I take Wojtek's and Michael's points - I don't want to come across as a Derrida defender. But I do think that he had something to say. My beef is with those who object to the difficulty/obscurity/ circularity, rather than the content. Arguing against my earlier post, the way in which form and content can be linked in Derrida is that the view of life that he theorised is itself shallow and self-indulgent. This links to James's point, and also to a point that I heard Zizek make about Ernesto Laclau being very excited about seeing a young banker commuting to work reading Deleuze and Guattari. Zizek's point was that this is entirely consistent - what the banker (assuming he wasn't a communist banker) would have seen in D&G was his own yuppie cosmopolitan lifestyle reflected back to him. Engaging with Derrida, and with D&G, is an engagement with certain central aspects of contemporary life raised to a higher level of thought, albeit raised up in a mystified form. Derrida is a bit old- fashioned now - there are new mystical thinkers out there - but it's still worth reading. And it's still worth despising, but for its content not its form. I'm struggling with Giorgio Agamben at the moment. A lot of commentators love his 'open-endedness', but really it's just ideas that he hasn't thought through. It still seems much more exciting because it's newer than Derrida, but it's appeal is the same - it's bad ideas, but bad ideas that are really engaged with the world. Another way of making the point about form and content is to look at James's favourable comparison between Derrida and Bloom/Strauss/ Scruton. I do not entirely agree. Although the form of Derrida's work is obscure, I think that he is sincerely representing a sincerely held theoretical world-view that is difficult. Whilst the conservatives are relatively easy reads, they are keen to promote the 'good lie' in society. In the case of Strauss at least, Shadia Drury makes a good case that he deliberately hid his message for the benefit of the initiates (and considered that the great political philosophers had done likewise). She overdoes the conspiracy point, but at least subjectively they did not want to be understood by all. Maybe it's just that their worldview is a bit simpler than Derrida's, but that doesn't make it any better. The claim that "the hallmark of a great mind is the ability to explain these ideas in understandable terms" (Wojtek) doesn't ring true to me. I am a great admirer of articulate popularisers, but they are not always the ones who come up with the great original ideas. Hegel is a thinker that I will defend, but he is extremely difficult (at least to me). My point is - please, do despise Derrida. But despise him for the right reasons. James Greenstein --- Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: From: Wojtek Sokolowski Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 15:13:23 -0400 To: lbo-talk@lbo-talk.org Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Re: Butler on Derrida James Greenstein > For me, Derrida's importance is that he showed how meaning is tied up > in relation to other versions of meaning, rather than being attached > to the world. By understanding texts in relation to other texts > we can bring to light meanings that are hidden. If that is the great discovery it looks like a mountain laboring mightily to give birth to a mouse. That is not even Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_, it's Linguistics 101. The incomprehensible jargon of many continental writers is an old trick of looking profound to those who are too insecure to ask "what the f___ does that mean?" There is no other excuse for poor and incomprehensible writing. Difficult ideas? Maybe, but the hallmark of a great mind is the ability to explain these ideas in understandable terms (Stephen Jay Gould comes to mind as an example). An impostor will make simple, if not trivial, things look esoteric and obscure. Wojtek ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk