Style and Context

I'm bored, so I'll ask Scottie a question...

Scottie,

Do you really think Derrida's early writing style is that much more difficult
or obtuse than, say, Hegel's, or Husserl's, or Heidegger's, or any of the
post-Hegelian phenomenologists? Or are you simply dismissing an entire
tradition within Western intellectual thought as being "unable to write?" I
agree that Derrida has more fun with his language than Hegel does, is more
performative with it, but is Hegel's really any better or any easier to
understand in, say, the *Phenomenology of Spirit*?

"This silent fusion of the pithless essentialities of the evaporated life
has, however, still to be taken in the other meaning of the actuality of
conscience, and in the manifestation of its movement: conscience has to be
considered as acting. The objective moment in this consciousness acquired
above the determination of a universal consciousness." (Hegel, *Phen. of
Spirit*, p. 400 of the A.V. Miller translation from Oxford University Press,
1977)

Also, I can easily imagine someone, knowing nothing about it whatsoever,
pulling *Ulysses* off the shelf and reading a bit and deciding that this
Joyce guy, no matter how subtle or developed his thought, can't bloody well
write.

Consider your response to such a reader to be my response to you.

Bye for now,

--John (who hopes the ground here dries up quickly so that he can get back on
the golf course after a rainy week of nothing to do but waste time at this
machine)

PS: Scottie, someday you should try and read "Envois," Derrida's epistolary
"fiction" published as the first piece in his book *The Post Card.* You
might be surprised. Yes, Plato is still in there, but so is Joyce and Anna
Livia Plurabelle and "the babbling pumpt of platinism." And so are
expressions of some delicacy. "I am only a memory, I love only memory and
reminding myself of you." And so are Charlie's Angels (with, I think, and
extra angel added by the character writing the letters):

"I have just fallen asleep, as I do every day, watching *Mysteries of the
West* and *Charlie's Angels* (four female private detectives, very beautiful,
one is smart, their orders arrive on the telephone, from a boss who seems to
be "sending himself" a fifth by speaking to them) and in passing I caught
this: only the dead don't talk. That's what you think! They are the most
talkative, especially if they remain alone. It's rather a question of
getting them to shut up."

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Received on Sat Dec 14 12:14:36 2002