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July 9, 2008 in musings
Tags: Derrida, everyday language, hands, Heidegger, metaphors, ousia and gramme, violence and metaphysics

Just musing on a few more thoughts about hands, the day before the Derrida Today conference.  Over at Rough Theory a good conversation has ranged from Marx and Heidegger through to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty.

In Geschlecht II Derrida comments that, for Heidegger, there is only ever the ‘hand’ in the singular.  Hand for Heidegger, is not the physical appendage.  Apes do not have hands.  Interestingly, Derrida, commenting on his style of reading in Ousia and Gramme (in Margins), comments that he reads with two hands.  From memory (I don’t have the book with me), he makes the point in explicit contrast to Heidegger.  He comments briefly on hands in the Amy Kofman film, Derrida, mentioning that he has just written a book on hands.  (I presume he means On Touching?)

In everyday language, we refer to things as being ’second-hand’, books, furniture, even knowledge.  In some contexts it may be an expression of disdain, on others, some kind of fetish perceived to be more valuable.  Second-hand knowledge is perceived to be not as good as first-hand.  Where as second-hand furniture or a second-hand book is installed in a new context, or inscribed with a new name.  Do not interesting inscriptions on the inside cover of second books make such a book more valuable?  A series of archives, inscriptions and signatures, all by means of the hand.  I wonder if in these everyday usages there is something of what Derrida intimates at.

Derrida quotes Borges in Violence and Metaphysics to the effect that the history of philosophy is but the history of several metaphors.  At the time, he is speaking of light, with regard to Levinas, and the ‘violence of light’.  Is not the hand, another?