On Etymology and Amphibology

Untitled work by Seoul-based artist Myeong Beom Kim 

featured as part of a solo exhibition in Paris presented 

by Galerie Paris-Beijing entitled Amphibology (2017)

I've always been fascinated by the etymology of words.

Not because I care about origins, or have a particular fascination with linguistic roots; nor even because I wish to determine the true sense of a word - quite the opposite!

That is to say, what really excites me is how things - including words - change and how language is always subject to a process of becoming. I'm interested also in how even innocent, straightforward little words - seemingly lacking in all ambivalence - nevertheless contain within them that which they are not; their own other and absence; their own difference and deferral, or what Derrida calls différance. 

Of course, critics say that deconstruction is nothing more than postmodern wordplay, often reliant upon false etymology in which the différance (and duplicity) of words is imagined simply to satisfy a cultural and political ideology masquerading as a philosophical project. However, I will always prefer the provocative brilliance of Derrida, Barthes, and Foucault, over the dull common sense of their critics. 

And I think that when a writer demonstrates that grammar is simply a theological prejudice and that even the Word of God contains the shadow of a lie (i.e. paradox and syntactic ambiguity), we should be grateful. For by breaking words (and worlds) open, they create the (chaotic) conditions in which poetry can thrive.