annotation assignment.

For this assignment you are required to annotate closely a passage between one and two pages in length from the selections I have made available in Course Materials or in The Purloined Poe of one of the following: The Challenge of Deconstruction (in Muller and Richardson), Barbara Johnsons essay Writing, Barbara Johnsons Translators Introduction to Jacques Derridas Dissemination, Jacques Derridas Differance (excerpted, with an introduction by Peggy Kamuf), pages 139-147 in Jonathan Culler’s “Semiotics: The Saussurian Legacy,” Jacques Derridas The Purveyor of Truth (173-212 in Muller and Richardson). For this assignment you must take extensive notes on the page or two on which the passages you are focusing appear. Then you must write a 3 page reflection (typed in 12-point font, double-spaced) on your annotations. What did you learn about the text by reading it this closely? The goal in the formal annotation exercise will be to provide as lucid a commentary as you possibly can on the passage you choose to reflect on. This doesn’t mean, of course, that you cannot ask important questions and complicate some of the operative assumptions you encounter. You certainly can. But your questions in the formal assignment must be driven by a firmer, more complete understanding of deconstruction and of the ideas of Jacques Derrida. Remember also that your formal annotation assignment must include copies of the pages you have annotated (please use a camera phone to take photos of your annotations or use a scanner) and then a separate three-page reflection. This reflection will of course include your references to and quotations from the text you have annotated but it is not simply a transcription of Derrida’s or Johnson’s or Culler’s sentences and your notations on them. Your reflection must be an organized piece of writing that takes as its focus a specific passage in Derrida or Johnson or Culler. Please feel free to draw attention to and to quote from other texts that we have considered this semester in order to aid you in your reflection.