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Jacques Derida

On this page:  
               {Stuff}
               {Richard Kostelanetz' advante guardes entry on derrida}
               {Readings list}


 

Stuff

Err, i'll take modernism for $400

   and it's the daily double....

Ok, so here we go.

Talking about Derrida though my hat (sort of like
Monty Python's "Sumarise Proust" contest).

(and believe me i'm NO expert on this... but 
see Richard K's comments below)....

First off, Derrida was one of the most advanced
and abstract thinkers of *any* century - so trying
to figure him out is a bit like delving into the
Pensieve of Leonardo's mind...

First off, he was trying to come to grips with 
how we talk about ideas. As such, he realised 
several things (i think):

  1) In order to talk about things, we need
     to use words - and they are in-herently
     mis-used, un-reliable, and of course
     infinitely maleable (just look at poetry,
     or set/acting directions, etc).

  2) Logic is no better. With Kurt Goedel's 
     discovery that almost EVERY system of
     logic has within it the very tools to
     destroy or at least leave un-answered
     questions and concepts within it and
     of course Bertrand Russell's "paradox"
     (two catalogs: one containing all
     sets that contain themselves and one
     that contains sets that do NOT contain
     themselves - but the two catalogs them
     selves ARE also sets: Where to put them?)
     Even simple systems fall apart!!

  3) World War I - the war to end all wars,
                   "The Great War" -- and
     it essentailly accomplished nothing
     (so concluded many people including 
     the Dada'ist's and the "Cuttle Fish
     Bones" poets (see, Eugenio Montale,
     the proto-absurdists esp German 
     Realists/Expressions around 1910),
     etc:
               WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN????

And along comes Derrida the young philosophy
and literature student:

  How can we talk about ANYTHING?
  How can we make sense of the world? 
  How do we escape our own cultural biases?
  etc.

What happened was several fold:

1) If every text of "sufficient length" 
   contains every other text; eg, a dictionary
   contains every possible text that can be
   written in that dictionary's language. See
   also, "The Library of Babel" and "Tlon" by
   Jorge Luis Borges. 


Richard K. sez...
In his superb book "Dictionary of the Avante Guardes", Richard
Kostelanetz sez:

"A Frenchman from North Africa, Derida has become some academic
literary circles the most influential critical theorist since Northrop Frye.
His books seem designed for the classroom, which means that 
they are most successfully read with a guide, in concert with other
seekers. Where they are comprehensible, at least in my experience,
the ideas are obvious; where they are in-comprehensible, Derrida's
theories of deconstruction offers the cognoscenti
rich opportunities for the kinds of one-ups-man-ship endemic to
such hierarchical societies as the military and most universities.

"To my mind, Derrida's originality comes from his way of thinking,
which I discovered not from reading his works, but from hearing
him speak. In Jerusalem, several years ago, I witnessed a question/
answer performance before a mostly academic audience, mostly
speaking, as he, non-native English. Whenever Derrida took a
question, you could see him fumble for the beginnings of an answer,
but once he got on track, an elaborate digression followe, at once 
elegant and idiosyncratic, until he reached a pause. Having followed
him so far, you wondered whether he would then turn to the left
or to the right, each direction seeming equally vaid, only to admire
the next verbal flight that led to another roadstop, with similarly 
arbitrary choices before continuing or concluding. In response to 
the next question, Derrida improvised structurally similar rhetorical
gymnnastics.

"What separates Derrida from tradtional literary theorists is this
commitment to improvisitory thinking with all of its possibilities 
and limitations. Shoul you have a taste for high-flown intellectual
gymnastics, consider Marshall McLuhan, whose
similarly improvised perceptions were sociologically more substantial.

"If you think improvisation is "no way to play music", you might judge
that Derrida's example is no way to think."

[Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes", P.58.]


btw: I typed this in while listening to Frank Zappa's "Hot Rats" alb,
a subj btw which Kostz. cvers in his bk; ie, F.Z.

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Readings

"Points...; interviews, 1974-1994", edited by Elisabeth Weber,
translated by Peggy Kamuf & others. (here is *exactly* where
an excelent 'et al' could have been used!).
ISBN 0.8047.2488.1 (California, 1992).  (Yes, i know that
the dates '1994' and '1992' "don't match"; go figure).