Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2005
Abstract
In this essay, I shall consider some striking parallels between legends of writing as manipulated by both Jacques Derrida and Euripides; more specifically, I shall investigate how each author dissects a narrative-or narratives-of writing's invention in order later to construct writing as an inherently unstable semiotic system. In each instance, a seemingly straightforward "myth" of writing is re-narrated in a dark and sardonic vein, one that downplays the technical aspects of writing and highlights instead the hermeneutical ambiguities encoded within this new technology. The Greek myth of Palamedes (as re-narrated by Euripides) hinges on the invention and eventual misapprehension of the written sign; the story of Levi-Strauss among the Nambikwara (as re-narrated by Derrida) performs exactly the same function, though the tale features an intrepid anthropologist in place of an intrepid Greek warrior. In their separate investigations of writing, both re-tellers focus on the term pharmakon as the embodiment of the paradox that lies at the heart of the narrative: that the discovery of writing is at the same time the discovery of erasure, including the possible erasure of its own discoverer.
Publisher
CML, Inc.
City
Columbia, MO
Repository Citation
Jenkins, Thomas E. “Palamedes’ ‘Writing Lesson’: On Narrative, Writing, and Erasure.” Classical and Modern Literature 25 (2005): 29-53.
Publication Information
Classical and Modern Literature