[lbo-talk] Derrida dead

[jeffrey fisher]

there are others who may be better equipped than i (both in terms of 
available knowledge and available time) to answer this, but i think 
probably the single most important thing is recognizing that people are 
always saying things they don't mean to say and don't even realize 
they're saying, and that those things often undermine (contradict) the 
things people think they're saying.

so then, what's the difference between deconstruction and socratic 
elenchus? derrida is much more like a sophist than like socrates 
(himself something of a sophist, though he would have bristled at that 
-- and so, probably, will others on this list) in that derrida thinks 
that the Truth that would guarantee not only the "author's" meaning but 
really any stable meaning doesn't exist. the main thrust of 
deconstruction, then, is to expose precisely that lack (whereas the 
main thrust of socratic dialectic is to gesture toward the Truth). i 
think the correspondences to socratic method are apparent, together 
with the fundamentally different direction, but maybe that's just me.

not only do i not have time to elaborate or defend this thought, i also 
am over-posted, already. i shall therefore eagerly await correction and 
amplification from friends (and others :-) on this list who understand 
this stuff better than i do.

j

On Monday, October 11, 2004, at 10:51 AM, Charles Brown wrote:


> What's the difference between "to deconstruct" and "to analyze " ?
>  
> Charles
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