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particularly provocative at the level of the sign itself, where for Saussure the hierarchical polarity of signifier and signified is fundamental. The celebrated punning and fragmentation of words in Derrida is a part of the inversion and displacement of that polarity as Derrida traces (and sets free) 'les vols des signifiants', 'the flights/thefts of the signifier', rather than attempting to pass untrammeled through the signifier towards the signified. |
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What I have offered by way of a reading of Homer partial as it inevitably is is not, despite the evident concern for the inversions and displacements of a polarised, normative discourse, an application of a 'sturdy device' extracted from this Derridean project. Rather, it is a reading that draws on a wide range of intellectual sources and provocations, not least from the study of representation undertaken by a network of feminist theorists.48 Indeed, it is not a reading that aims to prove or disprove any claim of Derrida's; nor a reading that is made possible solely by Derrida. At best, it is a reading that has been stimulated in part by an engagement with Derrida's writing, and that aims to allow more extensive implications of the discussion to emerge by a juxtaposition of my reading of Derrida with my reading of Homer. |
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Except, of course, I chose to focus on this aspect of Homer's epic precisely so that I could discuss example/counter-example with regard to Derrida's exposition . . . |
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Narrative and Paradigms:
Exemplifiction |
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'Dreadful to think of! She was one of the creatures who are written about.' George Meredith |
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The exemplarity of Helen and Clytemnestra continues throughout Greek tragedy. My third example is from Euripides and Euripides is an exemplary reader of Homer who in his play Electra has Electra argue with Clytemnestra herself precisely about her and Helen's exemplarity. Electra begins with a self-reflexive remark on beginnings, and an explicit paralleling of Helen and Clytemnestra (106066): |
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48 E.g. the writers collected in the following collections: Miller (1986); Flyn and Schweikart (1986); Abel (1982); Showalter (1985). |
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