To be exposed and exposing

It is interesting--although in many ways not surprising--that in a documentary about Derrida, which is a form of biography of him, Derrida addresses the nature of biography both directly and indirectly in several different instances. One of the most interesting things for me was the scene in which Derrida talks about the up and down relationship he has had with the production of his own image.

Partly, as Derrida explains in the interview, his refusal to have his image published in any way was to resist buying into the cult of the author and automatically be viewed in such a way in which authors are typically represented--in such a case, various attributes could automatically be applied to him based on the stereotype of an author's photograph (at his desk writing or shown as a polished, serious head shot) which do not necessarily apply to Derrida and could take away from his scholarly work. However, Derrida also says that part of his refusal to be photographed was a certain "narcissistic horror" at the sight of his own face--partly, the feeling that there is death in one's own image.

As Derrida got older and his career advanced it seems that he realized the inevitability of living a public life (he was indeed becoming an academic celebrity and more importantly an activist, who is someone whose purpose requires publicly speaking out and being recognizable) without having one's picture taken and published. Eventually, he even allowed aspects of both his public and his private life to be filmed in the documentary with which we are all now familiar. However, in doing so, Derrida constantly made sure he called attention to the framing--the confining and manipulating of images--which necessarily occurs in the production of film or photographic images.

Derrida called attention to this framing in his resistance to answering interviewers' questions, to illustrate the framing which occurs in the interview process (he even comments on the editing process--that he can sit an talk for two hours but it will be boiled down to ten seconds for what the filmmakers want to use in the finished product. Derrida says that the film is as much autobiographical for the filmmakers as it was biographical of him). The film reinforced his point when it included shots of Derrida watching footage of himself on a monitor, and shots of Derrida watching footage of himself watching footage of himself.

The way that Derrida treats his view of the film--as being inevitably limited and as potentially saying much more about the filmmaker than himself, the subject of the film--is not necessarily negative. He sees these aspects of film as inevitable, as necessarily characteristics of the medium, yet he allows and participates in the making of the film. Derrida asserts that to ask forgiveness or demand apology makes true forgiveness impossible, but he still believes that reconciliation is a valuable thing--it is just not pure forgiveness. Here Derrida differentiates between the practical and the theoretical, and believes that both have a place and a purpose. Along similar lines, lays out the limitations of film and interviewing, but he does not stop the film making or consider film inherently bad. Instead, he points out multiple sides to each issue and makes them apparent without clear value judgment. This seems to be an important aspect of post-structuralism (and point to the influence of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil). Thinking in terms beyond/outside of strict binaries value judgments is characteristic of a theory whose purpose is to expose the illusion of overarching truths and reveal multiplicity of meaning.

Go to your cave and find your power animal

Sometimes I think my power animal is a tarantula on roller skates--I am afraid of it, yet it is ridiculous. But it doesn't do any good to be afraid of the tarantula. It is on roller skates. That's funny. And it slides (it's a spider. it doesn't know how to roller skate).


About Jacques Derrida upon his death:
"He was what Richard Rorty once called an edifying philosopher-- not a system builder, or a great fashioner of airtight arguments, but one whose work incited and inspired others. The task of such a philosopher is not to reach closure but to pry apart, explore, upset, and stimulate." JB

"It is probably appropriate that he defied categorization because his work is very much about the limits of categories." JB (http://balkin.blogspot.com/2004/10/jacques-derrida.html)

Gaining (at least a beginning) understanding of Derrida's thinking, of the openness and possibilities of meaning that deconstruction brings, seems to be a beginning of understanding the idea of theory and of complex thought in general. I think we get frustrated with theory for the same reason that theory, as well as certain more abstract or radical thinkers in philosophy, is often discredited by science and more classical and concrete branches of philosophy. That is that theory in general, and most specifically Derrida, cannot be pinned down (is "not a system builder, or a great fashioner of airtight arguments") to a concrete decision or argument; it requires a little intellectual sliding.

It is confusing and really disheartening to read (and read of) the obituaries of Derrida in the mainstream news media, including in the New York Times, which called Derrida and his work absurd and "robbing texts of truthfulness, absolute meaning and presence" (Kandell, NYT). On the one hand, this illustrates the hold of a metaphysics of presence on western thought, permeating through even popular news media and popular culture. I think this also brings up an issue with academic celebrity (and really any celebrity), in which the renowned person is easily simplified and demonized or trivialized when their name becomes well-known. However, in this case, specifically with academic celebrity, it is not just a person who becomes simplified, flat, and trivialized, but their complex ideas become simplified, trivialized, and demonized.

I think that particularly post-9/11 there is a pervading popular attitude which is both anti-intellectual and xenophobic. Within this climate, I suppose it should not be surprising that the mainstream media would be quick to discredit a complex philosopher/theorist (and an Algerian Frenchman!) as being merely obtuse and absurd. It also seems to fit that a post-9/11 climate, one which functions on the binary of black and white, good and evil, us and them, would not want to take the time to understand a man whose ideas sought to expose the limits of such binary structures--the limits of these categories.

There also seems to be an assumption that theorists and philosophers such as Derrida who expose the instability of truth--the constructed nature of truth-making--are callous, unfeeling beings, who believe in nothing (People often assume that not believing in essential or absolute truths means that a person doesn't believe in anything at all). In fact, Derrida was a passionate person, involved in political activism for multiple causes, and although by many reports he was quirky, he is also always said to have been kind, polite, and generous.

The point is, celebrity simplifies people. Academic celebrity simplifies ideas and sometimes simplifies people into those simplified ideas. This process may partly account for the multiple erroneous (or at least unfair), rather harsh articles written about Derrida upon the event of his death. The response of outrage on the part of many in the academic community (including UC Irvine which had to set up a website to accommodate all those who wanted to sign a letter of protest to the NYT obituary and leave their names in support and memoriam of Jacques Derrida) proved the limitations and consequences of the above process.

Where have all the centers gone?

In reading Barry's well ordered comparison of structuralism and poststructuralism I better understood structuralism's concerns about language, which supported some of the claims in my previous post about which I was a little uncertain. Structuralism believes in the inherently ordered nature of language. "After all, language is an ordered system, not a chaotic one, so realizing our dependence on it need not induce intellectual despair" (64). Therefore, structuralism (albeit most specifically the thoughts of Saussure) insists that "we are not in control" and that the chaos of thought is, indeed, reigned-in by language.

Structuralism believes words can only be defined by their opposites, and while poststructuralism admits this same notion of binary opposition within language, it takes more issue with this (structuralism makes this assertion without anxiety, as noted above). That is, poststructuralism takes structuralism's notion further, by stating more emphatically that words are not only defined by their opposites, but that they are "always contaminated by their opposites" (64); therefore, meaning can never be pure or pinned down.

This seems to be a major point of departure between the two camps--where the "post" becomes necessarily attached to the "structuralism." This is because, as Barry states, structuralism still believes in the possibility of knowledge, even though the word or sign is arbitrary (because the system of language is orderly and therefore stable); but poststructuralism (as is appropriate due to its roots in skeptical philosophy rather than scientific linguistics) doubts the accessibility of any knowledge because it doubts the stability of the system.

Enter decentering. Enter Derrida.

Reign In Your Chaos Please

"Signs function not through their intrinsic value but through their relative position" (39).
"In language there are only differences without positive terms (40).

These two statements are very much related to one another. My basic understanding of this concept is that words or signs (because they lack an essential value, but are instead, constructions of thought and sound which arbitrarily create contingent meaning) do not have any meaning in and of themselves. Rather, meaning can only be attributed to them based on comparing them to what they are not. In other words, a sign, specifically a word, can never be explained in positive terms, because it has no positive, concrete (pre-existing) value--it's only value is in its "relative position" to other words or signs--a word's only value can be defined by determining what it is not.

This idea (of words lacking essential meaning) emphasizes Saussure's assertion that language is constructed, rather than essential. Therefore, it is subjected to the influence of societal structures. Saussure states "The arbitrary nature of the sign explains in turn why the social fact alone can create a linguistic system. The community is necessary if values that owe their existence solely to usage and general acceptance are to be set up; by himself the individual is incapable of fixing a single value" (35). Thus, it is clear that the meaning of language (signs, words) is only possible within the system--or community--of other signs or words, constructing meaning based on a relation to other words which point out what one word does not mean. Along the same lines, this constructed meaning of words is only valuable if the arbitrarily designated meaning is agreed upon by a community.

That Individual We Are Trying to Banish:
The above seems to negate the value of the individual in terms of the creation or maintenance of language and the construction of meaning. Then, does it follow that because language is a necessity for thought, the individual cannot exist without language; and because language cannot exist without the structure of a community, then the individual cannot think independently of that community structure?

If this is true, the illusion of the author-in-control (an assumption which we are--less than consciously even--having tremendous difficulty shedding), driving her or his own text, is herein exposed because literature is clearly a product of language, which, according to Saussure, cannot possibly be controlled by the individual.

"Thought, chaotic by nature, has to become ordered in the process of its decomposition" (34).
Is it time to admit that we are not in control?

One Bit More

What I continue to chew on:

What is most interesting and most frustrating about Marxism--indeed what is frustrating about theory in general, I suppose--is that it is not at all a fixed entity. Instead, Marxists are on a sliding scale from the strict to the more liberal interpretations of the theory. This is seen easily in the juxtaposition of Marxists who focused on social activism and those who don't consider that the purpose of literature, or at least not something of their concern. It is also seen in the various sections of Marxism and their level of belief in determinism.

--Another thing I am learning about theory and theorists is it's/their habit of compartmentalizing topics which "are not my concern at this moment," which can be an incredibly frustrating thing. Part of the frustration is with coming to terms with the seeming contradiction of a set of ideas which believes in the significance of the historical and cultural context of a text, but at times refuses to discuss practical implications of that text or believe that it can effect change in a practical way. I feel like this statement is sometimes true and sometimes not--just as I feel as though I sometimes understand and agree with it and sometimes I don't--