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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Is Derrida dead?
2004-10-12
Times of London emulates Scrappleface. Really.
A conceptual foundation for the deconstruction of mortality
Can there be any certainty in the death of Jacques Derrida ? The obituarists' objective attempts to place his life in a finite context are, necessarily, subject to epistemic relativism, the idea that all such scientific theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions. Surely, a postmodernist deconstruction of their import would inevitably question the foundational conceptual categories of prior science — among them, Derrida's own existence — which become problematised and relativised. This conceptual revolution has profound implications for the content of future postmodern and liberatory science of mortality. Is God dead?

It was, perhaps, Alan D. Sokal who most heuristically challenged the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook in his brilliant exegesis of Derridian principles Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. Dr Sokal's inclusive review of the literature (see especially Hamill, Graham. The epistemology of expurgation: Bacon and The Masculine Birth of Time. In Queering the Renaissance, pp. 236-252. And also Doyle, Richard. Dislocating knowledge, thinking out of joint: Rhizomatics and the importance of being multiple), and his eerily exact summary of the complementarity principle (Instead of a simple "either/or" structure, deconstruction attempts to elaborate a discourse that says neither "either/or" nor "both/and" nor even "neither/nor" while at the same time not abandoning these logics either) make his reading of Derrida irrefutable. We know only two things. We do not know. And M Derrida is in no position to enlighten us.
Bravo! Bravo! The logic is irrefutable! The style is impenetrable! The estimable Scott Ott would be proud oud to have written it himself!
Posted by:Fred

#15  We've got a set of threads on deconstructivism and postmodernism going over at Winds of Change. Start here and follow the links back.
Posted by: Robin Burk   2004-10-12 8:12:52 PM  

#14  It reminds me of that old joke, "There is no such thing as gravity, the world just sucks..."
Posted by: Phil Fraering   2004-10-12 6:09:32 PM  

#13  Postmodern critics have long posited that the promulgation of multiple discourses in lieu of any univocal truths reflects French historical guilt over being trounced by the Nazis in WW II. Borgboy kids you not...books have been written on the topic...
Posted by: borgboy   2004-10-12 5:14:55 PM  

#12  "Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher, who has died aged 74, was the founding father of deconstructionism, a controversial system of analysis which challenges the basis of traditional western thought; the deconstructive approach argues that all writing has multiple layers of meaning which even its author might not understand and which leave it open to an endless process of reinterpretation." Source.

Sounds like he studied too many Kerry speeches.
Posted by: Tom   2004-10-12 3:01:57 PM  

#11  The reference to Dr. Sokal is particularly sly and wonderful. Sokal perpetrated a hoax on the lefties. (Among other things, the paper implied that the force of gravity was a social construction.)

His "comprehensive review" was a later book where he and his co-author exposed deconstructionist writings as empty and nonsensical.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste   2004-10-12 2:49:32 PM  

#10  'Hawk:

Best. Posting. Ever.
Posted by: Mike   2004-10-12 2:28:31 PM  

#9  Somewhere in the Times building there is an obituary editor who enjoys drinking Absynth while reading On Time and Being by Martin Heidegger.

Bravo sir! Bravo!
Posted by: Secret Master   2004-10-12 2:20:35 PM  

#8  correction

"this is the creed'a
Jacques Derrida
there aint no writer
and there aint no reada
eida.
Posted by: Liberalhawk   2004-10-12 2:03:17 PM  

#7  "this is the creed of jacques Derrida
there aint no writer
and there aint no reada, eidda"
Posted by: Liberalhawk   2004-10-12 2:02:17 PM  

#6  Deconstructionism. Intellectualism without intellect.
Posted by: Dreadnought   2004-10-12 1:29:05 PM  

#5  [i]f reading and writing are one, ...if reading is writing, this oneness designates neither undifferentiated (con)fusion nor identity at perfect rest; the is that couples reading with writing must rip apart. One must then, in a single gesture, but doubled, read and write. And that person would have understood nothing of the game who, at this [du coup], would feel himself authorized merely to add on; that is, to add any old thing. He would add nothing, the seam wouldn't hold. Reciprocally, he who through "methodological prudence," "norms of objectivity," or "safeguards of knowledge" would refrain from committing anything of himself, would not read[/write] at all. The same foolishness, the same sterility, obtains in the "not serious" as in the "serious." The reading or writing supplement must be rigorously prescribed, but by the necessities of a game, by the logic of play.
-- Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination (63-64)

What's that bloody frog on about?
-- Biggles
Posted by: mojo   2004-10-12 12:35:15 PM  

#4  ROTFLMFAO!

Great wahrks! This is a Classic too!
Posted by: Steve from Relto   2004-10-12 10:41:19 AM  

#3  History is dead. Derrida lives.
Posted by: Francis Fukuyama   2004-10-12 10:27:43 AM  

#2  Seems to me that "dead" is a value judgement implying that one state of existence is privileged over another.
Posted by: Jonathan   2004-10-12 10:25:02 AM  

#1  Mmmmmmmmmmmm... mushrooms!
Posted by: tu3031   2004-10-12 8:30:46 AM  

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