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.
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2 comments:
Here here to that! It can be a crying shame when people unfit to the task try to confine something or someone well beyond the scope of confinement.
I like what you say about the importance of Derrida's questioning rather than the answering that he doesn't really deliver on. I hate to bring up an ancient Greek, but Socrates kind of springs to mind. He is, after all, the one I don't hate. He never claimed to have the answer, but he sure as hell tried to ask all the questions.
There is, in a lot of ways, an incredible amount of value in a question well apart from its answer. Obviously, we are never going to peg down the meaning of life. And even if we did, that would really ruin the fun. Imagine taking such a monstrously unanswerable question and wrapping it up in a quaint little package. Stupidity. The proof is in the pudding, i guess, or at least in the process of making pudding. And not that instant stuff, the real deal. Eggs, tempering, milk and sugar.
Yum.
Delicious theory.
Stephen King actually says something about this, beleive it or not. And yes, I know everybody wants to write King off as a crummy genre fictionist, but he's got a phenomenal take on writing. He actually pulled off a deus ex machina at the end of the Gunslinger books to muse for a while on why everybody wants a satisfying end to a story when the real point is in the telling. Worht all 2000 pages, I swear.
Thank you Mr. Pike--I'm all for pudding making. So much good thinking (and/or conversation) occurs when you are standing next to the stove, stirring and stirring and stirring and stirring..
I tend to think of Socrates that way--perpetually stirring his pudding--trying to stir other people up, trying to get them to examine and question what they hold to be true. Although Socrates believed in a truth, which separates him fundamentally from Derrida, their method (as well as the level to which they were considered either disruptive or absurd) of exposing the assumptions in one's thinking do seem connected.
As for Mr. King, I think we do want a satisfying end to the story. We want things tied up in comfortable packages--even if it's horrible and painful, at least it's defined. Theory doesn't allow for neat, comfortable packages or sets of rules. It is more fluid--shape-shifting, like the telling of a story. And like pudding.
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