Jacques Derrida Father of Deconstruction Theory Dies

[TomClash]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3729844.stm

Jacques Derrida, one of France's most famous philosophers, has died at the age of 74, it has been announced.
Derrida died in a Paris hospital on Friday night, news agency AFP reported. He suffered from pancreatic cancer.

The Algerian-born philosopher is best known for his "deconstruction theory" - unpicking the way text is put together in order to reveal its hidden meanings.

[comradebillyboy]

1. and hopefully deconstructionism dies with him

deconstructionism is a true step backwards from objectivity, rationalism and logic, which to my way of thinking are the building blocks of western civilization, the industrial revolution, the age of reason and the scientific revolution.

"there is no idea so foolish but that some philosopher has not thought of it" says cato, sometimes in the first century bc

[whirlygigspin]

2. oops, I thought he was dead already

Reason is way too over valued anyway, ask Shrub --"in the way of the psychopath", or as I like to call it, the Tao of Poop.

[Viking12]

3. You've obviously read Derrida extensively

NOT

deconstructionism is a true step backwards from objectivity, rationalism and logic

:wtf:

You have no idea what you're talking about

[msmcghee]

4. OK - Now I'm curious.

I've heard the word before but never really understood what it meant in context.

Can anyone give me a good link to an online reference or a book?

Is there a liberal/conservative angle to this?

[whirlygigspin]

5. yes I do

I said I thought he was dead already, and I did.

I never claimed to have read any of his lunatic rantings. lol

[Viking12]

8. Here's a decent primer

http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/deconstruction.html

[msmcghee]

42. Thanks Viking12

I'll check it out.

Raid and coastal Irish settlements lately? :hippie:

[Viking12]

60. The name refers to contemporary heritage ( Minnesota)

rather than ancestral, I'm actually a good part Irish w/ no Scandinavian roots. I'm a displaced football fan stuck in the heart of Packer land. :)

[Hephaistos]

114. The conservative angle

Conservatives pretend to hate postmoderism, but seems clear that some heavyweights in the Bush movement have read Baudrillard, like Orwell, as an instruction manual:

But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, reduced to the signs which attest his existence? Then the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum---not unreal, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.

So it is with simulation, insofar as it is opposed to representation. The latter starts from the principle that the sign and the real are equivalent (even if this equivalence is utopian, it is a fundamental axiom). Conversely, simulation starts from the utopia of this principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum. This would be the successive phases of the image:


it is the reflection of a basic reality.
it masks and perverts a basic reality.
it masks the absence of a basic reality.
it bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.

See any relation to our present situation? Matt Yglesias had a good riff on this a little while back.

[homodem]

129. Holy Fuck

Please!!! What a fucking circle jerk of articulation. Anyone speaking in those terms just loves to hear themself, masturbating to each syllable. That's what this Gay Black Marine thinks.

...the deliberate obscurantism of the prose

[bemildred]

122. A nice Obit:

I pulled a few bits out, but it's better to read the whole thing,
it gives a nice flavor of his life and the why he makes certain types
of "thinkers" go ballistic.

----

"Of all the philosophers of our time," eminent Stanford University philosopher Richard Rorty once said, Derrida "has been the most effective at doing what Socrates hoped philosophers would do: breaking the crust of convention, questioning assumptions never before doubted, raising issues never before discussed."

---

John Searle, a Mills professor of philosophy at UC Berkeley and one of Derrida's most eloquent critics, once said that what he found most deplorable about Derrida and deconstruction was "the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial."

---

According to biographer Paul Strathern, Derrida's interest in philosophy was piqued when he heard a talk about Albert Camus. Soon Derrida was reading French writer Andre Gide and poet-philosopher Paul Valery and filling a diary with quotations from Friedrich Nietzsche and Rousseau. Near the end of high school, he began to read Jean-Paul Sartre.

---

To illustrate how the greatest philosophers contradict themselves, he often cited Plato's declaration that oral discourse "is written in the soul of the listener." If speech, as the father of Western thought asserted, was superior to writing, how could it then be "written" in the soul?

LA Times

[MrPrax]

7. Good point...

While the the whole intellectual 'mess' classified generally as 'Post Modernism' can be rightly criticized, certain people like Derrida have made valuable contributions to critical thinking and philosophy...

I guess some folks just didn't read Derrida past the word 'French' in French Philosopher...

[tishaLA]

15. Derrida is poststructuralist more than postmodern

postmodernity is more like Lyotard, Baudriallard, or Jameson than Derrida.

[Character Assassin]

12. You've obviously never understood objectivity, rationalism and logic

Deconstructionism is highly distilled irrelevant bullshit used to fool the simple who don't have a background in logic, reason, etc....

Even that dope Derrida couldn't define what it was.

[Viking12]

13. Cute, but you're off the mark too

The binary you're trying to create doesn't exist.

[Character Assassin]

16. Yawn. Perhaps you're missing the point of this 'textual event'

Decontructionism is merely poorly cloaked solipsism, implying directly that there is no reality, and/or that one cannot know its true nature.

As such, it is bullshit.

Disclaimer: all further sub-posts descencing from this point downwards constitute additions to the textual system that this particular post embodies.

[Viking12]

21. And you "know" reality?!?

It is an honor to be in your omniscient presence :eyes:

[Character Assassin]

22. In the true spirit of deconstructionism, I 'know' that you don't

Reality can ideed by viewed in its true nature, but tortured philosophical abstractations extant almost exclusively in academic environments are not the way to best achieve this.

You're welcome.

[Viking12]

28. Has the irony of your posts dawned on you yet?

That you extole the virtue of "rationality" and then turn to reductio ad absurdum to make your case?

[Character Assassin]

30. Ohhh...... You're a quick one.

Say.... did you go to college?

I do not extole rationality as virtuous or otherwise; I do, however, recommend it.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

101. Has the irony of your boardname struck you yet?...

Because you're certainly attemting to do that to Viking 12, aren't you?

And yes, I did go to college...for 7 years, where I earned 2 BA degrees, all but the degree for a BS degree, and several minors.

[Character Assassin]

103. You'll have to do better than that

The name itself is indeed ironic, in more ways than one. You are not the first to have this dawn on you.

And yes, I did go to college...for 7 years, where I earned 2 BA degrees, all but the degree for a BS degree, and several minors.

Sigh. It was a rhetorical question.

[realcountrymusic]

24. sorry, but

that's how my first-year grad students write until they've done more reading

"there is no reality" is a complete canard -- an easy way to caricature both post-structuralist thought and deconstructionism in particular. what it means is "my version of 'reality' is threatened by your challenge to its tautological premises.'"

My own thinking is much more in the tradition of western Marxism -- Grasmci, Lukacs, Raymond Williams, David Harvey -- and I certainly have a serious beef with deconstruction (not deconstruction-ISM, by the way, which is a careless term). But to hear so much nonsense about a major philosopher who made such a serious contribution on the day of his death irks me. I'm not singling you out, CA. this thread is dominated by people who seem to have learned literary and social theory from the internet or the back of postmodern toasties boxes.

rcm

[Character Assassin]

29. Sorry, but

I'm long out of grad school.

"there is no reality" is a complete canard -- an easy way to caricature both post-structuralist thought and deconstructionism in particular. what it means is "my version of 'reality' is threatened by your challenge to its tautological premises.'"

No, it doesn't mean that in the least, although I will definitely agree that is weak amongst other criticisms that could be levelled against it.

I'm not singling you out, CA. this thread is dominated by people who seem to have learned literary and social theory from the internet or the back of postmodern toasties boxes.

I do hope you'll forgive me, but have spent aroud 5 years in and around an enviroment steeped in literary theory, I have little patience for those who do understand it and those who don't. The topic itself is the equivalent to angels dancing on the heads of pins, and just as rarified.

Kudos if you're actually making a living at it and not taking a rifle to the top of the book depository.

[realcountrymusic]

31. Fair enough

I do make my living at it, not in lit crit but in a social science field. I'm also more than a decade out of grad school, and in my grad school days, Derrida and Foucault et al were the hot new things. I read them very seriously, tried to see past the fashion, and have found the ideas they developed more than occasionally useful for thinking*as a Marxist* aboutpower, class, discourse, and the present political crisis. In that spirit, I hate to see them dismissed as unreadable nihilists. They were provocateurs (don't the French have a word for that?) and that in itself was a valuable contribution to a stultified American academic establishment in the 70s and 80s. But Derrida in particular was a real philosopher, no more difficult or less serious than Wittgenstein or Nietzsche or Quine or Husserl or Rorty. He wasn't a Nazi, and he didn't preach the end of Western Civilization (without which his thought wouldhave been ,. . . literally unthinkable). He's been treated as a bogeyman by the right, and that ought to make people on the left at least curious about what he says maybe meaning more than Lynn Fucking Cheney says it does.

RCM

[Character Assassin]

65. Hah! That's funny. Has Lynne Cheney ever cited him?

I do make my living at it, not in lit crit but in a social science field. I'm also more than a decade out of grad school, and in my grad school days, Derrida and Foucault et al were the hot new things.

NOOOOOO! He said Foucalt!!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Let's just say I condsider him even more of a charlatan, snake-oil salesman than any other figure from that time.

I read them very seriously, tried to see past the fashion, and have found the ideas they developed more than occasionally useful for thinking*as a Marxist* aboutpower, class, discourse, and the present political crisis.

OK, I guess. If I were a Marxist, I might be able to agree, but that's a whole different can of worms.

In that spirit, I hate to see them dismissed as unreadable nihilists. They were provocateurs (don't the French have a word for that?) and that in itself was a valuable contribution to a stultified American academic establishment in the 70s and 80s.

In the limited world of academia, perhaps, although Foucalt, most unfortunately, had a lot of readership (in France, at least) outside of that realm.

But Derrida in particular was a real philosopher, no more difficult or less serious than Wittgenstein or Nietzsche or Quine or Husserl or Rorty.

Alrighty. I can respect Wittgenstein (although he was mistaken), but Nietzsche was, I'm sorry, a dumbass.

He wasn't a Nazi, and he didn't preach the end of Western Civilization (without which his thought wouldhave been ,. . . literally unthinkable).

True.

He's been treated as a bogeyman by the right, and that ought to make people on the left at least curious about what he says maybe meaning more than Lynn Fucking Cheney says it does.

Again, did she say something I missed?

[realcountrymusic]

80. Nietzsche was a "dumbass," that's the ticket

Foucault was a charlatan? He was many things, but that's not one of them. He was a very serious historian, and Discipline and Punish and Birth of the Clinic have changed the way even very straight social historians (pun intended) view institutions like asylums and prisons.

Nietzsche was a *dumbass?" Sorry, but I'm done debating with you. You sound more like someone who didn't make it through the MA and hasa real chip on his (or her, but you don't have a "her" voice here) shoulder about those who managed to make a career in a tough business, at least in part because they took ideas -- even those with which they disagreed vehemently -- seriously when they were seriously presented.

Your anti-intellectual poses -- carefully crafted to make you impervious to the simple charge that you're blowing smoke out of your posterior accompanied with the suggestion that perhaps you might back up your caricatures of serious thinkers -- explain your posting handle clearly. Nice choice. Character assasination as intellectual argument is . . . well, I'll refrain from practicing it any more myself.

As for Wittgenstein (or Nietzsche), I doubt you've ever really read either one, let alone understood what you may have read summarized in an introductory textbook. I'll vote for Bush before I believe you've read Derrida.

This isn't the place, and no one comes to DU for serious discussion, but to show disrespect bordering on delight on the occasion of the death of a major philosopher whose work has inspired a great deal of powerful work by left intellectuals offends me. Maybe I'm thin-skinned. I'm not into fighting, certainly not with someone who doesn't know what the heck he's talking about.

RCM

PS And yes, Lynn Cheney has railed against "deconstructionists" "ruining our good universities" and spoiling the minds of our young people, etc. Look it up on Lexis/Nexis, since you're so brilliant. And you know what? It sounds to me like you're on her side.

Done with this thread. So flame away.

[mumon]

139. I gotta weigh in here...

This stuff is highly useful in areas like marketing, engineering (where aspects of a design are privileged/marginalized), politics and law.

Very, very useful.

The law aspects put to rest any notion of an "original interpretation" of the Constitution.

[wellstone_democrat]

52. Mine write that way too in the first semester

The thread is also dominated by people who have "learned" modern philosophical concepts from throw-away lines in political polemics and "culture wars" rhetoric.

Deconstruction, post-structural, post-modern, etc. easy to ridicule but they are complex ideas. I don't use much in my own work but that means nothing. I don't use Marxian analytical theories either---that doesn't make them invalid or foolish.

Frankly, some here sound like unhappy first-semester Humanities grad students. (If you attend UT, see you at seminar Monday afternoon!)

[realcountrymusic]

79. UT?

My grad school alma mater. You're not DK, are you?

RCM

[Media_Lies_Daily]

102. Is that the school where the football players have classes in...

...chair-stacking and walking? Tennessee, right?

Sorry...I had to say it...no offense intended.

[realcountrymusic]

115. TEXAS (the school that would NOT admit GW Bush!)

As opposed to Harvard and Yale, two schools that would.

I have nothing against the "other" UT, but the University of Texas is quite famous for its philosophy department. In fact, Gayatri Spivak was working there (I think in comp lit, however) when she translated *Of Grammatology.* Texas's world-class Slavic department was also the hotbed for the emergence of Mikhail Bakhtin's influence on American critical theory in the 80s, thanks in part to Roman Jakobson's late residence there.

Thanks to Bush, Texas had gotten a bad reputation in the world. Intellectually, UT Austin can compare with any school in the world. I was tremendously blessed to be able to do my grad work there, after doing my undergrad at one of the schools where Bush *was* accepted. There is no question in my mind which of the two I attended was the better university.

RCM

[wellstone_democrat]

124. Nope, not DK but am acquainted

I'm in a related department :evilgrin:

[venus]

57. I'm so glad DU has so many

thinking individuals. Sometimes it is truly a learning experience. No need to get nasty with one another in expressing differing views. Obviously this guy was eminent in stature and therefore deserves some investigative thought. I perused lightly through the link post #8 provided. "The second issue is much deeper than surface style. If language, metaphysics, and consciousness really are structured by difference, then there can be no solid foundation, no fixed point of reference, no authority or certainty, either ontological or interpretive." This sounds like an intriguing concept. By the way my History of Science professor, a PhD in Chemistry, referenced the
Internet(s) exclusively in our class; no text books.

[Name removed]

131. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RainDog]

35. Derrida comes out of a different way of thinking

I'm not Derrida scholar, but I have to say that your criticisms are part of a long, long difference between Empiricism and Continental philosophy that began long ago and that hopefully will long continue.

Luckily for most of us, we don't have to choose "Either/Or" when thinking about how we think. We can also choose "and" when looking at the world and how humans perceive it.

You can also find major flaws in the reductionist view that stems from Empiricism, and also find just as many problems in application.

The beauty of intellectual inquiry is the understanding that we are trying to understand with whatever tools are available. There is no "absolute" knowledge even within Empirical thought, as any decent scientist will acknowledge.

That's the wonder and beauty of inquiry.

[realcountrymusic]

38. very nicely put

One of Derrida's contributions was a critique of "either/or" argument. It's a shame he is classified as "or" only.

The debate we're dancing around goes back to the greeks in Western thought, and has similar depth in Asian philosophical traditions. It remains singularly relevant today.

But as a teaser, even for you logical positivists and empiricists, what you see is not exactly the "real." At a minimum, you are seeing it upside down and in only a very narrow band of spectral frequencies. So what you see may not be all you get.

Rather like Bush.

RCM

[comradebillyboy]

19. thank you

i agree completly

[comradebillyboy]

23. perhaps i have mistakenly confused him with the

mass of muddled nonsense that comprises post-modernism. i try to read and understand but my eyes glaze over and my brain goes numb. i do not have this problem reading aristotle, newton, archimedes or hisenberg (or cato for that matter) because physics and science in general rely on observable facts and logic as does any well grounded philosophy.

i can grasp complex ideas well enough, and i can also recognize bullshit disguised as profundity as well.

[ThatPoetGuy]

50. I'm with you, Viking12.

Today I mourn a thinker who brought such brightness to my mind.

Yesterday I would have told you he was my favorite living thinker. Today I learn he is dead. R.I.P., Jacques Derrida -- Rest In Possibility. Your prayers and tears will not be forgotten as we move in the joy of free play.

[On the Road]

58. His Death Was a Sign

and we all know that

Signs originate from other signs. The genetic root-system refers from sign to sign. No ground of nonsignification -- understood as insignificance or an intuition of a present truth-- stretches out to give it foundation under the play and the coming into being of signs.

I sure that would have been Jacques's comment.

[AngryAmish]

61. heh

[realcountrymusic]

81. Actually . . . .

Your post, meant I think to sound parodic of Derrida, summarizes rather eloquently the thought of American pragmatist philosopher C. S. Peirce. Yes, that Peirce, as in "Peirce and Boole," whose work on semiotic theory in the 19th century led to the development of symbolic logic and thence modern computer programming languages.

Parodying the writing of post-structuralists is so easy. It became a tired trope in the early 90s. In hindsight, we still have to grapple with some serious thought by some serious scholars who wrote in a difficult way for a reason and to make a point. There is plenty of bad writing by post-structuralists and postmodern theorists, of course. There's plenty of bad writing by logicial positivists, pragmatists, modernists, and liberals. Derrida was a great writer. You need to be a serious reader, and know prodigious amounts of Western philosophy, to make sense of what he wrote. It's not his fault that he became popular and was read by so many half-educated Americans.

You can always read Harry Potter stories if Derrida is too hard.

RCM

[realcountrymusic]

86. Replying to myself to apologize to RiboFunk

On re-reading the thread, I realize I may have misinterpreted your post, which was a playful-sounding riff on Derridean language, as a mean-spirited parody. I replied in defense of difficult writing and got a bit snide about it, because one gets so used to seeing critics of contemporary critical theory use parody to avoid engaging with the work at the level of ideas. I now realize that was not your intention, and in fact you provided a very appropriate and amusing send-off to JD. So I'm sorry for getting snippy with you, RiboFunk, before thinking.

RCM

[On the Road]

90. Thanks for the Post, RealCountry

You understood my intention on the second reading. I was actually just googling for a suitable Derrida paragraph.

I wrote the following post before I saw your reply, so I'll just leave it as is -- please take it in the spirit I meant it.

Derrida fascinates and exasperates me because I think he's very important but frankly I can't understand him. I have to read other people's accounts of what what he meant. And I'm more the rule than the exception.

I think academics whose work has broad implications have an obligation to the educated public. The benefits could be felt much more broadly throughout academia if those insights were understood outside a subset of graduate students.

Cheers! I'm constanly impressed with the community here. I'd like to see the Derrida obituary thread on FR.
:toast:

[realcountrymusic]

93. Thanks -- glad there's no hard feelings

Appreciate the comeback on this. I felt lousy about it.

I take the point. I've spent many an exasperated hour tryiing to figure out what Derrida (or many others) are trying to say in a single paragraph, reading commentary and checking the lit he's responding to, etc. There is indeed a kind of cult of obscurity that developed around deconstruction in particular, mostly the fault of people who didn't write as well as he actually did and didn't command the knowledge he did. But he wrote the way he did for a purpose -- you are meant to struggle with it. It enacts his point. Luckily, many secondary sources are quite valuable for making "sense" of his thought, up to a point. I benefited a lot from a particular professor of philosophy at the University of Texas who is well known for writing clear explications of difficult post-structuralist and postmodern work, and who taught students to read it patiently and respectfully when it deserved the effort. I lucked out to have such a teacher. A little research will turn up his name, or I'm happy to reveal it if someone wants it in an email. He has about 20 books out there.

Peirce -- yes, in fact he coined the modern usage of the term "semiotic." His work has been central to a small group of linguists and philosophers working in the last 20 years or so as a way out of some of the structuralist conundra that is in many ways more appealing to me than the post-structuralist venture. There's a nice introduction to it in a book called *Semiotic Mediation,* edited by Elizabeth Mertz and Richard Parmentier, unfortunately now out of print and hard to find, but should be in most academic libraries. No one has done a better job or I'd recommend an easier-to-find book!

That your paraphrase/crib from Of Grammatology reminded me of Peirce's account of the mediation of sign modes suggests just how compatible Derrida's philosophy actually is with the origins of modern symbolic logic! Sorta sticks it to the view that Derrida is a champion of anti-logic.

What a pleasure some phases of this thread have been! Thanks again for being gracious about my mea culpa.

RCM

[On the Road]

98. Glad We Could Have a Good Conversation

To tell you truth, I feel like a complete idiot trying to read a lot of modern academic writing. Even an old-timer like Sartre. It's very frustrating because I think it's important. My ex had a doctorate in philosophy and said I thought like a philosopher, but the texts are all Greek to me. I've been around enough grad students to know how many people feel the same way.

I get the idea that this is intentional, and not just due to the diffuclty of the concepts. Requiring that much dedication to make sense of the texts results in a cult of followers rather than seeding the insights throughout the discipline. If Martinus Veltman can write a clear article on the Higgs boson for a general audience in Scienfitic American, Derrida ought to be able to explain what undercutting the text means in The Atlantic. It's too bad that's considered a silly idea.

But I'm glad Derrida makes sense to you. Are there any books or sources you'd recommend for the outsider?

[realcountrymusic]

99. Recommended reading on Derrida

Ribofunk wrote: "But I'm glad Derrida makes sense to you. Are there any books or sources you'd recommend for the outsider?"

Sure. I'm not too proud to say that JD made a lot more sense to me after I worked through a secondary literature, and having taught post-structuralist work for years I am hip to the problems you're talking about. For me, getting my students over the initial hump of "I can't read this" is crucial. So here's a few.

Believe it or not, Jim Powell and Van Howell wrote a decent *comic book* intro to Derrida (one of a series of "critical theory comic books") that isn't half bad! It's called "Derrida for Beginners" and it's at:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0863161391/qid=1097431239/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-0610147-7636954?v=glance&s=books&n=507846


Terry Eagleton's classic and widely read *Literary Theory* has a chapter on poststructuralism (he belongs to the non-hyphenated school of thought on how to spell it) which is fair, if critical, about Derrida. I share his Marxist critique of PS to a large extent, so I'll recommend it with that caveat.

And the major classic book -- very clear and articulate -- is Jonathan Culler's *On Deconstruction.* After reading it, I think most people who are at all familiar with western philosophy and lit crit will have a fairly clear grasp of what Derrida was about from a fair-minded scholar who is broadly sympathetic without being an acolyte. It helps to read Culler's previous book (*Structuralist Poetics*) to have the full intellectual context.

RCM

[On the Road]

100. Thanks, RealCountry

I actually have "Derrida for Beginner" book and it was very well done. Made me want to learn more. Maybe like people like Powell, van Howell, and you will successfully bridge the gap over the next decade or two.

[tishaLA]

110. I'd like to add: Christopher Norris, I think,

wrote a very good book called, simply, "Derrida" that is very good. It's probably about 15 years old now, but I remember it as an excellent source, particularly for the earliest Derrida books like Dissemination, Of Grammatology, Spurs, Writing and Difference, and The Post-Card.

[realcountrymusic]

113. Oh yes, quite good

Mea maxima culpa for not mentioning Norris. One of my favorite critical readings of Derrida, by the way, is Dennis Tedlock's "On the problem of time in oral narrative," in his *The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation,* now also out of print but probably gettable at a good library.

RCM

[On the Road]

89. Actually It's Not a Parody at All

It's pretty much a direct quote from "Of Grammatology." But it's hard to tell, because Derrida parodies himself so well. ;)

I actually didn't know Peirce was a precursor to semiotics. (I studied psychology and business.) I did enjoy "The Problem of Christianity." My ex published on Peirce, but she was more interested in his pragmatism than semiotics or symbolic logic. She tended to be dismissive of those disciplines, unfairly in my view.

It's not so much a case of there being "some bad writing" by postmodernists and poststructuralists as it is a whole value system which prizes obscurity as a form of one-upsmanship. And it comes directly from the shadow of its leader. In every other field, practitioners talk in their own vernacular among themselves, but also can also write for a general audience. There's nothing unique about these disciplines that makes them unable to do so. But the language and the way of speaking were deliberately constructed to make them hermetic.

It's too bad because I think Derrida especially is extremely valuable as part of the symphony of the liberal arts. He just didn't want to join the party. It's too bad that deconstructionists seem to want to annihilate other approaches to exalt their own. When you internalize that, you become an intellectual stick figure. Maybe it's changed, but that seemed to be how it was 20 years ago.

I'm also a big admirer of JK Rowling. She does some important things extremely well, coincidentally in areas where there is a vacuum in souls of postmodernists.

[aneerkoinos]

63. Objective reality?

"deconstructionism is a true step backwards from objectivity"

I raise you with Quantum, Buddhist natural philosophy and your very own Alfred Korzybski:

Whatever we say a thing is, it isn't.

Derrida is just one vein in the critique of the paradigm of naive objectivism, paradigm that does not even survive the empirical test of Quantum Mechanics.

[realcountrymusic]

82. beautiful

nuf said

rcm

[aneerkoinos]

95. thx, now more name dropping...

I stole that Korzybski line from Bohm & Peat book 'Science, Order & Creativity'. If you haven't allready read it' I wholeheartedly recommend it. IMO it is the best introduction into Bohm's philosophy, very clearly written and easily approachable for people with limited reading skills in physical jargon (=people like me).

Peirce and other semiotics guys have been mentioned here, and with good reason. I would like to add one more name: De Saussure, who was an early revelation to me. I think he is often misunderstood and not given enoug credit for being one of the first guys in the West that got it, understood that linguistic meaning is undivided whole, a holistic process. That leads to Sapir, who should be rememberd if not for anything else, for that one immortal quote: "language flows down the current of it's own making". IMO that metaphor suits beatifully also the new cosmological paradigm (compare Bohm's notion of 'holomovement') which I like to call the 'Heraclitean paradigm'.

Of course, lately I've come to realize that the Western scientific revolution of Quantum Mechanics, post-structuralism etc. is nothing new to Buddhist philosophy, where the brilliant mind of Nagarjuna deserves special mention. The problem that all share is how to speak and share meaning about "wovon Mann nicht sprechen kann", where analytical use of language reaches it's limit. Derrida attempts to do what Rumi, Master Eckhardt et alii have been trying, and IMO his work is considered so difficult because it is as a whole a koan, an extremely hard personal challenge to individual mind to gain freedom from delusion of separate individuality and to directly realize that at the bottom lies sunyata, 'emptiness'. But a very French koan it is, no doubt about that... ;)

[realcountrymusic]

117. Cool, thanks.

Peirce predated Saussure, and arguably his "third trichotomy" (icon/index/symbol) and his notion of the "symbolic legisign" anticipates Saussure's model of signifier/signified standing in an arbitrary relation to each other within a structured system of differences (later clarified sharply by Greimas, who pointed out that the linguistic sign is not arbitrary for a speaker, a point which could be used to explain a lot of the misunderstanding of poststructuralist thought in this thread!). Saussure was radical, however, in both deriving and applying his semiology (to distinguish it from Peirce's "semiotic") specifically from/to language. He did not quite get clear on whether the "sign" in language was a lexical item or a smaller unit, bearing no intrinsic meaning in itself (that took Boas, Sapir, and Trubetskoy to figure out), which led to some problems that later came back to haunt both structuralist and post-structuralist literary and social theory, along with the broader problem of linguistic reductionism. Jakobson is such a key figure in this history, and very early on started mediating the American pragmatist tradition of Peirce and the French structuralist tradition of Saussure (for me, the key essay is "A Glance at the Development of Semiotics," which explicitly adjudicates the two systems and finds them complementary).

I'm ignorant of the extensions into Buddhist thought you discuss, although it is commensurate with the mysticism of Peirce and some of the other American pragmatists that their system of semiotic symbolic logic would have those resonances. (Peirce, who was a bit nuts, always thought he was on the way to describing the mind of God with his system, and it's fascinating that the genetic code appears to work rather strictly like Saussure's description of language!). The only name in your list I've really read is Rumi, the Sufi poet, but I haven't really taken an epistemological argument from that work (more of an ethical one for me).

I'll check out Bohm and Peat. I haven't really followed the extensions of this epistemological revolution into the natural sciences very much, though I'm aware it has a distinguished history.

Great to learn something new about something other than politics here! Thanks.

RCM

PS Jeez, this kind of post must drive "Character Assassin" mad.

[aneerkoinos]

136. continued...

- Buddhism:
I found this piece on Nagarjuna on the net: http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nagarjun.htm#Nagarjuna%E2%80%99s%20Skeptical%20Method%20and%20its%20Targets
I think you'll enjoy it. I would be interested to hear if you find any basic differences between Nagarjuna's skepticism and Derrida's deconstruction.

- Bohm:
The book I recommended is really more about how scientists talk, about language and communication and how it could be less fragmented, than about Quantum Theory. I think you will also find Bohm's ideas about generative and implicate orders and his post-Einsteinian notion of active information interesting, and with many parallels to your own line of study.

The Quantum Mind project, which megalomaniacally tries to solve the riddle of Mind and Body in search of unifying theory about (almost) everything ;) and draws together philosophers, physicists and biologists in Arizona, is very much Bohm's spiritual child. Bohm was among the first to notice the striking analogies between quantum domain and mental phenomena. Check it out if you have time:
http://consciousness.arizona.edu/

[Supersedeas]

144. careful not to confuse phenomenology with linguistics

language is not a device for representing reality--but a reality in which we live and move

Making sense is different from make True statements, but none the less, both endeavors are inevitably live in the same place where we try, fail and die.

May he rest in peace.

[Wombatzu]

91. don't treat ratiocination like a miracle...

Derrida was not, and did not seek, the end of Western Civilization. he walked the border and gave us reports back from the wilderness, and we understand ourselves better because of it.

[JCMach1]

92. Idiot!!!

:grr:

[Eurobabe]

109. and this is a good thing?

methinks you rely too much on the yang.

[demoman123]

143. My sentiments exactly.

But there is no shortage of other fifth rate pseudo philosophers around to carry on his nonsense.

[realcountrymusic]

6. As someone who has read Derrida extensively . . .

I send him a salute as he goes.

He was infuriating at times, difficult to read, capricious, intentionally refusing to be pinned down.

But *Of Grammatology* and essays such as "Structure, Sign, and Play" were signal contributions to modern thought. His readings of Heidegger and Husserl and Hegel and Levi-Strauss were provocative and stiumlated rich conversations that lasted for several decades. He made us see the relationship between speech and writing in a new way. His work hasbeen relentlessy caricatured and stereotyped by people who have never read it, or didn't understand it (or try to understand it) when they did -- hallmarks of a major intellectual figure.

To see his work as dangerous or antithetical to "Western Civilization" is, I think, narrow minded, though it is a widely shared opinion in the US academy. He provided tools with which to think seriously and critically about the foundations of our so-called "civilization" -- a civilization that has done plenty of bad along with its good effects. Any intellectual edifice is only improved by its serious critics. He was a product of that civilization and its philosophical heritage, and he took that as a responsibility.

His work will matter long after most of his critics have faded into irrelevance.

Goodbye Jacques.

RCM

[skooooo]

9. Didn't he write "The Authoritative Personality?"

[realcountrymusic]

25. no (eom)

[bemildred]

11. Indeed it will.

While the current crop of deconstructionists have produced very
mixed results and flooped around a good deal in trying to figure
out how to do "talk about talk", the core problem that is being
elucidated in these discussions is very important. It reminds me
of the development of relativity and quantum physics, and the
development of Turing/Goedel incompleteness/computability results
in Math. It is not nihilism to admit that the tools with which we
think (languages) have their limits, and to explore those limits in
search of better ways of knowing.

A good deal of the unsatisfactory nature of the deconstructionist
discussion, so far, derives from the paradoxical nature of the effort.
One must find a way to "talk about talk" without allowing the natural
defects of "talk" as a way of thought to lead one astray. One sees
similar struggles with "paradox" in the developments in physics and
math I mention above, and the surmounting of those "paradoxes" were
among the highest intellectual achievements of the 20th century.
Mr. Derrida deserves, at least, to be considered in the same company.

[realcountrymusic]

26. well said

one of themore thoughtful posts on this otherwise disappointingly anti-intellectual thread.

rcm

[bemildred]

27. The need for the illusion of certainty is compelling for many.

Thanks for the props, the limits of formal reasoning happens to be
an issue that I have a lifelong interest in.

[Plaid Adder]

10. Aw. Dang.

Say what you want about deconstruction itself in its pure form, but I'll tell you this: it was God's gift to critical thinking. Lots of people who have never read Derrida and would hate it if they tried are still using tools that he first developed to take apart the ideological bullshit that is constantly being slung at us. I sure wouldn't be who I am today without him.

Safe home, Jacques,

The Plaid Adder

[tishaLA]

14. M. Derrida was one of my heroes

I was fortunate to take a seminar with him several years ago.

I will miss his insights, his wisdon, and his humor.

[aquart]

17. Is he the Nazi apologist?

The one who desperately tried to make things other than what they mean so that his pro-Nazi writings could be explained away?

Is that the man?

[tishaLA]

18. You're thinking of Paul de Man

But I don't think it's quite accurate to call him a Nazi apologist. You might want to read M. Derrida's essay "Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell: Paul de Man's War" in the book Responses: On Paul de Man's Wartime Journalism.

BTW, de Man's "Nazi" writings were discovered after his death, so he never tried to explain them away.

[bemildred]

20. Derrida was a Jew. nt

[Rochambeau]

32. The man you think about is certainly Roger GARAUDY

He is one of the main characters of the extreme left negationism. The rightist one is Maurice BARDECHE. Robert FAURISSON, the "professor", the "pope" of negationism, pretends to be an "apolitic scientist" but he's just a sad crook.
It's very strange to see that the two extremism, left and right, come close on one thing (among others), negationism and antisemitism...Pathetic....

[librechik]

88. Heidegger? He wasn't alone in that, apparently n/t

[Dogmudgeon]

33. Fool-Proof Method for Detecting Decon Wankers

By which, I mean wankers who "criticize" and "debunk" Derrida and the Deconstruction philosophers without knowing what the fuck they're talking about.

They use the term "Deconstructionist".

It's like calling someone a "Skepticist" or a "Philosophist".

You wanna weigh in on Deconstruction? Start by learning the vocabulary!

--bkl

[debatepro]

34. Condolences

Another great french philosopher down. Jacques Derrida RIP.

[DrBB]

36. Well, the obit gets it exactly wrong, doesn't it

The Algerian-born philosopher is best known for his "deconstruction theory" - unpicking the way text is put together in order to reveal its hidden meanings.

Well, er, no. Sounds more like New Criticism to me. "Hidden meanings"? Not hardly. He precisely DIDN'T buy the idea that the text is an "integument" covering some hidden, yet stable and determinate "inner" meaning. Inner/Outer, Depth/Surface and the like are themselves arbitrary (but not random), culturally-determined oppositions that are used to construe meaning. He said at some pont "deconstrual" would have been a better term than "deconstruction," since the latter is so easily misrendered (misconstrued?) as "dissasembly."

Literal/Metaphorical is a useful example. The pairing is used to define an essential-seeming difference--the "spirit" versus the "letter" of the law; the hidden, abstract, "true" meaning versus the outer, pedestrian sense of an utterance. Yet the polarity itself is untenable: the term for the latter sense is itself a metaphor--"Literal" = "of the letter," i.e., "letter" as a symbol for the elementary ability to read, construe etc. All meaning, in other words, is metaphorical in this instance. All reality is virtual reality.

It's an intuition about meaning that I find very useful and profound (deep, another surface/depth metaphor) or completely obvious and trivial on alternating weekdays. Weekends I usually take off.

[tishaLA]

37. You might want to read Le Monde's obit

it's much better and it's right here.

[bemildred]

39. Merci.

Forty years since high school French, and I can still get
most of that. ;-)

[fjc]

40. For those here who have read Derrida...

and I haven't, I was wondering what difference his ideas make to the world. I mean, how might one, or, even, how have you, changed the way you live or conduct yourself after having come to grips with what he had to say.

[msmcghee]

41. Just a thought fjc, from someone who has . .

. . not read Derrida. Isn't one's life always different, never as it would have been, after we are exposed to any new information?

While it's true that any single piece of information we take in may have a negligible effect on any decision we make in the future - we will make many billions of those decisions so the odds are that we will take some paths differently.

Also, even if we never reference it - it is taking up some neural space that might have been used by some other concept or memory that we now don't have access to when considering options.

So, I'd propose that any information that we gather into our minds makes us a different person from that moment on.

[fjc]

53. That's true, just on general principles..

just about any new information changes ones world in some way or another, one could say without fear of contradiction. But I'm not talking about that. And frankly, from your praise of Derrida, I would have expected a bit more than just another factoid for consideration. I'm talking about a visceral difference, a shift of paradigm. What major tenet, belief, or firmly held principle did your reading of him overturn, or at least make you reconsider?

[msmcghee]

62. Continuing along this interesting path . .

. . I have not praised Derrida. I'm here to help bury him. You must have me confused with someone who knows what they're talking about. :hippie:

But I do understand your point. You are talking about a direct effect, like a change in paradigm that we consider at the time and can connect to his ideas.

I wasn't trying to be cute. Just suggesting that great changes can come from second and third level causes just as well. And we probably would not connect them in our minds. In fact, I'd say that the greatest changes in world-view that I have experienced were the result of my mind getting into the place where I could accept the new information that led to that change - rather than any direct study of the concepts or argument on the points.

I think we all resist changes at that (paradigm) level - because it means we have to change who we are. That's scary and takes a lot of emotional energy. Usually those changes come in the back door. One day we realize, "Holy shit, I'm a liberal". At least, that's what happened to me.

[ugarte]

45. His influence was such that he has made a difference in your world

whether you realize it or not. Did Einstein make a difference in your world? Yes, whether you ever studied physics or not.

[fjc]

55. Well, yes, the world changes even when we're not aware of it.

We're all behind the curve, if that's your measure. Your reference to Einstein is apt. His impact was immediate, I think, electrifying, so to speak, on those able to grasp the implications of his ideas. Did Derrida have that kind of impact on you?

[tishaLA]

51. I think that depends on how one understands Derrida, really

some have suggested--wrongly, IMHO--that Derrida's writings were apolitical or, at best, ambivalent about the idea of politics as such. For one thing, his life demonstrates that was not the case; he had long involvements with Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Sartre, etc. in movements for prison reform, gay and lesbian liberation, Palestinian liberation, and other leftist causes in France.

In addition, writers influenced by Derrida, most notably Gayatri Spivak, have worked to demonstrate the political dimensions of Derrida's writing. Read Spivak's admittedly difficult essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?," where she performs an excellent exegesis that demonstrates how Derrida's ideas are more amenable to political action than those of Foucault or Deleuze and Guattari (I still find that a specious claim, but nonetheless...). Derrida himself encounters the political influences in some of his works, most notably his later monographs like Specters of Marx, Given Time: Counterfeit Money, The Politics of Friendship, and The Monolingualism of the Other.

[IHateFundies]

43. and he will be sorely missed

what an amazing person!

[ugarte]

44. I agree he'll be missed

Conservatives and authoritarians hated him because he upset their little academic universe in which the Western Eurocentric tradition had a supposed monopoly on truth.

Derrida was all about people thinking for themselves and not relying on 'the experts' and systems of rules. He was not a Marxist, but leaned definitely to the left.

[IHateFundies]

46. exactly

he drove the authoritarians nuts. In fact, just a few years ago they expellend an Art Institute student in SF for his Derrida studies.

[ugarte]

47. Welcome to DU

Any friend of Jacques Derrida is a friend of mine. :)

[6000eliot]

48. Me too.

Even though I'm relatively new myself. I think that in many ways Derrida anticipated the Topsy-turvy political world that we've been living in for the past 15 or so years. Everything is spin and competing discourses.

[Character Assassin]

66. Careful, now!

Conservatives and authoritarians hated him because he upset their little academic universe in which the Western Eurocentric tradition had a supposed monopoly on truth.

So many authoritarians are on the left. If you think for one second that there aren't exactly the same types of sheltered morons in academia on the left side of the spectrum, you're quite mistaken.

They've got oxes. They get gored. They all gnash their self-serving teeth no matter what politics they proclaim.

This is, after all, academia, where trolls live under bridges and knights still joust at windmills (with spectator bleachers, no less).

[Viking12]

69. Have you thought about writing a column for David Horowtiz?

I ask, because your anti-intellectual, strawperson arguments would fit well within his paradigm.

[Name removed]

73. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Viking12]

74. Don't have cable nor nintendo

but I do have a PhD and I am one of those academics that you fear so much. Every post you've contributed to this thread is anti-intellectual. Reducing Derrida to "bullshit" for example.

[Character Assassin]

75. No, but intellectually, you embody both

You have a PhD? That sure is impressive. Are there any specials tonight?

You mistake fear for boredom. Say, are you getting a stipend while still in work-study?

I stand by my prior statement: bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Again, you must first understand 'intellectual' to correctly utilize its antithesis.

[Viking12]

77. So tell me, oh wise one...

How exactly does reducing a 40 year corpus of work to "bullshit" equate to intellectualism? Since these leftist authoritarians are so strongly represented in the academy, you should be able to identify several hundreds. How about a couple of dozen?

I've learned enough about you -- you're a self-loathing loser that flunked out of graduate school and need to blame the academy for your failures. I pity you.

[Name removed]

78. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[realcountrymusic]

84. Callin' you out, buddy

Your grammar, spelling, and rhetoric tell me you never served a day at the seminar table. What does it mean to say "you spent a lot of time in an environment with a lot of literary critics," or however you put it? And if the issue really is "so many angels dancing on the head of a pin" (an awfully undergrad metaphor, and I should know since I've read, oh, five thousand undergrad papers in the past decade) why are you so vehement about trashing Derrida and deconstruction?

I said I was done arguing with you, but you really are using "character assasination" not only against Derrida but against other posters on this thread, and it's rather juvenile.

RCM

PS -- My other favorite philosopher is not Jesus Christ, but Merle Haggard.l

[Character Assassin]

104. Mmm-Kay, buh-dee

Your grammar, spelling, and rhetoric tell me you never served a day at the seminar table.

Yes, I'll confirm that. And I'm glad for it.

What does it mean to say "you spent a lot of time in an environment with a lot of literary critics," or however you put it?

Well, let's see. I spent plenty of time in courses in undergrad on literary theory, my mother was a literature professor, my ex was a grad student in literary theory and Russian at UCLA while we were together, and I can read.

And if the issue really is "so many angels dancing on the head of a pin" (an awfully undergrad metaphor, and I should know since I've read, oh, five thousand undergrad papers in the past decade) why are you so vehement about trashing Derrida and deconstruction?

Because it is a distraction that entrances the simple and the gullible.

Angels dancing on the head of a pin in not an undergrad metaphor, but rather stems from medieval discussion about the nature of the divine in Catholic circles. Sorry you didn't know that.

I said I was done arguing with you, but you really are using "character assasination" not only against Derrida but against other posters on this thread, and it's rather juvenile.

Speaking of spelling, Mr. Kettle... Whatever you think best.

RCM

PS -- My other favorite philosopher is not Jesus Christ, but Merle Haggard.l

I'm not a stranger to Merle, myself.

[realcountrymusic]

105. Hmm, my ignore list function isn't working. Second try.

But since I saw that, a) it's not nice to use other people's accomplishments to burnish your own claim to authority, and it's clear that those accomplishments didn't rub off on you; b) I know perfectly well where "angels on the ehad of a pin" comes from (yes, I've read Aquinas too), and it's still an undergraduate choice of metaphor because it's tired and barely appropriate; and c) character assas*s*ination, is still a poor way to win an argument the substance of which is beyond your ken. But you caught me on a spelling error. I'll refrain from listing all of your errors of grammar, logic, spelling, and civility.

RCM

[Character Assassin]

106. Physician, heal thyself

a) it's not nice to use other people's accomplishments to burnish your own claim to authority, and it's clear that those accomplishments didn't rub off on you

I'm not. You asked for my exposure, I gave it. Sorry you can't tell the difference and what you're now claiming.

b) I know perfectly well where "angels on the ehad of a pin" comes from (yes, I've read Aquinas too), and it's still an undergraduate choice of metaphor because it's tired and barely appropriate; and c) character assas*s*ination, is still a poor way to win an argument the substance of which is beyond your ken. But you caught me on a spelling error. I'll refrain from listing all of your errors of grammar, logic, spelling, and civility.

You have yet to offer anything of substance yourself, other than chest-beating about grading papers. And when you make clear your conceit that you know thing one about logic, that's when I head for the door.

It's been something.

[realcountrymusic]

111. Tiresome

"Sorry you can't tell the difference and what you're now claiming."

Like I said, the grammar is a dead giveaway. Reminds me of a certain president.

This is getting boring, and I'm sure others are sick of hearing both of us snipe at each other. The temptation to respond is strong, but the truth is, I think, self-evident by now. I'm going to let it go and hope you are capable of doing the same.

One point that does require a defense: as for offering something of substance, I've discussed Derrida's thought in some detail elsewhere in this thread, recommended reading, answered susbtantive critiques (some of which I've agreed with) of post-structuralist thought, and had some very interesting exchanges with other thoughtful posters on the history of symbolic logic, the critique of logical positivism, and Derrida's specific contribution to anthropology. Perhaps you haven't read the entire thread, to give you the benefit of the doubt. Since you have not replied to me (or to anyone else you've assas*s*inated in this thread) on a point of susbtantive content, each exchange with you has devolved into a pissing contest, which you seem rather to enjoy. I would still maintain you've never read Derrida (or anyone else you malign by implication) in your life, and that you are covering for having exposed that shortcoming with excessive ad hominem attacks on fellow DUers and self-inflating puffery.

But congratulations, in any case, on having worn lil' ol' me plum out. Life is to short to argue for the sake of arguing, don't you think? And DU has a higher purpose, to which I propose we both return our attention. Readers of this thread can, I'm certain, form their own conclusions on the subject of who knows "thing one about logic." I'm not too worried.


RCM

[realcountrymusic]

112. Can't resist one more question

In reviewing the thread in order to improve myself in the future and avoid rising to flame-baiters, I found something I missed. Not only did you call Nietzsche a "dumbass," but in the same sentence you said quite authoritatively, implying familiarity, that Wittgenstein "was wrong."

Impress the hell out of me, and I'm sure many others here. Explain in clear, coherent, "logical" prose -- since you deem yourself an expert at discerning "logic" -- just what Wittgenstein was "wrong" about? There are many possible answers, of course. Do me the great honor, please, of making one argument, just one susbtantive argument, somewhere in this thread.

RCM

[Character Assassin]

125. Sure. I assume you mean Wittgenstein.

I don't have the text with me, so I'm going from memory.

His Tractatus is (purposefully?) very much like a mathematical proof, apart from the fact that they have more justification.

Wittgenstein said, "What can be said at all can be said clearly.", but this then gives rise to two issues: is one to assume that Wittgenstein believed or wished to show that any further clarification would have obscured the truth inherent to his work? Is the absence of clarifying commentary itself that which clarifies? Did he desire the reader to come to the conclusion that nothing more need be said, and that the Tractatus was speaking for itself, so to speak?

Further, one can make the case that the sentences of the Tractatus themselves are unable to qualify as "meaningful", in terms of Tractatus's own criteria, and Wittgenstein's method does not follow his/its own requirements from the correct philosophical method.

He was, however, much, much nearer the truth (IMO) with his sentiments about "showing the fly out of the fly bottle", if I recall that correctly, in terms of what the philosopher's (or, possibly how he would have put it, the 'true' philosopher) actual place and purpose is.

[realcountrymusic]

127. And you call *Derrida's* writing BS?

C to B minus work, even from an undergraduate, and so full of fake profundity too. When I did philosophy A-levels we 6th form schoolboys thought we were quite clever to discover that a conditional utterance is subject to a critique of its truth value on the basis of its very conditionality, the classic example being perhaps Epimenides (Cretan) paradox. Turns out we were re-inventing a pretty basic wheel, and so are you. (Q. Is this a question, and if so why? A. No, is this an answer?).

You must do some more work on nominalism and referentiality, then resubmit the paper. Your problem is a failure to grasp the truth value of contradictions, and Derrida would be very useful reading for you, living as you do in an auto-referential universe which you mistake (systematically in this thread) for "reality."

Besides which, citing only that quote as a distillation of Wittgenstein's philosophy fails to convince me of your literacy, given that it's the cereal-box version of the Tractatus. It's like saying Marx's work boils down to "workers of the world, unite."

Don't forget the second half of Wittgenstein's dictum, and take it to heart (please).

" . . . und wovon man nicht reden kann, daruber muss man schweigen."

You really should consider it. It's good advice for poseurs.

RCM

[bemildred]

133. Well, I rather like Lewis Carroll's take on deconstruction:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
—Through the Looking-Glass

It would seem that to state Wittgenstein is mistaken, one ought to be
clear about what he meant.

[realcountrymusic]

134. Nice!

The word is not the thing, except when it is.

RCM

"'Ouch!' is a one-word sentence." -- Quine

[realcountrymusic]

83. Let me add

That to those of us in anthropology, Derrida's critique of the hidden privileging of *logos* in the structuralist tradition -- which dominated anthropology for most of the 60s and early 70s and has dominated linguistics consistently since Saussure -- opened up a whole new vista on meaning, and on the critical possibilities for engaging with discourse *as action,* (though not language JD would approve, actually). He was a fellow traveler with many others who led us in this direction, but his specific critique of the speech/text binary (and of binarism in general) took what was powerful about structuralist thought and turned it outward from codes of signification to codes of power and authority. He made the most sense for me read alongside Foucault, Rorty, Kristeva, Habermas, and Bakhtin (who predates the others but whose thought really only came to light at the same moment). taken together, we came to see modernity not as an inevitable achievement but as a contingent and very contradictory and terribly uneven enterprise of domination as well as liberation.

In other words, the post-structuralist turn in philosophy, literature, linguistics, and social science achieved the first real break with the foundational half-truths and lies -- the colonialist, genocidal, racist, and misogynist lies, among others -- that rationalized the European Enlightenment as unequivocally good for all people on the planet (and as many of us might acknowledge, the planet itself, one of the great lies still with us as we consume the last of the world's pristine habitats). Indeed, contemporary environmentalism, feminism, and anti-globalization movements owe a great deal to the work of the post-structuralist philosophers. Imagine if the only possible critique of capitalism were unreconstructed Marxism? There would be no Left left.

RCM

Oh, and to get Lynn cheney's views, you could read her book *Killing history.* Yecch. I'm not soiling my bookshelf and my beautiful collection of post-structuralist classics with soiled toilet paper like this, but if you are interested:

http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=GF74yHCAd5&sourceid=00395996645644787198&btob=Y&isbn=0684825341&itm=1

Or such utter tripe as:

http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?sourceid=00395996645644787198&btob=Y&endeca=1&isbn=1893554120&itm=6

[Lautremont]

49. As with so many things, the death of Derrida

underlines the difference between thinking persons and Freepers. I checked out their response to it: a few weak jokes, relief that another Frenchman had died, incredibly vicious anti-intellectual spewings ("He should have been strangled at birth!") and a good number of dullardly shrugs: "Never heard of the guy. Sounds French, though."

These are supreme idiots here, and I'm not even talking about the ones who'd never heard of him. I would very much like to see a study correlating IQ (not just education) with political leaning.

[realcountrymusic]

85. Yah, unfortunately someof those Freepers are right here

Thanks for the info, and I admit I'vereally liked several parts of this discussion, which is (obviously) important to me. But even DU is not immune to that kind of anti-intellectual attitude.

And you know what I'm talking about. I just added said Freeper (or wannabe Freeper) to my ignore list too, first time I've ever done that at DU.

You (No, not you Lautremont -- you seem great!) can dislike Derrida's work. You can dislike his politics. You can dislike the man. But damned if I'll accept treating others who don't agree with those dislikes so disrespectfully because they hold a perfectly defensible view of a major intellectual figure. And all this on the day he died, no less.

Actually, the real clue was "coming from an academic family." Some of us do, and sometimes that creates "issues." Some of us work them out in different ways -- getting an MBA is one, and I have no reason to disrespect that kind of "practicality" (as if every MBA was doing something important and practical by selling more crap or making more deals, and every other "academic" was doing something "impractical" by devoting a lifetime of low-paying work to teaching big ideas to future leaders of society, sheesh.) For me, I spent a few years pretending to be a bit blue collar, playing country music, and engaging with what it means to be a working stiff in a red state. You know, some of the most interesting philosophers I've met are truck drivers and nurse's aides. And they don't have a knee-jerk anti-intellectual attitude.

RCM

[Viking12]

87. RCM, let it go

No need to get so worked up. I made the same mistake. I have PhD in Rhetorical Studies, have read the bulk of JD's work, and find it to be useful in navigating a life of inquiry. Like you, I have graded thousands of papers, given hundreds of lectures, seen countless bad interpretations of critical thinkers, and, as such, need not be bothered by some faceless dork on a message board.

[realcountrymusic]

94. Oh I have

And noticed you didn't need any help defending yourself. It just bugged me more to see someone speak ill of the dead in such an obtuse fashion, when s/he was really just working out some kind of personal demons.

RCM

PS: Too bad there's no HTML with which I could place a term "sous rature." Would have been handy on this thread.

[David Zephyr]

54. Toasting the Memory and Contributions of Jacques Derrida.

Although, he'd correctly consider this a cliche, wouldn't he? I love this man just the same, so: :toast:

[fjc]

56. Why? What did he do for you?

[whirlygigspin]

59. adieu sage fou a la chevelure blanche

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida

[Rochambeau]

64. Some Wikipedia articles should be taken with a grain of salt

Some articles (like this one: Air France Flight 8969) are true battlefields between lunatics ( many times freepers, don't ask me why) and reasonable persons. It is so easy to change the text in a Wikipedia article so some lunatics think they can re-write history.

My tip, always hit the "history" link at the very top of the wikipedia page you are interested in and then "compare selected versions" to know what are the latest changes. It is sometimes, funny, scary, incredible, interesting, nothing important....
It is sometimes grotesque like the "France" article wich has been vandalized with a link redirecting to "Pussy" for exemple, but it's also many times more insidious.

The article concerning J.Derrida had 22 modifications since yesterday. Anyway I have no specific comment about Derrida article and no comment either on the different versions since I'm absolutely not a specialist, it's just an exemple. And I don't blame Wikipedia and its system of editing, I just a give a tip. Take it the way you want.

[shadu]

67. That web site listed on your post is excellent

"cheese eating surrender monkey"

Is that your site?

[Rochambeau]

68. No, it seems to be a russian site.

I don't know much about this site but since I'm ok with the article I use it anyway.

[shadu]

70. The War Nerd. There is some great stuff in there.

[Rochambeau]

71. I forgot to say that some facts are not completely correct

in the article I use in my sig (like Charles Martel "king of the Franks" - he was not the king in fact but the chancelor. Or "Hell, Stalin signed a sweetheart deal with Hitler out of sheer terror" wich is not exactly true too ). But the rest is OK and it is said in english a way I couldn't say myself so, thank you Gary Brecher (the author).

[henslee]

72. Must say, I am enjoying this spirited discussion. Couldn't imagine

ever seeing one over at that OTHER SITE.

[Khephra]

76. I don't know much about the man

But I will say that many if not most of the written works of fiction that have lead to my growth as a person and artist have been labeled as being deconstructional. Whether his work was a good thing or a bad thing, I'll leave to the rest of you all who have studied his work. I'll just add that it's apparent that his presence added intellectual controversy to fields that often aren't influenced by any academic movements (eg. comic books) and for that I'm glad that his work exists.

[The Flaming Red Head]

96. Now that's he's dead. Someone please fucking explain Derrida to me

please.


If you have the time in between cleaning out the slurpee machines.

[Psephos]

126. Derrida might say you have to explain him to yourself

If you rigorously apply his arguments, then no one can fucking explain Derrida to you.

You can sum him up imprecisely, but with some accuracy, by saying he argued that communication is essentially impossible. The problem is that our communications, especially tangible communications (think books, plays, essays, polemics, music, films, etc.) are full of conflicts (he called them "binary oppositions"). A typical binary opposition might be gay/straight, or male/female, or rich/poor...you get the idea.

So, instead of a movie or a book having an objective meaning that different people can agree upon, it has swarms of meanings, swirling around under the surface, arising from its "oppositions." Its meaning to *you* depends on the interplay of these oppositions, your own experiences, and conflicts in the culture in which you live. These oppositions are a feature of the "text" (the work you're trying to decipher), and not its author's mind. It may even have a "meaning" actively denied by its own author...if you still believe in the word meaning after all this. To get at this meaning, you must deliberately deconstruct the text, by searching out its binary conflicts, and then link its deconstructed elements into an elemental structure of meaning. This process can never be said to be finished, because the deeper you look, the more conflicts you find.

Kind of makes you want to run right out to the bookstore, doesn't it?

I noticed some posts in this thread where the posters resorted to that dense, esoteric language of high academia to poo-poo those who question deconstruction. That deconstruction cannot be described easily in everyday language serves as a warning. You might look up Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" - which is decidedly not written in dense and esoteric language - for illumination of how jargon is used to make outsiders feel stupid when they're not. (Click on the first link you find in Google - it's right there.)

Here is a simple test, useful not only here, but when evaluating any ideological system: when you venture outside of academic settings, what tangible good can deconstruction be shown to have produced? I have trouble coming up an answer, although true believers will reflexively dismiss my attitude here as that of a simpleton.

Bottom line: if deconstuction holds that, in the end, nothing can really be said, then it's a contradiction to be saying that nothing can be said, and an even bigger contradiction to state this at length.

My $0.02 worth...

[drfemoe]

137. my head is spinning

does that mean anything?

[bemildred]

138. When you say "does that mean anything?"

What does "mean" mean? Does "mean" mean the same thing when
I say "What does 'mean' mean", in the second occurrence as when
you say "does that mean anything?". How would you tell?

The problem is the self-reference of the word mean. If you
try to be rigorous in nailing down what it "means", you get
into an infinite recursion of explanations of explanations etc.
Such a recursion is always a sign that one has made a mistake in
thinking about and formulating the problem in the beginning.

And yes, this post does mean something.

[drfemoe]

140. k. I thought

the 'spinning' aspect was gonna be the issue here.. a number of ways to take that 'meaning'.

But now I see that 'meaning' is the object .. of my head, ie mind (that unknown aspect of each being) 'being' confused.. ie. SPINNING!!

:D

[bemildred]

141. I see what you mean.

:-)

[drfemoe]

142. That makes one of us ..

profundity... ahhhhh.. How deep does it GO?

:freak:

[depakid]

97. What an outstanding thread!

Props to all the scholars and all the charlatans alike!

A fitting tribute to Derrida.

[RobertDevereaux]

107. So if Beethoven is decomposing in his grave...

...is Derrida deconstructing?

[homodem]

132. Possibly

...he is constructing...or putting out something much less useless than his bullshit philosophy.

That's what this Gay Black Marine thinks.

[Eurobabe]

108. Wow, I met him in 1994 at Villanova

why are people bashing him?

[fedsron2us]

116. Perhaps they do not like what he did to the study of literature

[Asher]

118. Condolences and Godspeed,

But I have to say deconstructivism has been a plague on higher learning since it gained widespread acceptance. I don't know how many times I've been asked during highschool as well as during college to find the meaning in a comma, a space or the number of sylables in a sentence of poetry. The art in art is lost, only to be replaced with academic quibbling.

[realcountrymusic]

120. Not Derrida's fault

Deconstruction (not "deconstructivism," a term I've never heard) is not synonymous with the kinds of formalist analysis you seem to be complaining about. Counting the number of syllables in a line of poetry is . . . poetics! The discipline of poetics -- the formal analysis of texts and rhetoric -- goes back at least to Aristotle in Western thought. Analysis need not be the enemy of art, and can be its handmaiden. Deconstruction, as literary theory, indeed is a form of poetics, and has implications for formal analysis. But in so many ways the formal analyses it inspired have been about reconnecting art to the social world, not the turning away from politics and power that New Criticism and much strucutralist though embraced.

To call deconstruction a "plague on higher learning" is to parrot a stance frequently espoused by arch-conservative culture warriors who lump a particular literary and philosophical theory with a range of other purported sins -- especially "multiculturalism" and "relativism" -- in order to brand critical intellectuals as enemies of the state, unwilling to accede to the hijacking of language by ideology. We live in an era in which up is down, war is peace, and oppression is liberation, if the right's language is to be matched to its policies. Calling attention to that, these days, whether one is within or outside the academy, can be very risky.

Complacence, subservience, naivete, fear, and conformity are the real "plagues on higher learning." It was ever thus.

We've been over a lot of this ground already in this thread. There's some enriching debate above.

RCM

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

119. He has touched every endevor of man, some of his principles

are much more extreme than they need to be for the subjects deconstructed, but for serious work (ancient writings, philosophy, psychology, religious texts) it has become standard practice.

Where I have any kind of beef with him is what has happened in fields where there are too many Doctoral degrees (teaching, nursing, business) and the people with those degrees, are, in large part, unaware of the realities of current practice of the profession. The
pablum they churn out while deconstructing texts which were gibberish to begin with, well, perhaps some day we will recover our sanity.

[realcountrymusic]

121. Could you be more specific?

There are too many PhDs in every field these days, even the natural sciences, for the job market for those PhDs. That doesn't make a doctorate a worthless accomplishment. Knowledge is good, whether it's practical or not.

But I'm curious -- genuinely -- about your claim that deconstruction has had a significant effect on doctoral-level research in fields like teaching, nursing, and business. I am occasionally asked to serve on dissertation committees in education, and have never seen a dissertation even mention, let alone apply, deconstructionist approaches. (That, by the way, is the correct usage of the "-ist" suffix, as an adjective.) I'd be amazed if it were different in nursing or business. But perhaps I am utterly mistaken. Could you clarify the point?

RCM

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

123. I don't feel it has had an effect on doctoral-level research

but in the application of that research into policy and practice, to use a diplomatic phrase, on the ground. I am not sure if they mention deconstructionism specifically, but it seems to many "working-class" professionals in those fields I have interviewed perceive classic knowledge has been treated thus. Many who had never been required to attain degrees until recently (RN's) once they entered college-level courses outside of practical nursing instruction felt an epiphany in either philosophy or psychology courses. Sort of a "oh, crap now I know what that over-educated do nothing from the consultant means now!"

As for there being too many Ph D's, I could not agree more. The system loves to force bright students up and up to feed itself. Unfortunately, we have devoured the beast from the inside now. There is little to eat but gristle anymore.

I hope I clarified my, admittedly, scatter-brained post.

[realcountrymusic]

128. Hmm, sounds like a perspective from inside

I'm still not sure I'm grasping it, though I do feel strongly the argument that "practical knowledge" -- "knowing how" vs. "knowing that" or the "practical consciousness" of the Marxist tradition -- has been devalued systematically *as* knowledge, and my own work attends quite specifically to this very issue. Still, I can't see how "theoretical knowledge" can be a negative thing unless it *is* presented (and internalized) as a superior form of consciousness. I also argue, in my own work, that systematic theory is always emergent *from* practical knowledge, and that the "great divide" between them in both Marxist and Liberal political economic traditions of inquiry is tragic. Indeed, my main debating point on DU reflects this conviction, namely that the Left in the U.S. has (by and large) given up on a historically crucial role of representing and articulating the interests of working-class people. (The favor, of course, has been returned, in spades. Divide and conquer is the name of the Right's game.)

So I suspect we are on the same page. I just don't see deconstruction as having any particularly corrosive role in the process described above, perhaps because an education in post-structuralist critical theory actually helped me to formulate my positions.

Best

RCM

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

130. Oh yes, we are on the same side

My only complaint with its application is by people who clearly do not understand what is supposed to be gained using it as well as you obviously do.

Way too often the theoretical is put forth as the law and those who live in reality are judged by it, mostly to the detriment of the worker.

[timezoned]

135. Here's a way this relates directly

I was thinking about Derrida the day before he died. It had to do with an article I read about how the GOP has used the "flip-flopper" attack on every candidate they've faced for decades. It's simply a trick, it worked for them so they continue to use it. It's possible because if you examine ANY person's speech or writing you can find contradictions. W is certainly no exception, as we all know.

And so this entire attack, which wormed its way into the public psyche, was a terrific demonstration of deconstruction in action. Derrida proved that you can find seeming (my term) contradictions in any text.