Re: Restored

Jim,

You're still missing my point -- you cite D'Souza on Jardine (or Jardine's
class, if you like) in response to something I wrote about Derrida's work. Your
citation is simply irrelevant, not only because D'Souza's gossipy book is a
shallow, ill-informed, simplistic reading that's wrong about almost everything,
but because it has nothing to do with what we were talking about concerning
the importance of order and coherence and structure in the written work of
Jacques Derrida.

And yes, I know Alice Jardine, and she certainly does *not* use chaos
"designed to obfuscate" either in her classes or in her writing. Ever.

Concerning your reading of the passage from "Force of Law;" nowhere in it
does Derrida, as you originally claim, either reject absolutes in any way or
reject the external imposition of force or structure.

Remember, Luke, here is what you wrote, concerning Derrida's work:

"It's a rejection of one absolute Order, Coherence, Structure, Meaning, and
Clarity..."

And this is horribly wrong, and the very passage you cite indicates this in
its rhetoric of inclusion and acceptance and affirmation. Derrida certainly
interrogates the effects of and the legacy of "one absolute Order, Coherence,
Structure, Meaning, and Clarity..." in the histories of Western thought. But
you have so far completely failed to demonstrate to me any place, anywhere in
his writing, where he "rejects" such things. I can cite passage after passage
after passage, in fact, where he insists on NOT rejecting, on saying yes, on
interrogating and displacing but *never* simply reversing. So you are simply
wrong.

And the language of the single passage from all of his work that you chose to
cite actually demonstrates that you are wrong about this (just as any other
passage would as well).

You ask me:

"So Daniel's stuff has no meaning, because an "and" doesn't appear where you
want it to, because there aren't signifiers over which to obsess? "

No, Daniel's' stuff has no meaning because it's incoherent and unreadable.

If you honestly know what a phrase like "in the same way evidence (that is
evidence) behaves in the same way..." means, or even what its purpose is in any
possible sentence, please clue me in. And please do the same for the phrase
"good candidate example of evidences contrary to your rationalizations" as
well. Thanks.

If you honestly understand precisely what the precise point of a paragraph
like:

"The stopping, that madness and death that shut his mouth in space and time,
and finally out of space and time.  He sought to be a winged free spirit and
well, I have scanned the skys and listened for reports of him flapping about,
to no effect."

might be, then perhaps you can offer a close and detailed reading of it for
the rest of us. I have tried and found it to be a waste of time.

You say you cite Rorty because he "denies anyone's ability to transcend
words/language in effective communication." But since neither Derrida nor I have
done this anywhere in this discussion, the quote is, like the D'Souza citation,
irrelevant.

I wrote to you: "I still have not seen you offer a single moment when Derrida
is rejecting absolutes..."

And you responded: "Who said Derrida says this?"

YOU did! Only two posts ago. You wrote, concerning Derrida's work:

"It's a rejection of one absolute Order, Coherence, Structure, Meaning, and
Clarity. For some idea of the chaos and incoherence that such a *rejection of
absolutes* creates..."

But, of course, you were wrong. Derrida's work does *not* offer any such
simple rejection of any of these things. And you remain unable to show me where
it does.

The fact that you have to ask "who said" that it does is very odd, since it's
only been a few hours since you wrote this and since you then go on to cite
yourself saying this in the very next paragraph!

Finally, you mouth more of D'Souza's cheap and easy nonsense again, from a
book which offers no close reading of any specific texts by the authors he
purports to be critiquing and which replaces serious detailed scholarship with
gossip and anecdote. D'Souza has never demonstrated anywhere than he knows
anything about what Derrida has actually written and his oversimplification
concerning "internal truth" ( phrase which is so vague, philosophically speaking, as
to be meaningless) is in no serious or scholarly way related to Derrida or his
work, although it is a perfect illustration of the amateurish way he
formulates but never develops concepts. D'Souza is a shallow and irresponsible
propagandist who does not even take the time to offer close readings of the texts he
is attacking. In that sense, he is the opposite of Derrida, whose entire body
of work consists of close, detailed, patient readings of specific texts and
careful discussions about (and always respecting) the responsibility of reading.

By the way, do you have any idea how to clearly demarcate the difference
between internally and externally imposed truths? Can you demonstrate for us how
you would separate the forces, both internal and external, that participate in
the construction of these truths? Can you describe in detail how the
delineation of the internal and the external can be recognized and formulated such
that one can decipher it in writing independent of rhetoric? Or are you just
blowing smoke?

Just wondering,

--John

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Received on Tue Jul 15 23:41:38 2003