I'd written:
>> I suspect Derrida's stuff on communication effectively denies a lot of
>> this, and, in so doing, denies us the potential to engage with him in such
>> democratic validation (communicative action).
And you responded:
>You would suspect wrong. Try reading _Limited Inc_. Hell, try reading
>anything he wrote from '57-74.
Well, I actually did try, Christian. I still maintain that if any of my three impressions of Derrida's theorising (below) evince any understanding on my part at all, then Derrida does indeed deny democratic practice in general and H's discourse ethics in particular:
1) I am a trace - I am never really present because I, my environment and my utterances are as much an infinite mess of absences as apparent presences. My intention is not really present to me, either, so I must take care not be clear because to appear to be clear is to perpetrate the logo/phallocentric myths that only a very limited scope of meanings is present in the social enunciation of a statement and/or that the sign might represent a referent and/or that I know what I mean when I think I'm meaning to say it.
2) These myths, which tyrannise us so, don't recognise that neither 'intention' nor the 'context' within which the 'statement' is 'enunciated' determine 'meaning' - or so do I understand 'differance'.
3) My propositions are not propositions, but rhetoric, metaphor and bits of evidence to which I myself am blind - and can be exposed as such by a deconstruction of my text.
None of Habermas's validity claims could be redeemed on these premises, no propositions could be made, and neither understanding nor agreement could be reached.
I may not even query Derrida, as to do so is to afford him a presence to himself he cannot have, and to assume my understanding is decisively a function of his intention and its context, which it cannot be.
I hold that it doesn't matter a toss if my propositions are rhetorical - they are no less propositions for that - and can be responded to as propositions.
Oh, and I don't deny that Derrida does some good things - just that this is no thanks to the actual content of the 'theory' that made him socially salient.
Rob.