KELLY ON DECONSTRUCTION

KELLY ON DECONSTRUCTION
6/91

We speak and assume that there is an “otherness” in our utterances. I speak of a wall and somehow this word becomes a temple in which all that serves as “wall-ness” is entombed. What is the magical character of language such that it can ossify a concept and carry it in the bones of its frame? How far can we take this concept? Words are signs and that “otherness” is what is supposed to be signified by that sign. But what I understand as signified can only be expressed in a sign, a word. What we approach through language is an endless deferment of sign to signified, which must be express as a sign which is supposed to exist as a signified, ad infinitum. How do we “get to” what these words are supposed to be symbols of outside of this infinity of reiterations? Are words “of” other things or are they positioned in a system of signs and signifiers that create an air of “conceptual-ness”, which is dependent on our minds ability to juxtapose a series of signifiers to reflect “meaning”?

Language is to Eve as meaning is to Adam. Deconstruction is then the apple of my eye.