Derrida: everywhere and nowhere baby, that's where you're at

[Catherine Driscoll]

Rob --
So you found Derrida obscure, self-indulgent, and not to accord with your
sense of how meaning is conveyed in language. 
I fail to see this as much of a dismissal given that it's just as easy to
say that other people have found him inspiring and challenging and that he
allowed them to test and uncover important assumptions and question
significant naturalisations. 
I have never found Derrida all that useful, but as it has enabled others to
try and act productively and think critically in and about the world it
still seems like a good thing to me. In fact, while I have never found
*Derrida* useful, I have found writers influenced and even shaped by Derrida
very helpful in thinking about how we receive and how we rely on founding
structures of our cultures as given and unavoidable. 
I found the work around _Of Grammatology_ hideous to read, but some of his
points at that time about, for example, the ways in which 'speech' is
prioritised over 'writing', and about the effects of that prioritisation,
have continued to hang around in useful ways. There are many ways to be
productive in the world, but I think that if you can write something which a
range of people find even a bit useful in thinking about how their world
works then you've done more than most people ever do.
Catherine

At 04:14  2/09/99 +1000, you wrote:
>G'day Observers,
>
>Groan.
>
>I once tried to read (and I mean REALLY tried to read) *Of Grammatology*.
>Derrida tells us deconstruction is neither science nor philosophy, rather
>(and you have to get to the end of the book to find it), he's offering what
>Rousseau once claimed he was offering: "The dreams of bad nights are given
>to us as philosophy. Younwill say that I too am a dreamer. I admit this.
>But I do what others fail to do. I give my dreams as dreams and leave the
>reader to discover whether there is anything in them which may prove useful
>to those who are
>awake."
>
>So a bloke once asked him: "My question to you is: are you allowing me to
>interview in much the same spirit - as a dream to be taken as the listener
>or reader wishes?"
>
>So ol' Jacques ups and sez: "Yes, but if I were to indulge in saying so, I
>would imply that I am totally awakened while dreaming, and I have no
>illusion about that."
>
>Well, as is the case here, Derrida's always indulging in saying so, and
>also always indulging in saying he's not.  You're allowed to do that when
>the possibility of meaning is infinite.
>
>We poor boobs, who can but sit and listen, are left to allocate whatever
>meanings our contemporary dream bestows (and there are no logical limits in
>D. as to the meanings our all-commanding, and seemingly haughtily
>autonomous, dreams may choose to assign), and even whether we be awake or
>asleep depends wholly on how we dream ourselves.
>
>If you can get anything out of that, please write and tell me what
>Macarthurs Park is about while you're at it.
>
>I'll take you more seriously than Derrida would, for unlike him I value the
>written word, assume you're awake,  grant your authorship a role in the
>scope of possible meanings, and presume to delimit that scope thus:
>
>'left the cake out in the rain' does not mean 'Macarthurs Park is melting
>in the dark' because either (a) they have meaninglessness in common - so
>they do not have meaning in common, or (b) one or both has meaning, in
>which case there must be a lot they do not mean - for to have an infinite
>possibility of meanings is to have no meaning, thus there is no human
>communication, thus, whatever Derrida wrote (everything thus nothing), we'd
>be reading something else, and we'd have no reason not to read our
>keyboards instead (nothing thus everything).
>
>Sorry Ange & Catherine, a few left conservatives still infest these shores ...
>
>Cheers,
>Rob.
>
>
>