Before the Law (Derrida)

>”Before the Law” is the title of a story. It's first sentence reads: ”Before the Law stands a doorkeeper”. On either side of the invisible line that separates title from text, the first names the text in its entirety, of which it is in sum the proper name and title, the second designates a situation, the site where the character is localized within the internal geography of the story. The former, the title, is before the text and remains external if not to the fiction then to at least to the content of the fictional narration. And yet, although it is outside the fictional narrative or the story that is being told, the title (Before the Law) remains a fiction that likewise bears the signature of the author or a representative of the author.

>The text would be the door, the entrance (Eingang), what the doorkeeper has just closed.As he closes the object, he closes the text. Which, however, closes on nothing. The story Before the Law does not tell or describe anything but itself as text. Not within a specular reflection of some self-referential transparency, but in the unreadability of the text. The text guards itself, that is to say, of its non-identity with itself. It neither arrives nor lets anyone arrive. It is the law, makes the law and leaves the reader before the law.

anderspaulin.com/index.php?/text/before-the-law-derrida-excerpt/

I don't understand Derrida. I mean I understand what he is saying, but everything he says is 100% devoid of content.

That's ok user. You can still pretend like everyone else does.

Just read If on a Winter's Night...

(You) are the 'content,' user. For instance consider this manifestation. When (you) 'break' the law, the law fixes not itself, but 'you,' etc.

Or.. when (you) 'go above the law' who or what is above or 'hanging over' (you)? Answer: the law.

try learning philosophy first

"since the story is supposed to be ununderstandable it would be wrong to give it a title that helps you understand it and the least helpful title would be the first words of the story"?

>I don't understand Derrida.
There's nothing to understand, he says nothing, and takes his time doing it. an obscurant simpleton largely forgotten except for as the occasional joke.

>this is your brain on Veeky Forums

Usually the more obscurant the language, the less intelligent the philosopher. Compare this jackass to Kant. 100X the brain power, but much more understandable language.

So just Wittgenstein tier word games then huh? Hurr language is neat innit

>Wittgenstein tier
gee, thanks user! i like the second instance better because it maintains the positional inside\outside 'relationship' (the joke- if not the 'kafka-esque' reality- is that just as no 'content' is perceived, so there can be no perceptible, or rather 'natural' relationship=POWER) but shifts 'them' up an imaginary 90 degrees.
Word games? Yes. But now prove them false.
After these two instances I began writing further in a notebook. One can dispense too much content.

did I get it right?

Derrida was a mistake.

Wow I wasn't aware of this commentary, thank you! Do you happen to know what Derrida text this quote is excerpted from? And have you read the Kafka story that Derrida refers to? Or the novel The Trial? That obviously would go a long way towards understanding the quote better.

It's so funny to say that Derrida is "100% devoid of content," especially considering the quote that you have chosen, which is of course, all about the lack of content (meaning).

I guess I would start by suggesting that what Derrida is getting at here has more to do with *form* than it does with content. The form of Kafka's "law" (which Derrida interprets as a "text") overrides any and every possible attempt at understanding the concept -- Derrida is simply describing the ways in which this is true, on every level of the text.

I think people think Derrida is really serious and intense because of his erudition but he's actually just super playful, and thinks words are really fun to mess around with. If you don't have a playful sense of language, I can imagine getting frustrated by Derrida.

meant to say "content" instead of "concept"

you're a fool

youre like one of those, gay guys or somethin

erudition?! good lord i think even his biggest supporters would acknowledge hes anything but that. isnt one of his major conclusions that nothing canonical is worth knowing anyway as it has no more value than something somebody just scribbled on a toilet stall

no

don't risk too much, senpai (:

>if a person would argue that a quality is not important that entails that they can't display that quality