Posted by Tessa den Uyl 
We often use the word 'change' in our conversation. Everybody seems to understand such expressions as: change yourself, we have to change, things are changing, change is needed, or if only something would change.
Change presupposes a certain kind of disruption in the way we think. We guide our perceptions through the creation of conceptual relations, which we think of as stable, of which we are consciously aware, and of which we recognise certain qualities within.
Upon such conceptual relations we act and react. And yet we desire change. This would not be so but for the fact that we question these relations.
In a world of myriad relations, we tend to extract only a few as valuable for the pattern of our proper life. And where we ascribe everything to specific relations in our life, desiring change signals trouble. Yet without change, we have no descriptive material. Without the stream of constant sensory change, how can we perceive life?
This morning, in a small village in Morocco, I go out to buy a washing powder called Tide. My friend Ilias understands not Tide but tête, meaning 'head'. Ilias does not understand what I want. With the help of a description of laundry, and pointing to the package, eventually we arrive at 'Oh, you want Tide.' Now why would one buy a 'head' in a shop which sells products for the home?
Over the past two years, Ilias and I have conducted a dialogue over many such misunderstandings regarding pronunciation. I try to apprehend his pronunciation, to speak slowly, but today we’re still at the same place where we started.
We are stuck. Ilias thinks that I should learn to speak better French – or from my point of view, I should learn to speak his kind of French. We are caught in a no-man's-land, where there is a problem about who will leave their territory to risk entering another – in which proper communication becomes possible.
What do we learn from this situation, about change? We learn that, in attempting to communicate, both parties need to reconsider the relations which lie behind the words and concepts of their communication. The problem was never really about Tide or tête, but rather about different cultures and perceptions, different languages and foci.
Ilias and I have no 'common ground' where we may place our verbal misunderstandings. His change is not my change. My interests are not his, and the relations which he traces in this world are not mine.
However simple this example might seem, it illustrates the difficulty of finding the mutual understandings which are essential before we try to change something in the understanding of another: my lack must become his lack, and his lack must become mine. To be able to act for change, we have to be willing to change the descriptions of the world which we ourselves possess.
In arguments about words, there is always a defence of a supposed norm. And so it is with all change. Change challenges ideas of truth which each one of us carries about with us inside. Psychological change always trespasses on property in this sense – the property of truth. Could it be, then, that change can only come about when we are aware of the diversity among us?
Consider another example. A Yemeni woman exclaims: 'Sometimes I hope that a missile would just blow us all away' – meaning: destroy herself and her family. What the woman desires is her liberation by that same force which took the old, recognisable relations from her.
Often we desire change without having to let go of ideas we have previously used to describe and make sense of the world. We want to continue to recognise something, while (impossibly) including within that old recognition a new, unlived experience of change. This may be why the Yemeni woman 'desires' death – which is the most logical change we can imagine. Although death itself does not change.
Change poses the problem and risk of being reconstructed inside of previously constructed ideas, which are thought upon the logic of some existing principle. Change, then, will eventually serve the function of that principle. If there is to be true change, apart from the irreversibility of death, then this change is not found in adapting to previous notions.
Yet if change is something that does not conform to a previous pattern, then where does change live? Can change then be thought? In a certain way, change can only live in a space unknown to our psyche.
We long for change, knowing that change is about a combination of more things than we can consider. These unconsidered things create not only linguistic difficulties when we talk together, but muddy all of our living together. In whatever way we may use the word 'change', perhaps change truly means the inability to point to ourselves.
We often use the word 'change' in our conversation. Everybody seems to understand such expressions as: change yourself, we have to change, things are changing, change is needed, or if only something would change.
Change presupposes a certain kind of disruption in the way we think. We guide our perceptions through the creation of conceptual relations, which we think of as stable, of which we are consciously aware, and of which we recognise certain qualities within.
Upon such conceptual relations we act and react. And yet we desire change. This would not be so but for the fact that we question these relations.
In a world of myriad relations, we tend to extract only a few as valuable for the pattern of our proper life. And where we ascribe everything to specific relations in our life, desiring change signals trouble. Yet without change, we have no descriptive material. Without the stream of constant sensory change, how can we perceive life?
This morning, in a small village in Morocco, I go out to buy a washing powder called Tide. My friend Ilias understands not Tide but tête, meaning 'head'. Ilias does not understand what I want. With the help of a description of laundry, and pointing to the package, eventually we arrive at 'Oh, you want Tide.' Now why would one buy a 'head' in a shop which sells products for the home?
Over the past two years, Ilias and I have conducted a dialogue over many such misunderstandings regarding pronunciation. I try to apprehend his pronunciation, to speak slowly, but today we’re still at the same place where we started.
We are stuck. Ilias thinks that I should learn to speak better French – or from my point of view, I should learn to speak his kind of French. We are caught in a no-man's-land, where there is a problem about who will leave their territory to risk entering another – in which proper communication becomes possible.
What do we learn from this situation, about change? We learn that, in attempting to communicate, both parties need to reconsider the relations which lie behind the words and concepts of their communication. The problem was never really about Tide or tête, but rather about different cultures and perceptions, different languages and foci.
Ilias and I have no 'common ground' where we may place our verbal misunderstandings. His change is not my change. My interests are not his, and the relations which he traces in this world are not mine.
However simple this example might seem, it illustrates the difficulty of finding the mutual understandings which are essential before we try to change something in the understanding of another: my lack must become his lack, and his lack must become mine. To be able to act for change, we have to be willing to change the descriptions of the world which we ourselves possess.
In arguments about words, there is always a defence of a supposed norm. And so it is with all change. Change challenges ideas of truth which each one of us carries about with us inside. Psychological change always trespasses on property in this sense – the property of truth. Could it be, then, that change can only come about when we are aware of the diversity among us?
Consider another example. A Yemeni woman exclaims: 'Sometimes I hope that a missile would just blow us all away' – meaning: destroy herself and her family. What the woman desires is her liberation by that same force which took the old, recognisable relations from her.
Often we desire change without having to let go of ideas we have previously used to describe and make sense of the world. We want to continue to recognise something, while (impossibly) including within that old recognition a new, unlived experience of change. This may be why the Yemeni woman 'desires' death – which is the most logical change we can imagine. Although death itself does not change.
Change poses the problem and risk of being reconstructed inside of previously constructed ideas, which are thought upon the logic of some existing principle. Change, then, will eventually serve the function of that principle. If there is to be true change, apart from the irreversibility of death, then this change is not found in adapting to previous notions.
Yet if change is something that does not conform to a previous pattern, then where does change live? Can change then be thought? In a certain way, change can only live in a space unknown to our psyche.
We long for change, knowing that change is about a combination of more things than we can consider. These unconsidered things create not only linguistic difficulties when we talk together, but muddy all of our living together. In whatever way we may use the word 'change', perhaps change truly means the inability to point to ourselves.
I like the last line, so brief, that change may mean 'the inability to point to ourselves'. Also the way that this follows from the text. It seems to me to be a revolutionary observation.
ReplyDeleteI will not speak for Derrida, but let me explain a bit more my metaphor. When I say that people should put their ideas in the marketplace, what I'm saying is that they should try to overcome their reluctance to share this background knowledge that you're talking about. Oftentimes, what happens is that those who have painstakingly developed a specialized knowledge of some kind rather indulge in publicity, presenting their assets as something of value, that we should not question, ponder or investigate: we should take what they advertise as is. " I am the expert of so and so", " I know how to use this word and you don't", " come back when you have read this author", etc.
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