A Gulf Coast Christmas and a word on vigor...
john v. omlor (omlor@packet.net)
Thu, 10 Dec 1998 19:13:22 -0500
Jim is kind enough to ask:
>PS Ah, so you do know you're speaking another language :) Good...
>BTW--what part of FL are you going to be in? I live in Orlando...
Jim,
Actually, I live on a condo covered little island tucked in between St.
Petersburg and St. Pete Beach (when I mentioned leaving town earlier it
was because I'm headed out to Texas for a week or so but will be back home
before Christmas). I get up not quite all the way to Orlando quite a bit
as I am a proud carrier of the year long, all parks Disney pass. I'll
probably wobble my way around Pleasure Island one night just before
Christmas, for instance.
Hope they avert the threatening strike -- it seems Mickey is a union mouse.....
By the way, in a later post, you write:
>What bothers me is that Derrida is actively, with an almost messianic
>vigor (esp. at the opening of Of Grammatology), promoting a specific
>value system and using his theory of reading and writing to support that
>value system--without offering a justificaction or an explanation of the
>value system to begin with--at least not in the few works I've read.
I agree completely with your assessment of the tenor of the *Grammatology*
and it was written of course in the midst of the fervor of May '68 in
Paris. Derrida has, needless to say, long since changed significantly both
in his politics and in the "messianic" nature of his writing. There is
still a somewhat shifting set of "value systems" in place as there always
will be in writing, but JD is much more self-reflexive about them and I
think much more subtle and mature (see his work on Nietzsche and
responsibility in "The Ear of the Other" or his work on "The Politics of
Friendship" or even his work on Eurpoean politics in "The Other Heading").
As for "justification" or "explanation," I would recommend his "The Force
of Law" on his theory of justice and his recent book on Marx (*Spectres of
Marx*) for an explanation of his complicated political positions and how
they are so throughly but problematically haunted.
Later you write:
> I'm not really speaking primarily of Derrida here
>(whom I respect), but of the many, many, many lesser lights that have
>gathered around that set of ideas...
An important distinction. Thank you for making it. What you describe and
properly insult is simple political reversal (the canonization of the
Other) and warned against all the time and at all costs by Derrida (see his
essay of warnings about Women's Studies Programs" called "Women in the
Beehive" for an example of this, there are countless others). It is the
most common misreading of Derrida's work and comes from quick and careless
thought. But perhaps the most disturbing sentence in your post was:
>It has all the appeal of an abandonment of tradition and logic while still
>offering
>intellectual rigor.
I single this out because of the many and repeated times that Derrida has
insited in interviews and in his own work that there can be no question of
any such "abandonment" and that nothing he has ever written or suggested
has implied that such a move would be either possible or desireable.
Indeed, he is a rigorous and respectful reader of the tradition from Plato
and Socrates through Descartes through Hegel and Heidegger and Freud, etc.
and has written extensively about the value of maintaining the archive even
as one reads and deconstructs it. I know you recognize this, Jim, and are
distinguishing him from other writers, but the point needed, I think, to be
clarified.
Hope this helps set some things straight.
Enjoy the holidays,
--John