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Example research essay topic: Critical Theory Western Philosophy - 1,309 words

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Discovering hypertext radically altered my perspective and perception of Jacques Derrida's work. Derrida's writing was not unfamiliar to me before this event but the texts were often difficult to read or un graspable. I had read about resistance to Derrida's honorary doctorate from Cambridge University in 1992, which provoked a strong response in me. I really wanted this man (whom I knew hardly anything about) to get his honorary doctorate and shove it right up the establishments derrire. I duly aligned myself (in a rather distorted form of identification) with the apparently disenfranchised and I have wanted to love this mans work ever since. Deconstruction as a concept was formally introduced to me at undergraduate level, along with logo centrism, difference and sous rate.

I am going to discuss these Derridean terms in relation to hypertext and their meaning in relation to me the beginning of my universe, as I know it. I will argue that the convergence of hypertext and Derrida in contemporary critical theory offers interesting possibilities for the reconstruction of sexual difference in this feminist project. I will outline hypertext as a concept before I advance a number of connections between Derrida, hypertext and feminism. The Derridean text that provides the main focus for this paper, which I will link to my analysis of hypertext, is Circumfession in Derrida base by Geoffrey Bennington (1993). There are several texts by Derrida, which arguably link more obviously to the concept of hypertext and its ability to demonstrate critical theory.

I will elucidate this point about critical theory as I work through the analysis of hypertext. Choosing Circumfession as the primary text for this paper is connected partly to the desire I expressed earlier to love this mans work. The expression of love in Circumfession was a theme that I found compelling and compulsive, to the exclusion of other Derridean texts. Circumfession invited my engagement and attention rather than a detached and clinical investigation of the material.

This was a roller coaster ride of an experience that moved, and moved me, in different ways and at varying intervals between the words, but always in a circular motion. It is the circular theme (s) and movement in Derrida's narrative that I want to explore. Hypertext and Derrida do not seem out of place in the same sentence; let me explain this statement. George Landow (1993) eulogizes a hyper textual experience that has yet to be widely actualized outside of a limited number of academic and corporate institutions. Basically, hypertext is computer generated and computer mediated, multi linear writing and publication that enables electronic links with other sites of information.

I am not talking about the World Wide Web (WWW) here; hypertext, as Landow sells his product, is a rarity that incorporates bi-directional linking and avoids the dilemmas of dangling links. Many students and users will first encounter a hyper textual experience through the WWW, which in many ways resembles the rhetoric and stylistics of hypertext, but without the fundamental difference of the linking capabilities that might allow access to an entire textual universe. Let me offer this example; in the logo centric text, that is, the traditional text that preoccupies this MA course that I have chosen, I would leave the main body of a primary text in order to refer to a secondary text, namely, a reference. The smaller print that generally displays footnotes and endnotes, denotes its position in the work as less significant.

Hence a traditional literary hierarchy is perpetuated where the written word of the author supersedes the importance of the sources and references used. Hypertext links the reference and situates the material on the computer screen, thereby de centring the original text and nullifying the binary opposition that is assumed and historically created between the text and the reference (ibid. : 68 - 69). The secondary text that now occupies the readers attention incorporates the same interconnectedness, facilitating access to the entire network, including texts cited within the primary document. Because hypertext links blocks of text or images, which Landow derives from words, a sentence, paragraph or graphics (1993: 61), to information outside the work, the work becomes an inter textual and intra textual web of signifier's and signified's in a chain of infinite signification or infinite regress.

The clich of infinite signification is particularly germane to hypertext because in this context it really does mean exactly what it says. In the perfect hyper textual experience that Landow proclaims, there is no end to the possibilities of linking texts and making links that the user, reader or navigator selects that are not preordained by the author of the primary text. Hypertext changes the experience of reading by virtue of the speed and control that this system offers for selecting links in an idiosyncratic manner. The meaning and understanding of a hyper textual work changes as the reader navigates links which can be indicated by the author but she can choose her own reading path to other cites of information. Whichever path is selected, the reader will be following her own agenda and producing her own meanings in that process.

The defined boundaries of print, binding, references and page numbers that constitute information retrieval in the bound text, dissolve and fragment with hypertext (ibid. : 52). A book, which usually has a beginning, middle and an end, is generally designed to be read in a linear sequential fashion. Some exceptions include dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and Hebrew Talmudic texts and train timetables that connect the user with different locations. Train timetables are read up and down and across and incorporate temporal, spatial, psychical and philosophical elements. The British Rail slogan were getting there exemplifies Derridean philosophy, I would argue, in the suggestion that the train may not actually reach its destination but the traveller is led to believe that British Rail is doing its utmost to ensure that the traveller will probably reach her destination. The letter by a different remark or name perhaps (Bennington 1993: 14 - 5).

I will return to this point. There are psychical consequences which may result from delays that impede travel the topical category road rage easily translates to train rage if you have ever experienced the frustrations of being a couple of minutes from your ultimate destination but detained on the tracks for eternity. I have moved rather swiftly over a number of complex ideas, which require further clarification. Deconstruction involves a form of close reading that destabilizes the distinct boundaries between the idea of an author, a reader and the text (Sharp 1993: 43). Deconstruction as a methodology is connected to Derrida's ideas on the metaphysics of presence (ibid. ). Presence implies a beginning; a starting point that always has a historical imperative.

Presence is the now or a known moment that can be experienced consciously. It is that which is readily available to the senses; it is anticipation of the self the Cogito. The metaphysics of presence also involves absence or a moment of absence, which relates to what cannot be known consciously about the world. Absence is death, language and non-sense (Bennington 1993: 18).

Philosophy has proceeded, it could be said, from a position that grounds presence (origin and foundation) in a form of unmediated being that can be known for certain in the here and now. This foundation is the logos, which functions in Western philosophy as the first and last entity in the Logos the very order of reason and meaning (Bennington 1993: 18). By subjecting Western philosophy to a rigorous investigation, Derrida initiates the deconstruction of philosophy and its search for a transcendental signifier. The transcendental signified is a privileging in philosophy of speech (the sign assumed as being the most evident of self-presence) over writing (Derrida 1997: xv, xi). Western philosophical concepts and metaphysical systems of thought are therefore grounded in what might be...


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Research essay sample on Critical Theory Western Philosophy

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