Deconstruction: The Venue and the Man

CUT TO:

INTERIOR OF A CROWDED CONFERENCE HALL

PANNING OVER THE AUDIENCE, SEEN IN PROFILE

Hardly an empty seat is visible amidst the rows of semi-formally dressed men and women who are, almost universally, silently giving their full and fresh attention to the unseen speaker, RICHARD MACKSEY.

MACKSEY (off camera):  ...We are especially grateful to those of you who have traveled such a long distance, ideologically as well as geographically, to attend these meetings. tings. There are representatives among us from eight countries and at least as many formal disciplines, who by their presence have expressed a willingness to submit, provisionally, to the, perhaps, tendentiously pluralistic topic suggested by our dual title of our convention. . Some of our initial difficulties are clearly indicated by the fact that the symmetrical English and French titles are not, on close examination, identical. More significantly, many here would reject, even for the rhetoric of symposia programs, the seductive allure which the word "Sciences" borrows from fields alien to our endeavor. Further, I realize that others, in the wake of Foucault and Heideggerian revisionism, would question the legitimacy for this time of the word "Man" and the metaphysical pathos attached to it by humanistic conventions and titular sponsors such as a Humanities Center (however loosely defined operationally both its virtual center and effective circumference may be).

The faces in the crowd will include characters who have not yet been introduced or specified, so we will forgo including all of the ones who must be seen in this shot for the time being. At the point where he is talking about the differences between the French and English titles of the conference, let's see two FRENCHMEN, heretofore unknown to us, quietly and discretely whispering to each other, with one pointing to a a program in his hand, as if explaining the very point that Macksey had just been speaker of.

At some point, as we move through the crowd, CLOSE IN, on faces one by one as they look at the speaker, we encounter the familiar visages of the TWO COLLEAGUES of Derrida and finally DERRIDA himself. For symmetry breaking, they should not be sitting side-by-side, but staggered in adjacent rows, as if they had taken some of the last available seats.

Among all the faces we have seen, it is DERRIDA who is not staring straight ahead, in wrapt and placid attention, but is gazing around the room, his head moving only slightly, but his eyes moving more, as if he is sizing up the place.

Let us make sure we are seeing him in a CLOSE UP when Macksey says the word "Man".