad someone did—that is just the most delightful passage, which is causing me to look suspisciously at these letterforms even as i type.

I have never read Derrida, but one day I will.

On Oct.15.2004 at 10:59 AM
Bradley’s comment is:

Very interesting...

But what of Japanese characters, Chinese calligraphy, Greek letterforms, Arabic or Russian writing? Surely I'm missing a few.

I for one would like to see more interest in the typography of cultures that don't use Roman characters. Not that I take any issues with this post, it just made me think that our perspective tends to be quite western.

On Oct.15.2004 at 12:03 PM
Armin’s comment is:

> I for one would like to see more interest in the typography of cultures that don't use Roman characters.

Bradley, not wanting to pick a fight or be oppositional, just curious… but, what would that interest lead to? Other than some fancy vertically stacked typography (eg).

On Oct.15.2004 at 12:31 PM
M Kingsley’s comment is:

>Not that I take any issues with this post, it just made me think that our perspective tends to be quite western.

Of Grammatology is a long riff on the work of Rousseau, so yes, it is focused on conditions of the West. There is some writing out there which does focus on aspects of Eastern culture — sections of the Zone magazine series, for example — but you have to dig around a bit.

Derrida ends the book with a quotation from Rousseau:

...the dreams of a bad night are given to us a philosophy. You will say I too am a dreamer; I admit it, but I do what others fail to do, I give my dreams as dreams, and leave the reader to discover whether there is anything in them which may prove useful to those who are awake.

...which sounds a bit Vedic to me. Perhaps aspects of Western thought are translatable and vice versa.

On Oct.15.2004 at 12:42 PM
ams’s comment is:

Bradly,

Is your interest in translated non-Western "deconstructions" of non-Latin characters? I'd be interested to read some of this as well.

Or in Western discussions of non-Western writing systems.

Pound believed that Chinese characters were ideal for writing poetry because of the multi-layered meanings in the ideograms. Yes, his translations have been debunked to an extent, but still, his interest was on poetry (not grammar or litteral translation) and reading and writing poetry that exceeds the confines of latin characters.

On Oct.15.2004 at 02:20 PM
ps’s comment is:

nice post mr. kingsley,

maybe a good passage to include in presentations when selling typographic solutions. sure would be interesting to see a client's reaction.

the passing of derrida sure brought back memories of endless discussions with good friends. thanks for the post.

On Oct.15.2004 at 03:12 PM
Bradley’s comment is:

Bradley, not wanting to pick a fight or be oppositional, just curious… but, what would that interest lead to? Other than some fancy vertically stacked typography

Well, that'd be cool...

Actually, that's the whole point--I don't really know. Yet. I should take a trip to Hong Kong (even though there's more partying in Iceland, and the women are more attractive too) or Tokyo and see how they use type. If there's anything akin to a calligraphic Ray Gun or something. I dunno. Just speculating.

On Oct.15.2004 at 05:20 PM
Tom Gleason’s comment is:

...the dreams of a bad night are given to us a philosophy. You will say I too am a dreamer; I admit it, but I do what others fail to do, I give my dreams as dreams, and leave the reader to discover whether there is anything in them which may prove useful to those who are awake.

Very nice. Funny, I was just admiring that quote before I went to go see Habermas' talk on Friday, which dealt with the Kantian dream of cosmopolitan law.

It's actually an inversion of the Eastern view that I am familiar with, which is that we are all asleep and need to become Awakened. The meaning is the same, though.

On Oct.18.2004 at 01:40 AM
KevinHopp’s comment is:

I was rather excited to read this passage, but I ran out of steam....

Roman letterform is one of the least expressive forms to date. It's self-evident when someone subjectively explains their general interpretation in such a fantasy way. Although I appreciate the creative writing, I just feel it's rather silly. It's unfortunate that we have to make up stories regarding the letterforms rather than the letterforms themselves telling us a story.

So I agree with Bradley, writing about Roman letterform can only reach a certain plateau of interest, and in this case truth. This writing is from someone's mind, not a certain truth, and therefore, Armin, Bradley has a strong point. However he does miss one thing....these aren't Western thoughts or perspectives, the passage is overflowing with fiction, it's independent of anything factual and rational.

On Oct.24.2004 at 11:57 AM
Dyske’s comment is:

“I for one would like to see more interest in the typography of cultures that don't use Roman characters. Not that I take any issues with this post, it just made me think that our perspective tends to be quite western.”

I was born in Japan and I speak Japanese. What is interesting is that ever since I started reading Derrida, I’ve always felt that his perspectives are quite Eastern. I was puzzled by the fact that no one talked about the similarities between his philosophy and that of the East, but I eventually found some philosophers who did.

In fact, when Derrida visited Japan, he was told by Japanese philosophers that there is nothing to deconstruct in Japan, because everything has always already been deconstructed there.

Because of this, Derrida’s philosophy has always felt quite familiar to me. The only difficult part of reading his books is the references he makes to the entire edifice of Western philosophy. (To be realistic, one cannot simply pick up a copy of his book and understand what he is saying without studying the entire history of Western philosophy, especially the Continental.)

Another philosopher I felt familiar with is Ludwig Wittgenstein. With him, I have found many analogies between his philosophy and Zen. And, I also found a great book called “Wittgenstein and Derrida” by Henry Staten. It is a thorough analysis of where they are similar and different.

There is also a great book by another French Poststructuralist, Roland Barthes, called “Empire of Signs”. It is his analysis of Japanese culture. It’s an interesting read if you want to learn the fundamental differences between the East and the West.

Although I’m not sure what the connection is between Melanie Klein’s quote and Derrida, his perspective for me is quite Eastern.

However, this can become quite confusing because the popular interpretation of what Deconstruction is, has very little to do with what it actually is. Do Japanese designers disfigure their typefaces, or set the type in a cryptic fashion? Yes, they do, but Deconstruction as in the style that became popular in the 90’s has very little to do with Derrida’s Deconstruction. So, it gets quite confusing when discussing this.

On Nov.06.2004 at 07:33 PM
Tom Gleason’s comment is:

I’ve always felt that his perspectives are quite Eastern.

You might be interested in the book "Nothingness and Emptiness- A Buddhist Engagement with the Ontology of Jean-Paul Sartre" by Steven W. Laycock. It is beautifully (though very "densely") written, and is a good example of philosophy that bridges Eastern and Western discourses. Derridean differance is compared to sunyata (emptiness) a few times.

I too often wonder why the similarities aren't brought up. In Madhyamika I see the beginning and end of philosophy, and often think of Occidental philosophy as simply an effort in translation and adaptation. Ever since Schopenhauer's appreciation of Buddhism, you can see through Nietzche, Heidegger, Derrida, etc. a more or less covert revival of many Buddhist concepts.

Coming from a deep study of Madhyamika, I understand the resonance that Derrida would have with you. I felt the same way, even though I couldn't really read his work for a long time. Only after an extensive familiarization with western philosophy am I beginning to be able to read him, but he always says what I would have expected him to be saying.

Deconstruction as a visual style has been co-opted and doesn't seem to have any significant potential for improving our understanding, but the real relevance of deconstruction (as a mode of critique) lives on. The realization of the "emptiness of emptiness" or the deconstruction of deconstruction is becoming apparent in design discourse in, for example, Experimental Jetset's "relative absolutism" (as opposed to "absolute relativism") and in my own work toward a "neomodern" philosophy of design, which is concerned with finding new ground for rationality when all ground seems to have been destroyed. Here, moving through the linguistic/postmodern turn, I find the most interesting insights in the work of Juergen Habermas, who deals, as designers also should, with salvaging rationality in a postmetaphysical world.

On Nov.06.2004 at 11:04 PM