Rhetoric as a Theory of Signification Derrida on Signification Attacks the idea that language is or can be referential There is nothing outside

de of the text Language cannot be transcended to reach the thing signified while disposing the signifier The effort to reach past language to the reality: metaphysics of presence Speech is prior to and somehow superior to writing Plato distrusted writing, by using speech to represent something else, to transfer thoughts, to communicate ideas, to overcome language There is no speech that effaces itself in the presence of truth The metaphysics of presence is the manifestation of a desire to hide or repress the absence of knowable referents for language, the gap or diffrance that constitutes language 1) By analyzing or deconstructing texts that contribute to the metaphysics of presence and 2) by adopting a style that resists the habit of assuming truths presence behind language Derrida argues that language is neither referential nor transparent; rather, it is always metaphorical and ambiguous, always in need of interpretation Derrida seeks to reveal the way in which any explanation tends toward the metaphysics of presence Gates on Signification It is impossible to forget, when examining the development of Black English, the often agonized relationship between white people and black people in the US Black rhetoric tries to stir the audience to verbal response Here, rhetoric means daily speech as a form of action Gates notes that signifying, the act of linguistic misdirection, ironically redirects the white word for the passive act of representation. Black rhetoric is to say that representing meaning is not passive, it is the greatest trickery of all Cixous on Signification Analyzes in terms of binaries, in which the dominant term defines itself by putting the other in a subordinate position Deconstructs binaries as she encounters them in literature, calling their inevitability into question, and attempts to develop a nonhierarchical writing practice, which she calls feminine, that offers a way out of binary thinking Laugh of Medusa calls for and demonstrates what Cixous hopes is a new way of using language, specifically female but also powerful She hopes to bring about a rejection of male-dominated systems of interpretation that classify female bodies, mouths, and words as inferior Writing with their bodies

It is rhetorical in that it is trying to control the audience, a power Cixous seeks for women while at the same time remaining wary of its potential dangers of co-optation