# data[].attributes.body
J Kennedy 2021 Organza and thread on dissolvable stabiliser 32cm x 22cm.

# data[].attributes.body
J Kennedy 2021 Organza and thread on dissolvable stabiliser 32cm x 22cm.

# data[].attributes.body
Dyslexia, Synaesthesia, Multiple Sclerosis, Autism &  Irlen Syndrome.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The phrase "pattern recognition" in a news story about the
April 13 death of Princeton neuroscientist Charles Gross,
and yesterday's post about a fanciful "purloined diamond,"
suggest a review of a less fanciful diamond.

See also earlier posts tagged Fitch
and my own, earlier and very
different, approach to such patterns -

Comments Off on The Royal Society Diamond

See also W. Tecumseh Fitch in this journal.

From the publisher (click to enlarge) -

The above publication date, 01 September 2015, suggests a review
of posts now tagged A Mirror Darkly.

Comments Off on Patterns at Oxford

A sequel to the 1974 film
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot :

Some variations on a thunderbolt theme:

These variations also exemplify the larger
Verbum theme:

Solomon's Cube

in this journal yielded A search today for Verbum
a Georgetown University Chomskyite, Professor
David W. Lightfoot.

" Dr. Lightfoot writes mainly on syntactic theory,
language acquisition and historical change, which
he views as intimately related. He argues that
internal language change is contingent and fluky,
takes place in a sequence of bursts, and is best
viewed as the cumulative effect of changes in
individual grammars, where a grammar is a
'language organ' represented in a person's
mind/brain and embodying his/her language
faculty."

Some syntactic work by another contingent and fluky author
is related to the visual patterns illustrated above.

See Tecumseh Fitch in this journal.

For other material related to the large Verbum cube,
see posts for the 18th birthday of Harry Potter.

That birthday was also the upload date for the following:

See esp. the comments section.

Yesterday afternoon's post linked to efforts by
the late Robert de Marrais to defend a mathematical
approach to structuralism and kaleidoscopic patterns.

Two examples of non-mathematical discourse on
such patterns:

1. A Royal Society paper from 2012-

Click the above image for related material in this journal.

2. A book by Junichi Toyota from 2009-

Kaleidoscopic Grammar: Investigation into the Nature of Binarism

I find such non-mathematical approaches much less interesting
than those based on the mathematics ofreflection groups .

De Marrais described the approaches of Vladimir Arnold and,
earlier, of H. S. M. Coxeter, to such groups. These approaches
dealt only with groups of reflections in Euclidean spaces.
My own interest is in groups of reflections in Galois spaces.
See, for instance, A Simple Reflection Group of Order 168.

Galois spaces over fields of characteristic 2 are particularly
relevant to what Toyota calls .

Comments Off on Pattern Grammar

Quoted in the March 13 post Blackboard Jungle:

"Every morning you take your machete into the jungle
and explore and make observations, and every day
you fall more in love with the richness and splendor
of the place."

- Paul Lockhart, A Mathematician's Lament

More from Lockhart's jungle-

Mathematical objects, even if initially inspired by some aspect of reality (e.g., piles of rocks, the disc of the moon), are still nothing more than figments of our imagination.

Not only that, but they are created by us and are endowed by us with certain characteristics; that is, they are what we ask them to be....

... in Mathematical Reality, because it is an imaginary place, I actually can have pretty much whatever I want....

The point is that there is no reality to any of this, so there are no rules or restrictions other than the ones we care to impose.... Make up anything you want, so long as it isn't boring. Of course this is a matter of taste, and tastes change and evolve. Welcome to art history!

- Lockhart, Paul ( 2009-04-01). A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form (pp. 100-104). Bellevue Literary Press. Kindle Edition.

Related material in this journal: Bellevue and Wechsler.

See also Gombrich in this journal and in the following:

Related material (Click for some background.) -

Comments Off on Art History

For a modern Adam and Eve-

W. Tecumseh Fitch and Gesche Westphal Fitch,
editors of a new four-volume collection titled
Language Evolution (Feb. 2, 2012, $1,360)-

Related material-

"At the point of convergence
the play of similarities and differences
cancels itself out in order that
identity alone may shine forth.
The illusion of motionlessness,
the play of mirrors of the one:
identity is completely empty;
it is a crystallization and
in its transparent core
the movement of analogy
begins all over once again."

- The Monkey Grammarian

by Octavio Paz, translated by
Helen Lane (Kindle edition of
2011-11-07, Kindle locations
1207-1210).

The "play of mirrors" link above is my own.

Click on W. Tecumseh Fitch for links to some
examples of mirror-play in graphic design-
from, say, my own work in a version of 1977, not from
the Fitches' related work published online last June-

See also Log24 posts from the publication date
of the Fitches' Language Evolution -

Groundhog Day, 2012.

Happy birthday to the late Alfred Bester.

Comments Off on Monkey Grammar

"... we have taken the first steps
in decoding the uniquely human
fascination with visual patterns...."

- W. Tecumseh Fitch et al. , July 2012

Fitch cites the following as a reference:

Washburn and Crowe discuss symmetries in general, but
not the Galois geometry underlying patterns like some of
those shown on their book's cover.

Comments Off on Adam in Eden

The concept of "deep structure," once a popular meme,
has long been abandoned by Chomskians.

It still applies, however, to the 1976 mathematics, diamond theory ,
underlying the formal patterns discussed in a Royal Society paper
this year.

A review of deep structure, from the Wikipedia article Cartesian linguistics -

[Numbers in parentheses refer to pages in the original 1966 Harper edition of Chomsky's book Cartesian Linguistics .]

Deep structure vs. surface structure

"Pursuing the fundamental distinction between body and mind, Cartesian linguistics characteristically assumes that language has two aspects" (32). These are namely the sound/character of a linguistic sign and its significance (32). Semantic interpretation or phonetic interpretation may not be identical in Cartesian linguistics (32). Deep structures are often only represented in the mind (a mirror of thought), as opposed to surface structures, which are not.

Deep structures vary less between languages than surface structures. For instance, the transformational operations to derive surface forms of Latin and French may obscure common features of their deep structures (39). Chomsky proposes, "In many respects, it seems to me quite accurate, then, to regard the theory of transformational generative grammar, as it is developing in current work, as essentially a modern and more explicit version of the Port-Royal theory" (39).

Summary of Port Royal Grammar

The Port Royal Grammar is an often cited reference in Cartesian Linguistics and is considered by Chomsky to be a more than suitable example of Cartesian linguistic philosophy. "A sentence has an inner mental aspect (a deep structure that conveys its meaning) and an outer, physical aspect as a sound sequence"***** This theory of deep and surface structures, developed in Port Royal linguistics, meets the formal requirements of language theory. Chomsky describes it in modern terms as " a base system that generates deep structures and a transformational system that maps these into surface structures", essentially a form of transformational grammar akin to modern studies (42).

The corresponding concepts from diamond theory are...

" Deep structure"- The line diagrams indicating the underlying
structure of varying patterns

" A base system that generates deep structures"-
Group actions on square arrays... for instance, on the 4×4 square

" A transformational system"- The decomposition theorem
that maps deep structure into surface structure (and vice-versa)

Comments Off on Deep Structure

From a New Yorker weblog yesterday-

" Happy Birthday, Noam Chomsky." by Gary Marcus-

"... two titans facing off, with Chomsky, as ever,
defining the contest"

"Chomsky sees himself, correctly, as continuing
a conversation that goes back to Plato, especially
the Meno dialogue, in which a slave boy is
revealed by Socrates to know truths about
geometry that he hadn't realized he knew."

See Meno Diamond in this journal. For instance, from
the Feast of Saint Nicholas (Dec. 6th) this year-

For related truths about geometry, see the diamond theorem.

For a related contest of language theory vs. geometry,
see pattern theory (Sept. 11, 16, and 17, 2012).

See esp. the Sept. 11 post, on a Royal Society paper from July 2012
claiming that

"With the results presented here, we have taken the first steps
in decoding the uniquely human fascination with visual patterns,
what Gombrich* termed our 'sense of order.' "

The sorts of patterns discussed in the 2012 paper -

"First steps"? The mathematics underlying such patterns
was presented 35 years earlier, in Diamond Theory.

* See Gombrich-Douat in this journal.

Comments Off on Defining the Contest...

( Continued from yesterday's post FLT )

Context Part I -

"In 1957, George Miller initiated a research programme at Harvard University to investigate rule-learning, in situations where participants are exposed to stimuli generated by rules, but are not told about those rules. The research program was designed to understand how, given exposure to some finite subset of stimuli, a participant could 'induce' a set of rules that would allow them to recognize novel members of the broader set. The stimuli in question could be meaningless strings of letters, spoken syllables or other sounds, or structured images. Conceived broadly, the project was a seminal first attempt to understand how observers, exposed to a set of stimuli, could come up with a set of principles, patterns, rules or hypotheses that generalized over their observations. Such abstract principles, patterns, rules or hypotheses then allow the observer to recognize not just the previously seen stimuli, but a wide range of other stimuli consistent with them. Miller termed this approach 'pattern conception ' (as opposed to 'pattern perception'), because the abstract patterns in question were too abstract to be 'truly perceptual.'....

.... the 'grammatical rules' in such a system are drawn from the discipline of formal language theory (FLT)...."

- W. Tecumseh Fitch, Angela D. Friederici, and Peter Hagoort, "Pattern Perception and Computational Complexity: Introduction to the Special Issue," Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2012) 367, 1925-1932

Context Part II -

Context Part III -

A four-color theorem describes the mathematics of
general structures, not just symbol-strings, formed from
four kinds of things- for instance, from the four elements
of the finite Galois field GF(4), or the four bases of DNA.

Context Part IV -

A quotation from William P. Thurston, a mathematician
who died on Aug. 21, 2012-

"It may sound almost circular to say that
what mathematicians are accomplishing
is to advance human understanding of mathematics.
I will not try to resolve this
by discussing what mathematics is,
because it would take us far afield.
Mathematicians generally feel that they know
what mathematics is, but find it difficult
to give a good direct definition.
It is interesting to try. For me,
'the theory of formal patterns'
has come the closest, but to discuss this
would be a whole essay in itself."

Related material from a literate source-

"So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern"

Not formal language theory but rather
finite projective geometry provides a graphic grammar
of abstract design-

See also, elsewhere in this journal,
Crimson Easter Egg and Formal Pattern.

Comments Off on Pattern Conception

The "FLT" of the above title is not Fermat's Last Theorem,
but Formal Language Theory (see image below).

In memory of George A. Miller, Harvard cognitive psychologist, who
reportedly died at 92 on July 22, 2012, the first page of a tribute
published shortly before his death -

The complete introduction is available online. It ends by saying-

"In conclusion, the research discussed in this issue
breathes new life into a set of issues that were raised,
but never resolved, by Miller 60 years ago...."

Related material: Symmetry and Hierarchy (a post of 9/11), and
Notes on Groups and Geometry, 1978-1986 .

Happy Rosh Hashanah.

A followup to Intelligence Test (April 2, 2012).

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
B (2012) 367, 2007-202 2
(theme issue of July 19, 2012) -

"... We believe that applying the theoretical

framework of formal language theory to two-dimensional

patterns offers a rich new perspective on the

human capacity for producing regular, hierarchically

organized structures. Such visual patterns may actually

prove more flexible than music or language for probing

the full extent of human pattern processing abilities.

With the results presented here, we have taken the

first steps in decoding the uniquely human fascination

with visual patterns, what Gombrich termed our

Although the patterns we studied are most similar

to tilings or mosaics, they are examples of a much

broader type of abstract plane pattern, a type found

in virtually all of the world's cultures [4]. Given that

such abstract visual patterns seem to represent

human universals, they have received astonishingly

little attention from psychologists. This neglect is particularly

unfortunate given their democratic nature,

their popular appeal and the ease with which they

can be generated and analysed in the laboratory.

With the current research, we hope to spark renewed

scientific interest in these 'unregarded arts', which

we believe have much to teach us about the nature of
the human mind."

Comments Off on Symmetry and Hierarchy

The following notes are related to A Simple Reflection Group of Order 168.

1. According to H.S.M. Coxeter and Richard J. Trudeau

"There is a pleasantly discursive treatment of Pontius Pilate's unanswered question 'What is truth?'."

- Coxeter, 1987, introduction to Trudeau's The Non-Euclidean Revolution

1.1 Trudeau's Diamond Theory of Truth

1.2 Trudeau's Story Theory of Truth

2. According to Alexandre Borovik and Steven H. Cullinane

2.1 Coxeter Theory according to Borovik

2.1.1 The Geometry-

2.1.2 The Algebra-

Coxeter Languages in Coxeter Theory

2.2 Diamond Theory according to Cullinane

2.2.1 The Geometry-

2.2.2 The Algebra-

Examples: Cullinane and (rather indirectly related) Gerhard Grams
Summary of the story thus far:
Diamond theory and Coxeter theory are to some extent analogous- both deal with reflection groups and both have a visual (i.e., geometric) side and a verbal (i.e., algebraic) side. Coxeter theory is of course highly developed on both sides. Diamond theory is, on the geometric side, currently restricted to examples in at most three Euclidean (and six binary) dimensions. On the algebraic side, it is woefully underdeveloped. For material related to the algebraic side, search the Web for generators+relations+"characteristic two" (or " 2") and for generators+relations+"GF(2)". (This last search is the source of the Grams reference in 2.2.2 above.)

Comments Off on Theories: An Outline

In the beginning
was...
the recursion?

"Words are events."
- The Walter J. Ong Project,
quoted in Log24 on Aug. 25, 2003

"Words are events."
- The Walter J. Ong Project,
quoted in the Heckler & Coch weblog
on July 17, 2004 as part of a section
titled "Recursive, Wide, and Loopy"

Walter J. Ong was a Jesuit. The Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, is celebrated on July 31 each year.

"Recursive, Wide, and Loopy 2", a Heckler & Coch entry dated July 31, 2004, leads to the following:

MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2004:

How humans got
the gift of gab:

Why do other primates
lag behind in language?

"New research may help scientists dissect just what it is about the human brain that endows us with language.

Researchers have found that tamarin monkeys have some distinctly languagelike abilities but that they can't quite master the more complex rules of human grammar. The findings appear in Friday's issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS, the non-profit science society.

The grammatical toolkit

'A relatively open question concerning language evolution is, "What aspects of the language faculty are shared with other animals, and what aspects are unique to humans?" ' said study author Marc Hauser of Harvard University.

To investigate, Hauser and W. Tecumseh Fitch of the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, devised tests for cotton-top tamarin monkeys and human volunteers. Tamarins have been evolving separately from humans for approximately 40 million years -suggesting that any shared machinery in human and tamarin brains is old enough to be relatively common among primates.

Instead of trying to teach the monkeys real words, Hauser and Fitch generated strings of one-syllable words that followed various grammatical rules.

According to linguistics expert Noam Chomsky, the simplest type of grammar is a 'finite state grammar' or 'FSG,' which dictates which types of words go near each other in a sentence. In English, for example, an adjective like 'fast' must go directly in front of 'car,' the noun it's describing.

Building on previous experiments, Hauser and Fitch recorded word-strings that obeyed a specific FSG, in which any syllable spoken by a female voice was automatically followed by one from a male voice.

Audio: Listen to an FSG word-string.
(Requires Windows Media Player.)

After listening to a series of word-strings, the monkeys were able to distinguish between those that followed this rule and others that didn't. Human test subjects could tell the difference as well, implying that tamarins and humans may share at least some components of what Hauser called 'the universal toolkit underlying all languages.'

Mastering this type of grammar represents the ability to compute some simple statistics, something human infants accomplish early on as they learn to speak. This ability may not be specific to language, however.

'Either the same mechanism or some approximation of it is used in mathematics, vision, music and other activities,' Hauser said.

Upping the Complexity

The grammatical rules of real languages govern more than just the placement of neighboring words, as anyone who had to diagram sentences in English class may remember all too well.

One of the more complex types of grammar is known as a 'phrase structure grammar,' or PSG. These grammars involve relationships between words that aren't next to each other in a sentence and thus allow for a more complex range of expression. The 'if ... then' construction is an example of a PSG.

The researchers generated a second set of word-strings that followed a PSG in which a pairing of syllables spoken by a female and a male could be embedded within another pairing. This grammar produces structures like [female [female, male] male].

Audio: Listen to a PSG word-string.
(Requires Windows Media Player)

After playing these recordings repeatedly to the monkeys, the researchers found that the animals didn't seem to notice the difference between word strings that obeyed the PSG and other strings that did not. In contrast, the human volunteers did notice the difference."

- Kathleen Wren

"The grammar or syntax of human language is certainly unique. Like an onion or Russian doll, it is recursive: One instance of an item is embedded in another instance of the same item. Recursion makes it possible for the words in a sentence to be widely separated and yet dependent on one another. 'If-then' is a classic example.... Are animals capable of such recursion? Fitch and Hauser have reported that tamarin monkeys are not capable of recursion. Although the monkeys learned a nonrecursive grammar, they failed to learn a grammar that is recursive. Humans readily learn both."

- David Premack ( Science 2004 303:318, quoted in ScienceWeek)

These citations by Heckler & Coch show that inability to understand complex language is not limited to monkeys.

The examples given by Wren in the audio samples are of alternating female (Hi) and male (Lo) voices, thus -

FSG: Hi Lo Hi Lo Hi Lo

PSG: Hi Hi Hi Lo Lo Lo

As these examples show, neither monkeys nor humans heard the sound of parentheses (or square brackets) as Wren describes them:

"structures like [female [female, male] male]."

There of course is, in ordinary language (which does not include the monologues of Victor Borge), no such thing as the sound of parentheses.

Thus the research of Hauser and Fitch is not only invalid, but ridiculous.

This point is driven strongly home by the following two articles:

Greg Kochanski, Research Fellow,
Oxford University Phonetics Lab:

Is a Phrase Structure Grammar
the Important Difference
between Humans and Monkeys?,

and

Mark Liberman, Professor,
University of Pennsylvania
Departments of Linguistics
and of Computer Science,
and co-director of the
Institute for Research
in Cognitive Science,
in his

Language Log,
January 17, 2004:

Comments Off on Thursday August 5, 2004

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The phrase "pattern recognition" in a news story about the April 13 death of Princeton neuroscientist Charles Gross, and yesterday's post about a fanciful "purloined diamond," suggest a review of a less fanciful diamond. See also earlier posts tagged Fitch and my own, earlier and very different, approach to such patterns - Comments Off on The Royal Society Diamond See also W.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Jacques Derrida was one of the most well known twentieth century philosophers. He was also one of the most prolific. Distancing himself from the various philosophical movements and traditions that preceded him on the French intellectual scene (phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism), he developed a strategy called "deconstruction" in the mid 1960s. Although not purely negative, deconstruction is primarily concerned with something tantamount to a critique of the Western philosophical tradition. Deconstruction is generally presented via an analysis of specific texts. It seeks to expose, and then to subvert, the various binary oppositions that undergird our dominant ways of thinking-presence/absence, speech/writing, and so forth.

Deconstruction has at least two aspects: literary and philosophical. The literary aspect concerns the textual interpretation, where invention is essential to finding hidden alternative meanings in the text. The philosophical aspect concerns the main target of deconstruction: the "metaphysics of presence," or simply metaphysics. Starting from an Heideggerian point of view, Derrida argues that metaphysics affects the whole of philosophy from Plato onwards. Metaphysics creates dualistic oppositions and installs a hierarchy that unfortunately privileges one term of each dichotomy (presence before absence, speech before writing, and so on).

The deconstructive strategy is to unmask these too-sedimented ways of thinking, and it operates on them especially through two steps-reversing dichotomies and attempting to corrupt the dichotomies themselves. The strategy also aims to show that there are undecidables, that is, something that cannot conform to either side of a dichotomy or opposition. Undecidability returns in later period of Derrida's reflection, when it is applied to reveal paradoxes involved in notions such as gift giving or hospitality, whose conditions of possibility are at the same time their conditions of impossibility. Because of this, it is undecidable whether authentic giving or hospitality are either possible or impossible.

In this period, the founder of deconstruction turns his attention to ethical themes. In particular, the theme of responsibility to the other (for example, God or a beloved person) leads Derrida to leave the idea that responsibility is associated with a behavior publicly and rationally justifiable by general principles. Reflecting upon tales of Jewish tradition, he highlights the absolute singularity of responsibility to the other.

Deconstruction has had an enormous influence in psychology, literary theory, cultural studies, linguistics, feminism, sociology and anthropology. Poised in the interstices between philosophy and non-philosophy (or philosophy and literature), it is not difficult to see why this is the case. What follows in this article, however, is an attempt to bring out the philosophical significance of Derrida's thought.

Table of Contents

1. Life and Works

In 1930, Derrida was born into a Jewish family in Algiers. He was also born into an environment of some discrimination. In fact, he either withdrew from, or was forced out of at least two schools during his childhood simply on account of being Jewish. He was expelled from one school because there was a 7% limit on the Jewish population, and he later withdrew from another school on account of the anti-semitism. While Derrida would resist any reductive understanding of his work based upon his biographical life, it could be argued that these kind of experiences played a large role in his insistence upon the importance of the marginal, and the other, in his later thought.

Derrida was twice refused a position in the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure (where Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and the majority of French intellectuals and academics began their careers), but he was eventually accepted to the institution at the age of 19. He hence moved from Algiers to France, and soon after he also began to play a major role in the leftist journal Tel Quel. Derrida's initial work in philosophy was largely phenomenological, and his early training as a philosopher was done largely through the lens of Husserl. Other important inspirations on his early thought include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Saussure, Levinas and Freud. Derrida acknowledges his indebtedness to all of these thinkers in the development of his approach to texts, which has come to be known as 'deconstruction'.

It was in 1967 that Derrida really arrived as a philosopher of world importance. He published three momentous texts ( Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena). All of these works have been influential for different reasons, but it is Of Grammatology that remains his most famous work (it is analysed in some detail in this article). In Of Grammatology, Derrida reveals and then undermines the speech-writing opposition that he argues has been such an influential factor in Western thought. His preoccupation with language in this text is typical of much of his early work, and since the publication of these and other major texts (including Dissemination, Glas, The Postcard, Spectres of Marx, The Gift of Death, and Politics of Friendship), deconstruction has gradually moved from occupying a major role in continental Europe, to also becoming a significant player in the Anglo-American philosophical context. This is particularly so in the areas of literary criticism, and cultural studies, where deconstruction's method of textual analysis has inspired theorists like Paul de Man. He has also had lecturing positions at various universities, the world over. Derrida died in 2004.

Deconstruction has frequently been the subject of some controversy. When Derrida was awarded an honorary doctorate at Cambridge in 1992, there were howls of protest from many 'analytic' philosophers. Since then, Derrida has also had many dialogues with philosophers like John Searle (see Limited Inc.), in which deconstruction has been roundly criticised, although perhaps unfairly at times. However, what is clear from the antipathy of such thinkers is that deconstruction challenges traditional philosophy in several important ways, and the remainder of this article will highlight why this is so.

2. Deconstructive Strategy

Derrida, like many other contemporary European theorists, is preoccupied with undermining the oppositional tendencies that have befallen much of the Western philosophical tradition. In fact, dualisms are the staple diet of deconstruction, for without these hierarchies and orders of subordination it would be left with nowhere to intervene. Deconstruction is parasitic in that rather than espousing yet another grand narrative, or theory about the nature of the world in which we partake, it restricts itself to distorting already existing narratives, and to revealing the dualistic hierarchies they conceal. While Derrida's claims to being someone who speaks solely in the margins of philosophy can be contested, it is important to take these claims into account. Deconstruction is, somewhat infamously, the philosophy that says nothing. To the extent that it can be suggested that Derrida's concerns are often philosophical, they are clearly not phenomenological (he assures us that his work is to be read specifically against Husserl, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty) and nor are they ontological.

Deconstruction, and particularly early deconstruction, functions by engaging in sustained analyses of particular texts. It is committed to the rigorous analysis of the literal meaning of a text, and yet also to finding within that meaning, perhaps in the neglected corners of the text (including the footnotes), internal problems that actually point towards alternative meanings. Deconstruction must hence establish a methodology that pays close attention to these apparently contradictory imperatives (sameness and difference) and a reading of any Derridean text can only reaffirm this dual aspect. Derrida speaks of the first aspect of this deconstructive strategy as being akin to a fidelity and a "desire to be faithful to the themes and audacities of a thinking" (WD 84). At the same time, however, deconstruction also famously borrows from Martin Heidegger's conception of a 'destructive retrieve' and seeks to open texts up to alternative and usually repressed meanings that reside at least partly outside of the metaphysical tradition (although always also partly betrothed to it). This more violent and transgressive aspect of deconstruction is illustrated by Derrida's consistent exhortation to "invent in your own language if you can or want to hear mine; invent if you can or want to give my language to be understood" (MO 57). In suggesting that a faithful interpretation of him is one that goes beyond him, Derrida installs invention as a vitally important aspect of any deconstructive reading. He is prone to making enigmatic suggestions like "go there where you cannot go, to the impossible, it is indeed the only way of coming or going" (ON 75), and ultimately, the merit of a deconstructive reading consists in this creative contact with another text that cannot be characterised as either mere fidelity or as an absolute transgression, but rather which oscillates between these dual demands. The intriguing thing about deconstruction, however, is that despite the fact that Derrida's own interpretations of specific texts are quite radical, it is often difficult to pinpoint where the explanatory exegesis of a text ends and where the more violent aspect of deconstruction begins. Derrida is always reluctant to impose 'my text', 'your text' designations too conspicuously in his texts. This is partly because it is even problematic to speak of a 'work' of deconstruction, since deconstruction only highlights what was already revealed in the text itself. All of the elements of a deconstructive intervention reside in the "neglected cornerstones" of an already existing system (MDM 72), and this equation is not altered in any significant way whether that 'system' be conceived of as metaphysics generally, which must contain its non-metaphysical track, or the writings of a specific thinker, which must also always testify to that which they are attempting to exclude (MDM 73).

These are, of course, themes reflected upon at length by Derrida, and they have an immediate consequence on the meta-theoretical level. To the minimal extent that we can refer to Derrida's own arguments, it must be recognised that they are always intertwined with the arguments of whomever, or whatever, he seeks to deconstruct. For example, Derrida argues that his critique of the Husserlian 'now' moment is actually based upon resources within Husserl's own text which elide the self-presence that he was attempting to secure (SP 64-66). If Derrida's point is simply that Husserl's phenomenology holds within itself conclusions that Husserl failed to recognise, Derrida seems to be able to disavow any transcendental or ontological position. This is why he argues that his work occupies a place in the margins of philosophy, rather than simply being philosophy per se.

Deconstruction contends that in any text, there are inevitably points of equivocation and 'undecidability' that betray any stable meaning that an author might seek to impose upon his or her text. The process of writing always reveals that which has been suppressed, covers over that which has been disclosed, and more generally breaches the very oppositions that are thought to sustain it. This is why Derrida's 'philosophy' is so textually based and it is also why his key terms are always changing, because depending upon who or what he is seeking to deconstruct, that point of equivocation will always be located in a different place.

This also ensures that any attempt to describe what deconstruction is, must be careful. Nothing would be more antithetical to deconstruction's stated intent than this attempt at defining it through the decidedly metaphysical question "what is deconstruction?" There is a paradoxicality involved in trying to restrict deconstruction to one particular and overarching purpose (OG 19) when it is predicated upon the desire to expose us to that which is wholly other ( tout autre) and to open us up to alternative possibilities. At times, this exegesis will run the risk of ignoring the many meanings of Derridean deconstruction, and the widely acknowledged difference between Derrida's early and late work is merely the most obvious example of the difficulties involved in suggesting "deconstruction says this", or "deconstruction prohibits that".

That said, certain defining features of deconstruction can be noticed. For example, Derrida's entire enterprise is predicated upon the conviction that dualisms are irrevocably present in the various philosophers and artisans that he considers. While some philosophers argue that he is a little reductive when he talks about the Western philosophical tradition, it is his understanding of this tradition that informs and provides the tools for a deconstructive response. Because of this, it is worth briefly considering the target of Derridean deconstruction - the metaphysics of presence, or somewhat synonymously, logocentrism.

a. Metaphysics of Presence/Logocentrism

There are many different terms that Derrida employs to describe what he considers to be the fundamental way(s) of thinking of the Western philosophical tradition. These include: logocentrism, phallogocentrism, and perhaps most famously, the metaphysics of presence, but also often simply 'metaphysics'. These terms all have slightly different meanings. Logocentrism emphasises the privileged role that logos, or speech, has been accorded in the Western tradition (see Section 3). Phallogocentrism points towards the patriarchal significance of this privileging. Derrida's enduring references to the metaphysics of presence borrows heavily from the work of Heidegger. Heidegger insists that Western philosophy has consistently privileged that which is, or that which appears, and has forgotten to pay any attention to the condition for that appearance. In other words, presence itself is privileged, rather than that which allows presence to be possible at all - and also impossible, for Derrida (see Section 4, for more on the metaphysics of presence). All of these terms of denigration, however, are united under the broad rubric of the term 'metaphysics'. What, then, does Derrida mean by metaphysics?

In the 'Afterword' to Limited Inc., Derrida suggests that metaphysics can be defined as:

"The enterprise of returning 'strategically', 'ideally', to an origin or to a priority thought to be simple, intact, normal, pure, standard, self-identical, in order then to think in terms of derivation, complication, deterioration, accident, etc. All metaphysicians, from Plato to Rousseau, Descartes to Husserl, have proceeded in this way, conceiving good to be before evil, the positive before the negative, the pure before the impure, the simple before the complex, the essential before the accidental, the imitated before the imitation, etc. And this is not just one metaphysical gesture among others, it is the metaphysical exigency, that which has been the most constant, most profound and most potent" (LI 236).

According to Derrida then, metaphysics involves installing hierarchies and orders of subordination in the various dualisms that it encounters (M 195). Moreover, metaphysical thought prioritises presence and purity at the expense of the contingent and the complicated, which are considered to be merely aberrations that are not important for philosophical analysis. Basically then, metaphysical thought always privileges one side of an opposition, and ignores or marginalises the alternative term of that opposition.

In another attempt to explain deconstruction's treatment of, and interest in oppositions, Derrida has suggested that: "An opposition of metaphysical concepts (speech/writing, presence/absence, etc.) is never the face-to-face of two terms, but a hierarchy and an order of subordination. Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed immediately to neutralisation: it must, by means of a double gesture, a double science, a double writing, practise an overturning of the classical opposition, and a general displacement of the system. It is on that condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the field of oppositions it criticises" (M 195). In order to better understand this dual 'methodology' - that is also the deconstruction of the notion of a methodology because it no longer believes in the possibility of an observer being absolutely exterior to the object/text being examined - it is helpful to consider an example of this deconstruction at work (See Speech/Writing below).

3. Key terms from the early work

Derrida's terms change in every text that he writes. This is part of his deconstructive strategy. He focuses on particular themes or words in a text, which on account of their ambiguity undermine the more explicit intention of that text. It is not possible for all of these to be addressed (Derrida has published in the vicinity of 60 texts in English), so this article focused on some of the most pivotal terms and neologisms from his early thought. It addresses aspects of his later, more theme-based thought, in Sections 6 & 7.

a. Speech/Writing

The most prominent opposition with which Derrida's earlier work is concerned is that between speech and writing. According to Derrida, thinkers as different as Plato, Rousseau, Saussure, and Levi-Strauss, have all denigrated the written word and valorised speech, by contrast, as some type of pure conduit of meaning. Their argument is that while spoken words are the symbols of mental experience, written words are the symbols of that already existing symbol. As representations of speech, they are doubly derivative and doubly far from a unity with one's own thought. Without going into detail regarding the ways in which these thinkers have set about justifying this type of hierarchical opposition, it is important to remember that the first strategy of deconstruction is to reverse existing oppositions. In Of Grammatology (perhaps his most famous work), Derrida hence attempts to illustrate that the structure of writing and grammatology are more important and even 'older' than the supposedly pure structure of presence-to-self that is characterised as typical of speech.

For example, in an entire chapter of his Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure tries to restrict the science of linguistics to the phonetic and audible word only (24). In the course of his inquiry, Saussure goes as far as to argue that "language and writing are two distinct systems of signs: the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first". Language, Saussure insists, has an oral tradition that is independent of writing, and it is this independence that makes a pure science of speech possible. Derrida vehemently disagrees with this hierarchy and instead argues that all that can be claimed of writing - eg. that it is derivative and merely refers to other signs - is equally true of speech. But as well as criticising such a position for certain unjustifiable presuppositions, including the idea that we are self-identical with ourselves in 'hearing' ourselves think, Derrida also makes explicit the manner in which such a hierarchy is rendered untenable from within Saussure's own text. Most famously, Saussure is the proponent of the thesis that is commonly referred to as "the arbitrariness of the sign", and this asserts, to simplify matters considerably, that the signifier bears no necessary relationship to that which is signified. Saussure derives numerous consequences from this position, but as Derrida points out, this notion of arbitrariness and of "unmotivated institutions" of signs, would seem to deny the possibility of any natural attachment (OG 44). After all, if the sign is arbitrary and eschews any foundational reference to reality, it would seem that a certain type of sign (ie. the spoken) could not be more natural than another (ie. the written). However, it is precisely this idea of a natural attachment that Saussure relies upon to argue for our "natural bond" with sound (25), and his suggestion that sounds are more intimately related to our thoughts than the written word hence runs counter to his fundamental principle regarding the arbitrariness of the sign.

b. Arche-writing

In Of Grammatology and elsewhere, Derrida argues that signification, broadly conceived, always refers to other signs, and that one can never reach a sign that refers only to itself. He suggests that "writing is not a sign of a sign, except if one says it of all signs, which would be more profoundly true" (OG 43), and this process of infinite referral, of never arriving at meaning itself, is the notion of 'writing' that he wants to emphasise. This is not writing narrowly conceived, as in a literal inscription upon a page, but what he terms 'arche-writing'. Arche-writing refers to a more generalised notion of writing that insists that the breach that the written introduces between what is intended to be conveyed and what is actually conveyed, is typical of an originary breach that afflicts everything one might wish to keep sacrosanct, including the notion of self-presence.

This originary breach that arche-writing refers to can be separated out to reveal two claims regarding spatial differing and temporal deferring. To explicate the first of these claims, Derrida's emphasis upon how writing differs from itself is simply to suggest that writing, and by extension all repetition, is split (differed) by the absence that makes it necessary. One example of this might be that we write something down because we may soon forget it, or to communicate something to someone who is not with us. According to Derrida, all writing, in order to be what it is, must be able to function in the absence of every empirically determined addressee (M 375). Derrida also considers deferral to be typical of the written and this is to reinforce that the meaning of a certain text is never present, never entirely captured by a critic's attempt to pin it down. The meaning of a text is constantly subject to the whims of the future, but when that so-called future is itself 'present' (if we try and circumscribe the future by reference to a specific date or event) its meaning is equally not realised, but subject to yet another future that can also never be present. The key to a text is never even present to the author themselves, for the written always defers its meaning. As a consequence we cannot simply ask Derrida to explain exactly what he meant by propounding that enigmatic sentiment that has been translated as "there is nothing outside of the text" (OG 158). Any explanatory words that Derrida may offer would themselves require further explanation. [That said, it needs to be emphasised that Derrida's point is not so much that everything is simply semiotic or linguistic - as this is something that he explicitly denies - but that the processes of differing and deferring found within linguistic representation are symptomatic of a more general situation that afflicts everything, including the body and the perceptual]. So, Derrida's more generalised notion of writing, arche-writing, refers to the way in which the written is possible only on account of this 'originary' deferral of meaning that ensures that meaning can never be definitively present. In conjunction with the differing aspect that we have already seen him associate with, and then extend beyond the traditional confines of writing, he will come to describe these two overlapping processes via that most famous of neologisms: différance.

c. Différance

Différance is an attempt to conjoin the differing and deferring aspects involved in arche-writing in a term that itself plays upon the distinction between the audible and the written. After all, what differentiates différance and différence is inaudible, and this means that distinguishing between them actually requires the written. This problematises efforts like Saussure's, which as well as attempting to keep speech and writing apart, also suggest that writing is an almost unnecessary addition to speech. In response to such a claim, Derrida can simply point out that there is often, and perhaps even always, this type of ambiguity in the spoken word - différence as compared to différance - that demands reference to the written. If the spoken word requires the written to function properly, then the spoken is itself always at a distance from any supposed clarity of consciousness. It is this originary breach that Derrida associates with the terms arche-writing and différance.

Of course, différance cannot be exhaustively defined, and this is largely because of Derrida's insistence that it is "neither a word, nor a concept", as well as the fact that the meaning of the term changes depending upon the particular context in which it is being employed. For the moment, however, it suffices to suggest that according to Derrida, différance is typical of what is involved in arche-writing and this generalised notion of writing that breaks down the entire logic of the sign (OG 7). The widespread conviction that the sign literally represents something, which even if not actually present, could be potentially present, is rendered impossible by arche-writing, which insists that signs always refer to yet more signs ad infinitum, and that there is no ultimate referent or foundation. This reversal of the subordinated term of an opposition accomplishes the first of deconstruction's dual strategic intents. Rather than being criticised for being derivative or secondary, for Derrida, writing, or at least the processes that characterise writing (ie. différance and arche-writing), are ubiquitous. Just as a piece of writing has no self-present subject to explain what every particular word means (and this ensures that what is written must partly elude any individual's attempt to control it), this is equally typical of the spoken. Utilising the same structure of repetition, nothing guarantees that another person will endow the words I use with the particular meaning that I attribute to them. Even the conception of an internal monologue and the idea that we can intimately 'hear' our own thoughts in a non-contingent way is misguided, as it ignores the way that arche-writing privileges difference and a non-coincidence with oneself (SP 60-70).

d. Trace

In this respect, it needs to be pointed out that all of deconstruction's reversals (arche-writing included) are partly captured by the edifice that they seek to overthrow. For Derrida, "one always inhabits, and all the more when one does not suspect it" (OG 24), and it is important to recognise that the mere reversal of an existing metaphysical opposition might not also challenge the governing framework and presuppositions that are attempting to be reversed (WD 280). Deconstruction hence cannot rest content with merely prioritising writing over speech, but must also accomplish the second major aspect of deconstruction's dual strategies, that being to corrupt and contaminate the opposition itself.

Derrida must highlight that the categories that sustain and safeguard any dualism are always already disrupted and displaced. To effect this second aspect of deconstruction's strategic intents, Derrida usually coins a new term, or reworks an old one, to permanently disrupt the structure into which he has intervened - examples of this include his discussion of the pharmakon in Plato (drug or tincture, salutary or maleficent), and the supplement in Rousseau, which will be considered towards the end of this section. To phrase the problem in slightly different terms, Derrida's argument is that in examining a binary opposition, deconstruction manages to expose a trace. This is not a trace of the oppositions that have since been deconstructed - on the contrary, the trace is a rupture within metaphysics, a pattern of incongruities where the metaphysical rubs up against the non-metaphysical, that it is deconstruction's job to juxtapose as best as it can. The trace does not appear as such (OG 65), but the logic of its path in a text can be mimed by a deconstructive intervention and hence brought to the fore.

e. Supplement

The logic of the supplement is also an important aspect of Of Grammatology. A supplement is something that, allegedly secondarily, comes to serve as an aid to something 'original' or 'natural'. Writing is itself an example of this structure, for as Derrida points out, "if supplementarity is a necessarily indefinite process, writing is the supplement par excellence since it proposes itself as the supplement of the supplement, sign of a sign, taking the place of a speech already significant" (OG 281). Another example of the supplement might be masturbation, as Derrida suggests (OG 153), or even the use of birth control precautions. What is notable about both of these examples is an ambiguity that ensures that what is supplementary can always be interpreted in two ways. For example, our society's use of birth control precautions might be interpreted as suggesting that our natural way is lacking and that the contraceptive pill, or condom, etc., hence replaces a fault in nature. On the other hand, it might also be argued that such precautions merely add on to, and enrich our natural way. It is always ambiguous, or more accurately 'undecidable', whether the supplement adds itself and "is a plenitude enriching another plenitude, the fullest measure of presence", or whether "the supplement supplements... adds only to replace... represents and makes an image... its place is assigned in the structure by the mark of an emptiness" (OG 144). Ultimately, Derrida suggests that the supplement is both of these things, accretion and substitution (OG 200), which means that the supplement is "not a signified more than a signifier, a representer than a presence, a writing than a speech" (OG 315). It comes before all such modalities.

This is not just some rhetorical suggestion that has no concrete significance in deconstruction. Indeed, while Rousseau consistently laments the frequency of his masturbation in his book, The Confessions, Derrida argues that "it has never been possible to desire the presence 'in person', before this play of substitution and the symbolic experience of auto-affection" (OG 154). By this, Derrida means that this supplementary masturbation that 'plays' between presence and absence (eg. the image of the absent Therese that is evoked by Rousseau) is that which allows us to conceive of being present and fulfilled in sexual relations with another at all. In a sense, masturbation is 'originary', and according to Derrida, this situation applies to all sexual relations. All erotic relations have their own supplementary aspect in which we are never present to some ephemeral 'meaning' of sexual relations, but always involved in some form of representation. Even if this does not literally take the form of imagining another in the place of, or supplementing the 'presence' that is currently with us, and even if we are not always acting out a certain role, or faking certain pleasures, for Derrida, such representations and images are the very conditions of desire and of enjoyment (OG 156).

4. Time and Phenomenology

Derrida has had a long and complicated association with phenomenology for his entire career, including ambiguous relationships with Husserl and Heidegger, and something closer to a sustained allegiance with Lévinas. Despite this complexity, two main aspects of Derrida's thinking regarding phenomenology remain clear. Firstly, he thinks that the phenomenological emphasis upon the immediacy of experience is the new transcendental illusion, and secondly, he argues that despite its best intents, phenomenology cannot be anything other than a metaphysics (SP 75, 104). In this context, Derrida defines metaphysics as the science of presence, as for him (as for Heidegger), all metaphysics privileges presence, or that which is. While they are presented schematically here, these inter-related claims constitute Derrida's major arguments against phenomenology.

According to Derrida, phenomenology is a metaphysics of presence because it unwittingly relies upon the notion of an indivisible self-presence, or in the case of Husserl, the possibility of an exact internal adequation with oneself (SP 66-8). In various texts, Derrida contests this valorisation of an undivided subjectivity, as well as the primacy that such a position accords to the 'now', or to some other kind of temporal immediacy. For instance, in Speech and Phenomena, Derrida argues that if a 'now' moment is conceived of as exhausting itself in that experience, it could not actually be experienced, for there would be nothing to juxtapose itself against in order to illuminate that very 'now'. Instead, Derrida wants to reveal that every so-called 'present', or 'now' point, is always already compromised by a trace, or a residue of a previous experience, that precludes us ever being in a self-contained 'now' moment (SP 68). Phenomenology is hence envisaged as nostalgically seeking the impossible: that is, coinciding with oneself in an immediate and pre-reflective spontaneity. Following this refutation of Husserlian temporality, Derrida remarks that "in the last analysis, what is at stake is... the privilege of the actual present, the now" (SP 62-3). Instead of emphasising the presence of a subject to themselves (ie. the so-called living-present), Derrida strategically utilises a conception of time that emphasises deferral. John Caputo expresses Derrida's point succinctly when he claims that Derrida's criticisms of Husserlian temporality in Speech and Phenomena involve an attempt to convey that: "What is really going on in things, what is really happening, is always "to come". Every time you try to stabilise the meaning of a thing, try to fix it in its missionary position, the thing itself, if there is anything at all to it, slips away" (cf. SP 104, Caputo DN 31). To put Derrida's point simplistically, it might be suggested that the meaning of a particular object, or a particular word, is never stable, but always in the process of change (eg. the dissemination of meaning for which deconstruction has become notorious). Moreover, the significance of that past change can only be appreciated from the future and, of course, that 'future' is itself implicated in a similar process of transformation were it ever to be capable of becoming 'present'. The future that Derrida is referring to is hence not just a future that will become present, but the future that makes all 'presence' possible and also impossible. For Derrida, there can be no presence-to-self, or self-contained identity, because the 'nature' of our temporal existence is for this type of experience to elude us. Our predominant mode of being is what he will eventually term the messianic (see Section 6), in that experience is about the wait, or more aptly, experience is only when it is deferred. Derrida's work offers many important temporal contributions of this quasi-transcendental variety.

5. Undecidability

In its first and most famous instantiation, undecidability is one of Derrida's most important attempts to trouble dualisms, or more accurately, to reveal how they are always already troubled. An undecidable, and there are many of them in deconstruction (eg. ghost, pharmakon, hymen, etc.), is something that cannot conform to either polarity of a dichotomy (eg. present/absent, cure/poison, and inside/outside in the above examples). For example, the figure of a ghost seems to neither present or absent, or alternatively it is both present and absent at the same time (SM).

However, Derrida has a recurring tendency to resuscitate terms in different contexts, and the term undecidability also returns in later deconstruction. Indeed, to complicate matters, undecidability returns in two discernible forms. In his recent work, Derrida often insists that the condition of the possibility of mourning, giving, forgiving, and hospitality, to cite some of his most famous examples, is at once also the condition of their impossibility (see section 7). In his explorations of these "possible-impossible" aporias, it becomes undecidable whether genuine giving, for example, is either a possible or an impossible ideal.

a. Decision

Derrida's later philosophy is also united by his analysis of a similar type of undecidability that is involved in the concept of the decision itself. In this respect, Derrida regularly suggests that a decision cannot be wise, or posed even more provocatively, that the instant of the decision must actually be mad (DPJ 26, GD 65). Drawing on Kierkegaard, Derrida tells us that a decision requires an undecidable leap beyond all prior preparations for that decision (GD 77), and according to him, this applies to all decisions and not just those regarding the conversion to religious faith that preoccupies Kierkegaard. To pose the problem in inverse fashion, it might be suggested that for Derrida, all decisions are a faith and a tenuous faith at that, since were faith and the decision not tenuous, they would cease to be a faith or a decision at all (cf. GD 80). This description of the decision as a moment of madness that must move beyond rationality and calculative reasoning may seem paradoxical, but it might nevertheless be agreed that a decision requires a 'leap of faith' beyond the sum total of the facts. Many of us are undoubtedly stifled by the difficulty of decision-making, and this psychological fact aids and, for his detractors, also abets Derrida's discussion of the decision as it appears in texts like The Gift of Death, Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, Adieu to Emmanuel Lévinas, and Politics of Friendship.

In Adieu to Emmanuel Lévinas, Derrida argues that a decision must always come back to the other, even if it is the other 'inside' the subject, and he disputes that an initiative which remained purely and simply "mine" would still be a decision (AEL 23-4). A theory of the subject is incapable of accounting for the slightest decision (PF 68-9), because, as he rhetorically asks, "would we not be justified in seeing here the unfolding of an egological immanence, the autonomic and automatic deployment of predicates or possibilities proper to a subject, without the tearing rupture that should occur in every decision we call free?" (AEL 24). In other words, if a decision is envisaged as simply following from certain character attributes, then it would not genuinely be a decision. Derrida is hence once more insisting upon the necessity of a leap beyond calculative reasoning, and beyond the resources of some self-contained subject reflecting upon the matter at hand. A decision must invoke that which is outside of the subject's control. If a decision is an example of a concept that is simultaneously impossible within its own internal logic and yet nevertheless necessary, then not only is our reticence to decide rendered philosophically cogent, but it is perhaps even privileged. Indeed, Derrida's work has been described as a "philosophy of hesitation", and his most famous neologism, différance, explicitly emphasises deferring, with all of the procrastination that this term implies. Moreover, in his early essay "Violence and Metaphysics", Derrida also suggests that a successful deconstructive reading is conditional upon the suspension of choice: on hesitating between the ethical opening and the logocentric totality (WD 84). Even though Derrida has suggested that he is reluctant to use the term 'ethics' because of logocentric associations, one is led to conclude that 'ethical' behaviour (for want of a better word) is a product of deferring, and of being forever open to possibilities rather than taking a definitive position. The problem of undecidability is also evident in more recent texts including The Gift of Death. In this text, Derrida seems to support the sacrificing of a certain notion of ethics and universality for a conception of radical singularity not unlike that evinced by the "hyper-ethical" sacrifice that Abraham makes of his son upon Mt Moriah, according to both the Judaic and Christian religions alike (GD 71). To represent Derrida's position more precisely, true responsibility consists in oscillating between the demands of that which is wholly other (in Abraham's case, God, but also any particular other) and the more general demands of a community (see Section 6). Responsibility is enduring this trial of the undecidable decision, where attending to the call of a particular other will inevitably demand an estrangement from the "other others" and their communal needs. Whatever decision one may take, according to Derrida, it can never be wholly justified (GD 70). Of course, Derrida's emphasis upon the undecidability inherent in all decision-making does not want to convey inactivity or a quietism of despair, and he has insisted that the madness of the decision also demands urgency and precipitation (DPJ 25-8). Nevertheless, what is undergone is described as the "trial of undecidability" (LI 210) and what is involved in enduring this trial would seem to be a relatively anguished being. In an interview with Richard Beardsworth, Derrida characterises the problem of undecidability as follows: "However careful one is in the theoretical preparation of a decision, the instant of the decision, if there is to be a decision, must be heterogeneous to the accumulation of knowledge. Otherwise, there is no responsibility. In this sense not only must the person taking the decision not know everything... the decision, if there is to be one, must advance towards a future which is not known, which cannot be anticipated" (NM 37). This suggestion that the decision cannot anticipate the future is undoubtedly somewhat counter-intuitive, but Derrida's rejection of anticipation is not only a rejection of the traditional idea of deciding on the basis of weighing-up and internally representing certain options. By suggesting that anticipation is not possible, he means to make the more general point that no matter how we may anticipate any decision must always rupture those anticipatory frameworks. A decision must be fundamentally different from any prior preparations for it. As Derrida suggests in Politics of Friendship, the decision must "surprise the very subjectivity of the subject" (PF 68), and it is in making this leap away from calculative reasoning that Derrida argues that responsibility consists (PF 69).

6. The Other

a. Responsibility to the Other

Perhaps the most obvious aspect of Derrida's later philosophy is his advocation of the tout autre, the wholly other, and The Gift of Death will be our main focus in explaining what this exaltation of the wholly other might mean. Any attempt to sum up this short but difficult text would have to involve the recognition of a certain incommensurability between the particular and the universal, and the dual demands placed upon anybody intending to behave responsibly. For Derrida, the paradox of responsible behaviour means that there is always a question of being responsible before a singular other (eg. a loved one, God, etc.), and yet we are also always referred to our responsibility towards others generally and to what we share with them. Derrida insists that this type of aporia, or problem, is too often ignored by the "knights of responsibility" who presume that accountability and responsibility in all aspects of life - whether that be guilt before the human law, or even before the divine will of God - is quite easily established (GD 85). These are the same people who insist that concrete ethical guidelines should be provided by any philosopher worth his or her 'salt' (GD 67) and who ignore the difficulties involved in a notion like responsibility, which demands something importantly different from merely behaving dutifully (GD 63).

Derrida's exploration of Abraham's strange and paradoxical responsibility before the demands of God, which consists in sacrificing his only son Isaac, but also in betraying the ethical order through his silence about this act (GD 57-60), is designed to problematise this type of ethical concern that exclusively locates responsibility in the realm of generality. In places, Derrida even verges on suggesting that this more common notion of responsibility, which insists that one should behave according to a general principle that is capable of being rationally validated and justified in the public realm (GD 60), should be replaced with something closer to an Abrahamian individuality where the demands of a singular other (eg. God) are importantly distinct from the ethical demands of our society (GD 61, 66). Derrida equivocates regarding just how far he wants to endorse such a conception of responsibility, and also on the entire issue of whether Abraham's willingness to murder is an act of faith, or simply an unforgivable transgression. As he says, "Abraham is at the same time, the most moral and the most immoral, the most responsible and the most irresponsible" (GD 72). This equivocation is, of course, a defining trait of deconstruction, which has been variously pilloried and praised for this refusal to propound anything that the tradition could deem to be a thesis. Nevertheless, it is relatively clear that in The Gift of Death, Derrida intends to free us from the common assumption that responsibility is to be associated with behaviour that accords with general principles capable of justification in the public realm (ie. liberalism). In opposition to such an account, he emphasises the "radical singularity" of the demands placed upon Abraham by God (GD 60, 68, 79) and those that might be placed on us by our own loved ones. Ethics, with its dependence upon generality, must be continually sacrificed as an inevitable aspect of the human condition and its aporetic demand to decide (GD 70). As Derrida points out, in writing about one particular cause rather than another, in pursuing one profession over another, in spending time with one's family rather than at work, one inevitably ignores the "other others" (GD 69), and this is a condition of any and every existence. He argues that: "I cannot respond to the call, the request, the obligation, or even the love of another, without sacrificing the other other, the other others" (GD 68). For Derrida, it seems that the Buddhist desire to have attachment to nobody and equal compassion for everybody is an unattainable ideal. He does, in fact, suggest that a universal community that excludes no one is a contradiction in terms. According to him, this is because: "I am responsible to anyone (that is to say, to any other) only by failing in my responsibility to all the others, to the ethical or political generality. And I can never justify this sacrifice; I must always hold my peace about it... What binds me to this one or that one, remains finally unjustifiable" (GD 70). Derrida hence implies that responsibility to any particular individual is only possible by being irresponsible to the "other others", that is, to the other people and possibilities that haunt any and every existence.

b. Wholly Other/Messianic

This brings us to a term that Derrida has resuscitated from its association with Walter Benjamin and the Judaic tradition more generally. That term is the messianic and it relies upon a distinction with messianism.

According to Derrida, the term messianism refers predominantly to the religions of the Messiahs - ie. the Muslim, Judaic and Christian religions. These religions proffer a Messiah of known characteristics, and often one who is expected to arrive at a particular time or place. The Messiah is inscribed in their respective religious texts and in an oral tradition that dictates that only if the other conforms to such and such a description is that person actually the Messiah. The most obvious of numerous necessary characteristics for the Messiah, it seems, is that they must invariably be male. Sexuality might seem to be a strange prerequisite to tether to that which is beyond this world, wholly other, but it is only one of many. Now, Derrida is not simplistically disparaging religion and the messianisms they propound. In an important respect, the messianic depends upon the various messianisms and Derrida admits that he cannot say which is the more originary. The messianism of Abraham in his singular responsibility before God, for Derrida, reveals the messianic structure of existence more generally, in that we all share a similar relationship to alterity even if we have not named and circumscribed that experience according to the template provided by a particular religion. However, Derrida's call to the wholly other, his invocation for the wholly other "to come", is not a call for a fixed or identifiable other of known characteristics, as is arguably the case in the average religious experience. His wholly other is indeterminable and can never actually arrive. Derrida more than once recounts a story of Maurice Blanchot's where the Messiah was actually at the gates to a city, disguised in rags. After some time, the Messiah was finally recognised by a beggar, but the beggar could think of nothing more relevant to ask than: "when will you come?"(DN 24). Even when the Messiah is 'there', he or she must still be yet to come, and this brings us back to the distinction between the messianic and the various historical messianisms. The messianic structure of existence is open to the coming of an entirely ungraspable and unknown other, but the concrete, historical messianisms are open to the coming of a specific other of known characteristics. The messianic refers predominantly to a structure of our existence that involves waiting - waiting even in activity - and a ceaseless openness towards a future that can never be circumscribed by the horizons of significance that we inevitably bring to bear upon that possible future. In other words, Derrida is not referring to a future that will one day become present (or a particular conception of the saviour who will arrive), but to an openness towards an unknown futurity that is necessarily involved in what we take to be 'presence' and hence also renders it 'impossible'. A deconstruction that entertained any type of grand prophetic narrative, like a Marxist story about the movement of history toward a pre-determined future which, once attained, would make notions like history and progress obsolete, would be yet another vestige of logocentrism and susceptible to deconstruction (SM). Precisely in order to avoid the problems that such messianisms engender - eg. killing in the name of progress, mutilating on account of knowing the will of God better than others, etc. - Derrida suggests that: "I am careful to say 'let it come' because if the other is precisely what is not invented, the initiative or deconstructive inventiveness can consist only in opening, in uncloseting, in destabilising foreclusionary structures, so as to allow for the passage toward the other" (RDR 60).

7. Possible and Impossible Aporias

Derrida has recently become more and more preoccupied with what has come to be termed "possible-impossible aporias" - aporia was originally a Greek term meaning puzzle, but it has come to mean something more like an impasse or paradox. In particular, Derrida has described the paradoxes that afflict notions like giving, hospitality, forgiving and mourning. He argues that the condition of their possibility is also, and at once, the condition of their impossibility. In this section, I will attempt to reveal the shared logic upon which these aporias rely.

a. The Gift

The aporia that surrounds the gift revolves around the paradoxical thought that a genuine gift cannot actually be understood to be a gift. In his text, Given Time, Derrida suggests that the notion of the gift contains an implicit demand that the genuine gift must reside outside of the oppositional demands of giving and taking, and beyond any mere self-interest or calculative reasoning (GT 30). According to him, however, a gift is also something that cannot appear as such (GD 29), as it is destroyed by anything that proposes equivalence or recompense, as well as by anything that even proposes to know of, or acknowledge it. This may sound counter-intuitive, but even a simple 'thank-you' for instance, which both acknowledges the presence of a gift and also proposes some form of equivalence with that gift, can be seen to annul the gift (cf. MDM 149). By politely responding with a 'thank-you', there is often, and perhaps even always, a presumption that because of this acknowledgement one is no longer indebted to the other who has given, and that nothing more can be expected of an individual who has so responded. Significantly, the gift is hence drawn into the cycle of giving and taking, where a good deed must be accompanied by a suitably just response. As the gift is associated with a command to respond, it becomes an imposition for the receiver, and it even becomes an opportunity to take for the 'giver', who might give just to receive the acknowledgement from the other that they have in fact given. There are undoubtedly many other examples of how the 'gift' can be deployed, and not necessarily deliberately, to gain advantage. Of course, it might be objected that even if it is psychologically difficult to give without also receiving (and in a manner that is tantamount to taking) this does not in-itself constitute a refutation of the logic of genuine giving. According to Derrida, however, his discussion does not amount merely to an empirical or psychological claim about the difficulty of transcending an immature and egocentric conception of giving. On the contrary, he wants to problematise the very possibility of a giving that can be unequivocally disassociated from receiving and taking.

The important point is that, for Derrida, a genuine gift requires an anonymity of the giver, such that there is no accrued benefit in giving. The giver cannot even recognise that they are giving, for that would be to reabsorb their gift to the other person as some kind of testimony to the worth of the self - ie. the kind of self-congratulatory logic that rhetorically poses the question "how wonderful I am to give this person that which they have always desired, and without even letting them know that I am responsible?". This is an extreme example, but Derrida claims that such a predicament afflicts all giving in more or less obvious ways. For him, the logic of a genuine gift actually requires that self and other be radically disparate, and have no obligations or claims upon each other of any kind. He argues that a genuine gift must involve neither an apprehension of a good deed done, nor the recognition by the other party that they have received, and this seems to render the actuality of any gift an impossibility. Significantly, however, according to Derrida, the existential force of this demand for an absolute altruism can never be assuaged, and yet equally clearly it can also never be fulfilled, and this ensures that the condition of the possibility of the gift is inextricably associated with its impossibility. For Derrida, there is no solution to this type of problem, and no hint of a dialectic that might unify the apparent incommensurability in which possibility implies impossibility and vice versa. At the same time, however, he does not intend simply to vacillate in hyperbolic and self-referential paradoxes. There is a sense in which deconstruction actually seeks genuine giving, hospitality, forgiving and mourning, even where it acknowledges that these concepts are forever elusive and can never actually be fulfilled.

b. Hospitality

It is also worth considering the aporia that Derrida associates with hospitality. According to Derrida, genuine hospitality before any number of unknown others is not, strictly speaking, a possible scenario (OH 135, GD 70, AEL 50, OCF 16). If we contemplate giving up everything that we seek to possess and call our own, then most of us can empathise with just how difficult enacting any absolute hospitality would be. Despite this, however, Derrida insists that the whole idea of hospitality depends upon such an altruistic concept and is inconceivable without it (OCF 22). In fact, he argues that it is this internal tension that keeps the concept alive.

As Derrida makes explicit, there is a more existential example of this tension, in that the notion of hospitality requires one to be the 'master' of the house, country or nation (and hence controlling). His point is relatively simple here; to be hospitable, it is first necessary that one must have the power to host. Hospitality hence makes claims to property ownership and it also partakes in the desire to establish a form of self-identity. Secondly, there is the further point that in order to be hospitable, the host must also have some kind of control over the people who are being hosted. This is because if the guests take over a house through force, then the host is no longer being hospitable towards them precisely because they are no longer in control of the situation. This means, for Derrida, that any attempt to behave hospitably is also always partly betrothed to the keeping of guests under control, to the closing of boundaries, to nationalism, and even to the exclusion of particular groups or ethnicities (OH 151-5). This is Derrida's 'possible' conception of hospitality, in which our most well-intentioned conceptions of hospitality render the "other others" as strangers and refugees (cf. OH 135, GD 68). Whether one invokes the current international preoccupation with border control, or simply the ubiquitous suburban fence and alarm system, it seems that hospitality always posits some kind of limit upon where the other can trespass, and hence has a tendency to be rather inhospitable. On the other hand, as well as demanding some kind of mastery of house, country or nation, there is a sense in which the notion of hospitality demands a welcoming of whomever, or whatever, may be in need of that hospitality. It follows from this that unconditional hospitality, or we might say 'impossible' hospitality, hence involves a relinquishing of judgement and control in regard to who will receive that hospitality. In other words, hospitality also requires non-mastery, and the abandoning of all claims to property, or ownership. If that is the case, however, the ongoing possibility of hospitality thereby becomes circumvented, as there is no longer the possibility of hosting anyone, as again, there is no ownership or control.

c. Forgiveness

Derrida discerns another aporia in regard to whether or not to forgive somebody who has caused us significant suffering or pain. This particular paradox revolves around the premise that if one forgives something that is actually forgivable, then one simply engages in calculative reasoning and hence does not really forgive. Most commonly in interviews, but also in his recent text On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, Derrida argues that according to its own internal logic, genuine forgiving must involve the impossible: that is, the forgiving of an 'unforgivable' transgression - eg. a 'mortal sin' (OCF 32, cf. OH 39). There is hence a sense in which forgiving must be 'mad' and 'unconscious' (OCF 39, 49), and it must also remain outside of, or heterogenous to, political and juridical rationality. This unconditional 'forgiveness' explicitly precludes the necessity of an apology or repentance by the guilty party, although Derrida acknowledges that this pure notion of forgiveness must always exist in tension with a more conditional forgiveness where apologies are actually demanded. However, he argues that this conditional forgiveness amounts more to amnesty and reconciliation than to genuine forgiveness (OCF 51). The pattern of this discussion is undoubtedly beginning to become familiar. Derrida's discussions of forgiving are orientated around revealing a fundamental paradox that ensures that forgiving can never be finished or concluded - it must always be open, like a permanent rupture, or a wound that refuses to heal.

This forgiveness paradox depends, in one of its dual aspects, upon a radical disjunction between self and other. Derrida explicitly states that "genuine forgiveness must engage two singularities: the guilty and the victim. As soon as a third party intervenes, one can again speak of amnesty, reconciliation, reparation, etc., but certainly not of forgiveness in the strict sense" (OCF 42). Given that he also acknowledges that it is difficult to conceive of any such face-to-face encounter without a third party - as language itself must serve such a mediating function (OCF 48) - forgiveness is caught in an aporia that ensures that its empirical actuality looks to be decidedly unlikely. To recapitulate, the reason that Derrida's notion of forgiveness is caught in such an inextricable paradox is because absolute forgiveness requires a radically singular confrontation between self and other, while conditional forgiveness requires the breaching of categories such as self and other, either by a mediating party, or simply by the recognition of the ways in which we are always already intertwined with the other. Indeed, Derrida explicitly argues that when we know anything of the other, or even understand their motivation in however minimal a way, this absolute forgiveness can no longer take place (OCF 49). Derrida can offer no resolution in regard to the impasse that obtains between these two notions (between possible and impossible forgiving, between an amnesty where apologies are asked for and a more absolute forgiveness). He will only insist that an oscillation between both sides of the aporia is necessary for responsibility (OCF 51).

d. Mourning

In Memoires: for Paul de Man, which was written almost immediately following de Man's death in 1983, Derrida reflects upon the political significance of his colleague's apparent Nazi affiliation in his youth, and he also discusses the pain of losing his friend. Derrida's argument about mourning adheres to a similarly paradoxical logic to that which has been associated with him throughout this article. He suggests that the so-called 'successful' mourning of the deceased other actually fails - or at least is an unfaithful fidelity - because the other person becomes a part of us, and in this interiorisation their genuine alterity is no longer respected. On the other hand, failure to mourn the other's death paradoxically appears to succeed, because the presence of the other person in their exteriority is prolonged (MDM 6). As Derrida suggests, there is a sense in which "an aborted interiorisation is at the same time a respect for the other as other" (MDM 35). Hence the possibility of an impossible bereavement, where the only possible way to mourn, is to be unable to do so. However, even though this is how he initially presents the problem, Derrida also problematises this "success fails, failure succeeds" formulation (MDM 35).

In his essay "Fors: The Anglish Words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok", Derrida again considers two models of the type of encroachment between self and other that is regularly associated with mourning. Borrowing from post-Freudian theories of mourning, he posits (although later undermines) a difference between introjection, which is love for the other in me, and incorporation, which involves retaining the other as a pocket, or a foreign body within one's own body. For Freud, as well as for the psychologists Abraham and Torok whose work Derrida considers, successful mourning is primarily about the introjection of the other. The preservation of a discrete and separate other person inside the self (psychologically speaking), as is the case in incorporation, is considered to be where mourning ceases to be a 'normal' response and instead becomes pathological. Typically, Derrida reverses this hierarchy by highlighting that there is a sense in which the supposedly pathological condition of incorporation is actually more respectful of the other person's alterity. After all, incorporation means that one has not totally assimilated the other, as there is still a difference and a heterogeneity (EO 57). On the other hand, Abraham and Torok's so-called 'normal' mourning can be accused of interiorising the other person to such a degree that they have become assimilated and even metaphorically cannibalised. Derrida considers this introjection to be an infidelity to the other. However, Derrida's account is not so simple as to unreservedly valorise the incorporation of the other person, even if he emphasises this paradigm in an effort to refute the canonical interpretation of successful mourning. He also acknowledges that the more the self "keeps the foreign element inside itself, the more it excludes it" (Fors xvii). If we refuse to engage with the dead other, we also exclude their foreignness from ourselves and hence prevent any transformative interaction with them. When fetishised in their externality in such a manner, the dead other really is lifeless and it is significant that Derrida describes the death of de Man in terms of the loss of exchange and of the transformational opportunities that he presented (MDM xvi, cf WM). Derrida's point hence seems to be that in mourning, the 'otherness of the other' person resists both the process of incorporation as well as the process of introjection. The other can neither be preserved as a foreign entity, nor introjected fully within. Towards the end of Memoires: for Paul de Man, Derrida suggests that responsibility towards the other is about respecting and even emphasising this resistance (MDM 160, 238).

8. References and Further Reading

a. Derrida's Texts (and Their Abbreviations)

Acts of Literature, ed. Attridge, New York: Routledge, 1992 (AL).

Adieu to Emmanuel Lévinas, trans. Brault & Naas, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999 (AEL).

Circumfessions: Fifty Nine Periphrases, in Bennington, G., Jacques Derrida, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 (Circ).

On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, London: Routledge, 2001 (OCF).

Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, (inc. "Force of the Law"), eds. Cornell, Carlson, & Benjamin, New York: Routledge, 1992 (DPJ).

Dissemination, trans. Johnson, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981 (D).

"'Eating Well' or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida" in Who Comes After the Subject? eds. Cadava, Connor, & Nancy, New York: Routledge, 1991, p 96-119.

The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation, trans. Kamuf, ed. McDonald, New York: Schocken Books, 1985 (EO).

Edmund Husserl's 'Origin of Geometry': An Introduction, trans. Leavey, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1978 (1962) (HOG).

"Fors: The Anglish Words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok", trans. Johnson, in The Wolfman's Magic Word: A Cryptonomy, Abraham, N., & Torok, M., trans. Rand, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986 (Fors).

The Gift of Death, trans. Wills, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995 (1991) (GD).

Given Time: i. Counterfeit Money, trans. Kamuf, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 (GT).

"Hostipitality" in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, Vol. 5, Number 3, Dec 2000.

Le Toucher: Jean-Luc Nancy, Paris: Galilée, 2000 (T).

"Le Toucher: Touch/to touch him", in Paragraph, trans. Kamuf, 16:2, 1993, p 122-57.

Limited Inc. (inc. "Afterword"), ed. Graff, trans. Weber, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998 edition (LI).

Margins of Philosophy, trans. Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982 (M).

Memoires: for Paul de Man, trans. Lindsay, Culler, Cadava, & Kamuf, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989 (MDM).

Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, trans. Brault & Naas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 (1991) (MB).

Monolingualism of the Other or the Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Mensh, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996 (MO).

"Nietzsche and the Machine: Interview with Jacques Derrida" (interviewer Beardsworth) in Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 7, Spring 1994 (NM). Of Grammatology, trans. Spivak, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1976 (OG).

Derrida, J., & Dufourmantelle, A., Of Hospitality, trans. Bowlby, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000 (OH).

On the Name (inc. "Passions"), ed. Dutoit, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995 (ON).

"Ousia and Gramme: A Note to a Footnote in Being and Time" trans. Casey in Phenomenology in Perspective, ed. Smith, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970.

Parages, Paris: Galilée, 1986. Points... Interviews, 1974-1995, ed. Weber, trans. Kamuf et al, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995 (P).

Politics of Friendship, trans. Collins, New York: Verso, 1997 (PF).

Positions, trans. Bass, London: Athlone Press, 1981 (1972) (PO).

"Psyche: Inventions of the Other" in Reading De Man Reading, eds. Waters & Godzich, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989 (RDR).

Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Kamuf, New York: Routledge, 1994 (SM).

'Speech and Phenomena' and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, trans. Allison, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973 (1967) (SP).

The Work of Mourning, eds. Brault & Naas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001 (WM).

Writing and Difference, trans. Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978 (1967) (WD).

b. Selected Commentaries

Bennington, G., Interrupting Derrida, Warwick Studies in European Philosophy, London: Routledge, 2000.

Bennington, G., Jacques Derrida, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Caputo, J., Deconstruction in a Nutshell, New York: Fordham University Press, 1997.

Caputo, J., The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Critchley, S., The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Lévinas, Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1992.

Culler, J., On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983.

Gasché, R., Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994. Gasché, R., The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Hart, K., The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Harvey, I., Derrida and the Economy of Différance, Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.

Howells, C., Derrida: Deconstruction from Phenomenology to Ethics, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999.

Krell, D., The Purest of Bastards: Works of Art, Affirmation and Mourning in the Thought of Jacques Derrida, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, 2000.

Norris, C., Derrida, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Patrick, M., Derrida, Responsibility and Politics, Avebury Series in Philosophy, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1997.

Silverman, H., ed. Derrida and Deconstruction, New York: Routledge, 1989.

Wood, D., The Deconstruction of Time, Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and the Human Sciences, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1989.

Wood, D., ed. Derrida: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.

Wood, D., & Bernasconi, R., eds. Derrida and Différance, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988.

Author Information

Jack Reynolds
Email: Jack.Reynolds@latrobe.edu.au
La Trobe University
Australia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Jacques Derrida was one of the most well known twentieth century philosophers. He was also one of the most prolific. Distancing himself from the various philosophical movements and traditions that preceded him on the French intellectual scene (phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism), he developed a strategy called "deconstruction" in the mid 1960s.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is considered a chronic auto-immune inflammatory disease. One of the hall-marks, however, is progressive neurodegeneration, which plays a key role in the advancement of neurological dis-abilities. Little is known of the link between neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration of the disease. Previous biochemical studies have shown elevated levels of nitric oxide in patients with MS produced by the activation of nitric oxide synthase secondary to repetitive proinflammatory cascades. Nitric oxide has a wide range of biological functions, one of which is a strong vasodilator that can manipulate cerebral blood flow (CBF), thus mediating neurovascular coupling that is responsible for increased blood supply during transient neural activation. In healthy volunteers, studies reported an immense increase of blood flow in the visual cortex in response to visual stimuli (an increase of more than 60%-80% compared with the resting state), indicating that intact neurovascular coupling of the brain is essential for instant and rapid oxygen delivery. However, for patients with MS, chronically high levels of nitric oxide may have detrimental effects on the vascular health of the brain; its overproduction may desensitize endothelial and smooth muscle function (vascular habituation), causing decreased vasodilatory capacity and limited blood supply for neurons that perform demanding tasks; thus, this overproduction may create neuronal activity- induced hypoxia.

Several histopathological studies have elucidated hypoxia-like tissue injury in patients with MS, which may help us better understand its pathogenetic role in lesion formation and neurodegeneration. This is likely an underlying cause of progressive neurodegeneration secondary to neuroinflammation in MS. Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR), a useful index of cerebral vascular function, can be used to measure the impaired hemodynamic response to vasodilator stimuli. Although perfusion measurements (eg, CBF and cerebral blood volume) have been reported in numerous studies, vasoreactivity has not yet been investigated in patients with MS.

A number of vasoactive stimuli have been explored for CVR assessment, including caffeine, carbon dioxide (CO ₂), and injection of acetazolamide. CO is the most commonly used and most appropriate vasodilator for CVR measurement owing to its practicality, reliability, and ability to be standardized. Using a fixed CO ₂ gas mixture (5% by volume), previous studies have reported CVR impairment using blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for several neurological diseases (eg, Alzheimer disease and stroke). However, blood oxygen level-dependent functional MRI measures CBF changes indirectly because it relies heavily on the blood oxygenation level. The modulation of physiological blood flow can be evaluated using arterial spin labeling (ASL) perfusion MRI, which measures CBF noninvasively by magnetically labeling arterial blood water as an endogenous tracer. A few studies have shown that ASL-based techniques can reliably measure CVR (see, eg, Tancredi et al).

Our hypothesis is that patients with MS have significant abnormalities in CVR that may be due to the presence of chronically high nitric oxide levels, and such vascular hemodynamic response deficits may be a significant underlying cause of diffuse and progressive neurodegeneration. In the present study, we used a robust and well-validated pseudocontinuous ASL (pCASL) perfusion MRI acquisition at normocapnia (room air) and at hypercapnia (5% CO ₂) conditions to evaluate CVR in patients with MS, compared with healthy controls, and to correlate CVR and brain atrophy measures.

Methods

Participants

Nineteen patients with clinically definite MS (17 with relapsingremitting MS and 2 with secondary progressive MS), with a mean (SD) age of 42.8 (10.2) years (10 women and 9 men), and 19 healthy control volunteers, with a mean [SD] age of 39.6 [12.9] years (6 women and 13 men), were included in our study. The protocol was approved by the institutional review board and research ethics committee at New York University School of Medicine and NYU Langone Medical Center. After receiving an explanation of the study protocol, all participants provided written informed consent and were financially compensated for participation. Patients and controls with a prior diagnosis of cardiovascular, pulmonary, cerebrovascular, or other neurological disease, as well as active smokers, were excluded. All patients had varied symptoms that included visual disturbances, numbness and tingling, weakness or fatigue, pain or sensitivity to heat, dizziness, bowel or bladder problems, or difficulty thinking clearly. All patients received 1 or more immunosuppressive or immunomodulatory drugs in the 3 years prior to the examination. Among them, 6 patients received natalizumab (Tysabri; Biogen Idec) and glatiramer acetate (Copaxone; Teva Neuroscience), 4 received interferon beta-1a (Rebif [EMD Serono/Pfizer] and Betaseron [Bayer HealthCare]), 3 received fingolimod (Gilenya; Novartis), 2 received interferon beta-1a (Avonex; Biogen Idec), and 1 received rituximab (Rituxan; Genentech/Biogen Idec). None of these medications are known to cause changes in vascular function. All participants were instructed to refrain from drinking coffee for at least 4 hours before the examination. The patients had a mean (SD) disease duration of 10.4 (7.6) years (range, 2.2-24 years) and a mean (SD) Expanded Disability Status Scale score of 2.9 (1.5) (range, 1-6).

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The MRI data were obtained by use of a 3-T whole-body MR scanner (Siemens Tim Trio; Siemens Healthcare) with a 12-channel head coil, following our standard protocol for intracranial lesion assessment. This includes nonenhanced T1-weighted (repetition time/echo time: 600/14 milliseconds), fluid-attenuated inversion recovery images (repetition time/ echo time: 9010/134 milliseconds; inversion time: 2500 milliseconds) and T2-weighted images (repetition time/echo time: 3400/119 milliseconds) covering the whole brain. Postcontrast T1-weighted imaging (repetition time/echo time: 600/14 milliseconds) was acquired to evaluate enhancing lesions. In addition to conventional routine sequences, CBF was measured using pCASL perfusion MRI, based on single-shot gradient-echo echo-planar imaging with the following parameters: repetition time/echo time: 3950/17 milliseconds; labeling duration:1470 milliseconds; postlabeling delay: 1230 milliseconds; slice thickness: 5 mm; 32 transverse slices; field of view: 22 cm; 64 × 64 in-plane matrix; and a total of 52 measurements with 26 pairs of label and control images. Labeling was performed at 97 mm below the center-of-imaging volume such that it was approximately perpendicular to the internal carotid and vertebral arteries. We used a generalized autocalibrating, partially parallel acquisition factor of 2 with a scan duration of 3 minutes and 35 seconds.

Two pCASL sequences were recorded, the first sequence under normocapnia, in which the patient breathed room air, and the next sequence under hypercapnia, in which the patient breathed a 5% CO ₂ gas mixture (5% CO ₂, 21% oxygen gas, and 74% nitrogen gas) from a Douglas bag. The participants were tightly fitted with a nose clip to restrict breathing to the mouth. During both sequences, end-tidal CO ₂ (ETCO ₂) was monitored and measured at a 2-second sampling rate, using the MR-compatible Medrad 9500 MRI Multigas Monitor. After the normocapnia scan, the hypercapnia gas was switched on, and 1-minute, 18-second, T1-weighted anatomical imaging (repetition time/echo time: 320/2.42 milliseconds; voxel resolution size: 0.9 × 0.9 × 1 mm ³) with identical imaging orientation, resolution, and slice number as the pCASL was performed for optimal image registration. This time permitted ETCO ₂ to reach a new steady state, allowing the second pCASL sequence to be run under the hypercapnia condition. Three-dimensional magnetization-prepared rapid acquisition with gradient echo (MPRAGE), high-resolution, T1-weighted imaging was performed for brain tissue segmentation (repetition time/ echo time: 2300/2.98 milliseconds; inversion time: 900 milliseconds; voxel resolution size: 1 × 1 × 1 mm ³).

Image Processing and Evaluation

The processing of images was conducted using Statistical Parametric Mapping (University College London) software in order to perform motion correction for both pCASL sequences and in order to register the geometrically matched 2-dimensional spin-echo T1-weighted images and 3-dimensional high-resolution MPRAGE anatomical images. For both pCASL sequences, the difference between the average labeled image and the control image was corrected for the differences in the acquisition delay time of the slices. The CBF maps were generated for each condition by conducting CBF calibration using

where Δ M is the difference signal between the control and labeling states; λ = 0.9 g/mL, which is the blood/tissue water partition coefficient; α = 0.86, which is used empirically for the inversion tagging efficiency of pCASL at 3 T; M0 is the equilibrium magnetization of brain tissue determined from a wholebrain region of interest during the control condition, after accounting for T1 relaxation; T1 = 1.6 seconds, which is the conventional T1 constant of blood at 3 T; w is the postlabeling delay, which is different for individual slices (1.23 seconds + slice acquisition delay); and τ is the labeling duration (1.47 seconds in our data).

The resulting maps were subsequently transformed into the Montreal Neurological Institute template of 52 space-masking brain-only regions and were spatially smoothed using a gaussian kernel (full-width at half-maximum = 8 mm). A CBF difference map (hypercapnia − normocapnia) was divided at each voxel by the average gray matter (GM) partial volume- adjusted normocapnia CBF to reflect the CBF percent increase. This was performed by assuming that GM perfusion is 2.5 times white matter (WM) perfusion per unit volume. These maps were normalized by individual ETCO ₂ increases, to adjust for participant-specific variation, resulting in CVR maps. Thus, CVR (calculated as the percent increase of normocapnic to hypercapnic CBF normalized by the change in ETCO ₂) represents the percent change of CBF per unit of ETCO ₂ (mm Hg) change. Global GM and WM CBF values were computed by overlaying the tissue mask (defined as >70% probability of being the tissue type) on the normalized CBF maps and calculating the mean value within. These values were used to calculate global CVR according to

FireVoxel software ( https://files.nyu.edu/hr18/public/) was used for semiautomatic MS lesion load quantification, after intensity uniformity correction of the fluid-attenuated inversion recovery images. Lesions were visually inspected to correct errors. The brain was segmented into GM, WM, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) regions based on the 3-dimensional, high-resolution, T1-weighted MPRAGE images using the Brain Extraction Tool and the Automated Segmentation Tool from the FMRIB (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain) Software Library. Results were visually inspected and manually corrected. The fractional brain parenchymal volume, an index of brain atrophy, was computed as the ratio of brain parenchymal volume (GM and WM) to total intracranial volume (GM, WM, and CSF). Fractional GM (fGM) volume was computed as the ratio of GM volume to total intracranial volume.

Statistical Analysis

The CVR map for each participant was used for voxel-based regional analyses between patients and controls. Group statistics were calculated using the Statistical Parametric Mapping software on voxel-by-voxel bases. A 2-sample t test was used to identify clusters with significantly different CVR values in the MS group compared with the control group, set at a familywise error-corrected threshold of P < .05. Voxels were automatically labeled using the preparcelled Montreal Neurological Institute brain template and the PickAtlas software. Global CVR values of the patients and controls were compared using a 2-sample t test. For regression analysis, the Pearson correlations between GM CVR and lesion load, fractional brain parenchymal volume (ie, brain atrophy index), Expanded Disability Status Scale score, and disease duration were evaluated for patients with MS.

Results

All participants completed the scan comfortably. Compared with the control group, the MS group showed a significant decrease of global GM CVR (). Global GM CBF and mean ETCO ₂ values are listed in , with no significant difference between the MS group and the control group shown for either measure at normocapnia or hypercapnia. There was a significantly smaller mean CBF percent increase (31.7%) from normocapnia to hypercapnia in the MS group than in the control group (44.8%) ( P = .01). However, the ETCO ₂ increase was almost identical for both groups (9.2 mm Hg for the MS group vs 8.9 mm Hg for the control group; P = .73). presents the mean (SD) GM CVR values in the control group (5.08 [1.56]) and the MS group (3.56 [0.81]) measured as the percent change of CBF per unit change of ETCO ₂ ( P = .001) () and the widespread CVR deficit distribution along the cortical surface between the patients with MS and the controls (corrected P < .05) as a result of a voxel-by-voxel comparison of CVR maps (). The mean (SD) global WM CVR was 6.1 (3.0) for the control group and 4.0 (1.2) for the MS group, showing a significant difference ( P = .007). Further analysis was restricted to GM because the pCASL signal is less reliable in WM.

Table 1

Quantitative analysis of the voxel-based group comparison shows a significant reduction in CVR in more than 10% of the GM volume of the temporal, parietal, sublobar, and limbic regions and in less than 10% of the GM volume of the frontal and occipital lobes. Specifically, GM CVR deficits are seen in more than 25% of the superior temporal gyri, supramarginal gyri, rolandic opercula, Heschl gyri, anterior cingulate gyri, and lenticular nuclei. summarizes the lobes and contained subregions where more than 10% of GM volume shows a significant decrease in CVR.

Table 2

The mean (SD) fractional brain parenchymal volume was decreased in the MS group compared with the control group (0.79% [0.04%] vs 0.82% [0.02%]; P = .02), as was the mean (SD) fGM volume (0.41% [0.03%] vs 0.44% [0.02%]; P = .008). The mean (SD) lesion size in the MS group is 14.3 (12.7) cm ³. shows the significant negative correlation of GM CVR with lesion volume ( R = 0.6, P = .004), as well as the significant positive correlation of GM CVR with the fGM atrophy index ( R = 0.5, P = .03). There was no significant correlation between GM CVR and Expanded Disability Status Scale score or disease duration. No enhanced lesions were visible in the postcontrast T1-weighted image.

Discussion

Neurovascular coupling is a complex and important physiologic mechanism during which neuronal activation leads to increased local cortical blood flow resulting from activity-induced vasodilation. This prompt response is critical for maintaining normal brain function by fulfilling instantaneous energy demand, through oxygen and glucose delivery. Such an intrinsic mechanism can be estimated with CVR, which defines the ability to change CBF in response to vasodilatory stimuli. In our study, we found that global GM CVR (by CO ₂ challenge) significantly decreases and correlates with brain atrophy and lesion volume in patients with MS. The pathophysiological mechanism of such deficits of vascular hemodynamic response in MS may be best explained by chronically high concentrations of nitric oxide (a potent vasodilator causing vascular habituation) secondary to repetitive vascular inflammatory cascades, as opposed to other postinflammatory by-products. Over time, inadequate blood flow to neurons due to impaired CVR can cause a chronic state of hypoxia leading to neurodegeneration, especially affecting otherwise healthy neurons. We have provided the first direct evidence that CVR, which is essential for neurovascular coupling, is impaired in MS and may be accountable for neurodegenerative changes often seen in patients with MS.

There is abundant evidence showing higher levels of nitric oxide (and its nitroderivatives in CSF) in patients with MS. However, nitric oxide has a very short lifetime and is difficult to use clinically for CVR assessment. Alternatively, mild CO ₂ mixtures (5% CO ₂, 21% oxygen gas, and 74% nitrogen gas) are often used as a safe and reliable vasodilator for CVR measures. Increased CO ₂ tension in blood (referred to as hypercapnia) is known to cause an increase in CBF. As performed in our study, comparing CBF at normocapnia (breathing room air) and hypercapnia (breathing 5% CO ₂) allows for a direct estimation of CVR. Compared with regular continuous or pulsed ASL, the recently developed pCASL sequence is optimized for a better signal to noise ratio, as well as high tagging efficiency within a reasonable short scan time.

A significant drawback of the ASL-type technique is its larger variations of CBF values in WM, which are due to the poor sensitivity and heterogeneous transit time, than in GM. Therefore, we do not consider WM CVR changes as reliable, but reduced CVR is expected because it is accepted that, in MS, inflammatory activities with lesion formation are more prominent in WM than in GM. Because nitric oxide is a highly lipophilic and diffusible gas, it permeates biological membranes, reaching distances far beyond where it was generated. In light of this, the chronic elevation of nitric oxide is expected to affect the vasculature reserve function found in the GM throughout the brain, which is shown by our finding of a diffuse decrease in CVR. Our results favor the notion that, in MS, atrophy is more prominently seen in GM than in WM because GM has a higher vascular density; thus, the CVR compromise may be more pronounced in GM than in WM. However, with several recent improvements in ASL, including 3-dimensional gradient- and spinecho readout schemes and background suppression techniques, a more accurate characterization of WM CVR may be possible in the near future.

In the present study, neither of the CBF conditions show significant differences in the patients with MS compared with controls; however, previous literature has reported both increased and decreased perfusion in patients. More regions are likely associated with underlying inflammatory activities, and regions with decreased perfusion may be due to either decreased neuronal activity (demand) or vasoreactivity. Our study only investigates global mean CBF values because regional CBF is not reliable with current ASL techniques owing to low signal to noise ratio. The CVR of the patients with MS, however, is significantly lower than the CVR of the controls. This is likely driven by the significantly smaller CBF increase in the MS group than in the control group when both groups were exposed to hypercapnia, as opposed to the ETCO ₂ increase, which is similar in both groups. There is an imbalance in the number of male and female participants in the control group; however, in a study of 152 healthy controls, Lu et al show that no sex effects were observed in CVR.

We show a globally diffuse, significant decrease in CVR in the MS group, which can indicate a widespread impairment in blood flow regulation or neurovascular coupling. We hypothesize that such impairment can lead to inefficient blood supply on demand and eventually neuronal dysfunction and death, which supports the increasingly recognized evidence of widespread neurodegeneration in MS. In our study, the GM CVR deficits found in certain cortical areas are consistent with structural changes shown in previous studies and are likely responsible for the common symptoms experienced by patients with MS. For example, decreased GM volume and thickness have been shown in the superior temporal gyrus of patients with MS and have been a suggested marker of cognitive impairment related to attention and information speed processing. We report that 43.7% of this region has significantly decreased CVR, which could be the underlying cause of GM thinning. Further studies are needed to explore the correlation between symptoms, structural changes, and CVR deficits; however, we provide evidence that CVR may play an important role in initiating these changes that lead to clinical symptoms.

Cerebrovascular reactivity is an important clinical measure because it assesses vascular health and therefore may indicate overall neuronal health. It is a strong predictor of tissue at risk and can guide medical treatment of many disorders, such as stroke. For the MS group, the global GM CVR and the fGM volume are significantly correlated. This is to be expected because a decreased fGM volume indicates neurodegeneration, which can be partly due to decreased CVR in patients with MS. This significant correlation is unlikely to be attributed to the partial volume effect of CSF because similar analysis for the control group does not show a significant correlation between CVR and fGM volume.

Conclusions

In conclusion, the direct measure of CVR with hypercapnia perfusion MRI reveals important characteristics of vascular hemodynamic function, and its impairment in patients with MS is usually only detectable in in vivo studies. This technique allows for a better understanding of the underlying mechanism of neuro-degeneration and the worsening of symptoms in MS.

Acknowledgments

Funding/Support: Dr Ge was supported by grants R01 NS076588 and R01 NS029029S1 from the National Institutes of Health and by research grant 4707A1 from the National MS Society. Dr Lu was supported by grants R01 MH084021, R01 NS067015, R01 AG042753, and R21 NS078656 from the National Institutes of Health. Dr Grossman was supported by grant R01 NS029029 from the National Institutes of Health.

Footnotes

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

Role of the Sponsor: The funding agencies had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, or interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Additional Contributions: We would like to thank Jacqueline Smith, Ilya Kister, MD, and Sanjeev Chawla, PhD, from the New York University School of Medicine for helping with data collection. We would also like to thank Danny J. Wang, PhD, from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, for providing the pseudocontinuous ASL sequence. These individuals did not receive compensation from the funding sponsors.

REFERENCES

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Impaired Cerebrovascular Reactivity in Multiple Sclerosis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is considered a chronic auto-immune inflammatory disease. One of the hall-marks, however, is progressive neurodegeneration, which plays a key role in the advancement of neurological dis-abilities. Little is known of the link between neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration of the disease.

# data[].attributes.body
I have both Dyslexia and Irlen syndrome I had coloured lens glasses for years which helped to correct the Irlen syndrome but now it is difficult to get them.

# data[].attributes.body
From the book Systems: Documents of Contemporary Art

# data[].attributes.body
This book is great. I have gained so much from reading it. Many artist circa 1968 and from the A & L movement have contributed to it. I am getting a good understanding of how artists work with systems , what systems are and how I could study just one system say the human form or interlink any combination of systems from various subject fields to inform my practice. This book provides workable structures that help me to form my own methodologies for combining the subject areas that interest me : science, philosophy, technology and language into my art practice.

# data[].attributes.body
I am right at the end of my research time and just come across Tony Cragg's work. His work is a perfect link to take forward from my research to the Creative Enquiry module where I am exploring making the unseen visible through the medium of animism/shamanism .

# data[].attributes.body
So now I have to hand in my research but really it is a work in progress it is not an ending. Which to my mind means that there have been many successes in this project. One of the ways I can make visible my perception in my artwork is quite simply by collaborating and instructing towards making creations that are cognitively and physically beyond my scope. This has been the best thing for me to learn this year I have already taken this forward into other module where I felt defeated by my limitations until I conquered my fear of communication and worked towards an extremely successful making outcome through dialogue and collaboration with the colleges tutor and technician.
Another way I can make visible my non-neurotypical perception is by using the framework of other established systems to build my blocks within as a foundation and then use my own autonomy to alter the system from within and make it my own. That's what the A & L movement did. Another way is by rooting myself in the feminine power represented by the colour red and then using that confident stability no longer in a state of separation but at the centre of my own sensorially creative artmaking process .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
French, 19th-20th century.
Born 1876, France; died 1954.

In the annals of art brut, numerous artists claimed to have been moved to produce their paintings, drawings or other works by invisible spirits whose voices they heard or whose forces influenced the form or appearance of their artistic creations. Augustin Lesage was a coal miner in the far north of France who asserted that, at the age of 35, he had heard a voice tell him that he would become an artist. Up until that time, the only direct contact Lesage had had with the fine arts had been a visit to the art museum in Lille. Ultimately, the voice Lesage heard, which he believed was that of his younger sister, who had died at the age of three, instructed him about what subjects to paint and which materials to use to make his pictures. Lesage went on to make art and also to serve as a medium in spirit-summoning séances.

Guided by spirit voices, including that of his dead sister, Lesage made his first drawings. During the early 1910s, he set to work on a large canvas that took him two years to complete. Similarly, throughout his art-making career, large-format paintings featured prominently in his oeuvre. Recalling his first compulsion to make art, Lesage once said, "In January 1912, powerful spirits came and revealed themselves to me, ordering me to draw and paint, something which I had never done before. [...] 'Do not worry about insignificant details,' was their response. 'We are the ones working through your hands.'" (1) Lesage claimed the voices he heard also had told him, "Don't be afraid. We are next to you. One day you will be a painter." (2)

Although his service in World War I interrupted his art-making, Lesage returned to painting in 1916. By the early 1920s, he was able to make a living from his activities as a spirit medium and artist. In a body of work that consisted of some 800 paintings, Lesage created intricate, colorful images that featured neatly laid-out, often symmetrical or architectonic compositions, with rows of detailed patterning or figures in profile, similar to (and in some cases unabashedly imitating) Egyptian hieroglyphics. Birds, human faces and what appear to be temple-guarding lions (frequent animal figures in ancient Egyptian art) often turn up in Lesage's pictures, as do frame-like forms that surround and contain sections of certain compositions. Some observers have suggested that these forms allude to the narrow, confining tunnels of the coal mines in which Lesage had labored as a young man.

The French modern artist Jean Dubuffet, whose research about the unconventional work of self-taught art-makers led him to formulate a definitive description of art brutartists and the nature of their creations, acquired some of Lesage's paintings for his collection. Dubuffet amassed "mediumistic" works by other artists, too, including paintings, drawings, written texts and embroidered textiles. In the late 1920s, in Paris, Lesage offered public demonstrations of his spirit-driven painting technique while being observed by scientific researchers who were interested in his kind of "spiritualistic art." He continued making art right up until the end of his life.

- Edward M. Gómez

Notes:
(1) Peiry, Lucienne, Art Brut: The Origins of Outsider Art. Paris: Flammarion, distributed in the U.S.A. by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.; second English-language edition, 2006; originally published in French as L'Art Brut, Paris: Flammarion; 1997. Page 16.
(2) Website of American Folk Art Museum, New York. See web page: http://www.folkartmuseum.org/?p=folk&t=images&id=3469

Selected Exhibitions
2013, The Encyclopedic Palace, main exhibition of the 55th Venice Biennale, Venice
2010, The Museum of Everything, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin
2008, Augustin Lesage, Elmar Trenkwalder: Les inspirés, La Maison Rouge/Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Paris
1979, Outsiders, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London

Selected Collections
Collection abcd, Montreuil
Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne
Lille Métropole Musée d'Art Moderne, d'Art Contemporain et d'Art Brut, Lille

Selected Bibliography
The Museum of Everything, exhibition catalogue, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli & Electa, Turin/Milan, 2010.
Roulin, Geneviève. "Raw Classics: Augustin Lesage." Raw Vision, U.K., issue number 26, spring 1999.
Peiry, Lucienne, Art Brut: The Origins of Outsider Art. Paris: Flammarion, distributed in the U.S.A. by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.; second English-language edition, 2006; originally published in French as L'Art Brut, Paris: Flammarion; 1997.
Deroeux, Didier, Annick Notter, Michel Thévoz et al., Augustin Lesage 1876-1954, Philippe Sers Éditeur/Vilo, Paris, 1988.
Thévoz, Michel, L'Art brut, Albert Skira, Geneva, 1975.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Established in 1993, the Outsider Art Fair is the premier fair dedicated to Self-Taught Art, Art Brut and Outsider Art and takes place annually in New York and Paris. The New York edition is held in January at the Metropolitan Pavilion.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
At the frontier of reality and imagination, during long sessions of silent meditation, I travel around visual sensations. It is the knotty bark of a tree, a fragment of a wall, the blue water of a lagoon, an imaginary techno world launched at full speed in a virtual communication circuit. Free to let go of my mind or whatever he wants. I throw this abstract energy on the canvas.

Self-taught, from a family of artists for several generations. I have definitely turned to this passion for seventeen years after a career in fashion and many trips.

2016: Saachi Art Gallery

2014/2016: Barnes Courchevel Exhibition

2014/2016: Andy Marhol Gallery Brussels

2013: Artnet Gallery Geneva Switzerland

2012/2013: Exhibition of the Grand Palais Artiste indépendants Paris

2009/2012: Villa Pérrote Dieppe Gallery

2011: Dreffus Art89 Paris Gallery

2009/2010: Gallery on 6Bis Annecy

2005: Mediterranean Gallery Courchevel and Baux de Provence

2005: Gallery of Pierre Courchevel's chalet

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Marion Moulin's Gallery- KAZoART online art gallery

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At the frontier of reality and imagination, during long sessions of silent meditation, I travel around visual sensations. It is the knotty bark of a tree, a fragment of a wall, the blue water of a lagoon, an imaginary techno world launched at full speed in a virtual communication circuit.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Welcome to madgegill.com

Madge Gill (1882-1961) is undoubtedly one of the world's most highly regarded self-taught artists. Here you will discover a large selection of her artworks as well as an insight into the artist's remarkable life and news of events and exhibitions.

Roger Cardinal, who coined the term Outsider Art in 1972, writes in his latest biography 'The Life of Madge Gill': Gill's frenetic improvizations have an almost hallucinatory quality, each surface being filled with checkerboard patterns that suggest giddy, quasi-architectural spaces. Afloat upon these swirling proliferations are the pale faces of discarnate and nameless women, sketched perfunctorily, albeit with an apparent concern for beauty, and with startled expressions.

Working under the control of Myrninerest, her spirit guide, Madge's art remains an enigma. We hope these magical drawings will inspire you.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Madge Gill - The life and art of Britain's foremost female outsider artist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Welcome to madgegill.com Madge Gill (1882-1961) is undoubtedly one of the world's most highly regarded self-taught artists. Here you will discover a large selection of her artworks as well as an insight into the artist's remarkable life and news of events and exhibitions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
110 boulevard Saint Germain 75006 Paris (France) - info[at]aware-art[.]org - +33 (0)1 55 26 90 29

© 2021 Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions.
Tous droits réservés dans tous pays/All rights reserved for all countries.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Aloïse (Aloïse Corbaz dite) - AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Now considered one of the major figures of art brut, Aloïse is well known to a wider audience today thanks to the eponymous 1975 film by Liliane de Kermadec (born 1928), starring Delphine Seyrig. Aloïse's artistic practice is inseparably linked to her disease - schizophrenia...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Browse images of artworks on display or in store at the Museum, including Richard Dadd, Louis Wain, Stanley Lench and William Kurelek.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
ARTECHMEDIA International Forum. Cordoba "Art, Science, Technology, Innovation, Society"

Great changes have taken place recently and have permeated all our lives, constructing a society fuelled by intelligent communication systems that will allow us to access precise information at home, in the car, while we're walking etc. The technology that is being created tends to ubiquitous and non-intrusive.

These changes have also led to a series of concerns as well as cultural challenges. In order to make out the direction in which we are heading, and the paths that have opened up through new technologies in art and society as a whole, in this future that has become our present, there is a need for debate and reflection from different perspectives, in order to take stock of the impact that it is going to have on our polyhedric reality. Only in this way will we be able to feel we are playing an active role in this global change, designing and directing the process, not just mere receptors of its contents.
ARTECHMEDIA International Forum. Cordoba

Cordoba will be the venue for the forum for art, creativity, and innovation with the participation of institutions and all sectors related to art and new media, innovation, technology and digital culture, both nationally and internationally.

The main objective of the call for an International Forum is to debate and articulate proposals and their content and to develop a blueprint for Experimental Centres for artistic and creative production, as well as the Strategic Plan for the Development of Arts and Digital Culture, leading to New platforms and contents for art, the construction of the Society of knowledge and the participation of citizens in cultural politics. The talks and debates will aim to design structures and objectives. At the same time there will be presentations and debates on proposals that showcase the most innovative ideas and creations on the international stage.
Main objectives:
Presentation and debate of the proposals that promote content for the Experimental Centres and the new platforms for the 21st century and the Strategic Plan for the Development of Arts and Digital Culture.

To establish guidelines for the collaboration and exchange of ideas and projects with Experimental Centres throughout the world.

In the Forum, to determine the upcoming initiatives and an agenda for the development of those organisational and operational aspects needed for dissemination and collaboration with other institutions: platforms for digital knowledge, TV channel on the Internet, exchange programme etc.

The Forum link up participants and collaborators with institutions and technology, art and social organisations throughout the world through the ARTECHMEDIA platform. It will facilitate efficient, reliable partner searches and collaborations among all sectors.

web: ARTECHMEDIA International Forum Cordoba "Art, Science, Technology, Innovation, Society"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ARTECHMEDIA International Forum. Cordoba "Art, Science, Technology, Innovation, Society" Great changes have taken place recently and have permeated all our lives, constructing a society fuelled by intelligent communication systems that will allow us to access precise information at home, in the car, while we're walking etc.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Art and science have much more in common than one might think. Each of these pursuits is, after all, an attempt by humans to describe and understand the world, and even the universe around us. IIn his book, Until the End of Time, American physicist Brian Greene argues that both of these pursuits are a direct subconscious response to the finite nature of life.

Though the methods used to reach that "aha" moment may be different, both art and science are fundamentally human, and both play very important roles in the human experience as well as human innovation. Nonetheless, something special happens when science and art play off each other, even intersect, with each of these areas offering a little more insight into the other. Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence have led to new types of creativity. Complex computer-driven algorithms are helping us design, engineer, and paint like never before.

Job titles like AI Artists or AI Designer are becoming more common. While on the other end of the spectrum, these same intelligent machines are helping unlock the secrets of art dating back to the renaissance. Stunning human-made biological sculptures are being used to save the bees. Ideas derived from fluid dynamics paired with particle science are being the basis for sublime interactive experiences.

Technology is changing the way we experience and create art

There are so many inspiring examples out there. For as long as artistic expression has existed, it has benefited from interplay with scientific principles. That same interplay has led the curious to tremendous discoveries. It was Albert Einstein that once said, "The greatest scientists are artists as well." Today, we will look at modern examples of how science is inspiring art, and how art is inspiring scientists.
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination - John Dewey.
Technology is changing art and opening the doors to new virtual museums, interactive hubs, and new creative mediums. It is no secret that technology is an increasingly pervasive part of our lives, and its influence is finding its way to the art world. Some of the changes may seem obvious, like the increasing popularity of digital art galleries amidst the current coronavirus pandemic. But there are other, less expected changes that have made art more accessible to both creators and buyers.

Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are unlocking new creative horizons for artists

Here is a question for you, "If a computer creates 'art,' should it still be considered art?" This conundrum has laid at the heart of some of the most controversial types of art, AI-generated Art. AI-generated art has sold for thousands, but does that mean it is any good? An AI-generated portrait of Edmond Belamy by French art collective Obvious Art sold for an eye-watering $432,000 in 2018, the most expensive AI painting by far.

The process of creating AI-generated art is not as complicated as you may think. Though there are many different paths to creating AI art, in general, artists write algorithms that are able to "learn" a specific aesthetic by analyzing thousands of images.

The algorithm then tries to generate new images along the lines of the aesthetics it has learned. You could teach an AI algorithm to "paint" like your favorite artists from the renaissance or modern pop art. This convergence of technology and art may someday prove to be one of the most exciting new areas in the art world. And with new AI artists appearing each year, someday may be getting closer.

Blockchain is allowing more people to participate in the art world.

A high-end art collection is usually seen as a fairly exclusive pursuit, reserved for individuals with high net worths. Companies like Maecenas are now using blockchain technologies to help people with ordinary incomes to get into the world of art collecting. Cryptocurrencies have grown in popularity over the years, generating billions of dollars in value. However, one of the biggest hallmarks of the crypto boom was blockchain technology and its ability to democratize marketplaces and remove the need for central authorities.

This is what is doing in the art world. The company allows anyone to purchase shares of fine artworks, the same way you might purchase a share of a company. These art shares are purchased using blockchain tokens called ART tokens, which record the transactions. Thanks to start-ups like this, people no longer need millions of dollars to get in on the excitement of investing in art.

Researchers are using quantitative analysis to study art history

Science is also changing the way we interpret and understand art.
It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science. - Carl Sagan
Those within the art industry currently have a lock on creating influential art criticism. However, similar to the way algorithms are being used to create art, researchers are also using algorithms to analyze art. These tools could even help us unlock some of the secrets of our past.

Art from thousands of years ago holds clues to past cultures. In most cases, the best we can do is make an educated guess about the meaning and purpose of such ancient art. Even so, understanding how and why art has evolved over the millennia is not easy. This is where technology steps in to help. A paper, by researchers from Estonia and Korea, argued that mathematics may hold the key to understanding art history.

Aside from the aesthetic appeal of modern art, art is a gateway to the emotional tone of a society. Art is traditionally looked at through a qualitative lens. The researchers here wanted to try something different.

After scanning thousands of paintings, the team used mathematical algorithms to find commonalities between them over time. They were able to identify observer trends in painting styles, as well as techniques, over certain eras. Quantitative methods have become more important in the art world and are equally important in the creation of AI-generated art.

At the intersection of art, technology, and science, we find creative solutions to real-world problems

Art and science are not only about making things functional and appealing. Merged together, these two areas can become a conduit for change, inspiring real-world solutions to global issues. A master at combining the arts with sciences, architecture, and materials engineering, Neri Oxman has a series of projects that encapsulate all of this and much more. Here are two of our favorites.

A synthetic apiary, created to combat honeybee colony loss, doubled as an art project

Neri Oxman and her team at the Mediated Matter Group have blurred the lines between art and biology to create stunning new designs, art, and sculptures as well as to solve real-world problems.

Oxman is an American-Israeli designer and professor at the MIT Media Lab , who is recognized around the world for her ability to combine architecture, design, biology, computing, and materials engineering. In 2016, Oxman and her Mediated Matter Group team created a Synthetic Apiary. In 2018, 40% of the honeybee colonies died in the US, according to a report published by the University of Maryland .
In nature, there is no separation between design, engineering, and fabrication; the bone does it all. - Neri Oxman
The causes of this mass die-off have been attributed to global warming , habitat loss, parasites, and a class of bee-killing insecticides known as neonicotinoids. The Oxman design project hopes to combat colony loss by exploring the possibility of constructing controlled, indoor environments that would allow honeybee populations to thrive year-round.

To create this environment, the team at Mediated Matter studied honeybees' habits and needs coming up with the precise amounts of light, humidity, and temperature needed to keep the bees thriving in a Spring-like environment.

Adapting to their new environment, the bees were provided with synthetic pollen and sugar water while their health was tracked consistently. Paralleling an art performance, the project was a success. As described by the team, "In this unique experiment, humans and honey co-habitat, enabling natural cultivation and in artificial space across scales, from building scale to the organism scale."

This sculpture was made from biopolymers that could help us engineer better products

The team at Mediated Matter has also created a stunning sculpture that takes an aesthetic vision and gives it a purpose that directly tackles a prevalent global issue.

Upon briefly inspecting the architectural pavilion, you might simply walk away thinking it is another stunning sculpture. But upon further expectation, you come to notice that there is something uniquely different about its composition. Standing 16 feet (5 meters) high, Aguahoja I is composed of some of the most abundant biopolymers on our planet. According to Oxman's team, the pavilion is made of 5,740 fallen leaves, 6,500 apple skins, and 3,135 shrimp shells. The structure is known as a bio-composite.

"The materials are designed as a hierarchical network of patterns optimized for structural stability, flexibility, and visual connectivity." In short, they were able to merge these various materials into this singular totem, incorporating each material in a way to maximize the sculpture's integrity. They created these biopolymers through the process of programmed decomposition.

The structure itself was then 3D-printed by a robot, shaped by water, and augmented with synthetically engineered organisms and natural pigments. Aguahoja I is extremely durable, able to withstand changing environmental conditions such as heat and humidity while retaining its flexibility.

Oxman and her team created this art and science project as a direct response to the impact of plastics on our environments, highlighting how biodegradable polymers could be used in future manufacturing methods.

Both of these projects embody Oxman's vision of the future, "The future of design is a future where anything material in the environment - whether it's wearables, cars, buildings - can be designed with this variation of properties and relationship with the environment that can take part in the natural ecology," describes Oxman.

The intersection of art, science, and technology could hold the key.

Innovations reside where art and science connect

In his book on Leonardo Da Vinci, Walter Issacson discusses the historical figure's ability to meld the humanities with science. This core superpower directly shaped this genius's art and inventive creations. "innovation resides where art and science connect is not new."

"Leonardo da Vinci was the exemplar of the creativity that flourishes when the humanities and sciences interact," says Issacson.

"When Einstein was stymied while working out General Relativity, he would pull out his violin and play Mozart until he could reconnect to what he called the harmony of the spheres."

This common theme has run true today and lies at the core of some of our modern heroes. From Albert Einstein to Carl Sagan, to Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, these individuals have championed the relationship between science and technology, attributing it to their own great feats. It will be interesting to see how the fields continue to blur together over the decades.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
It's Magic When Art, Science, and Technology Come Together

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Art and science have much more in common than one might think. Each of these pursuits is, after all, an attempt by humans to describe and understand the world, and even the universe around us. IIn his book, Until the End of Time, American physicist Brian Greene argues that both of these pursuits are a direct subconscious response to the finite nature of life.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Journal Information

Technology and Culture is the quarterly interdisciplinary journal of the Society for the History of Technology. The international journal publishes the work of historians, engineers, scientists, museum curators, archivists, sociologists, anthropologists, and others, on topics ranging from agriculture to zippers. Technology and Culture regularly includes scholarly articles, book reviews, museum exhibit reviews, and critical essays. The society's Current Bibliography in the History of Technology also appears under the banner of Technology and Culture.

Publisher Information

One of the largest publishers in the United States, the Johns Hopkins University Press combines traditional books and journals publishing units with cutting-edge service divisions that sustain diversity and independence among nonprofit, scholarly publishers, societies, and associations. Journals The Press is home to the largest journal publication program of any U.S.-based university press. The Journals Division publishes 85 journals in the arts and humanities, technology and medicine, higher education, history, political science, and library science. The division also manages membership services for more than 50 scholarly and professional associations and societies. Books With critically acclaimed titles in history, science, higher education, consumer health, humanities, classics, and public health, the Books Division publishes 150 new books each year and maintains a backlist in excess of 3,000 titles. With warehouses on three continents, worldwide sales representation, and a robust digital publishing program, the Books Division connects Hopkins authors to scholars, experts, and educational and research institutions around the world. Project MUSE® Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social sciences content, providing access to journal and book content from nearly 300 publishers. MUSE delivers outstanding results to the scholarly community by maximizing revenues for publishers, providing value to libraries, and enabling access for scholars worldwide. Hopkins Fulfillment Services (HFS) HFS provides print and digital distribution for a distinguished list of university presses and nonprofit institutions. HFS clients enjoy state-of-the-art warehousing, real-time access to critical business data, accounts receivable management and collection, and unparalleled customer service.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Art, Technology, and Science: Notes on Their Historical Interaction on JSTOR

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Journal Information Technology and Culture is the quarterly interdisciplinary journal of the Society for the History of Technology. The international journal publishes the work of historians, engineers, scientists, museum curators, archivists, sociologists, anthropologists, and others, on topics ranging from agriculture to zippers. Technology and Culture regularly includes scholarly articles, book reviews, museum exhibit reviews, and critical essays.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Olga Bogdashina is Professor, Chief Research Fellow and Lecturer at the International Autism Institute, co-founder of the International Consortium of Autism Institutes, and Visiting Lecturer and Associate Consultant (Autism) to the European Institute of Child Education and Psychology (ICEP Europe). Olga shares her experience and insight into synaesthesia in autistic people.
A person with synaesthesia can:

see sounds

smell colours

taste shapes

feel sounds on the skin

hear colours.

Although not specific to autism, synaesthesia seems to be quite common among autistic individuals.

"Wednesdays are always blue, like the number nine or the sound of loud voices arguing...Tuesdays are a warm colour while Thursdays are fuzzy"
Tammet 2006

Quite common in autistic pople is the form of synaesthesia that produces tactile sensations without the individual being physically touched, for example, looking at something can bring a tactile experience. Alternatively, when somebody looks (or stares) at them directly, they feel it on the skin. Some autistic individuals experience 'being touched' by sounds, in other words, certain sounds are more felt than seen.

Lucy Blackman (2001) calls this phenomenon 'sound-feeling'. Often the skin sensation comes from sounds other people cannot hear. But there are no strict rules as the experiences, interpretation and response change at different times. Some can be even hit by sounds. What is even more interesting, the sound can be both felt on their skin and seen by their eyes simultaneously. Too much noise creates visual chaos - making it impossible to interpret their environment and comprehend what is going on around them.

Different variations and forms of synaesthesia.

According to the number of senses involved, synaesthesia can be of two types:

1. Two-sensory (or bimodal) synaesthesia

When stimulation of one sensory area triggers the perception in a second area. There can be many different combinations of senses. For example:

coloured-hearing (when a sound triggers the perception of a colour)

coloured-olfaction (when a smell triggers the perception of a colour); coloured-tactility (when a touch triggers a colour)

coloured-gustation (when a taste triggers the perception of a colour)

tactile-hearing (when a sound triggers tactile sensation)

tactile-vision (when a sight triggers feeling shapes and textures pressing the skin);

tactile-gustation (when a taste is experienced as a shape)

audiomotor (when the sounds of different words trigger different postures or movements of the body) etc...

2. Multiple sensory (or multimodal) synaesthesia

When stimulation of one sensory area triggers simultaneous sensations in several other senses, e.g. a child may experience the taste of the sound while simultaneously seeing the colour and experiencing tickling sensation on the skin.

Another major distinction is made between sensory synaesthesia and cognitive synaesthesia. Cognitive synaesthesia combines sensory (usually colour) and semantic triggers - letters, words and numbers - when letters/words/numbers are heard or read they are experienced as colours; or numbers are experienced as shapes or forms.

Another variation of the cognitive synaesthesia is conceptual synaesthesia, when abstract concepts (for example, units of time, mathematical operations) are perceived as shapes or colours. So the answer to 6+2 may be 'green'.

Prevalence

The research of prevalence shows that 2-5% of the population have synaesthesia (Simner et al. 2006). Though the fact that synaesthesia does occur in autistic people is recognised, it is considered to be rare. Probably, the reported low incidence of synaesthesia in autistic people can be accounted for by the fact that it is not easily detected in the autistic population because many autistic children with synaesthesia don't realise that other people cannot hear sounds while seeing colours.

Features of synaesthesia

Synaesthetic experience is very individual; for example, among people who see coloured sounds there is no specific colour for each sound from person to person. Learning disabilities seem more common in synaesthetes.

There are some general features of synaesthesia, suggested by Cytowic (1995/2002):

Synaesthesia is involuntary. It is a passive experience that happens to someone. The sensations cannot be suppressed or incurred, though the intensity is influenced by the situation they occur in.

Synaesthesia is projected into the environment: it is not just in the head but the individual actually sees a sound, hears a sight, etc...

Synaesthetic perceptions are durable and generic, i.e. they do not change over time or situation and they are always experienced with the stimulus.

Synaesthesia is memorable: the synaesthetic sensations are remembered best.

Synaesthesia is emotional: having this experience causes pleasure.

Synaesthetes are observed to have uneven cognitive skills. They are reported to prefer order, neatness, symmetry and balance. Most commonly reported are right-left confusion (allochiria), poor maths skills and a poor sense of direction. Here there may be some similarity between the synaesthetic and autistic features.

One of the most common features of synaesthetes is their superior memory (due to their parallel sensations). Synaesthetes often remember the secondary perception better than the primary one. Some people may forget the name of the person they know but remember the colour, or taste, or even the temperature of the word. They often remember conversations, verbal instructions, movie dialogues, text blocks in books, precise location of objects, furniture arrangements, etc... in great detail.

Professional experience

One of my first experiences of synaesthesia in autistic people was during my teaching days at a school for autistic children. I brought some coloured alphabet blocks into the classroom for fun learning. But seven year-old Lena definitely didn't think this idea was much fun. She grabbed a block and threw it across the room: "The colour is wrong!" "C" isn't yellow, it's brown!" More blocks (with Lena's commentaries) followed the first one.

Daniel Tammet, an autistic adult describes fascinating ways he perceives numbers and words. He explains that often the colour of the word depends on the initial letter:

"Yoghurt' is a yellow word, 'video' is purple (perhaps linked with 'violet') and 'gate' is green. I can even make the colour of a word change by mentally adding initial letters to turn the word into another: 'at' is a red word, but add the letter T to make 'that', the word's colour is now orange. Not all words fit the initial letter pattern: words beginning with the letter A, for example, are always red and those beginning with W are always dark blue".
Tammet 2006

Many synaesthetes have more than one form of synaesthesia. More often synaesthesia is unidirectional, for example, sight may be experienced as touch but touch does not trigger visual perceptions.

Most people with synaesthesia do not complain of their condition because for them it is their normal perception of the world and they are not aware of it causing any disadvantages. Moreover, they often enjoy it and think that losing their unique perception would be upsetting. When asked if they'd want to get rid of their synaesthetic experiences, most would say 'no', because they see their condition not as a problem but rather as a different (and wonderful!) way to perceive the world, and they cannot imagine their life without it.

However, when synaesthesia is 'two-ways' (for example, a person with synaesthesia not only sees colours when they hear sounds, but also hears sounds whenever they see colours), the individual can really struggle: they can experience stress, dizziness and information overload. Because of this, they may avoid noisy or colourful places, and may withdraw completely. And if the synaesthete is also autstic (with other sensory differences as well) it becomes harder to deal with sensory overload.

A person can experience problems comminicating with others because the voice hurts or sends flashes of colour that disrupts the understanding. Or the voice may be so pleasant (with pleasurable sensory experiences - colour, movement, etc.) and fascinating that the person cannot focus on the conversation and lose the meaning of verbal utterances.

When Alex (an autistic child with synaesthesia) is in a state of sensory overload, his synaesthetic experiences can lead to 'panic attacks' and aggression. After one of these 'incidents' he tried to give his explanation of what had happened:

"In the shop I heard black, then the word broke down into pieces and they entered my eye. I became blind because everything was black."

At the time I was bewildered with his explanation, and placed his 'reports' into the category 'confusing'. However, in 2011 I came across the account by Brian King, a social worker who is autistic himself. King says that when he is listening to someone speak, he can see each word; words scroll through the air in front of him. If someone repeats a word in a conversation Brian sees it in a darker colour; and if his communicative partner emphasises that word while speaking, it literally jumps out at him like 3D. So Alex sees not only colours in response to sounds, but also words (yes, words) when he hears them.

Many autistic people with synaesthesia cherish their unique perspectives as a valid way to perceive the world around them:

"I gain so much beauty and meaning from the way my senses work! My hearing is oversensitive and this is bothersome at times, but I wouldn't change it because I don't want to lose the colors of voices and the tactility of music."
Sinclair 1998

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Olga Bogdashina is Professor, Chief Research Fellow and Lecturer at the International Autism Institute, co-founder of the International Consortium of Autism Institutes, and Visiting Lecturer and Associate Consultant (Autism) to the European Institute of Child Education and Psychology (ICEP Europe). Olga shares her experience and insight into synaesthesia in autistic people.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Visual perception and hand function in persons with multiple sclerosis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between hand function performance and visual perceptual function in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Twenty‐two participants, 19 wom...

# data[].attributes.body
The red reference and frame?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A few weeks ago, during a weekly Twitter chat that I host about autism, a mother of an adult on the spectrum mentioned how, when her daughter was a child, structure had been crucial in helping her to learn flexibility. It sounds like an oxymoron, but I found it to be absolutely true in my life as well. When I look back my early childhood years and try to figure out the things that worked best for me, structure is a repeated motif. In fact, I think it was one of the most important aspects of my growing up years - and it helped me in many ways.

Having these "imaginary rehearsals" give me a sense of what is coming, and minimizes the chances that I may choke when the situation actually arrives. Without them, I may freeze or lose speech, or blurt out something embarrassing or inappropriate. It feels like what happens when you attempt to interact with a computer that has no operating system, or when it is given a command that software does not know how to handle. These types of rehearsals can only happen if you have a sense of what's going to happen next. Without that knowledge, the anxiety can become overwhelming to the point of panic, especially for someone who has a traumatic list of memories of that happened due to lack of preparation.

I've written before of the program that my parents sent me to from kindergarten to third grade. It's something I've always struggled to explain to people who weren't there, but one of the things that sticks out the most about it was how integral structure was to their approach. When I'd try to explain it to my peers, after having left it, my peers would often make negative comments. "That sounds awful," they'd say, leaving me stymied. But the fact of the matter is I can't remember a single child who was there that shared the same opinion. I had to conclude that I must somehow lacked the proper capabilities to capture the spirit of the environment.

What my peers were reacting to in my explanation was exactly what made it a comfortable environment for me and many others-structure. Rules. Consequences. Predictability. In the end, what child will actually admit to liking rules? But for me, having rules explicitly communicated along with their consequences made the world a lot less frightening. If you're not the type of person that can pick up on social rules by osmosis, then the world begins to feel like a torture chamber of random punishments.

How fair is it to punish a child for violating a rule they didn't know existed? Yet, it happened to me all the time, until I came to a place where they didn't assume that I would "just pick it up," and made a point of making sure that I knew and understood. I didn't appear to be the only each child that blossomed under this. Today, I'm not surprised to read in parenting advice columns and books that rules and structure are important. I saw it firsthand.

When the participant in my chat talked about structure as a driver for flexibility, I reacted with excitement. This was something I'd found crucial as well. For example, at the program I went to they had rules about what we could eat in our lunches. Given the number of children they had at their home at any one time, they did not have the resources or equipment to cook lunches themselves, so we had to bring bag lunches. They were believers in the value of nutrition for children, so they made rules about the makeup of lunches to help drive kids to eat a variety of foods, that were on the healthier side.

This, I believe, help me a great deal to expand my diet. In fact, in retrospect, I often find it ingenious in they way it fit so well with my particular cognitive profile. As is not uncommon among autistic kids, I was not fond of change, although I'd had to deal with my share of it. But the way they chose to structure their rules helped to make change less scary. In the case of lunches, the rules were fairly simple - lunches must consist of a vegetable, a fruit, a sandwich or protein-based food, and juice. None of the foods could contain sugar. So, how did rules make change less scary?

When I think of that, I think of an example that Temple Grandin gave it her TED talk, " The World Need All Kinds of Minds." In it, she gives the example of a horse who is afraid of riders wearing a black cowboy hats, but riders wearing white cowboy hats were perfectly fine (see 9:48 in the video). She explains that this is a side effect of being a visual thinker. That small changes to what one sees in a picture are experienced as an entirely new picture. Being a visual thinker myself, this makes sense to me. It sheds some light onto why changing a meal was stressful for me. If I was asked to incorporate something new or switch out some component of my meal, I experienced this as a complete change of the meal. A new picture.

This is where the "modularization" of lunches served to help me build flexibility. By breaking the concept of "lunch" into discrete sub-concepts, it broke the "picture" of lunch into separate pictures that could be combined and separated at will. This made it easier to see the scope of change being asked for. If I was asked to try a new type of fruit, I could still see that my choice of vegetable, sandwich, and juice were the same. So, my parents worked with that. I may have eaten peanut butter sandwiches almost every day for four years, but I gradually developed a taste for a variety of vegetables, fruits, and juices.

This same type of structure was used throughout my time in this program, in various forms. Our days were always structured, whether they were schooldays or not. In the summer, every day of the week had a different activity theme. We had a bike day, a hike day, a beach day, and a trip day, always on the same days of the week. We always knew what type of activity we would do on a Monday or a Tuesday, but details of that activity would be different each week. One week we'd ride bikes to one local landmark, another week we'd ride to a different one.

It was the same, consistent, yet not. There was always familiarity along with the variation. Every bike day, we knew we'd get a rare sugary treat, yogurt push ups. Every beach day, we'd know we would cook hot dogs for lunch. Trip days stretched me the most. A trip day could mean very different things. It could mean visiting a museum, or it could mean visiting an amusement park. But, the schedule was always posted weeks ahead of time, so I had ample time to prepare myself.

On school days, we would use a structured technique to choose what group activities we wanted to do after everyone finished their homework. We would be called together into a circle, in which the adults would lead the conversation. They would ask for ideas of what we wanted to do. It was known that our options were limited by the amount of adults available to supervise. Every group playing always had an adult supervisor embedded in the play to structure it and ensure nothing went awry.

The children would indicate their interests in the different activities, and we'd choose the few most popular. If any tied in popularity, the adults would act as tie breakers, as they would also if any particular activity group had to be pared down to avoid overloading a particular adult. This method allowed us to make our wants known, and give us a certain level of control, while still maintaining structure and adult control. We also knew, that if it turned out that the activities we suggested did not turn out to be the ones chosen, we knew that we had to learn to go along.

And, sometimes, you learn to like it.
For updates you can follow me on Facebook or Twitter. Feedback? E-mail me. My book, Living Independently on the Autism Spectrum, is currently available at most major retailers, including Books-A-Million, Chapters/Indigo (Canada), Barnes and Noble, and Amazon. To read what others have to say about the book, visit my web site: www.lynnesoraya.com.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Using Structure To Help Autistic Kids Build Flexibility

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A few weeks ago, during a weekly Twitter chat that I host about autism, a mother of an adult on the spectrum mentioned how, when her daughter was a child, structure had been crucial in helping her to learn flexibility. It sounds like an oxymoron, but I found it to be absolutely true in my life as well.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The ability to organise and prioritise helps us to plan daily activities and manage our time effectively. However, some autistic people may find organising and prioritising difficult. Here, we explain why this can be the case, and list some ways to help.
An autistic person may have difficulties with:

processing information

predicting the consequences of an action (if I do this, what will happen next?)

understanding the concept of time

'executive function' (coping with daily tasks like tidying up or cooking).

One or all of these can affect a person's ability to organise, prioritise and sequence. For example, if you struggle to understand the concept of time, how do you plan what you will do over the course of a week?

Strategies to help

Here are some ways in which people on the autism spectrum can organise and prioritise daily activities and tasks. At first, other people may need to have a lot of involvement introducing the strategies. You may use the strategies in more than one place, for example at home and at school, so it is important that everyone who is using them - be it family members, employers, teachers or friends - uses them consistently.

Over time, some autistic people will be able to use the strategies independently. Others may always need support.

Visual supports

Pictures, written lists, calendars and real objects can all be good ways of helping autistic people to understand what is going to happen and when. For example, a person might have a daily timetable with pictures of a shower, clothes, breakfast, their school, dinner, a toothbrush, pyjamas, and a bed to indicate what they will be doing, and in what order, that day. Find out more about visual supports.

Colour coding

Colours can be used to indicate the importance or significance of tasks (and therefore help to prioritise tasks and work through them in a logical sequence).

For example, work in a red tray or file could be urgent, work in a green tray or file could be pending, while work in a blue tray or file is not important or has no timescale attached to it.

Colours can also help people to distinguish between paperwork, for example different household bills.

Voice recording

Recorded messages, on a dictaphone or smartphone, can be a useful auditory reminder of tasks, work, events or deadlines.

Lists

Lists can remind us of the tasks we need to do, and to help us prioritise. Lists can also be a good way of registering achievements (by crossing something off when you've done it), and of reassuring yourself that you're getting things done. Lists can be visual, written, or in the form of a task list app.

Alarms and alerts

Computer calendars can have important dates stored on them, or reminders about when to pay bills. Instructions can be sent to the person's mobile phone by text - text messages lend themselves to this especially well as you are forced to keep instructions brief and simple. A text message is also an unobtrusive and discreet way of contacting or supporting an autistic person.

Task boxes, envelopes and files

Store work or belongings in set places, so they aren't misplaced or forgotten.

Times of day, days of the week

You can use times of day (morning, afternoon or evening) or days of the week to help plan and organise tasks, social activities and other events. For example, Saturday is shopping day, Wednesday is bills day, Thursday night is homework night.

Social stories™ and comic strip conversations

Social stories™ and comic strip conversations can be a good way of illustrating the consequences of an action. They can help people to understand why it's good to be organised, and what might happen if we don't meet deadlines or attend an activity at a particular time. Find out more about Social stories™ and comic strip conversations.

Teaching materials: time and sequence

You may find that teaching materials such as sequence cards, games, timers and clocks help some autistic people to understand the concept of time and sequences. Materials like this can be used at home and at work.

Budgets

We all need to learn how to manage our money, to budget, control spending and pay bills. Many autistic adults will manage their own money or bills, to varying extents, while children may have pocket money. It can help to set out very specific guidelines about managing money and the consequences of spending. Try our free managing money online module.

At school

Homework, assignments and deadlines can cause great anxiety for some people. Others will not register their significance. The following strategies can help:

clear monitoring

regular meetings with teaching staff

colour coding of files.

Some people may need help in understanding the end goal of what to them may seem continuous work and deadlines.

Processing of instructions can be difficult, so it may be useful to use communication books, online learning environments, and voice recordings to reduce the pressure on the student of trying to remember what they are supposed to be doing.

At work

Strategies to use in the work environment include:

using files and colour to identify and clarify the importance and deadlines for particular pieces of work.

making a clear to do list at the beginning of the day - you can then cover up or mark off work which has been completed

arranging regular meetings with your line manager to ensure work is understood and is progressing

using the computer programs available to help organise work - for example colour coding emails relating to importance of response

using the calendar as a reminder for meetings or deadlines.

Further information

Read about the Brain in Hand digital self-management support system.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Organising and prioritising - a guide for all audiences

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Autistic people can find organising, planning and prioritising difficult but there are many tools to help.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Applied Behavioral Analysis | How to Become an Applied Behavior Analyst

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
One of the primary diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is that the individual shows restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. And one of the key items of evidence to support the diagnosis is an insistence on sameness and an inflexible adherence to routines... extending down to minute details with things like the placement of toys, silverware, or bath towels... or into types of foods available at certain meals and the order in which they may be eaten... or the exact words and even tone of voice used in a bedtime story.

This insistence on routine and sameness can only be categorized as obsessive and compulsive

Any deviation from any of these particulars, even one almost undetectable to a neurotypical individual, can result in enormous anxiety and tantrums from an ASD patient. Adherence to routine becomes obsessively important and any sort of change is a major cause for alarm.

This resistance to change is one of the oddities that applied behavior analysts (ABAs) have to learn to deal with when working with ASD patients. In fact, it might be one of the symptoms that an ABA is expressly asked to treat, using the techniques of applied behavior analysis to help patients adjust to new situations or alter their routines.

Researchers are investigating whether or not there is a neurobiological basis for this insistence on routine but currently there is little or no understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the symptom.

Routine For Autistic Individuals Isn't All Bad

Routine can actually be a powerful force in helping ASD patients deal with the depression, anxiety, and uncertainty that ordinarily confronts them in daily life. It's well understood that kids and adults with ASD turn to routine, sameness, and even seemingly obsessive repetitive behaviors (as is the case in the most acute forms of autism), as a way to comfort themselves and to bring calm and self regulation to an otherwise anxious mind.

But resistance to changing routine can also create problems when those changes are unavoidable; for example, moving between classrooms when going up in grade levels at school, or when a new sibling is born.

Though it might seem counterintuitive, reinforcing routines can actually help those with ASD to stop relying on them so much as a crutch. Routine can be powerful in reinforcing a feeling of well-being and stability for autistic individuals. When that sense of stability and wellness is fulfilled, then it can actually be easier for them to handle other changes.

Talking Autistic Kids Through Change

Communication is another key to helping with change management. Changes that are unexpected are the most traumatic. Communicating the change before it happens helps the autistic individual prepare to handle it more easily.

Using visual aids and other methods of communicating that are easier for ASD patients to understand can also be helpful. Much of the shock of changes comes from the difficulty that ASD patients have in making sense of what is happening. Sensory and verbal communication deficits make it difficult for them to quickly grasp new situations. Accommodating their strengths in visual perception versus verbal and social skills when discussing changes can help them settle in more rapidly and feel more at ease with the situation.

Not all changes are equal and not all ASD patients react the same way. High-functioning autistics confronted with a minor change in their daily routine or living situation might feel uncomfortable but have sufficient self-control to show no outward signs. On the other hand, a low-functioning child with autism whose family is moving to a new home might have a full-blown meltdown on the first day.

Because ABA has proven to be an effective treatment both to break down resistance to changes and to build routines that reinforce positive behaviors, it remains one of the most popular therapies for helping ASD patients deal with transitions. Applied behavior analysts are adept at using the repetitive nature of autistic patients to create patterns and methods that are beneficial to their long-term well-being and social skills.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why is Routine so Important to People with ASD?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
One of the primary diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is that the individual shows restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. And one of the key items of evidence to support the diagnosis is an insistence on sameness and an inflexible adherence to routines...

# data[].attributes.body
J Kennedy 20cm x 20cm 2021
Print on aluminium. Framed in neon yellow.