>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
If someone says they find someone else's style almost inpenetrable and if they say they disagree with what content they can discern, and if that someone gives reasons for their position with which noone on these lists has ever taken issue, I'd think that constitutes a pretty good dismissal. What else can that someone do?
>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.
*Mein Kampf* had this effect, too (and that's the only criterion of comparison I intend, I assure you). Same with *The Road to Serfdom*. Both identify real issues that were contemporarily widely under-recognised, and a lot of people clearly found one or the other very inspiring. Both are relatively easy to read, of course, so the outrageous associations, implications and prescriptions can quite easily be decoupled from the premise questions (which is harder to do with *Of Grammatology*), but both have done hideous damage to our world. I actually suspect that Derrida has done more harm than good - not intentionally, of course, but effectively - and often through those he unconsciously inspired. There are a lot of such folks sprinkled through the history of 'the left', of course (Derrida's intellectual grand-dad Althusser, for one). And I'm sure ol' Jacques is a much nicer bloke than some of 'em, too.
>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.
Well, that's you. The menu of critical enablers is not a short one, but each time prodeuces its own pathology, and hence its own menu-choices (Eagleton's line, I think). Me, I like *The German Ideology* and I like EP Thompson and I like Raymond Williams and I like Erich Fromm and I like Antonio Gramsci and I tend to go with a fair bit of the younger Jurgen Habermas, too. Perhaps I just couldn't help dislike the French Nietzschians after all that - I dunno.
>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.
Yeah, but I reckon the fact that I'm not up to being particularly useful in these ways does not mean I'm wrong, and it also doesn't mean it's not my business to say what I reckon and why I reckon it. I know you don't exactly argue what I'm arguing against here, but I am trying to suggest it's a good idea not to rely too much on the argument as you've expressed it here.
Cheers, Rob.