In the recent bout of deaths, I failed to note this biggie passing. It's a rather dismissive article.
Jacques 'Mr. Deconstruction' Derrida was all the craze back in the 1980s; which goes to show how behind the cruve Australian Academes were at the time. They were a lot quicker picking up other French Philosophers since then if I may be so snide...
Which is all very nice. I found the 'deconstruction'/"critic is the true artist" vogue rather idiotic, but you couldn't miss the impact. You had architecture students (being the poseurs they were) trying to apply 'deconstruction' to their constructions; you had medical students (Jam Jabbers!) trying to deconstruct anatomy; you had Engineering students tryiing to 'deconstruct' the Harbour Bridge; rock musicians 'deocnstructing' Rock music; Intellectually speaking, it was a terrible time indeed, thanks to the works of Jacques Derrida that seemed to reduce us all to Chance Gardener.Born in French Algeria, Derrida quickly became identified with the hip postwar café culture of Paris's Left Bank. His prose was famously impenetrable; Derrida didn't shrink from writing sentences that rambled on for two or three pages and his books were abstruse and convoluted in the extreme. None of this put off his tweedy admirers, who regarded Derrida's density as further proof of his profundity.
But Derrida built no new intellectual edifice. His project was one of destruction — or "deconstruction." Derrida claimed to have discovered that all texts contain inherent contradictions that fatally compromise their ability to communicate meaning. The upshot was that the entire Western philosophical and literary tradition rested on an enormous fallacy. Fundamental concepts like logic and truth were illusions. Derrida himself wrote more than 50 books attempting to prove that nothing could be said.
Although dismissed by Derrida's fellow philosophers, deconstruction appealed to literary scholars and others in the humanities who wished to project their own beliefs (political and otherwise) onto the works they studied. It is perhaps revealing that Derrida chose to defend rather than censure the legacy of his most famous student, Paul de Man, after a Belgian scholar revealed that the Yale professor had written anti-Semitic tracts in a French-language, collaborationist newspaper during the Second World War.
Well at least, an Algerian Jew having written anti-semitic tracts for a collaborationist newspaper during World War II is not somthing that loses its meaning too quickly under 'deconstruction'.
He was 74.
- Art Neuro
8 comments:
In defence of Derrida, his work was profound and important. It makes the work of those like Joyce accessable. Derrida's writings are opaque. But while the mind of the reader may wander that is not the intent of the writer: He was a crap writer, but his work was important.
Derrida's work allowed Leonard Cohen, as every body knows.
Derrida gives permission for atheists to seek meaning in religious text, when habit would inform them otherwise. He also gives religious zealots an insight into the mindless atheist.
Derrida is the pimple on the pope's behind. The shit from which flowers grow.
I don't mourn his passing. I temporise and sigh for lost chances.
How about the mindful Atheists of the wolrd?
Mindful Atheist? isn't that what Derrida might describe as a stutter? An oxymoron?
To be an atheist, one has to have faith in their observations or observe faith. If one observes faith, one is religious. But we started with the Atheist, who does not belive in god, and so does not observe faith. Hence an Atheist has faith in what they observe.
To place faith in observation and not to hold to faith is a description of non cognitive habit. Hence mindless Atheism. : )
That's a way, way, way simplistic construction of how an athiest perceives the issue. Yet if what you say is true and a mindful atheist is an oxymoron, but your account it still stands that a mindless atheist is a tautology.
If indeed atheists were mindless becauese they did not believe in God, then it would also stand to reason that one can only have a mind if one believes in God/A God/Any God.
And yet a antheist such as say, Betrand Russell, is considered to have had a great mind by most social norms of assessing what a mind is considered to be in our society. How is that so? Clearly the construction you make is incorrect.
Now Derrida would probably say, what is this God you speak of? what re its salietnt features? Who believes in this, and why?
I point this out because while I have no passing opipnion about your faith (and hence I'm rigourously avoiding ad hominem attacks upon your faith) I have to say that to call atheism mindless by deifnition, is a gross simplification of why an atheist might choose to be an atheist.
Let's face it, if somebody called you a "logic-less worshipper of God", wouldn't that description concern you as an insult to the true nature of your faith?
Sorry Art, I was copying Derrida's 'style' as a joke. In fact, I have not revealed my opinion but played around with Derrida's technique.
I don't believe Atheists to be anything other than sincere.
However Derrida is not above the display of arrogance with language. In fact, Derrida, in my lampoon of his technique, which I characterise as BallStutter, does classify the Atheist as mindless because of the sincerity. BallStutter has it that a religious person acknowledges that knowledge is based on faith. The Atheist does not ackowledge that fact. Therefore, the religious stance is considered and the Atheist stance is mindless.
If you choose to ignore my arguement and pretend that I was just being insulting, well that is your right, but you would be wrong.
The Leonard Cohen reference was to his song, entitled 'Everybody Knows'
"I don't mourn his passing. I temporise and sigh for lost chances." is Ballstutter deconstruction of one from the other. Vis, repetition. Repetition. :)
Okay. Thanks for the clarification.
No ofense taken, none meant. :)
Just wanted to analyse what you'd written.
No, no, I'm the one being snide about JD.
Not Mr. Weasel. :)
I equate JD's namee with my generally miserable time at the Uni of Sydney. It started with agony and only got worse. I wish I had a better time at University, but I didn't. For which I blame JD, summararily, arbitrarily.
Actually, Chris is correct. I shouldn't grock an author I haven't read and only know third hand.
I've seen clouds from both sides now,
from up and down
and still somehow,
It's clouds illusions I recall.
I really don't know clouds,
At all.
Joni Mitchel(??)
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