derrida marxist?

christian a. gregory driver at nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu
Sat Dec 19 14:37:05 PST 1998


charles wrote:

"I am talking about the notion that the certainty with which scientists, economists, and artists make about objective reality and truth is questionable. This has nothing to do with the certitude you have relating to the danger facing your wife. That is a fact that can be verified immediately. Of course, there is no question of this even happening. Your straw man argument draws an absurd conclusion because it does not even address what I was talking about."

me:

two things: it's the crudest of reductions to say that derrida's work is interested in saving "uncertainty" in the context of the "certainty" of scientists, economists and artists. as derrida says in *of grammatology*, he's not interested in deconstructing the practice of science--since that is, in the last instance what grammatology aspires to. but "grammatology" is a "science" of writing, cultural graphology, episteme of differance, what have you; and according to derrida, such a science understands the historically contingent nature (the "written" quality, the institutional, "performative," "excessive" quality) of all knowledge. most scientists i know are more than happy to say that contingency is built into what they do--but that doesn't stop them from doing science. it seems to me that you're conflating having a thesis (or constructing one) and trying to support it and believing that everything can be understood all at one go ("certainty"). besides, all that quibbling that economists and scientists do over terms, definitions and means of calucations? that's performing the writing of science, of what counts as science and why.

second: if offering "indeterminacy" were all derrida were doing, it would be way too little, way too late. as i've tried to show, he supports indeterminacy in chosen contexts, for chosen ends--it's not value free (any more than science).

best christian



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