> In the case of deconstruction, the "conditions" of "(im)possibilities"
> primarily refer to the conditions of language, _ahistorically_ conceived.
i think you must use that big black monolith from _2001_ as a bookmark. derrida may himself emphasize this--your reading is fantastically reductive--but his emphasis hardly determines the possibilities of his commentaries. i don't even like der- rida, but he's at least willing to admit that determinations serve as much to animate as to limit. i think it's the former, animating, the upsets you so: hence, when you read derrida, you see only limits.
> Whether Derrida discusses Plato or Hegel, Descartes or Marx, he always
> finds the same problem:
and it's one you don't like because it isn't teleological and authoritarian.
i do declare, i see the Zeitgeist--in the form of a gigantic hi-liter pen riding across the pages yoshie reads.
> For Marx, however, the conditions of possibilities concern history, the
> very conditions to which Derrida pays scant attention in his preoccupations
> with what makes language (im)possible -- the (im)possibility common to any
> and every text -- hence the same difference that Eagleton speaks of:
> "subverting everything and nothing."
notably absent from marx's litany of what a man might do in the morning, afternoon, and evening, is one activity: commenting on marx. and you would critique that man for his failure, wouldn't you? this is marx read through the lens of class aspirations.
cheers, t