I’m a little late on the uptake for this, but Derrida is “dead.”http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3729844.stm
Here you’ll find some snarky commentary by people who think they know what Derrida was all about. This is a minor point of annoyance for me. Deconstruction has become synonymous with “analysis.” In other words, people think that deconstructing texts is about finding out what they “really mean.” In fact, Derrida’s whole point was that deconstructing texts reveals that they are meaningless.
Differance!!!
(via Bump)
3 responses so far ↓
1 Stefan Geens // Oct 10, 2004 at 8:40 pm
Boy do I have a quote for you!
Here’s how Derrida replied in response to a question “What’s the most widely held misconception about you and your work?”
“That I’m a skeptical nihilist who doesn’t believe in anything, who thinks nothing has meaning, and text has no meaning. That’s stupid and utterly wrong, and only people who haven’t read me say this. It’s a misreading of my work that began 35 years ago, and it’s difficult to destroy. I never said everything is linguistic and we’re enclosed in language. In fact, I say the opposite, and the deconstruction of logocentrism was conceived to dismantle precisely this philosophy for which everything is language. Anyone who reads my work with attention understands that I insist on affirmation and faith, and that I’m full of respect for the texts I read.”
2 scotty // Oct 11, 2004 at 5:17 am
Hahahaha! I love it!
I sort of get what he’s saying, but that’s so damned annoying!
“I never said everything is linguistic and we’re enclosed in language…” while possibly true, one of his central themes in (at least my limited readings) was the fact that meaning only exisits outside of the system of “Meaning”—in other words, you can’t describe something from within the system—the meaning is deferred to “outside” the system blah blah… Sounds like he’s saying we’re not enclosed in language, so much as unable to really understand it.
anyway, a brilliant, maddening, funny man if ever there was one.
3 scags // Oct 14, 2004 at 9:22 pm
logocentrism is hard to escape and as old as Lord Shiva’s pee-pee, which was called the lingum, ie- “ligua”. Also: the Book of John in the New Testamant: “In the Beginning, there was the word.” And remember that movie “Pi” about the Hasidic thugs bent on computing the letters that spell the name of God? The idea is that, as soon as that word is spelt out, it’s armageddon time. I dunno. Deconstruction is perhaps the oldest philosophical concept: What is born must die. And now we got the endmedia freaks telling us that Guttenberg’s printing press spelt the beginning of the end. It is weird to think that there is basically no more such thing as esoteric knowlegde. Any information on any secret to the universe that is written (and it’s pretty much all been written) can be purchased at amazon.com. And if the rulers of our nations or souls can’t lord over us with their secret powers, then there will be real anarchy, and the power of words will self-destruct and the formula required to clone an army of terminators will be as common as please, thankyou and I’m sorry.
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