OT: Derrida? Ptui!
tra...@pipeline.com
http://www.interlog.com/~klima/ed/post-mod.txt
>From The Globe & Mail, Wednesday, June 5, 1996, C1.
"The Post-modern Hoax Offers a Glimmer of Hope," by Robert Fulford:
For years to come, the name of Alan Sokal will live in infamy among
professors of cultural studies. A physicist at New York University,
Sokal recently set out to answer questions that have bothered many of us
for years. Is the jargon-infested writing in post-modern academic
journals as stupid and empty as it appears? Can people teaching
cultural studies get away with absolute nonsense? Sokal devised an
experiment, and came up with an answer. Yes in both cases.
He submitted a bogus essay on history and science to Social Text, a
leading journal of cultural studies, published at Duke University.
Sokal attacked where the editors were most vulnerable, in their need to
have their own views confirmed--in particular, their relativist views of
science. He also catered to their fondness for painfully jumbled prose
and cant words such as "hegemonic." The piece he concocted,
Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of
Quantum Gravity, called for a "liberatory post-modern science." He
filled it with absurdities--for instance, he said modern physics
supports the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, a favourite of
post-modern theorists. The editors of Social Text read Sokal's piece,
took it seriously, and duly published it. Shortly after, he revealed
that it was a hoax in an article for Lingua Franca, a journal about
universities.
Sokal's motive was clear. He wanted to pour contempt on the view of
many theorists that science is an arbitrary construction rather than an
honest response to nature. But the editors of Social Text and their
friends argue that he misunderstands them. They don't want to deny the
existence of scientifically proven reality; they merely want, they say,
to show that the purposes of science are politically determined. In the
New York Times, Stanley Fish of Duke University called Sokal ignorant
and misguided. Furthermore, Fish claimed, Sokal's clever hoax could
have been detected only "by someone who began witha deep and corrosive
attitude of suspicion that may now be in full flower in the offices of
learned journals because of what he has done." Connoisseurs of academic
self-righteousness will recognize that passage as the ethical equivalent
of a triple play. In a single sentence, Fish: 1) condemned Sokal for
violating the faith of the editors; 2) suggested that te editors, by
being fooled, proved themselves morally supoerior to the man who fooled
them; 3) accused Sokal of polluting the futre editorial atmosphere of
learned journals. Rightly, Fish is recognized as a master.
Elsewhere an editor of Social Text has claimed, rather less inventively,
to have felt all along that there was something flaky about Sokal's
article. Other post-modernists have reacted with rage. None has
suggested for a moment that they can learn anthing from this incident.
Perhaps others can. Sokal's mischief has focused attention on the most
appallng academic movement of this period, the proliferation of mainly
useless theoretical writing and teaching. About 20 years ago, many
academics across the United States and Canada began embracing the
theories of philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.
These ideas, which in themselves can be taken seriously (or, on
occasion, not), turned into something monstrous when they reached North
America. Teachers began spraying their classrooms and their
publications with badly digested versions of Derrida and attacking
whatever they believed was "hegemonic" (which means ruling). The
movement now exerts powerful influence on many departments of English
and French literature, philosphy, women's studies, art and film. It's
become a burden and a bore to students who are forced to deal with it,
and a major waste of resources. Waht began as a curiosity turned into a
serious nuisance and then became a tragedy.
Wherever they go, the propagators of critical theory distort education.
Literature becomes a game played in a maze: self-enclosed,
self-justifying and meaningless to anyone who has not learned the code.
Outsiders may imagine that professors of English help students to love
and understand literature, but in many cases they do not. Instead, they
concentrate on the evil power of great writing, and its nasty
connections to racism, sexism and imperialism. In many cases, students
learn the theories better than the literature. And nstead of learning
to write, they imitate the arcane priestly language of their teachers.
Professors of lterature often accomplish precisely the opposite of what
most people imagine is their function. It's as if we hired arsonists to
work on the staff of the fire department.
How has this calamity come about? That question will be pondered for
generations by historians of ideas. It may be simply a movement
designed to perpetuate mediocrity. Certainly it supports (and hides)
the mediocre. A tin-eared professor of English with no feeling for
literature, and no writing ability, can make a reputation by explaining
how great writers got everything wrong.
These days optimists claim that post-modern theory is losing its force.
Even the French, they say, are abandoning it. In fact, there are
Parisian intellectuals who now glibly insist that Derrida & Co. were
never taken seriously in France, and were designed strictly for export
to naive Americans. An enemy of post-modernism, Roger Kimball, writing
in The Wall Stree Journal last week, greeted Sokal's hoax as a turning
point: "The campus culture wars may be entering a new phase, and this
time the good guys finally seem to be pulling ahead." He's dreaming,
and so is anyone who expects to see the end of this phenomenon in the
near future. Too many tenured academics have invested too much time in
it. They wrote doctoral theses on Derrida and others, and they built
careers on books and articles devoted to post-modernism. They can never
afford to turn back--and in many places their ideas are truly hegemonic.
Copyright 1996. All rights reserved. No reproduction in whole or in
part without the written permission of the Globe and Mail. .
Robert Scott Martin
Hello, Tracy. Just a quick comment or two.
Derrida is interesting as a latter-day "cabbalistic" writer. While we may
disagree with what he says or how his writings are applied, the experience
of reading Derrida is very similar to that of reading the torah (or one of
aleister crowley's greatest hits) with a cabbalistic eye -- every word,
every letter is pregnant with possible meanings, hidden jokes, magic
spells waiting to be unlocked and spoken.
Of course, part of the issue here is that he's very hard to read, and so
those looking for meaning in his work tends to drive themselves into a
frenzy of interpretation in order to justify the entire affair. Make it
make sense. Find the hidden gold. Read it until it surrenders.
Again, this is similar to cabbalistic reading, in which we interrogate the
word or number until we find the thing we were looking for all along
(hello, kansan1225!). The game is hide and seek.
As a boy, I argued that the deconstructionists will go down in history as
a "mystery sect" similar to the Renaissance alchemists. The interpretative
key to Derrida will be lost but the texts will remain, a hollow maze of
language in search of the missing word.
More immediately, his book POSTCARD is actually a bewitching argument in
favor of the hermetic universe as a viable alternative to modern
rationalist thought, and so is tactically useful to us in that respect.
>These days optimists claim that post-modern theory is losing its force.
>Even the French, they say, are abandoning it.
This is at best a statement of the obvious and fatuous at worst. The
French had deconstructionism out of their system a good 15 years ago,
around the time the North American academy picked it up like a castoff
suit.
The fact that the writer is so glibly ignorant of the fact that "the great
god Pan" is already dead only underlines just how deranged our sense of
time passing has become.
k...@springhaven.org
>The fact that the writer is so glibly ignorant of the fact that "the great
>god Pan" is already dead only underlines just how deranged our sense of
>time passing has become.
post-post-modernism.
peter li'ir key
k...@springhaven.org
Robert Scott Martin
Robert Scott Martin <gl...@panix.com> wrote:
>key to Derrida will be lost but the texts will remain, a hollow maze of
>language in search of the missing word.
That is to say, a world of "husks" or linguistic mumia, devoid of true
life yet possessed of a certain uncanny motion -- wiltered word salad from
beyond the grave, served up at table.
Or for our friends concerned with the breakup of the Round Table, a waste
land written on the walls of language.
Robert Scott Martin
>post-post-modernism.
Quit quitting quitting!
Jason
"Robert Scott Martin" <gl...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:9rs1mk$f51$1...@panix3.panix.com...
I'm giving it my best,Robert.
tra...@pipeline.com
> <tra...@pipeline.com> wrote:
>
>Hello, Tracy. Just a quick comment or two.
Hello.
>
>Derrida is interesting as a latter-day "cabbalistic" writer. While we may
>disagree with what he says or how his writings are applied, the experience
>of reading Derrida is very similar to that of reading the torah (or one of
>aleister crowley's greatest hits) with a cabbalistic eye -- every word,
>every letter is pregnant with possible meanings, hidden jokes, magic
>spells waiting to be unlocked and spoken.
It says that words have no inherent meaning, yet it uses words to examine
other words. Is that logical?
>
>Of course, part of the issue here is that he's very hard to read, and so
>those looking for meaning in his work tends to drive themselves into a
>frenzy of interpretation in order to justify the entire affair. Make it
>make sense. Find the hidden gold. Read it until it surrenders.
>
>Again, this is similar to cabbalistic reading, in which we interrogate the
>word or number until we find the thing we were looking for all along
>(hello, kansan1225!). The game is hide and seek.
Kabbalah has much more to it than meets the eye.
>
>As a boy, I argued that the deconstructionists will go down in history as
>a "mystery sect" similar to the Renaissance alchemists. The interpretative
>key to Derrida will be lost but the texts will remain, a hollow maze of
>language in search of the missing word.
>
>More immediately, his book POSTCARD is actually a bewitching argument in
>favor of the hermetic universe as a viable alternative to modern
>rationalist thought, and so is tactically useful to us in that respect.
Well, you know. I don't think we need an alternative to modern rationalist
thought. The problem is that we, society, swing from one opposite to
the other. I see this all the time. It seems the kabbalist, out of all
the population, should be able to go "through the pairs of opposites"
(so to speak) and not get stuck in one opposite or the other, no?
>
>>These days optimists claim that post-modern theory is losing its force.
>>Even the French, they say, are abandoning it.
>
>This is at best a statement of the obvious and fatuous at worst. The
>French had deconstructionism out of their system a good 15 years ago,
>around the time the North American academy picked it up like a castoff
>suit.
Oh I see. Hm....
>
>The fact that the writer is so glibly ignorant of the fact that "the great
>god Pan" is already dead only underlines just how deranged our sense of
>time passing has become.
well..I must be misisng something because I did not see a reference to the
god Pan in that article. I'll go over it tomorrow to see if I can find any more
veiled references.
Tracy
Jason
"Robert Scott Martin" >
>Again, this is similar to cabbalistic reading, in which we interrogate the
> word or number until we find the thing we were looking for all along
> (hello, kansan1225!). The game is hide and seek.
Now I know you to be holding Truth back from us,
Robert. I know 1225 to mean the Nexus and Point
of the Dimentionless State. This suggests two possible
scenarios: either you or Mr.Zimmer is the Head and
Heirophant of the Illuminati. I will now expect one
of you to come forward,seeing that none of you will
respond to me as a representitive of God.You expressed
concern of the Knights of the Round Table being split
apart by Magick, now prove yourself as genuine by
uniting us again by Magick.
Robert Scott Martin
<tra...@pipeline.com> wrote:
[Derrida]
>It says that words have no inherent meaning, yet it uses words to examine
>other words. Is that logical?
Perhaps words "have no inherent meaning" in isolation, but only in their
relationships with each other -- as such, words are always already in play
to "examine" one another.
Yesod has meaning when set alongside Malkuth, and Hod has meaning when set
alongside Yesod. Alone, without reference to one another, what are they?
Perhaps also, the best works of the Derridean current are interesting
because they acknowledge that an authentic experience -- call it "gnosis"
if you like -- does not translate into everyday discursive language, and
then go further.
The Derridean current -- and I'm actually talking more of his fathers and
children, stylists like Georges Battaile, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva,
Mark Taylor -- struggles to find new, non-everyday modes of language that
allow them to point at ("examine") this unspeakable experience.
And so the word games and broken-backed sentences, sly attempts to catch
God out of the corner of one's eye or sift God out of the atoms of
language's dust.
[The alchemists "open" the matter by breaking each and every one of its
bones. Thus too, the derrideans and the Word.]
>>Again, this is similar to cabbalistic reading, in which we interrogate the
>>word or number until we find the thing we were looking for all along
>>(hello, kansan1225!). The game is hide and seek.
>
>Kabbalah has much more to it than meets the eye.
So does the paragraph you're commenting on here. In some practices,
notably my own hamfisted laboratory hermetic work, "cabbalism" [with a
"c"] is something different from "the kabbalah" or Hebrew mysticism -- it
is Fulcanelli's "green language of the birds" or "the language of the
diplomats."
As such, we may be talking about two very different things.
>Well, you know. I don't think we need an alternative to modern rationalist
>thought. The problem is that we, society, swing from one opposite to
>the other. I see this all the time. It seems the kabbalist, out of all
>the population, should be able to go "through the pairs of opposites"
>(so to speak) and not get stuck in one opposite or the other, no?
Say more please.
>>The fact that the writer is so glibly ignorant of the fact that "the great
>>god Pan" is already dead only underlines just how deranged our sense of
>>time passing has become.
>
>well..I must be misisng something because I did not see a reference to the
>god Pan in that article. I'll go over it tomorrow to see if I can find any more
>veiled references.
Again, there is a hidden joke here. The writer of the original article is
crowing that, at last, the terrible bugaboo Deconstructionism has given up
the ghost. This, to me, is like that Egyptian helmsman coming to port a
few thousand years too late -- the "news" that Pan is dead is both
redundant and absurd, because Pan, like the nefarious Jacques Derrida,
died years ago, and yet never died at all. Either way, it's not news.
Kindest regards,
Robert Scott Martin
>Now I know you to be holding Truth back from us,
>Robert. I know 1225 to mean the Nexus and Point
>of the Dimentionless State. This suggests two possible
>scenarios: either you or Mr.Zimmer is the Head and
>Heirophant of the Illuminati. I will now expect one
>of you to come forward,seeing that none of you will
>respond to me as a representitive of God.
I truly doubt God would be so unimaginative as to install a stereotype
such as myself up as the head of any "order." It would certainly
display a lack of complexity that I would find disappointing in a
proper divinity.
Perhaps this Mr Zimmer is the person you're looking for, or -- more likely
-- perhaps the representatives of God are constantly responding to you,
but you keep spending your time looking for the man with the stripy hat.
God speaks through meat. Men and women speak through hierarchies.
k...@springhaven.org
>God out of the corner of one's eye or sift God out of the atoms of
>language's dust.
language is like a pair of sunglasses. much use in the right
situations, but in other situations obstruct vision. deconstruction
is a reminder to remove the sunglasses after the sun goes gown.
tra...@pipeline.com
But you don't need deconstruction to do it. Sigh. Maybe it's me.
Tracy
tra...@pipeline.com
>Perhaps words "have no inherent meaning" in isolation, but only in their
>relationships with each other -- as such, words are always already in play
>to "examine" one another.
The problem is, in deconstructionism, a nebulous subject is examined
with an inexact tool.
>
>Yesod has meaning when set alongside Malkuth, and Hod has meaning when set
>alongside Yesod. Alone, without reference to one another, what are they?
>
>Perhaps also, the best works of the Derridean current are interesting
>because they acknowledge that an authentic experience -- call it "gnosis"
>if you like -- does not translate into everyday discursive language, and
>then go further.
Derridean current? Is that like one of Isaac Bonewitz' "deity circuits"?
>
>The Derridean current -- and I'm actually talking more of his fathers and
>children, stylists like Georges Battaile, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva,
>Mark Taylor -- struggles to find new, non-everyday modes of language that
>allow them to point at ("examine") this unspeakable experience.
oh yeah, well.....
http://answers.org/issues/derrida.html
They usually go to power, meaning, and social critique. His follwers
have not, as I understand it, ever expressed that. Derriada was an
agnostic. I'll go further to even posit that he was not spirtual in any way.
I'd appreciate references.
>
>>Well, you know. I don't think we need an alternative to modern rationalist
>>thought. The problem is that we, society, swing from one opposite to
>>the other. I see this all the time. It seems the kabbalist, out of all
>>the population, should be able to go "through the pairs of opposites"
>>(so to speak) and not get stuck in one opposite or the other, no?
>
>Say more please.
ok, I mean balance. I mean being able both to use logic, I mean materialist
reductionist logic, when that is appropriate, and also being able to go beyond
it when that is appropriate. And knowing when to do which :). Balance
between the two, not one (total materialist reductionist fascist) or the other
(new age Neptunian bubblehead fascist).
>
>Again, there is a hidden joke here. The writer of the original article is
>crowing that, at last, the terrible bugaboo Deconstructionism has given up
>the ghost. This, to me, is like that Egyptian helmsman coming to port a
>few thousand years too late -- the "news" that Pan is dead is both
>redundant and absurd, because Pan, like the nefarious Jacques Derrida,
>died years ago, and yet never died at all. Either way, it's not news.
If it's dead, then why defend it? :)
>
>Kindest regards,
kindest regards.
Tracy
Michael Dorfman
> On 3 Nov 2001 18:59:17 -0500, gl...@panix.com (Robert Scott Martin) wrote:
>
> >Perhaps words "have no inherent meaning" in isolation, but only in their
> >relationships with each other -- as such, words are always already in play
> >to "examine" one another.
>
> The problem is, in deconstructionism, a nebulous subject is examined
> with an inexact tool.
>
Deconstruction is not an -ism. This is just one of many things the
author of the "Answers in Action" web page got wrong-- in fact, it is
hard to believe an article that short could be wrong on so many
points. I mean, really, how are we to take seriously an article that
says:
"the immediate context of a word in a sentence or paragraph, or the
immediate context of a scene in a film or play, usually determines its
meaning. This is a general rule of all interpretation that Derrida and
his gang ignore."
Even a cursory reading of "Signature Event Context" (found in the very
book "Limited Inc", referred to elsewhere in the article) shows that
far from "ignoring" this rule, Derrida builds his entire case upon it.
(That's what the "Context" in the title means!)
> >The Derridean current -- and I'm actually talking more of his fathers and
> >children, stylists like Georges Battaile, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva,
> >Mark Taylor -- struggles to find new, non-everyday modes of language that
> >allow them to point at ("examine") this unspeakable experience.
>
> oh yeah, well.....
>
> http://answers.org/issues/derrida.html
>
> They usually go to power, meaning, and social critique. His follwers
> have not, as I understand it, ever expressed that. Derriada was an
> agnostic. I'll go further to even posit that he was not spirtual in any way.
Derrida says that he "rightly passes for an atheist." (Note the
present tense--he is still alive, after all.) However, to say that he
is "not spiritual in any way" is an outrageous misrepresentation.
Here's a brief quote, from an improvised session in English:
"Now what I call faith in this case, this has something to do with
justice and the gift, it is something which is presupposed by the most
radical deconstructive gesture. You cannot address the other, speak to
the other without an act of faith, without testimony. What are you
doing when you testify, when you attest to something? You address the
other and ask belief. Even if you lie, even if you are in a perjury
you are addressing the other and asking the other to trust you. This
'trust me, I'm speaking to you' is of the order of faith. It cannot be
reduced to a theoretical statement, to a determining judgement; it is
the opening of the address to the other."
Religious themes have run through his work, from the very earliest
texts (like "Violence and Metaphysics") to the most recent (his book
"Religion" with Vattimo, and the forthcoming "On Religion" with
Anidjar.) If you are interested in this aspect of Derrida's thought,
I'd recommend "The Gift of Death" as a starting point. It's brief,
but powerful.
> I'd appreciate references.
I've mentioned a few above, but if you prefer an outside opinion, John
Caputo has a book entitled "The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida"
that makes the case that Derrida is best understood as a religious
philosopher.
> >
> >Again, there is a hidden joke here. The writer of the original article is
> >crowing that, at last, the terrible bugaboo Deconstructionism has given up
> >the ghost. This, to me, is like that Egyptian helmsman coming to port a
> >few thousand years too late -- the "news" that Pan is dead is both
> >redundant and absurd, because Pan, like the nefarious Jacques Derrida,
> >died years ago, and yet never died at all. Either way, it's not news.
>
> If it's dead, then why defend it? :)
Derrida says that mourning is not merely one work among others; all
work is the work of mourning.
Michael Dorfman
Robert Scott Martin
<tra...@pipeline.com> wrote:
>>Perhaps words "have no inherent meaning" in isolation, but only in their
>>relationships with each other -- as such, words are always already in play
>>to "examine" one another.
>
>The problem is, in deconstructionism, a nebulous subject is examined
>with an inexact tool.
"Contradictory and unstable meanings give such a question its endless
oscillation" what to do in order that the secret remain secret? How to
make it known, in order that the secret of the secret -- as such -- not
remain secret? How to avoid this divulgence itself? These light
disturbances underlie the same sentence."
-- Jacques Derrida, "How To Avoid Speaking: Denials"
>Derridean current? Is that like one of Isaac Bonewitz' "deity circuits"?
I haven't read Bonewitz.
>They usually go to power, meaning, and social critique. His follwers
>have not, as I understand it, ever expressed that. Derriada was an
>agnostic. I'll go further to even posit that he was not spirtual in any way.
>
>I'd appreciate references.
"There cannot be an absolutely negative discourse: a logos necessarily
speaks about something; it is impossible for it to refer to nothing."
-- "How To Avoid Speaking"
"Modestly and in my own way, I try to translate (or let myself be carried
along, perhaps elsewhere, by and perhaps without) a thought of Heidegger's
that says: 'If I were still writing a theology -- I am sometimes tempted
to do that -- the expression BEING should not figure in it.... There is
nothing to be done here with Being. I believe being can never be thought
as the essence and the bottoming of god."
-- Jacques Derrida, "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in
Philosophy"
"As I have always been fascinatd by the supposed movements of negative
theology..."
-- "How To Avoid Speaking"
"The name of God (I do not say God, but how to avoid saying God here, from
the moment when I say the name of God?) can only be said in the modality
of this secret denial: above all, I did not want to say that."
-- "How To Avoid Speaking"
[commenting on an essay of Walter Benjamin:]
"It seems at first that there is no way out and so no hope. But at the
impass, this despair ... summons up decisions of thought that concern
nothing less than the origin of language in its relation to the truth,
destinal violence ... that puts itself above reason, then, above this
violence itself, God: another, a wholly other 'mystical foundation of
authority.' "
-- Jacques Derrida, "Force of Law: 'The Mystical Foundation of Authority'"
>If it's dead, then why defend it? :)
"Is the most distressing, or even the most deadly infidelity that of a
possible mourning that would interiorize within us the image, idol or
ideal of the other who is dead and lives only in us? Or is it that of the
impossible mourning, which, leaving the other his alterity, respecting
thus his infinite remove, either refuses to talk or is incapable of taking
the other within himself, as the tomb or the vault of some narcissism?"
-- Jacques Derrida, "Memories for Paul de Man"
tra...@pipeline.com
>>If it's dead, then why defend it? :)
>
>"Is the most distressing, or even the most deadly infidelity that of a
>possible mourning that would interiorize within us the image, idol or
>ideal of the other who is dead and lives only in us? Or is it that of the
>impossible mourning, which, leaving the other his alterity, respecting
>thus his infinite remove, either refuses to talk or is incapable of taking
>the other within himself, as the tomb or the vault of some narcissism?"
>-- Jacques Derrida, "Memories for Paul de Man"
I see. Are you saying that the theory of Deconstruction lives within
"us"? If so, then you cannot logically or validly criticize Dr. Tom Snyder
for criticizing it.
In fact, even if it is "dead" he can still validly criticize it. That is a baseless
defence.
Tracy
Robert Scott Martin
<tra...@pipeline.com> wrote:
>>"Is the most distressing, or even the most deadly infidelity that of a
>>possible mourning that would interiorize within us the image, idol or
>>ideal of the other who is dead and lives only in us? Or is it that of the
>>impossible mourning, which, leaving the other his alterity, respecting
>>thus his infinite remove, either refuses to talk or is incapable of taking
>>the other within himself, as the tomb or the vault of some narcissism?"
>>-- Jacques Derrida, "Memories for Paul de Man"
>I see. Are you saying that the theory of Deconstruction lives within
>"us"?
No, not at all. I'm answering your question as to why I'm "defending" a
body of work I haven't looked at in years.
k...@springhaven.org
postpostmodernism
tra...@pipeline.com
If *anybody* defends it, then anybody who sees error in it can rightfully
criticize it.
Robert Scott Martin
<tra...@pipeline.com> wrote:
>>>>"Is the most distressing, or even the most deadly infidelity that of a
>>>>possible mourning that would interiorize within us the image, idol or
>>>>ideal of the other who is dead and lives only in us? Or is it that of the
>>>>impossible mourning, which, leaving the other his alterity, respecting
>>>>thus his infinite remove, either refuses to talk or is incapable of taking
>>>>the other within himself, as the tomb or the vault of some narcissism?"
>>>>-- Jacques Derrida, "Memories for Paul de Man"
>>
>>>I see. Are you saying that the theory of Deconstruction lives within
>>>"us"?
>>
>>No, not at all. I'm answering your question as to why I'm "defending" a
>>body of work I haven't looked at in years.
>
>If *anybody* defends it, then anybody who sees error in it can rightfully
>criticize it.
By all means do so. If a specific passage in Derrida irks you, please
bring it up here so we can discuss it. (I promise to add alt.magick
content to each and every post on the topic, after this one).
Incidentally, thanks for the pointer to answers.org. Quite an interesting
site.
tra...@pipeline.com
well. you're welcome.
tra...@pipeline.com
magicians or the practice of magick, then it is a valid
topic. And philosophy does.
Here are some rebuttals, with a few selections from each,
except for the letters:
___________________________________________________
http://www.mun.ca/animus/1996vol1/jackson.htm
56 Through it own very project, then, post-philosophy becomes
a wholly intellectual activity without result, thematic substance or
reference. In it the paradox implied in the attempt to think beyond
thinking is no longer merely latent, as in earlier ultra-philosophy;
it is this paradox itself in the active form of a self-annihilating thinking.
The restrictions it would set on all reasonable argument prevent it
from arguing its own case with reason, that is, intelligibly. Perched
on a sceptical fence it must withdraw in one moment what it asserts
in the next: it says philosophy is about the writing-reading of texts
and then again that there are no texts; or philosophy is an open,
deliberately inconclusive conversation and then draws the boldest
, dogmatic conclusions about all and sundry. That post-modern
writing is given to wilful inconsistency, to ambiguous sleights of
language or has recourse to comic, anarchistic or even pornographic
rhetoric, expresses the predicament that it may never allow itself to
say what it means, identify a theme, or reach a conclusion, for to do
that would undermine the purity of the "post-philosophical" non-thinking
it would sustain.
Conclusion: The Recovery of Philosophy
57 In post-philosophy ultra-modernist thought reaches both an impasse
and a completion. Its project radically to affirm the modern principle of
a concrete, here-and-now freedom in contrast with the other-worldliness
of the spiritual-speculative tradition is articulated in its most extreme
form. In its purely sceptical reflection on the philosophical legacy it is itself
the attempted embodiment of the paradoxical idea of a self-annihilating
thinking. This is far from saying, however, that it has at last succeeded in
finally overthrowing and nullifying thought so that it really is now all over
for philosophy. On the contrary, post-philosophy, even more than earlier
forms of ultra-philosophy, remains tied to the tradition it disavows. By its
own admission it cannot think to bring about the actual end of philosophy
for that would not only be to revert to an ultra-modernist dogmatism whose
very difficulties it was meant to overcome, but also to eliminate the very
context whose deconstruction alone is what sustains it. And so it can only
remain on the sceptical margins and boundaries, a purely suspensive
thinking unable either to go beyond philosophy or return to it.
64 What ultra-modernism would articulate is the extreme ideal of
Modernity as fully and literally actual, a concretely present condition
in which every reality or value has been thoroughly assimilated to
the interests and perspectives of existing individuals who are subjectively
convinced of their absolute freedom and of the world as subordinate to
that freedom. This human-existential condition it affirms as one already
or virtually accomplished, thus such as exists before all mediations of
history, culture or thought. For this reason it violently disengages itself
from such mediations, even those of its own western-intellectual legacy
from which it draws its ideals and its language. To the latter's notion of
a reasonable, universal and objective freedom it opposes the contrary
extreme of a finite, temporal, pragmatic, contingent and wholly subjective
one. But as this latter vision in the end is boud to contradict its own very
ideal of a concretely realized human freedom it falls into a scepticism
where freedom itself becomes dissipated, confused and degenerate.
65 For in its post-modern form ultra-philosophy has discovered that
since it can never complete the intellectual overthrow of reason, its
only recourse is sceptically to suspend or abandon it. But in this it
forfeits all legitimacy as philosophy and reaches an impasse
beyond which, as it itself admits, it is impossible to go. In this
sceptical form the ultra-modernist revolt is thus paralysed in its
tracks; it can neither establish any position beyond the philosophical
tradition nor can it return to it, nor can it give it up. The worlds now
confronting each other are no longer some one ultra-modernist
doctrine set against another - scientism contra absolutism,
liberalism contra existentialism - nor is it the triumph of "contemporary"
over "traditional" philosophy. It is now the philosophical legacy as
a whole in its historical integrity on the one hand, and the utterly
destroyed, annihilated post-modern account of it on the other.
Thus, it can no longer make sense either to remain attached to
the ultra-modernist critique or to the one-sided defense of traditional
thought as against it. From a viewpoint no longer intimidated by the
biases which have dominated the past two centuries it has become
feasible to begin to speak of the ultra-philosophical project as
having reached its limit, making it possible to recover again the
connection between this revolt and the actual philosophical legacy
it thought to abandon. The issue thereby shifts to become that of
how the western tradition is after all to be reconciled to its ultra-
modern critique, or contrariwise, how the ultra-modern demand
for a concrete and worldly human freedom is to recover its roots
in philosophical world-history. This implies a number of obvious
challenges: to reinstate and liberate the authentic philosophical
legacy from its ultra-philosophical distortions; to revisit the
question as to what inspired the ultra-modernist revolution,
what underlies its hostility to the philosophical spirit, and how
it came to its present post-modernist impasse; overall to
restore the sense of the unity, wholeness, continuity and the
substance of world-philosophical culture as comprehensive
of and moving beyond the now tiresome negativity of the
ultra-modernist preoccupation with a history "broken in two".[39]
http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html
So take Derrida, one of the grand old men. I thought I ought to at least be
able to understand his Grammatology, so tried to read it. I could make
out some of it, for example, the critical analysis of classical texts that I
knew very well and had written about years before. I found the scholarship
appalling, based on pathetic misreading; and the argument, such as it was,
failed to come close to the kinds of standards I've been familiar with since
virtually childhood. Well, maybe I missed something: could be, but suspicions
remain, as noted. Again, sorry to make unsupported comments, but I was
asked, and therefore am answering.
Some of the people in these cults (which is what they look like to me) I've met:
Foucault (we even have a several-hour discussion, which is in print, and spent
quite a few hours in very pleasant conversation, on real issues, and using
language that was perfectly comprehensible --- he speaking French, me
English); Lacan (who I met several times and considered an amusing and
perfectly self-conscious charlatan, though his earlier work, pre-cult, was
sensible and I've discussed it in print); Kristeva (who I met only briefly during
the period when she was a fervent Maoist); and others. Many of them I haven't
met, because I am very remote from from these circles, by choice, preferring
quite different and far broader ones --- the kinds where I give talks, have interviews,
take part in activities, write dozens of long letters every week, etc. I've dipped
into what they write out of curiosity, but not very far, for reasons already mentioned:
what I find is extremely pretentious, but on examination, a lot of it is simply illiterate,
based on extraordinary misreading of texts that I know well (sometimes, that I
have written), argument that is appalling in its casual lack of elementary self-criticism
lots of statements that are trivial (though dressed up in complicated verbiage) or
false; and a good deal of plain gibberish. When I proceed as I do in other areas
where I do not understand, I run into the problems mentioned in connection with
(1) and (2) above. So that's who I'm referring to, and why I don't proceed very far.
I can list a lot more names if it's not obvious.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Andrew_Lilico/postmod1.htm
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Andrew_Lilico/postmod2.htm
http://www.btinternet.com/~old.whig/flcomm/flc051.htm
I used to be troubled by the post-modernists. Whenever I l
ooked into their works, I found them full of claims that
everything I believed was wrong, with arguments in support
that sounded impressive but always seemed just outside
the range of my understanding. I would look up from the
page feeling distinctly unintelligent. Perhaps, I would think,
I was an intellectual incompetent. Perhaps I was able to
travel easily enough along paths that generations of previous
thinkers had made smooth and provided with sign posts,
but not to strike out in new directions which might lead
more directly to the truth, but where the ground was still
uneven. It took me a while to realise that this was one
of the main objects of post-modernism , and that the
arguments themselves, so far as they could be translated
into normal English, were just hot air.
Post-modernism is the last refuge of people who realise
they have been wrong for most of their adult lives, but
who for reasons of pride or career cannot make a full
recantation. They simply claim that circumstances have
changed, and that because of this all the old ways of
thinking and doing things are obsolete - not just their own,
but also those of their opponents. Without ever admitting to
having been wrong in the past, they have abandoned their
old positions in favour of new ones from which they can
continue sneering at everyone else and preening themselves
on their own effortless superiority and fitness to rule.
As well as benefits, however, post-modernism has its costs.
In politics, for example, though it may disguise a retreat
from evil, it also disguises much remaining or even new evil.
The old socialists may have been wrong, but they usually
argued in the normal way from their premises; and their
opponents could see where and why the arguments were
wrong. The post-modernists prefer to advance behind a
barrage of ambiguity and verbal tricks. We can suspect t
heir intentions, but these are plain only to the initiated.
http://www.carleton.ca/%7Eclaughli/tutpost.htm
Postmodernism, whether of the political/moral sort, or
the more amoralistic/relativistic sort, is fundamentally
anti- realist and non-empirical in its evaluation of "truth."
The truth is attained when either the essentially relativistic
nature of knowledge is acknowledged, or the underlying
hegemonic function of knowledge is unveiled. There is no
reference in postmodernist accounts to any transcendental
reality in relation to which human knowing "trues itself"
(see my earlier discussions of truth and belief).
The naivete of positivism rests in the fallacy that we can
know the world "as it really is" apart from the process of
our knowing of it. Twenty-five hundred years ago the
Buddha was occasionally asked to talk about the world
apart from consciousness of the world, and he would
remain mute, steadfastly refusing to answer such questions.
Indeed, this was one of the ten famous questions the Buddha
remained silent about. If I may be so presumptuous as to say
why he refused to comment on the question, it was because
the problem was in the naivete of the question itself. To ask
to know something without the process of knowing conditioning
what is known is just silly. Positivism often led to reification of
scientific models of the world upon the operational environment
in just this naive sort of way -- as though our models of the world
were the world.
http://zena.secureforum.com/Znet/zmag/articles/albertold10.htm
A little over two years ago, preparing to ride from Boston to
New York to attend the Socialist Scholars Conference,
I asked a scholar friend to explain "post-modernism" in the
four to five hours we would spend on the road. He accepted
, and we rode揺e lecturing and me listening.
When we got to New York if someone had walked up and asked,
"What is post-modernism?" I could not have answered. Four hours
and I still didn't know what "post-modernism" referred to. Three
interpretations spring to mind.
My tutor was an idiot incapable of explaining one concept in four hours.
I am an idiot incapable of understanding one concept in four hours.
The concept is idiotic, a vague pastiche of mush covering a range
too broad to clarify in four hours. The third possibility, as you might
guess, is my favorite. But how could a concept which engenders
shelves of books be nearly empty? Here's my hypothesis: Literary
theory is largely a sham literary theorists use to cajole regal treatment
from their professional cohorts, bosses, students, and broader
intellectual community.
How can I commit such blasphemy?
Robert Scott Martin
<tra...@pipeline.com> wrote:
>Here are some rebuttals, with a few selections from each,
>except for the letters:
I'm sorry. My interest in this revolves around Derrida's own works, not
the secondary literature. Let's talk about the works themselves. What
specific passage in Derrida concerns you?
Robert Scott Martin
Robert Scott Martin <gl...@panix.com> wrote:
>I'm sorry. My interest in this revolves around Derrida's own works, not
>the secondary literature. Let's talk about the works themselves. What
>specific passage in Derrida concerns you?
A nice box of fragments is stored at
http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/content.html -- here are two that touch
less tentatively on the "magickal":
(from "Differance" concerning the aleph)
I will speak, therefore, of a letter.
Of the first letter, if the alphabet, and most of the speculations
which have ventured into it, are to be believed.
I will speak, therefore, of the letter a, this initial letterwhich it
apparently has been necessary to insinuate, here and there, into the
writing of the word difference; and to do so in the course of a writing on
writing, and also of a writing within writing whose different trajectories
thereby find themselves, at certain very determined points, intersecting
with a kind of gross spelling mistake, a lapse in the discipline and law
which regulate writing and keep it seemly. One can always, de facto or de
jure, erase or reduce this lapse in spelling, and find it (according to
situations to be analyzed each time, although amounting to the same),
grave or unseemly, that is, to follow the most ingenuous hypothesis,
amusing. Thus, even if one seeks to pass over such an infraction in
silence, the interest that one takes in it can be recognized and situated
in advance as pre-scribed by the mute irony, the inaudible misplacement,
of this literal permutation. One can always act as if it made no
difference. And I must state here and now that today's discourse will be
less a justification of, and even less an apology for, this silent lapse
in spelling, than a kind of insistent intensification of its play.
(on Jewish mysticism, from a telephone interview)
at any rate, unfortunately or fortunately, as you like it, I am not
mystical and there is nothing mystical in my work. In fact my work is a
deconstruction of values which found mysticism, i.e. of presence, view, of
the absence of a marque, of the unspeakable. If I say I am no mystic,
particularly not a Jewish one as Habermas claims at one point, then I say
that not to protect myself, but simply to state a fact. Not just that
personally I am not mystical, but that I doubt whether anything I write
has the least trace of mysticism. Insofar there are many misunderstandings
not only between Habermas and me, but also between many German readers and
me, as far as I can see. In part this is because German philosophers do
not read my texts directly, but refer instead to secondary, often American
interpretations. For instance if Habermas speaks of my judaistic mysticism
he uses a book by Susan Handelman which in my view is certainly
interesting, but very problematic regarding the claim that I be a lost son
of Judaism. At any rate one never reads immediately. I know very well that
one always reads from within certain schemes and mediations, so I do not
demand that one read me - as if before my texts you could put yourselves
into some kind of intuitive exstasy - but I demand that one be careful
with the mediations, more critical regarding the translations and the
detours through contexts that very often are quite far away from mine.
Robert Scott Martin
>In fact, even if it is "dead" he can still validly criticize it. That is a baseless
>defence.
"I am very happy there is a conference to do with deconstruction. I have
heard it's on the wane, dying, for the last 30 years. I tell you, it is
dead. If there is a difference between deconstruction and any other
fashion, discipline and so forth, it is that it started with dying."
-- Jacques Derrida, 1995, interviewed at the Luton "Applied Derrida"
conference
tracy
> In article <3be5d80c...@news.lvcablemodem.com>,
> <tra...@pipeline.com> wrote:
>
> >Here are some rebuttals, with a few selections from each,
> >except for the letters:
>
> I'm sorry. My interest in this revolves around Derrida's own works, not
> the secondary literature. Let's talk about the works themselves. What
> specific passage in Derrida concerns you?
Well that is not a true statement, because you just responded to some
"secondary literature". So that means you only do it when it suits you,
and that is fine, but obviously, since as you say your interest in this
is linked to whether or not you respond, then, since you did respond to
"secondary literature", your interest does revolve around secondary
literature also. But then, since *you* are a secondary source of
information, how can I possibly give anything you have to say about
Derrida credence either?
However, I have made some comments on alt.postmodern.
Tracy