Derrida in Practice: The Possibilities of Theory in The Void

This chapter emerged from the Theory Reading Group chaired by Dr Amy Matthews at Flinders University; members included postgraduate students from Creative Writing and Literary Studies. The reading group explored Jacques Derrida’s Of grammatology through the creation and subsequent analysis of iPhone and Android photographs that sought to embody and engage with Derridean processes such as deconstruction and ideas, including those of fidelity and origin; translation and retranslation; ruin, lamentation, memory, and commemoration; and différance and the trace. In this chapter we seek to extend our inquiry by imagining the possibilities of translating our still photography into the virtual – what would digital embodiment do to these Derridean spools of thought? Can we go further into theory through using the technology of Flinders’ University’s multi-purpose virtual production platform, The Void? This chapter will practise theory and replicate creative outputs (our photographs) that emerged from that practice, while articulating work that does and does not yet exist, and mapping possible ways our theory praxis might interact with The Void.