{{short description|Ancient Greek philosophical concept}} {{redirect|Parerga|the work by Schopenhauer|Parerga and Paralipomena}} {{Multiple issues| {{Incomprehensible|date=August 2022}} {{Unfocused|date=August 2022}} }} In semiotics, a '''parergon''' (paˈrərˌgän; plural: parerga<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parergon|title=Definition of PARERGON|website=www.merriam-webster.com|language=en|access-date=2019-10-30}}</ref>) is a supplementary issue<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Rhapsody of Philosophy: Dialogues with Plato in Contemporary Thought|last=Statkiewicz|first=Max|date=2009|publisher=The Pennsylvania State University Press|isbn=9780271035406|location=University Park, PA|pages=45–46}}</ref> or embellishment.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference|last=Battersby|first=Christine|date=2007|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9780415148108|location=Oxon|pages=85}}</ref> The term's usage has broadened to mean anything that is additional to the main body of a creative work.
== Origin == The literal meaning of the ancient Greek term is "beside, or additional to the work".<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p8soDAAAQBAJ&dq=parergon+ergon+structural&pg=PT65|title=Ornament and Order: Graffiti, Street Art and the Parergon|last=Schacter|first=Rafael|date=2016-05-13|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781317084990|language=en}}</ref> Parergon has a negative connotation within Greek classical thought, since it is against ergon or the true matter.<ref name=":3" />
== Modern usage == Immanuel Kant used parergon in his philosophy. In his works, he associated it with ergon, which in his view is the "work" of one's field (e.g. work of art, work of literature, and work of music, etc.). According to Kant, parergon is what is beyond ergon.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments: Corpora and Digitally-driven Critical Analysis|last=O'Halloran|first=Kieran|date=2017|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=9780415708777|location=Oxon|pages=50}}</ref> It is what columns are to buildings or the frame to a painting. He provided three examples of parergon: 1) clothing on a statue; 2) columns on a building; and, 3) the frame of a painting.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3oUAAwAAQBAJ&dq=derrida+parergon&pg=PT40|title=Derrida Reframed: Interpreting Key Thinkers for the Arts|last=Richards|first=K. Malcolm|date=2013-02-05|publisher=I.B.Tauris|isbn=9780857718907|language=en}}</ref> He likened it to an ornament, one that primarily appeals to the senses.<ref name=":6">{{Cite book|title=Framing Consciousness in Art: Transcultural Perspectives|last=Minissale|first=Gregory|date=2009|publisher=Rodopi|isbn=978-90-420-2581-3|location=Amsterdam|pages=92}}</ref> Kant's conceptualization influenced Jacques Derrida's usage of the term, particularly how it served as an agent of deconstruction using Kant's conceptualization of the painting's frame.
[[File:Chinmoy Guha with Derrida (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright|Jacques Derrida explained his interpretation of ''parergon'' in ''The Truth in Painting,'' associating it with the so-called "great philosophical question, "What is art?".<ref name=":4" />]] According to Jacques Derrida, it is "summoned and assembled like a supplement because of the lack – a certain 'internal indetermination – in the very thing it enframes".<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Reading the Figural, Or, Philosophy After the New Media|author1-link=David Rodowick|last=Rodowick|first=David|date=2001|publisher=Duke University Press|isbn=9780822327226|location=Durham|pages=134}}</ref> It is added to a system to augment something lacking such as in the case of ergon (function, task or work), with parergon constituting an internal structural link that makes its unity possible.<ref name=":1" />
Parergon is also described as separate – that it is detached not only from the thing it enframes but also from the outside (the wall where a painting is hung or the space in which the object stands).<ref name=":2" /> This conceptualization underscores the significance of parergon for thinkers such as Derrida and Heidegger as it makes the split in the duality of intellect/senses.<ref name=":6" /> It plays an important rule in aesthetic judgment if it augments the pleasure of taste. It diminishes in value if it is not formally beautiful, lapsing as a simple adornment.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Art and Its Significance: An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory, Third Edition|last=Ross|first=Stephen David|date=1994|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=978-0-7914-1852-9|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/artitssignifican0000unse/page/415 415]|url=https://archive.org/details/artitssignifican0000unse/page/415}}</ref> According to Kant, this case is like a gilt frame of a painting, a mere attachment to gain approval through its charm and could even detract from the genuine beauty of the art.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference|last=Battersby|first=Christine|date=2007|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9780415148108|location=Oxon|pages=85}}</ref>
Derrida cited parergon in his wider theory of deconstruction,<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title=Deconstruction: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, Volume II|last=Culler|first=Jonathan D.|date=2003|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=041524708X|location=London|pages=45, 46}}</ref> using it with the term "supplement" to denote the relationship between the core and the periphery and reverse the order of priority so that it becomes possible for the supplement – the outside, secondary and inessential – to be the core or the centerpiece.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Philosopher's Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium|last=Marder|first=Michael|date=2014|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=9780231169028|location=New York|pages=208}}</ref> In ''The Truth in Painting'', the philosopher likened parergon with the frame, borders, and marks of boundaries, which are capable of "unfixing" any stability so that conceptual oppositions are dismantled.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|title=Understanding Derrida|last1=Reynolds|first1=Jack|last2=Roffe|first2=Jonathan|date=2004|publisher=Continuum|isbn=0826473156|location=New York|pages=88}}</ref> It is, for the philosopher, "neither work (ergon) nor outside work", disconcerting any opposition while not remaining indeterminate.<ref>{{Cite book|title=New Developments in Film Theory|last=Fuery|first=Patrick|date=2000|publisher=Macmillan International Higher Education|isbn=9780333744901|location=London|pages=153}}</ref> For Derrida, parergon is also fundamental, particularly to the ergon since, without it, it "cannot distinguish itself from itself".<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|title=Plato, Derrida, and Writing|last=Neel|first=Jasper|date=2016|publisher=Southern Illinois University Press|isbn=9780809335152|location=Carbondale|pages=162}}</ref>
In artistic works, parergon is viewed as separate from an artwork it frames but merges with the milieu, which allows it to merge with the work of art.<ref name=":5">{{Cite book|title=Literature in the First Media Age|last=Trotter|first=David|date=2013|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-07315-9|location=Cambridge, MA|pages=258}}</ref>
In a book, parergon can be the liminal devices that mediate it to its reader such as title,<ref>{{Cite book|title=Picturing the Language of Images |last1=Pedri|first1=Nancy|last2=Petit |first2=Laurence |date=2014 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing|isbn=978-1-4438-5438-2|location=Newcastle upon Tyne|pages=244}}</ref> foreword, epigraph, preface, etc.<ref name=":5" /> It can also be a short literary piece added to the main volume such as the case of James Beattie's ''The Castle of Scepticism.'' This is an allegory written as a parergon and was included in the philosopher's main work called Essay on truth, which criticized David Hume, Voltaire, and Thomas Hobbes.<ref>{{Cite book|title=English Literature, Volume 2: 1939–1950|last=Landa|first=Louis A.|date=2015|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-1-4008-7733-1|location=Princeton, NJ|pages=1122}}</ref>
==Wider usage== ''Parergon'' is the title of the journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, launched in 1983.<ref>{{cite web |title=Parergon |publisher=Project Muse |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309 |access-date=20 August 2025 }}</ref>
== References == {{reflist}}
Category:Art criticism Category:Deconstruction Category:Humanities Category:Literary concepts Category:Literary motifs Category:Jacques Derrida