In other intellectual news:

Derrida, RIP

Good riddance.

So Derrida has gone on to join his "Spectres of Marx", and just in time for Halloween.

Can one, in order to question it, address oneself to a ghost? ... The question deserves perhaps to be put the other way: Could one address oneself in general if already some ghost did not come back? If he loves justice at least, the “scholar” of the future, the “Intellectual” of tomorrow should learn it and from the ghost. He should learn to live by learning not how to make conversation with the ghost but how to talk with him ... [Derrida, Spectres of Marx]

I suggest we leave poor Derrida's ghost alone, and not hassle it with seances and ouija boards and such.

De mortuis nil nisi.

There's a kernel of truth that Derrida pointed out, let's not forget that. In spite of the eager joy that young academics felt in tearing down all of their forefathers and progenitors (academically speaking).

Namely, that every position and point of view has an inbuilt perspective, and never has the full "truth". Every perspective is boundaried.

Note, this is VERY far from every perspective is "equal", or that truth doesn't exist - just that there is an inherent perspective and limit on the truth found.

Namely, that every position and point of view has an inbuilt perspective, and never has the full "truth". Every perspective is boundaried.

No. That point is neither novel to Derrida nor even characteristic of Derrida as I understand his work. Korzybski made his succinct observation that the map is not the territory when Derrida was still wearing square pants. Or before. And as I understand it Derrida was either denying that there was a territory or that there was no way to compare the validity of differing maps.

Should be "claiming that there was no way...".

Have any of you actually read Derrida's work?

Derrida Primer (at least with regard to Of Grammatology):

Derrida's scholarship starts out with a simple premise; that philosophers and others who deal with language prejudice speech over writing. Derrida has claimed that this prejudice is significant and that its genesis can be found in the work of Socrates, who (as we all know) refused to write down any of his work (thus the only access we have to his work is via Plato's dialogues). Plato agreed with this view, and an examination of it can be found in his Phaedrus. Aristotle also, in the main agreed with it, and in his On Interpretation found that writing was far more removed from the truth than speech because it was a sign of a sign (it being the sign oral statements which were in turn a sign ideas). Paul, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Rousseau, etc. all show a similar prejudice against the written word.

Now you are probably asking right now, so what?

Well, Derrida argues that this prejudice is logocentrism; this is a fancy way of stating that that the origin of the word is privileged over what follows it. This means that Derrida's criticism is one concerning the absoluteness of origin. He states that bi-furcating speech and writing is non-sense; that as signs they are essentially the same thing. What he has thus done is deconstructed the so-called distinction between the writing and speech and demonstrated that they aren't as different as claimed; and by doing so he has come up with a tool (deconstruction) by which to attack other categories that have binary traits. He argues that these categories of binary things tend to show a dominance of one pole over another and that this dominance is based on power.

Now, flip back to what Derrida thought of origins and you will see that an author's intentions cannot be treated as the absolute word on a text (not a novel concept); that language is temporal in other words; that language is slippery. However, one can apply the tactic of deconstruction to look at a text; to dismantle it; and by doing so, we see - according to Derrida - the fundamental instability in language. Now, combine this with the notion that no form of human discourse can step outside of discourse to render an objective judgment about that discourse(this has the flavor of Godel I realize).

Keeping the above in mind, also note that Derrida (along with Barthes and Lacan) also state that our access to reality is a semiological one.

Now think about the recipe: language is unstable + language is made up of signs (oral or written) + our access to reality is semiological = an unstable self or personhood - a personhood not based on "origins."

Whether one accepts this or not, and there are indeed problems with Derrida's grand philosophical narrative, the notion of an unstable self is a highly liberating idea and far removed from the ideological, etc. rigidities that have so often plagued human beings.

Yes, I've read the Grammatology and also a lot of other work on the philosophy of language and hermeneutics.

I would argue, contra both Derrida and Lacan but with Cassirer, Ricouer and Tillich, that language is symbolic, not semiotic. Symbols partake of the meaning that they point to, but cannot encompass all of that meaning. Signs are arbitrary and are not necessarily connected to that to which they point in any way other than convention.

Important words function like icons in the Orthodox churches - as windows on and pointers to larger clusters of meaning That's a very different role than as mere signs.

Derrida creates binaries where, in fact, there are layers of meaning, some closer and some father from the center.

In his attempt to destroy absolutes, Derrida goes too far in his claim that central concepts (in a text, in a theory) are untenable and unuseful. I'll spare our readers the relevant quotes unless someone wants them, but suffice it to say that a lot of shoddy research has been done in my own field based on that assertion of his.

Inappropriate and artificial rigidity is confining. But dissolving one's skeleton is a poor way to become more fluid and graceful.

Another criticism I have of Derrida is that he mis-reads (intentionally or not) the original "speech vs. writing" argument. When Aristotle discuss 'speech' he is using the word logos. This word has a much richer and deeper set of meanings than just verbal utterance.

At its core, logos means meaning, and in particular meaning as it connects things. For example, Euclid uses logos to refer to the ratios and proportions that allow otherwise disparate things to be brought into mathematical relationship with one another (the area of a square with numbers, for instance). This sense carries over, to a lesser degree, into the Latin ratio which is the root for our 'rational'.

Aristotle is in fact distinguishing between the resonance of meaning, and in particular connections of meaning, which characterize thought and therefore speech, from the frozen written word. He is, among other things, placing speech in a social context, where paralinguistic markers (tone of voice etc.) add to the meaning being conveyed. Aristotle is correct to say that written language is an attempt to capture what we do when we speak with one another and, as a secondary product, is in some ways less rich.

Rather than seeing the text as a useful but not totally adequate way of conveying meaing, Derrida OTOH detaches the written text from those underlying meanings. In so doing he impoverishes rather than enriches written communication.

I'm sympathetic to Derrida's desire to break out of the structures of Continental thought and especially French structuralism. Nineteenth and early twentieth century philosophers in Europe had far too great a tendency to invent abstract nouns and concepts and then treat them as proven facts. Marx and the marxist schools are only one example of this tendency.

It's ironic, therefore, that Derrida exhibits just this sort of confusion. It's even more ironic that he himself is so bound to the sort of absolutist binaries that characterize the earlier French writers like Levi-Strauss (The Raw and the Cooked, 'langue' vs. 'parole', etc.).

The 20th century offered alternative approaches which I find far more sophisticated and useful. Godel's incompleteness theorem, for example, did not end our use of axiomatics in mathematics just because he demonstrated that there is meaning in mathematical structures which cannot be fully formalized. Ricouer's call for a "second naivete" in hermeneutics is an equally supple approach.

It's a pity that Derrida and other postmodernists did not find their way to a similar understanding of language.

Robin rulez. I'm gonna reread this slowly!

Robin,

Have you read any of Walker Percy's work on language? I used him and Ricouer extensively in my dissertation. I agree completely with the symbolic vice semiotic view of language. As for what Derrida actually said about language, that varies not only by who you ask but by when you ask them. John Searle criticized the post-structuralists' tendency to shift their arguments "from the preposterous to the platitudinous." It's been a while since I read Derrida, but I can think of a good example from Foucault. Foucault claims that Gregor Mendel was not understood or found useful for nearly a century because he was not "dans le vrai." He was, as Foucault put it, a "monster" who was completely outside the discourse of science at the time. If one takes that to mean that science couldn't use the theory of genetics because there is no truth to it outside discourse and that scientific discourse could not accomodate it in Mendel's time, that's clearly preposterous. But if all it means is that Mendel was ahead of the scientists of his day, and his work couldn't be used until science caught up with him, that's utterly trivial (platitudinous). Frankly, I'm with Joe: good riddance.

Joe Katzman, Fred, etc.,

So much for "humanity." I find it rather hilarious (and sickening) that you would impliedly wish pancreatic cancer on the man; one of the more painful varieties of cancer I might add.

If one takes that to mean that science couldn't use the theory of genetics because there is no truth to it outside discourse and that scientific discourse could not accomodate it in Mendel's time, that's clearly preposterous. But if all it means is that Mendel was ahead of the scientists of his day, and his work couldn't be used until science caught up with him, that's utterly trivial.

You are attacking something that is not particularly novel in the philosophy of science here. Indeed, the social constructivism you attack here is directly in line with John Searle's work. It is a healthy reaction to the realism and instrumentalism that dominated the philosophy of science for so many years.

Robin,

Wow, substantive remarks. I'm shocked.

I would argue, contra both Derrida and Lacan but with Cassirer, Ricouer and Tillich, that language is symbolic, not semiotic.

I disagree with both sides. Language is both symbolic and semiotic. Its a dialectic oscillation between the two that makes language as we know it. See Kristeva for more on this.

In his attempt to destroy absolutes, Derrida goes too far in his claim that central concepts (in a text, in a theory) are untenable and unuseful.

Derrida doesn't describe them as unuseful. This is a fabrication or a misunderstanding on your part.

Another criticism I have of Derrida is that he mis-reads (intentionally or not) the original "speech vs. writing" argument. When Aristotle discuss 'speech' he is using the word logos. This word has a much richer and deeper set of meanings than just verbal utterance.

The speech v. writing argument to Derrida starts with Socrates and Plato, not Aristotle.

Aristotle is correct to say that written language is an attempt to capture what we do when we speak with one another and, as a secondary product, is in some ways less rich.

And Derrida doesn't disagree that Aristotle states this; indeed, he readily remarks that Aristotle's criticisms are more muted than that of Socrates.

Rather than seeing the text as a useful but not totally adequate way of conveying meaing, Derrida OTOH detaches the written text from those underlying meanings.

Wrong again. He does nothing of the kind. What he does do is state that those original meanings aren't the only ones at play; that's not detachment.

It's even more ironic that he himself is so bound to the sort of absolutist binaries that characterize the earlier French writers like Levi-Strauss (The Raw and the Cooked, 'langue' vs. 'parole', etc.).

He's not bound to absolutist binaries; he does state that deconstructionism is a way to attack such binaries. You really haven't read Of Grammatology I see.

Wow, I go on vacation for two weeks and Winds turns into a pomo debate center!

Seriously, without getting into the lit crit theory or political misapplication lines of argument, I will observe that elements of pomo approaches such as the sign/signified distinction are good engineering theories. Anyone who spends significant time dealing with full text databases or other text analytics gets a really humbling experience in the variability and slipperiness of meanings behind character strings. And a real appreciation that attempts to create generic, externalized semantic frameworks merely replicate the sign/language problem in another form, a sort of infinite regress. Clay Shirky and I have banged on about this elsewhere in the context of 'semantic web', so I won't duplicate, but just wanted to observe that there are very practical implications of what is often itself a 'sign' for leftist relativism.

Gary,

It is possible, for entirely humane reasons, to see another human being's death as a good thing. Derrida, given the damage his ideas have caused, falls into that category for me. The world is better off without him, and while murder cannot be advocated without consequences that negate any good it may do, death by natural causes carries no such complications. I'd apply the same logic to a number of people.

As to the manner of his death, the world doesn't run on my wishes, so I'm entirely agnostic. Which natural cause is responsible is fate's province. Mine is to judge the consequences - and I see them as good. They would have been even better had Derrida fessed up to his intellectual swindles, and spent some time trying to undo the damage (one more reason not to wish specific things on living people, for fear of short-circuiting this potential in them).

But again, the world doesn't run on my preferences. He didn't do that. Now he's dead. That's an unchangeable fact (surprise, Jacques - those exist!).

All that's left is to ask: am I happy about that?

Yes.

That's my narrative, and I'm sticking to it.

This discussion has been good, but it isn't about the post.

I'm going to close comments at this point, and urge people to continue discussions in the Death of Derrida post today. Since all comments here now have permalinks, it's easy to refer to anything here if you need to.