Abstract
Sign and Zeit: Deconstruction and the Medieval Text creates a dialogue between
deconstruction and medieval literature, which have traditionally been polarised
as opposite modes of thought. In this thesis, I deconstruct the conservative
viewpoint which regards medieval thought as a prime representative of
logocentrism, and which conceives of medieval thought and deconstruction as
binary opposites existing in a relation which is similar to other oppositions:
old /new, outdated /fashionable, reactionary /radical, theocentric /objective, etc.
This thesis challenges the fundamental opposition between deconstruction and
medieval thought, which is constructed on oppositions which are themselves
grounded in logocentrism. It begins with the assumption that the sphere of
Western culture demarcated by Derrida may possess temporal as well as
geographical boundaries.
Chapter One lays the foundation for later discussions of the ontological theory of
signs, while introducing the question whch is central to this thesis, the
opposition of speech and writing. Through a reading of Aristotle's De Anima, I
argue that the opposition of speech and writing in Of Grammatology actually
masks a more fundamental opposition between Being and Becoming. Chapter
Two returns again to the question of speech and writing, using Augustine's
Confessions as the central text. Chapter Three contains a discussion of a radically
different expression of medieval Christian thought, the negative theology of
Pseudo -Dionysius. This chapter focuses on the act of speaking, on the effort to
speak what is fundamentally inexpressible, and on Derrida's question of how to
avoid speaking in order to say nothing, or in the case of negative theologians,
how not to speak so that everything can be expressed. Chapter Four moves to a
later theory of representation developed by Bonaventure. In this chapter, I
interrogate the images of the book, the mirror, and the trace. Chapter Five
explores the concepts of allegorical representation and the death of he author in
Dante's works. Chapter Six investigates the relation between time and space,
using Dante's Paradiso as the focal point in this discussion of the circularity of
time. Chapter Seven attempts to bring together the fundamental concepts
addressed throughout this thesis and to interpret them, based not on a work
from the Middle Ages, but on Derrida's autobiography. In this chapter, my
process of deconstruction and my reduction of the opposition between speech
and writing becomes complete, ending in a circular model of time in which
reading the past allows us to more wisely write the future.
