A summary of one key essay/chapter

Suje Garcia

 Derrida: Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing

This essay examines and discusses the writing Restitutions of the Truth of Pointing [Pointure] by Jacques Derrida. One of the things I have come to understand about Derrida’s writing is that even his own arguments have a fatal flaw in which he seeks to provoke. He is also aware of this idea.

The beginning explains Martin Heidegger’s interpretation of a painting by Vincent Van Gogh. It also elaborates on Diente gar nitche or a work of art not serving as it once did. While creating art may lead to perhaps one conclusion the future tense of the work presents new forms of information based on the time that the work is examined. The work may reveal new information based on the time in which it is examined.

Heidegger explains that three things must be present in the work of art. All of these elements are fused together based on a particular conceptual mechanism. They must be present in the work of art. The three modes of being are Zeug or product, the natural thing, and the work of art.

Derrida discuses much of Heidegger’s idea about the three modes of being. He states that thing three is much like thing one in that they are both a Zeug, and product. Derrida explains that Heidegger is not interested in the work of art but more so focused on the striping down of things that are represented or presented.

Another particular element within a work of art is the frame, which allows art to become supplementary. The example that they discuss is that shoes are no longer necessary if the feet are not present. The frame then creates another element of construction to either support or confuse its construction. Derrida states that shoes serve no longer what they once did once they become a work of art.

The greatest thing about Derrida is that he begins to examine many of the factors that are intertwined within a work of art. Here he discusses Klee’s nails that are used to stretch his canvases. He also examines the shoes that Heidegger discusses and refers to the sexuality that they represent. It is important to consider all of the information that is present within a work of art because it may lead or mislead one to believe certain things about artwork that perhaps may not have previously existed or because of its existence makes for a more understandable presentation. Here it is brought up that the shoes Heidegger is discussing refers to a bisexual sort of information. Not from a sexual perspective but rather the lack of information that leads one to believe masculine or feminine constructs.

Derrida explains that often artwork is explained from one piece and not a body of work as a whole. He discusses that Heidegger examined one painting by Van Gogh and did not mention the other paintings, which were many, of the same subject by the same artist as well. Why were the shoes in Van Gogh’s painting even used? Derrida examine the question as to why did Heidegger not just use a drawn pair of shoes on a chalkboard to refer to the same information that he was after. Either one would have been suffice.

Town shoes would have been just as useful for the presentation of this argument as were the peasant shoes. Any discussion of a peasant shoe is irrelevant to the argument Derrida makes about the three modes of being. He begins to elaborate on the artist’s letter that was written in 1888 in which is discussed that the shoes presented in the paintings are that of the artist rather than those of a peasant person.

Three dogmas are discussed about Shapiro who has also examined the text by Heidegger. Two entities define the shoes. They art the shoes and the artist. Secondly shoes are just shoes. The reference to feet suggests a reference to that of the body.

Derrida jumps around quite a lot here. He starts to question why other artwork was not considered in the discussion of the shoe painting. Magritte shoe paintings are brought up and discussed as to why they were not used. Derrida concludes by stating that Heidegger’s discourse on this particular topic is invalid. He uses the phrase “the law of dissymmetry is at work here.”

This article is a good example of how Derrida think and breaks down the text that may have perhaps lead others to false conclusion. It seems as if there is more at work quite often more that any of us realize.

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