Of me (by comparison)...

And another thing:

Just by way of comparison, I might point out that Derrida is much more
conservative than, for instance, I am.

Much of what I have said on this goofy little list to Luke and Daniel, about
the silliness of god-stories and the demon Ashcroft and about the complete
inability to ever get beyond conflicting rhetorics of power and desire or to ever
really know what's going on in another's head, etc., Derrida would NEVER have
written nor would he be in any way in agreement with.

He is much more cautious and traditional than I am and much more careful
about his arguments and the reasonableness of his conclusions. And Jim is right
to remind you all that even Derrida's own somewhat extreme rhetorical
conclusions as a young man in the Grammatology have long since been severely tempered.

Derrida is spiritual, even. And his autobiographical essays reveal him to be
a loving and emotional father and teacher and thinker. And he is always
thoroughly concerned with questions of ethics and justice and, above all,
responsibility (the thrust of his work on the Holocaust, for instance).

He is consistently respectable, in many ways, and never really prone to throw
out any of the babies with any of the bathwater

Not me. I admire his work tremendously. I think his writing is witty and
entertaining and insightful and inspiring. I have learned a lot from him. I
think he is one of the great philosophical contributors of the second half of
the 20th Century and that future generations will not argue about that. But I am
much more inclined to push for the punishing of the stupid and for ridiculing
the narrow-minded and intolerant Ashcrofts of the world and much more
inclined to insist that although none of you are able to admit it, you are indeed all
stuck in my world whether you want to be or not, because the sheer power and
force of unavoidable rhetorics of desire have completely taken over the
universes of discourse and the cultural systems, relationships and contexts in which
you presently find yourselves, despite your best intentions, and there is
nothing you can do about it except recognize it and begin to analyze it.

That's not Derrida. It's me (with a little Deleuze and Guattari added for
spice).

All the best,

--John

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Received on Mon Aug 11 23:49:48 2003