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