ok! so i wanted to clarify some things about Derrida, since there are misconceptions i've seen even a rly good youtuber recently fall into

1. Derrida didn't think everything was text. he wasn't saying everything is language, textuality or signs. in fact he's opposed to this idea

2. a deconstructive practice draws its material from its object. because language was on everyone's mind (the linguistic turn), he uses it as a way of deconstructing philosophy. if Derrida started writing today, I imagine he would have used the vocabulary of digital technology.

3. so Derrida practiced deconstruction on language, but deconstruction should not be equated with language.

4. when deconstruction operates on a binary opposition, it is not the reversal of that opposition. alongside this, Derrida does not think writing comes before speech

5. it is true that reversal is a common procedure in his work, but there is a stage, often missed, where essentially he comes to show that the 2 terms in an opposition are in a way structurally undecidable. neither is prior to the other. they are transcendentally co-determined

6. it's true that he calls this transcendental condition "writing" or "archi-writing," but A) see point 2, and B) he identifies it with the marginalized term since it's by way of the marginalization of that term that it comes to be revealed in the first instance and as such

7. it's not right to say Derrida is interested in an original moment of logocentrism, as this desire for origins is exactly what he aims to deconstruct. this is why he reads Plato, Rousseau, and Levi Strauss along side one another, rather than give a *straight forward* history

8. the past of deconstruction is not a past that has ever been present, just like the future Derrida's work later moves toward will never be present

9. could keep going but don't want to be obnoxious, also probably nobody cares this isn't a subtweet btw, you're all beautiful