Derrida down under

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Thu Sep 2 06:45:46 PDT 1999


Catherine to Carl:
>In this very article which Kirsten fwds and on which you are, I guess,
>commenting, Derrida says something fairly similar about his own work. That
>he wants to say things that can't be explained in 5 minutes and which aren't
>already held to be self evident. Faced with the 'accusation' that people may
>not understand him he suggests they will 'understand enough to understand
>more'.
<snip>
>but this point seems to me to be fair
>enough. 'Clarity' can all too often be a description of the unsurprising,
>the comfortable and the overly simplistic.

I agree that the clarity problem of which Derrida, et al. often get accused is actually a non-problem, especially in that they have mainly written for the converted and the professionally interested, which is merely a consequence of the division of labor.

I see an opposite problem; actually, Derrida, Lacan, etc. and their disciples have constituted a discourse of self-evidence -- a constellation of theoretical commonplaces which seem to many only 'too clear' (hence unexamined) that Peter Starr, Peter Dews, David Harvey, Terry Eagleton, etc. have criticized. For instance, Peter Starr points to the eminently gregarious 'logics' of postmodern political theory: a "logic of specular doubling," a "logic of structural repetition," and a "logic of recuperation." Starr asks, in _Logics of Failed Revolt: French Theory After May '68_, the Lacanian question of such theoretical commonplaces: "Where is it that _it_ [_ça_] satisfies them, tricks like that?" (I think you might enjoy this book if you haven't read it already.)


>Now I've never been a fan of Derrida (and much of this article is tritely
>concerned with 'Derrida fandom')

Fandom can be an object of interesting research, if you believe pop cult studies folks who have long insisted on this point. They've exoticized Trekkies and Otaku; why not Derrida fans?

In another post you wrote:
>These new faithful are looking for a definition of their work as
>intellectual endeavour instead of institutional tools rather than they are
>surrendering to enjoyment of the futility of 'post-structuralism' or
>'postmodernism' (which are, for god's sake, not the same thing).
>
>My problem with this is that it is so damned romantic -- not that I'm
>immune, not that I never desire that kind of idea of meaningfulness in what
>I do, but... we are owned by the system that contains us, and that system
>doesn't much care what we write/think about within certain boundaries.
>Having said that I also sympathise, and while I don't think the definition
>they desire is really tenable, there may be a way of maintaining a
>productive possibility along those lines.

I agree with the above, though I think that the problem that this yearning for 'unalienated intellectual labor' (which btw non-postmodern academics also share, esp. in English-speaking countries) has produced is larger than any positive influence that it may have, even seen dialectically, so to speak. I hope that, one of these days, fans will get tired of this left-Hegelian secular religion, but I am not optimistic.

Yoshie



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