The Magical Weight Loss Supplement
While searching for answers to this troubling situation, Harold’s first move was to turn to his flickering friend. He is constantly being told by his TV how easy it is to lose weight, how easy it is to become more vibrant and fun, and how easy it is to finally feel great. If TV could be partially blamed for the problem, then it could surely offer part of the solution, too. However, one question remained: which proclaimed path would lead to the most satisfaction in the shortest amount of time? After all, Harold does have some attention problems, is prone to being sedentary, and has no trouble overcoming all urges to stop being a spectator. The easy way out would probably fit him best.
Perhaps because he is obsessed with speed, like so many Americans, Harold wants results yesterday. He doesn’t have the patience to wait around for gradual changes to evince themselves. He doesn’t feel like he has the discipline to stick to something long term. Instead, the quick-fix seems like the best option. Off all the options proclaiming themselves the greatest of all time on TV, the advertisements for diet pills intrigue him the most. It seems so easy. This little pill will allow him to lose weight, be happier, and instantly become more attractive. It all sounds too good to be true. Medical science has solved this plague of the modern world and, ironically, it is just as easy as swallowing.
These products are slightly more complicated, though, and require some discernment. They all claim to be clinically proven, but, Harold wonders, what clinics, what trials, and under what conditions? Products like Hydroxycut pronounce numerous benefits on their website and in their commercials. In the commercials, happy souls talk about how much they love their new bodies, how fulfilled they have become, and how impressed all their friends are with their dramatic transformations. It is America’s number one selling weight loss supplement brand, and the success stories speak for themselves. Becoming part of this family seems like a sure path to weight-loss success.
Patrons from all over the country utter unbelievably upbeat claims about Hydroxycut’s products, like Bryan from Georgia who states, “I decided to lose the weight because I wanted to take control of my life. I am still trying to wrap my brain around my new body!... Every day, people ask me what I have been doing. They want what I've got.” People envy the trim and slim bodies of those transformed by such an amazing weight loss supplement. And these benefits extend into all aspects of the personalities of the participants, too, as Kelicea, from Georgia, points out. “It's kind of surreal, so I'm excited about what the future holds for me, but it's still going to take some time to get used to the new me…. it's a great boost of confidence, but the most rewarding part for me is that I now feel more comfortable in my own skin.” Lifestyles change dramatically, too. Ashley, from Minnesota, says “It helped me to get energized and determined in my journey to reach my goal.” Such pronouncements cannot help but be embraced by those who recently realized how unhappy they are with their bodies and the sheltered lives they have been living because of those bodies. People want to feel confident, want to gain control over their lives, want to get energized and become go-getters, and want others to envy the significant progress they have made as people.
It is only natural to get caught up in the hype, especially when you behold the beautiful bodies provided on the product’s website. Selling such a cure for what ails you only works if the evidence is dramatic. The website offers stories and pictures from users across the country, and each bodily breakthrough is supported with highly quotable quips such as “choose to live happy” or “I’m a walking success.” Adorning such statements are happily smiling female patrons in stylish, form-fitting dresses, slim jeans and high heels, or even the dreaded bikini. The guys have no trouble showing off their shirtless chests with pride. Looking good never seemed so easy, and Harold cannot wait to get started.
Harold gets in his car and drives to the nearest drug store, a scant one mile away. Before he arrived, he imagined the store would offer a few supplements from which to choose—with the most recognizable brands conveniently placed at eye level. They advertised the most over the past few years for a reason; someone is buying the pills, right? He thought he would simply pluck a product off the shelf, go home, and usher in his new, slimmer life. What confronted Harold was anything but simple. While he recognized a few brands from their commercials, he soon found himself facing a small wall full of possibilities. About thirty-six square feet of shelf space stuffed with products vied for his attention, and he soon found himself wading through more than 50 different brands of weight loss products, each with multiple options, as well. Were extracts better than proprietary blends? Would he benefit more from boosting his metabolism? Finding ways to eat less food? Melting the fat away? While certain of his choice at first, the array before him challenged his determination.
While the sheer number of choices proved daunting, the sticker shock was even more eye-opening. Hydroxycut caplet were easy to find among the numerous options, but he was quickly stopped in his tracks while reading the dosing information. It turns out he is supposed to take 6 caplets a day. That’s a lot of caplets. On top of that, a bottle of seventy-two caplets costs $30, and while Harold may be physically a step behind, mentally, he knew a $30 supply would not even last him two weeks. Harold quickly realized he may have bitten off more than he could chew. The store had some cheaper choices, but based on their costs—some as cheap as $15 for 90 tablets—he wondered whether they were just sugar pills or some other ridiculous concoction looking to engender the placebo effect. After blankly staring at the wall before him for a few minutes, Harold settled on Hydroxycut since its label proudly proclaims it is the most popular. If other people swear by it, he would too, and it was said to boost his energy, and, if anything, burning more energy would surely enable him to regain control and reshape his body in the shortest amount of time possible. Harold swiped his credit card, drove home, cracked open a bottle of water, and started his journey towards a better life.
***
Before we get any further into Harold’s Homeric quest, we do have to discuss those seemingly obscure theorists and philosophers off-handedly mentioned in the introduction. When I mentioned those names, I assumed not everyone would be familiar with each individual’s reputation, themes, or modus operandi. To be honest, not many people outside of academia go around talking about subjectification or deconstruction. Within those walls, these types of ideas and theories freely flow, becoming productive interpretive tools. In English departments like the one I studied in, the cultural currency is valued enough that I once had an unfulfilled fundraising idea to sell WWFS (What Would Foucault Say) bracelets. To say it becomes a way of life, or more accurately a way of thinking, would be justified. Once I understood the concept utilized in this chapter, its captivating nature compelled me to look at many texts through a deconstructive lens. I may be a little different, and my obsessive tendencies might prove above average, but once some of these ideas clicks, they stick with you and might possibly reshape or recolor your world, too.
The goal here is not to lecture about theorists like Derrida, which would bore most people. What I intend—hope—to do is offer some of the tools needed to grasp some complex concepts as a means of further analyzing this book’s protagonist’s journey to slenderness. Each chapter will introduce some theorist’s ideas, explain how they developed, and utilize the ideas as a vehicle for looking through the regiments, rituals, and interventions undertaken by our fearless dieter. If a concept doesn’t immediately click, don’t worry and keep reading. If the theories seem a little weird, it might not be your imagination. If you completely lose track of the purpose, wait for the important “Why” question to pop up. By mentioning Derrida by name, it was actually a promise to follow through on explaining his ideas in a way everyone can understand the thought processes generating the impetus for this book.
Now, even though many people have not heard the name Jacques Derrida, many of those same people might have an idea concerning the mark this highly peculiar French philosopher left on society. Deconstruction is probably the term most readily applied to the ideas generated by Derrida’s method, and, as simple shorthand, deconstruct will be used as verb in order to understand how Derrida views language in general. Once a sound understanding of how to deconstruct a text is gained, we can then turn our attention back to Harold and the numerous spokespersons espousing the splendid benefits of weight loss supplements.
However, we do have to depart from contemporary times for a moment in order to wrap our heads fully around the ways in which Derrida’s methods can be useful today. Derrida’s ideas come out of a very close reading of the remarkably influential eighteenth century philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau. So, an understanding of Rousseau leads us to the methods by which Derrida reads his published works. Let’s start simply. As part of an ancient debate between written and oral communication, one point Rousseau makes is that speech remains the unadulterated expression of our actual thoughts, as opposed to the written word. He writes, “Writing, which seems as if it should fix language, is precisely what alters it; it changes not its words but its genius; it substitutes precision for expressiveness…. In writing, one is forced to take all the words according to the common acceptation; but he who speaks caries the meaning by the tone of his voice, he determines them as he pleases, less constrained to be clear he grants more to forcefulness, and it is not possible for a language one writes to keep for long the liveliness of one that is only spoken.” For Rousseau, speech is affective, vibrant, able to be more fully utilized in the service on conveying a person’s emotions, but the written word loses this inherent ability to connect with people, forever changing the genius associated with speech’s possibilities. In effect, Rousseau draws a clear line between the abilities of speech and writing.
All this seems logical enough, if you think about it. Speech is more immediate, speech is more freely uttered, as if a direct flow of thought spills out audibly, and speech is more easily understood by a listening audience. Speech matters. Audiences are routinely moved by speeches, this type of expressive communication builds relationships, and politicians continually backpedal on quotes they uttered contemporaneously because the words that come out tend to lack a filter. The mind generates ideas and out they come. By comparison, the written word is measured, negotiated, and interpreted by the author. Even while writing that last sentence, I stopped typing, re-ordered, and revised those three verbs in order to achieve the most dramatic effect while still conveying the overall idea. Accordingly, for Rousseau, the written word is always removed from the spoken word’s immediacy. Since no one can purely translate thoughts into written words—with all apologies to Joyce—it is easy to see how this linguistic barrier is the grounds on which miscommunication is built.
However, when Derrida sorts through the philosophy espoused by Rousseau, he sees such a duality in a slightly different light. As a matter of fact, Derrida sees an obvious paradox, a tension developing between the subject matter and the medium. Rousseau spent his life writing discourses and essays on politics, education, and the arts. He published volume after volume, and, in general, was a prolific author. Among all his various writings, his autobiography is considered a foundational example of the genre, but his famous reason for penning an autobiography was to enable a safe distance between himself and his words through writing to reveal a true self, a level of intimacy beyond the realm of speech. In one breath, Rousseau disavows the ability of speech to convey truthfully the alarmingly intimate details of his life. The irony is not lost on Derrida who relishes the chance to draw attention to the paradoxical relationship Rousseau develops between these two types of communication.
The crux of Derrida’s methods and philosophy rests on the contemplation of Rousseau’s inability to extricate meaning from medium, as the focus centers on the seemingly innocuous word supplement. In French, and now in most critical lexicons, the word employs two different meanings: substitution and addition. Derrida freely engages both meanings as a means of illustrating the logical relationship between language and the world. Derrida explains, writing, “The concept of the supplement is a sort of blind spot in Rousseau’s text, the not-seen that open and limits visibility. But the production, if it attempts to make the not-seen accessible to sight, does not leave the text. It has moreover only believed it was doing so by illusion.” Quotes such as this consistently make Derrida one of the most idiosyncratic philosophers to read, and digesting his words takes some time. Let’s dive in. We have to look at what all texts try to do; they attempt to create meaning, but, as Derrida posits, it is through a production, a building, a construction of meaning. Meaning is not inherent in the words used during the creation of written texts (and all texts, as we will later see), and authors spend concerted effort to build meaning into their treatises, just as I am doing right now. Rather than merely point out, and re-use, a word from Derrida’s own writing (production), I felt the need to add some other related words (a building, a construction) in order to further explain and elucidate my interpretation of the words Derrida used. When creating meaning, it is never as simply as writing some words, assuming your audience knows your exact meaning, and moving on to the next idea in need of expression.
Since meaning is always in production, or is always in the process of being made, it cannot, does not leave the text in which it appears. In order to understand such an idea, we have to take into account both uses of the word supplement. To make meaning clear, we must constantly add to it; we must constantly elaborate in order for our true meaning to be conveyed to an audience. In an accompanying way, each consecutive word also acts as a substitution for the previous word, as if the previous word’s meaning was never going to be sufficient, was never going to fulfill the intended meaning, and swapping in another word would finally make things so much more apparent. It is similar to the familiar adage penned by Leonardo da Vinci himself: art is never finished, only abandoned. It is not a stretch to apply this idea to all texts, as authors since have done, and as it applies to Derrida’s ideas, the openness of meaning comes into view. If we are always producing meaning as we inscribe a text, then we are also always creating meaning in each particular instance, each particular text. Production of meaning within a text will always be the attempt to bring to light the obscured.
An understanding of how production functions for Derrida leads us to ponder what is not-seen, as written in the above quote twice in only three sentences. What does it mean to make the not-seen accessible to sight? Allow me to digress for a moment. Platonic friendships are invaluable. The give and take between two close friends, the joy engendered by being together, and the closeness of shared intimacy adds unparalleled pleasure to life. When these types of bonds form, we cherish each moment together and remember them for life. It is the perfect example of companionship by which we measure all other relationships. Of course, platonic, the oft-used descriptor, derives from the person, Plato, who gave to the world our first contemplation of how meaning is related to medium. For Plato, the true conception of any idea rests in the mind, which is then represented in the world to varying degrees of success. For Plato, the perfect form is always conceivable, seen by the mind’s eye or not, and perfect partnerships are just as challenging a concept. This metaphysical representation of the prefect form is the not-seen. This conceivable perfection existing beyond the physical world is to what Derrida alludes.
For Derrida, though, meaning is incapable of being removed from the text. It is created in the text, carried meaning within the text itself, but it limited to the text. As a pithy mantra, Derrida is often quoted in this sense: “There is nothing outside of the text.” More accurately, though, the phrase “there is no outside-text” might be a more effective way of thinking about Derrida’s philosophy, and the catalyst for this chapter. In effect, a text is precisely comprised of, constituted by, the attempt to represent those metaphysical ideas which transcend our world. However, the attempt to refer to those metaphysical ideas, which are inherently outside the text itself, is nothing more than a repetition (an addition or substitution) of the attempt over and over. Transcending the structure by which meaning is created in a text is impossible.
Perhaps because he is obsessed with speed, like so many Americans, Harold wants results yesterday. He doesn’t have the patience to wait around for gradual changes to evince themselves. He doesn’t feel like he has the discipline to stick to something long term. Instead, the quick-fix seems like the best option. Off all the options proclaiming themselves the greatest of all time on TV, the advertisements for diet pills intrigue him the most. It seems so easy. This little pill will allow him to lose weight, be happier, and instantly become more attractive. It all sounds too good to be true. Medical science has solved this plague of the modern world and, ironically, it is just as easy as swallowing.
These products are slightly more complicated, though, and require some discernment. They all claim to be clinically proven, but, Harold wonders, what clinics, what trials, and under what conditions? Products like Hydroxycut pronounce numerous benefits on their website and in their commercials. In the commercials, happy souls talk about how much they love their new bodies, how fulfilled they have become, and how impressed all their friends are with their dramatic transformations. It is America’s number one selling weight loss supplement brand, and the success stories speak for themselves. Becoming part of this family seems like a sure path to weight-loss success.
Patrons from all over the country utter unbelievably upbeat claims about Hydroxycut’s products, like Bryan from Georgia who states, “I decided to lose the weight because I wanted to take control of my life. I am still trying to wrap my brain around my new body!... Every day, people ask me what I have been doing. They want what I've got.” People envy the trim and slim bodies of those transformed by such an amazing weight loss supplement. And these benefits extend into all aspects of the personalities of the participants, too, as Kelicea, from Georgia, points out. “It's kind of surreal, so I'm excited about what the future holds for me, but it's still going to take some time to get used to the new me…. it's a great boost of confidence, but the most rewarding part for me is that I now feel more comfortable in my own skin.” Lifestyles change dramatically, too. Ashley, from Minnesota, says “It helped me to get energized and determined in my journey to reach my goal.” Such pronouncements cannot help but be embraced by those who recently realized how unhappy they are with their bodies and the sheltered lives they have been living because of those bodies. People want to feel confident, want to gain control over their lives, want to get energized and become go-getters, and want others to envy the significant progress they have made as people.
It is only natural to get caught up in the hype, especially when you behold the beautiful bodies provided on the product’s website. Selling such a cure for what ails you only works if the evidence is dramatic. The website offers stories and pictures from users across the country, and each bodily breakthrough is supported with highly quotable quips such as “choose to live happy” or “I’m a walking success.” Adorning such statements are happily smiling female patrons in stylish, form-fitting dresses, slim jeans and high heels, or even the dreaded bikini. The guys have no trouble showing off their shirtless chests with pride. Looking good never seemed so easy, and Harold cannot wait to get started.
Harold gets in his car and drives to the nearest drug store, a scant one mile away. Before he arrived, he imagined the store would offer a few supplements from which to choose—with the most recognizable brands conveniently placed at eye level. They advertised the most over the past few years for a reason; someone is buying the pills, right? He thought he would simply pluck a product off the shelf, go home, and usher in his new, slimmer life. What confronted Harold was anything but simple. While he recognized a few brands from their commercials, he soon found himself facing a small wall full of possibilities. About thirty-six square feet of shelf space stuffed with products vied for his attention, and he soon found himself wading through more than 50 different brands of weight loss products, each with multiple options, as well. Were extracts better than proprietary blends? Would he benefit more from boosting his metabolism? Finding ways to eat less food? Melting the fat away? While certain of his choice at first, the array before him challenged his determination.
While the sheer number of choices proved daunting, the sticker shock was even more eye-opening. Hydroxycut caplet were easy to find among the numerous options, but he was quickly stopped in his tracks while reading the dosing information. It turns out he is supposed to take 6 caplets a day. That’s a lot of caplets. On top of that, a bottle of seventy-two caplets costs $30, and while Harold may be physically a step behind, mentally, he knew a $30 supply would not even last him two weeks. Harold quickly realized he may have bitten off more than he could chew. The store had some cheaper choices, but based on their costs—some as cheap as $15 for 90 tablets—he wondered whether they were just sugar pills or some other ridiculous concoction looking to engender the placebo effect. After blankly staring at the wall before him for a few minutes, Harold settled on Hydroxycut since its label proudly proclaims it is the most popular. If other people swear by it, he would too, and it was said to boost his energy, and, if anything, burning more energy would surely enable him to regain control and reshape his body in the shortest amount of time possible. Harold swiped his credit card, drove home, cracked open a bottle of water, and started his journey towards a better life.
***
Before we get any further into Harold’s Homeric quest, we do have to discuss those seemingly obscure theorists and philosophers off-handedly mentioned in the introduction. When I mentioned those names, I assumed not everyone would be familiar with each individual’s reputation, themes, or modus operandi. To be honest, not many people outside of academia go around talking about subjectification or deconstruction. Within those walls, these types of ideas and theories freely flow, becoming productive interpretive tools. In English departments like the one I studied in, the cultural currency is valued enough that I once had an unfulfilled fundraising idea to sell WWFS (What Would Foucault Say) bracelets. To say it becomes a way of life, or more accurately a way of thinking, would be justified. Once I understood the concept utilized in this chapter, its captivating nature compelled me to look at many texts through a deconstructive lens. I may be a little different, and my obsessive tendencies might prove above average, but once some of these ideas clicks, they stick with you and might possibly reshape or recolor your world, too.
The goal here is not to lecture about theorists like Derrida, which would bore most people. What I intend—hope—to do is offer some of the tools needed to grasp some complex concepts as a means of further analyzing this book’s protagonist’s journey to slenderness. Each chapter will introduce some theorist’s ideas, explain how they developed, and utilize the ideas as a vehicle for looking through the regiments, rituals, and interventions undertaken by our fearless dieter. If a concept doesn’t immediately click, don’t worry and keep reading. If the theories seem a little weird, it might not be your imagination. If you completely lose track of the purpose, wait for the important “Why” question to pop up. By mentioning Derrida by name, it was actually a promise to follow through on explaining his ideas in a way everyone can understand the thought processes generating the impetus for this book.
Now, even though many people have not heard the name Jacques Derrida, many of those same people might have an idea concerning the mark this highly peculiar French philosopher left on society. Deconstruction is probably the term most readily applied to the ideas generated by Derrida’s method, and, as simple shorthand, deconstruct will be used as verb in order to understand how Derrida views language in general. Once a sound understanding of how to deconstruct a text is gained, we can then turn our attention back to Harold and the numerous spokespersons espousing the splendid benefits of weight loss supplements.
However, we do have to depart from contemporary times for a moment in order to wrap our heads fully around the ways in which Derrida’s methods can be useful today. Derrida’s ideas come out of a very close reading of the remarkably influential eighteenth century philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau. So, an understanding of Rousseau leads us to the methods by which Derrida reads his published works. Let’s start simply. As part of an ancient debate between written and oral communication, one point Rousseau makes is that speech remains the unadulterated expression of our actual thoughts, as opposed to the written word. He writes, “Writing, which seems as if it should fix language, is precisely what alters it; it changes not its words but its genius; it substitutes precision for expressiveness…. In writing, one is forced to take all the words according to the common acceptation; but he who speaks caries the meaning by the tone of his voice, he determines them as he pleases, less constrained to be clear he grants more to forcefulness, and it is not possible for a language one writes to keep for long the liveliness of one that is only spoken.” For Rousseau, speech is affective, vibrant, able to be more fully utilized in the service on conveying a person’s emotions, but the written word loses this inherent ability to connect with people, forever changing the genius associated with speech’s possibilities. In effect, Rousseau draws a clear line between the abilities of speech and writing.
All this seems logical enough, if you think about it. Speech is more immediate, speech is more freely uttered, as if a direct flow of thought spills out audibly, and speech is more easily understood by a listening audience. Speech matters. Audiences are routinely moved by speeches, this type of expressive communication builds relationships, and politicians continually backpedal on quotes they uttered contemporaneously because the words that come out tend to lack a filter. The mind generates ideas and out they come. By comparison, the written word is measured, negotiated, and interpreted by the author. Even while writing that last sentence, I stopped typing, re-ordered, and revised those three verbs in order to achieve the most dramatic effect while still conveying the overall idea. Accordingly, for Rousseau, the written word is always removed from the spoken word’s immediacy. Since no one can purely translate thoughts into written words—with all apologies to Joyce—it is easy to see how this linguistic barrier is the grounds on which miscommunication is built.
However, when Derrida sorts through the philosophy espoused by Rousseau, he sees such a duality in a slightly different light. As a matter of fact, Derrida sees an obvious paradox, a tension developing between the subject matter and the medium. Rousseau spent his life writing discourses and essays on politics, education, and the arts. He published volume after volume, and, in general, was a prolific author. Among all his various writings, his autobiography is considered a foundational example of the genre, but his famous reason for penning an autobiography was to enable a safe distance between himself and his words through writing to reveal a true self, a level of intimacy beyond the realm of speech. In one breath, Rousseau disavows the ability of speech to convey truthfully the alarmingly intimate details of his life. The irony is not lost on Derrida who relishes the chance to draw attention to the paradoxical relationship Rousseau develops between these two types of communication.
The crux of Derrida’s methods and philosophy rests on the contemplation of Rousseau’s inability to extricate meaning from medium, as the focus centers on the seemingly innocuous word supplement. In French, and now in most critical lexicons, the word employs two different meanings: substitution and addition. Derrida freely engages both meanings as a means of illustrating the logical relationship between language and the world. Derrida explains, writing, “The concept of the supplement is a sort of blind spot in Rousseau’s text, the not-seen that open and limits visibility. But the production, if it attempts to make the not-seen accessible to sight, does not leave the text. It has moreover only believed it was doing so by illusion.” Quotes such as this consistently make Derrida one of the most idiosyncratic philosophers to read, and digesting his words takes some time. Let’s dive in. We have to look at what all texts try to do; they attempt to create meaning, but, as Derrida posits, it is through a production, a building, a construction of meaning. Meaning is not inherent in the words used during the creation of written texts (and all texts, as we will later see), and authors spend concerted effort to build meaning into their treatises, just as I am doing right now. Rather than merely point out, and re-use, a word from Derrida’s own writing (production), I felt the need to add some other related words (a building, a construction) in order to further explain and elucidate my interpretation of the words Derrida used. When creating meaning, it is never as simply as writing some words, assuming your audience knows your exact meaning, and moving on to the next idea in need of expression.
Since meaning is always in production, or is always in the process of being made, it cannot, does not leave the text in which it appears. In order to understand such an idea, we have to take into account both uses of the word supplement. To make meaning clear, we must constantly add to it; we must constantly elaborate in order for our true meaning to be conveyed to an audience. In an accompanying way, each consecutive word also acts as a substitution for the previous word, as if the previous word’s meaning was never going to be sufficient, was never going to fulfill the intended meaning, and swapping in another word would finally make things so much more apparent. It is similar to the familiar adage penned by Leonardo da Vinci himself: art is never finished, only abandoned. It is not a stretch to apply this idea to all texts, as authors since have done, and as it applies to Derrida’s ideas, the openness of meaning comes into view. If we are always producing meaning as we inscribe a text, then we are also always creating meaning in each particular instance, each particular text. Production of meaning within a text will always be the attempt to bring to light the obscured.
An understanding of how production functions for Derrida leads us to ponder what is not-seen, as written in the above quote twice in only three sentences. What does it mean to make the not-seen accessible to sight? Allow me to digress for a moment. Platonic friendships are invaluable. The give and take between two close friends, the joy engendered by being together, and the closeness of shared intimacy adds unparalleled pleasure to life. When these types of bonds form, we cherish each moment together and remember them for life. It is the perfect example of companionship by which we measure all other relationships. Of course, platonic, the oft-used descriptor, derives from the person, Plato, who gave to the world our first contemplation of how meaning is related to medium. For Plato, the true conception of any idea rests in the mind, which is then represented in the world to varying degrees of success. For Plato, the perfect form is always conceivable, seen by the mind’s eye or not, and perfect partnerships are just as challenging a concept. This metaphysical representation of the prefect form is the not-seen. This conceivable perfection existing beyond the physical world is to what Derrida alludes.
For Derrida, though, meaning is incapable of being removed from the text. It is created in the text, carried meaning within the text itself, but it limited to the text. As a pithy mantra, Derrida is often quoted in this sense: “There is nothing outside of the text.” More accurately, though, the phrase “there is no outside-text” might be a more effective way of thinking about Derrida’s philosophy, and the catalyst for this chapter. In effect, a text is precisely comprised of, constituted by, the attempt to represent those metaphysical ideas which transcend our world. However, the attempt to refer to those metaphysical ideas, which are inherently outside the text itself, is nothing more than a repetition (an addition or substitution) of the attempt over and over. Transcending the structure by which meaning is created in a text is impossible.