Work · Structuralism & Poststructuralism
Plato's Pharmacy
Writing as pharmakon – poison and remedy at once.
Introduction
Derrida published the long essay in 1968 in two issues of the journal Tel Quel and included it in Dissemination (1972). It is a close reading of the myth at the end of Plato’s Phaedrus, in which the god Theuth offers writing to King Thamus as a remedy for memory and the king rejects it as a poison. The Greek word pharmakon means both, and Derrida follows how Plato’s text depends on this ambiguity while trying to control it. He links it to related words such as pharmakeus (sorcerer) and pharmakos (scapegoat), which does not occur in Plato. The essay is a frequently studied example of the method of deconstruction.
Connections
Criticizes
- Phaedrusc. 370 BCE · Plato
More works by Jacques Derrida
- 1967Of Grammatology
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