Re: Derrida

Daniel,

You write, concerning your earlier, ridiculous claim that Derrida says
"Communication is dead":

"It's really not flip,..."

OK, then, simply and spectacularly wrong.

Now then, as to the rest of your post:

You then write this:

"What you failed to address in a previous post of mine is that
one of the large problems with Derrida and deconstruction is its Post Modern
heritage, like the Freud thing, the whole enterprise is suspect."

1. Derrida is not "post-modern." He is not a product of any "post-modern
heritage." You have been misinformed. He has written in detail about the
reasons why his work cannot be considered as such in many places. Most
explicitly, you can find his argument in an essay sarcastically entitled:
"Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms,
Parasitisms, and other small Seisisms" translated in the journal *States of
Theory* by Anne Tomiche, and reprinted in David Carroll's book *States of
Theory*, Columbia University Press, 1990, pp 63-95. Derrida is much more in
the tradition of European phenomenology than he is in anything like cultural
or literary post-modernism (which is more often allied with contemporary
Anglo-pragmatism and cultural theory in philosophy). Derrida repeatedly and
explicitly criticizes a number of problems written into concepts such as the
"postmodern" and separates his work from such terms over and over again.
And, in fact, postmodernism in literature has very little in common with
Derrida's work (the literature that he writes most often about, in fact, is
Kafka and Joyce and Mallarme and other writers from the first part of the
century).

2. Derrida's relationship to Freud is an extremely complex and problematic
one and he spends much of his time explicitly criticizing Freud's
assumptions, methodologies and conclusions. His careful and almost page by
page reading of Freud's *Beyond the Pleasure Principle" is a demonstration of
this and can be found in his book *The Post Card.* It's called "To
Speculate: On Freud." Derrida writes about Freud and Marx precisely because
he feels their work has played an important role in shaping the Western
intellectual tradition and he sees serious problems both with their
methodologies and conclusions and with their undeniable legacies. He affirms
their importance in the history of Western thought even as her devastatingly
criticizes their writings, their influence, and their effects. Please read
more carefully before you speak about something like "the Freud thing,"
otherwise you simply reveal your own lack of knowledge about the texts.

And who are you citing in your post? I can't seem to find where you identify
the source.

The comments that follow the citations have a number of things wrong with
them. Let me reply patiently.

You write, speaking I suppose of Derrida:

"he really says that you can't say anything at all because value is dead
despite the fact that his writings are infused with value."

Horribly wrong again. Show me one place where Derrida says "value is dead."
This is pure nonsense. You really don't understand what you are talking
about. Over and over Derrida seeks to analyze the importance of value and
the many important shifts in value that take place in language and the
constant crucial role played by value in meaning. You either simply haven't
read him or you are reducing to cliche and simple-minded categorical
statements complex arguments that have confused you. Much of Derrida's
professional career has been spent writing precisely about the inevitability
of value and its constantly shifting effects in language.

Derrida does speak often about the "other" and about the double bind built
into the Western philosophical tradition which has long sought to prioritize
the immediate presence of speech at the expense of writing even as it has had
to do so in writing. He has sought to tease out the differences, for
instance, between philosophy, which does this from Plato through Heidegger,
and literature, which seems rather to celebrate this paradox (thus his love
of Joyce and Kafka and Mallarme).

But your childish characterization of this as somehow saying "there are no
moral absolutes" is as mistaken as it is simplistic. Derrida is reading
texts and analyzing their differences and engaging in a philosophical
discussion about the relationship between language of the concept of Being.
He at no time ever says "there are no moral absolutes" or any other such
nonsense. You too often mistake analysis and the act or problematizing
relationships as denial. Derrida is not a nihilist, he has worked long and
hard in the fight against nihilism, and he is certainly not a simple
relativist, since that is one of the positions he has sought to undermine.

(And he is most definitely not a pantheist, since his most recent work on
religion has been very specific about an analysis of the construction and the
function of God in the history of philosophy and the structure of the debt as
it relates to our situating ourselves in relation to God. Please think
before you write such horribly ill-informed things.)

I defy you to find me one moment of "anarchy" or the call to "anarchy"
anywhere in Derrida's work. In fact, he is quite insistent on maintaining
the archive and preserving the tradition even as he re-reads it from
alternative perspectives. He is not only respectful of what he reads, but
first and foremost and in every case "affirmative." He insists on this. One
of his briefest definitions has always been that deconstruction means saying
"yes" twice to a text. His, therefore, is the opposite of anarchism and once
again you simply do not know the work you are discussing.

Here is a quote from Derrida (from an interview in the *Journal of Advanced
Composition* several years ago) which I think you will be able to understand:

"I'm in favor of tradition. I'm respectful and a lover of the tradition.
There's no deconstruction without the memory of the tradition."

Here's another one:

"I think that if what is called 'deconstruction' produces neglect of the
classical authors, the canonical texts and so on, we should fight it."

Derrida has always been about conserving and preserving even as he
deconstructs, because most of all Derrida has always been about reading with
care and respect.

And he says *none* of the things you ascribe to him for your own unfathomable
reasons.

Much of the rest of what you have written, about Nietzsche, for instance
(whom Derrida reads critically and patiently and even quite harshly in
*Spurs* and *The Ear of the Other*) and the childish nonsense about Hitler
and Jesus, does not require a response.

Derrida's work is also not rooted in anything like chaos.

Here's another quote in case you don't believe me:

"First, deconstructing academic discourse, professional discourse doesn't
mean simply destroying the norms or pushing these norms to utter chaos. I'm
not in favor simply of disorder."

Derrida has never been allied to anything like the ideas you list in your
post.

Please, Daniel, read more carefully. Listen more completely and with open
ears, and I think you'll find that your analysis of Derrida is utterly and
horribly wrong and that you have come to conclusions which are simply and
directly contradicted by the texts the man has written.

Now, perhaps, we should continue this discussion off list, as I'm sure many
of the B-fishers are beyond tired with it all.

All the best,

--John

-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Fri Dec 13 16:29:23 2002