Abstract

The focus of this paper is Derrida's idea of rhythm. I will analyse how the idea of rhythm can work in a contemporary semiotic, and in particular in a semiotic of interpretation, in order to eliminate the confusion between interpretation and semantics and to constitute a syntactic model of interpretation. In ‘The Double Session’ Derrida uses the Greek word rytmos in order to indicate the ‘law of spacing’. Rytmos is a form that is always about to change or to break up, because it is not a definitive form. It is a not-proper form. But when I say here that a rhythmic relation is a not-proper form, the word ‘proper’ is intended in the sense of Heidegger's Eigentlichkeit. In this sense a not-proper relation is a relation which is not grounded on a justification. What I'm trying to demonstrate in this essay is that the rhythmic relation discovers another sense of the word ‘proper’, another meaning, which is far from Heidegger's Eigentlichkeit. In this sense, it is possible to say that the problem of a rhythmic relation is the problem of a relation between ‘two’ that is not justified by the third element which makes it proper or eigentlich