Re: babies in the bathwater

“I'm not sure what details about Derrida you thought were "irrelevant" or why, so I can't answer your opening question. Everything I wrote in my long post about his work and his defense of his positions dealt with his writing, his published philosophical essays, including his published autobiographical ones, so I haven't offered any personal information that would be separate from that discusion, as far as I can see.”

You offered details about Derrida as a father, which were completely irrelevant.

”Also, you should feel free to "psychoanalyze" away. You wouldn't be the first, and even some professionals have had their crack at me. So don't hesitate if it will make you feel any better.”

So some professionals have, in the past, behaved very unprofessionally. This seems like a crappy debate topic in general, but one that is necessary, I suppose, to establishing an intellectual pecking order in which critics who stroke an author are placed at the top, while others who don’t like the author – and aren’t saying anything that hasn’t been said about this guy a thousand times before, which curiously, I then can understand the need for Derrida to defend himself so specifically against these claims, as you suggest he does – are simply ignorant.

“Then you write this wonderful sentence:

"...you apply these accusations to mean that you don't agree with someone else's own take on deconstructionism, even after he has been exposed extensively to this technique of literary criticism..."

Well, if you mean you, it seems to have been a case of indecent exposure. Why? Because if we are talking about Derrida, you should have known that 1.) for him there is no such thing as "deconstructionism" nor has there ever been and 2.) nothing that he has ever written anywhere about the term "deconstruction" could ever be called a "technique of literary criticism."

Look – I empathize with professors trying to teach this author, who – in my humble opinion here – uses such slippery, complex language that no one often knows what the hell to call what he’s doing. Similarly, I empathize with critics of his work who want to take ideas seriously, and gosh, it’s hard to keep a straight face sometimes watching the analysis of a Derrida quote take hot air so seriously.

Curiously, I’ve never had one of these professors, and I’ve tried to make sense of Derrida on my own. But I guess the advantage of an intellectual hierarchy associated with the interpretation of an author is that his interpreters can always claim the opposition is simply ill-informed, and never be held dynamically accountable for a static refutation of claims, simply because standards are constantly evolving. What a racket y’all have going.

“In fact, the sentence "Deconstruction is not, must not ever be, a technique or method..." appears too many times in his work to count. He insists repreatedly that it is not a technique, and certainly not a technique of "literary criticism," something he himself has never done, even when he has written about literature. And, incidentally, he has written a whole essay on exactly why there can never be anything like "deconstructionism." …

This isn't personal. Either you just are not very well informed, you have not been well-taught, or you are writing things that are simply mistakes.”

Thanks for the citation; I’ll definitely check it out. But it might get us nowhere, absolutely nowhere, because any conclusion I come to will of course reflect “ignorance,” while only the more enlightened interpreters of Derrida such as you (and Derrida himself? he comments in this article extensive on his own stuff? is he that arrogant?) are wise and well-versed enough to know what’s truly going on.

Deconstructionism is discussed, as if it exists. It is discussed as if it is a technique or method, no matter how many times Derrida says it is not. Yeah, okay, he’s wise enough to see that it’s not. And it’s definitely personal, if you have to establish that a take on Derrida is more enlightened than another.

Derrida’s “clarification” probably won’t seem much like a clarification to me, without relying on reason as some basis for explaining his ideas or without a clear relationship between his own thoughts and the language he uses to express them. Let’s just chalk this disconnect up to presence, and move on with our lives.

”And I'm not sure why D'Souza has your admiration, since he has never said anything about this topic that is even close to accurate, let alone meaningful. At best his gossip is cocktail party chatter, even less serious than what we have been doing here; at worst it's lies and the deliberate, self-important denigration of others for cheap political effect. I know. I do it here all the time, just for fun. But I sure as hell don't publish it in my serious work. If my remarks about Ashcroft bothered you at all, you should despise Dinesh's work. His book is embarrassing.”

I’m not sure what parts of <I>Illiberal Education</I> would constitute an ad hominem attack, of which your posts re Ashcroft are such a perfect example. Certainly, people are quoted, and it’s not nice. But D’Souza didn’t make anything up. Revealing an unflattering truth is a lot different from making wild speculations that a person is a “sanctimonious lizard,” and then tersely responding that you don’t have to prove it, because everyone knows you’re right. I still think you should prove it… much like D’Souza does with his claims about university education in the late 1980’s, which rarely get personal and reflect a deep concern about students' education experiences.

“Believe me, Luke, what you have written here about Derrida's work reveals that you are at best simply a novice, that you have a cartoonish sketch of what his writings are and that you, at times, simply don't know what you are talking about.”
  
Here’s the thing – I’ve read “Racism’s Last Word,” and you still accuse me of ignorance of it. This is what I'm saying your accusations of ignorance mean: You don’t like another reader’s negative reaction to an author that you happen to like. Ok – I can live with that. But enough of the cheap condescension, really, which gets to be too much. The whole last paragraphs of your response are just one elaborate tirade about how I don’t really “understand” Derrida, because I don’t share your views on his work.

You’re right, that list-readers can go out and read Derrida for themselves and decide what’s going on. I think he makes some claims occasionally that mean something, but in general, he’s full of it. I also interpret some of those substantive claims to have pernicious consequences in more realistic settings like literary criticism (oh, but Derrida says non! <I>Derrida!</I> well, I’m stupid then, so let’s make it all so very personal!) and human relationships.

luke

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