It was nice to meet you! Good summary too.
Now, what are the chances I'll write my first Long Sunday post this weekend? Looking good so far!
count me jealous, all around.
The wolf "ravishes" a lamb? That's one kinky wolf. Are you sure you didn't mean ravages?
1. It's from John Berger 2 'Ravish' can simply mean 'take away by force' 3. There can be no 'kinks' in the lupine community, nor anyplace else in animalsville.
Now, what are the chances I'll write my first Long Sunday post this weekend
Well, as of 23.58 on Sunday, I'd say they're pretty slim.
It struck me after the lecture that the Derrida as anti-hunter motif might be a reference to D's relationship to Heidegger - wandering through the hills and forests, but for very different purposes.
Yes, I definitely sensed Heidegger lurking in the bushes, at various points.
Well, as of 23.58 on Sunday, I'd say they're pretty slim.
failed, again...folk came over and made me watch Dennis Potter things.
Tomorrow....
Mark
I really like the imagery Badiou is using. My interest in Derrida always revolved around not only the "vanishing point," but the status of thinking (philosophy) and expressing this point. How is it that we are able to recognize this point at the "closure of metaphysics?"
Of course, Derrida was always suspicious of any pronouncements of endings (History, Philosophy, Literature) or stepping outside of a tradition in order to critiqe it. But he also thought there was something unique about our ability to speak of this vanishing point at this historical "moment." But other than assuming some version of Hegelian (or Heideggerian) escatology, could Derrida explain his "Speculative Gentleness?"
perhaps the "negative eschatology" of Maurice Blanchot gives us the best clue.
http://www.studiocleo.com/
librar...tle_pagemn.html
could someone please explain what is 'speculative gentleness'?
i mean, someone other than derrida, since it is not exactly a term he used. did he avoid 'violent' texts and questions?
are his texts addressing - to name a few - artaud, blanchot, genet, heidegger, hegel, levinas, benjamin, bataille...'speculatively gentle'?
hum
Perhaps "Speculative Gentleness" is simply the way he approached reading texts? "Speculative" because he was willing to allow the text to take him to places a traditional reading would think illegitimate; "Gentle" because he did not attempt to dominate his subject matter in the manner of the crude metaphysicians that Nietzsche liked to chastize?
I think YH's mention about the 'double reading' at serious play is most apt:
"one part sympathetic exposition, one part exposing the hidden presuppositions of a text."
which seems especially at work in texts like Gift of Death. Frustrating, to be sure, because one is never quite sure of his "position" on things. He is courteous to a fault, but always the chance of a hidden barb. It was (is) up to the reader, finally, 'to sign' the text.
Derrida honed this skill (anything but mechanical) to a fine art, and it was a measure of his extreme tact and patience that he has able to wander so boldly, in my view.
Alain,
I was struck not just by the imagery used by Badiou but by the fact that he was using it so conspicuously in that particular section of the lecture. To some extent I think it was homage by way of mimesis. Mimesis in turn is like �touching� � it follows a given texture, pattern rather than producing a conceptual �reduction� of it.
I�m not sure I have anything interesting to say about the preconditions of Derrida�s �speculative gentleness� and the ability of thought to �recognise� the vanishing point. Obviously, this �speculative gentleness� didn�t just arrive out of nowhere � many see precedents in the negative dialectics of Adorno et al. How does one conceptualise the pre-conceptual, or accommodate what does not fit into the concept. So maybe the question is when and why does Enlightenment thought turn on/ into itself?
Robert Young in his book White Mythologies (not very good) links Derrida�s project to decolonisation, and others, Eagleton for example, also note that Derrida�s position in the literal margins (Algeria) is a precondition of his ability to install himself in the margins of the text.
Mark and Matt
I think you are right that one of the key questions is why does Enlightenment turn on itself. What I struggle with is what are we to do politically, here and now as the "latest of the late comers?"
What fascinates me about Derrida's project is that his form of mimesis is always a double gesture, both an overturning and displacement. The political implications of this displacement is what I have never been able to quite grasp. As many commentators have indicated, it was Derrida's biographical marginality that may have brought him to the margins of textuality. But if we take his accomplishment seriously, and I do, I would like to be able to say what the implications are for praxis. Derrida's musings on the messianic, sans any messianism, have never been very convincing to me. But I am in the midst of giving these later works a second look.
the enlightment turns on "itself"?
can one really pose this question with such tranquil specularity?
isn't that what happens once the question is posed thus?
aren't we prohibited form doing so by
the blinding dark light of the last 80 odd years.
if something of the enlightment is to come, will it be in the speculative mode? wouldn't that be obscene?
( what does one miss - and efface - by calling derrida's text 'speculative'? well, the writing...)
I'm not sure the 'enlightenment turning on itself' is very useful, and Eagleton is not the one to ask about Derrida let us hope it goes without saying.
Recall Barthes (if not inclined to read Blanchot), particularly where he mentions "The Pensive Text" as that which is always "keeping in reserve some ultimate meaning...which is not annulment, but on the contrary its recognition...signifier of the inexpressible, not the unexpressed" (SZ 216), as well as the preceeding pages on "The Three Points of Entry" (rhetoric, castration and economy)...which of course all boil down to "economy' in a sense. 'Economy,' as you'll recall, was not a minor theme in Derrida's writing.
Matt and Hum
I am not sure what Mark meant by The "Enlightenment turning on itself" but I took it to simply mean that reason, philosophy or even critique itself (broadly understood) has come to reflect on its own possibility. In other words, the enlightenment shines its light on itself and asks for an account. Somewhere in the later writings Derrida talks about a more enlightened enlightenment, one that admits to its own historicity.
The other way I take the phrase is in the Heideggerian sense of Metaphysics having exhausted (and completed) its possibilities in the age of technology. Of course, mapping this Heideggarian theme on to Derrida cannot be done in a reductive way, but I am merely using it for the purpose of posing a question: Can deconstruction provide us with the tools for a politics? Can it be more than just a very cool way of reading great books?
Matt, I think you are right that the themes of economy, castration and rhetoric point to a certain notion of economy,of what is "proper" to the oikos.
re turning, Alain, I'd basically agree with your take. Just to add, not 'turn on itself' in the sense of an attack (like when yr pet dog turns on you), no, not that at all; instead, it turns towards itself, using its own resources, it turns its own resources on itself. Or when you speak of something turning on its own axis.
why OWN possibility, OWN axis, OWN resources?
what if the re of re-turning knocked it of its axis? if the pet dog didn't.
'beginning and end do not rhyme.'
holderlin, who is not speaking only of poetry, but of history. not a specular history which wheels along on its own axis, but a finite history, delivered to ( and through )interruption, exposed to the outside, to the first damn dog that comes dashing along.
while holderlin's boyhood friend hegel could state that death could be looked in the face and sublated, holderlin 'saw' that death couldn't be looked in the face because it has no proper face ( 'is nothing but the sneer of its capital error' as blanchot notes )and that such finitude is the caesura of the speculative ( of owness.)
holderlin also wrote that what is most one's own, most proper to one, is what is the strangest and the most difficult.
does this provide tools for politics? at one time heidegger thought it was the task of philosophy to found (a) politics. i wonder if we have taken the measure of that disaster.
i don't think derrida is about finding a cool way to read 'books'. it is hard, hardly cool. if one insists on finding tools in the books, how else to do so than by reading the writing, not by hanging one's hat and hope on the first signified(tool) one can lay one's hands on but really getting caught in the writing. as matt said above, by countersigning the text.
of course one could refuse countersigning and prefer a politics of one's own.
Hum and Matt
I do not think we are really that far apart in our take on Derrida. Perhaps my use of language is a bit careless. Of course Derrida's work is one of careful reading, and re-reading, of the texts he chooses to examine. When I read Derrida for the first time 20 years ago, I experienced "getting caught in the writing" and "countersigning the text." I understand that by talking the way I am - appropriating Derrida for a politics - is to perform a violence to his texts. And it is probably not the best way to approach them.
Nevertheless, as you read Derrida reading Plato, Hegel, Kant, or Levinas, one cannot help but think something radical is being undertaken. Not only did I experience the vertigo of deconstruction, but one starts to loose the sense in which commentary ends and the text itself begins. Once we loose sight of who is signing and who is writing, the text reveals a new way of viewing experience itself. In this respect Derrida never really left the terrain of phenomenology, revealing the brilliance being coming to presence.
I guess once I underwent the initial shock of reading this body of work, I felt there must be an impact on the way we look at ethics, politics, the economy. But it is on these topics that I have always struggled. And I think Derrida was at a loss as well. I recently picked up Rogues, and one can see that Derrida was attempting to enter unfamiliar terrain, attempting to work his way through the discourse of terrorism. It is reminiscent of his essay and exchange on Apartheid in the mid 80's. You can see he is straining both his own discourse and that of conventional politics. I think if he had lived we may have seen something radically different in terms of political theory, but as it is, we must pick up and write in his spirit. Perhaps the spectre of deconstruction haunts us, calling us to respond to the promise.
pas au dela has posted a poem by celan.
everything to do with this discussion of philosophy and politics, derrida and badiou.
badiou's refuses - as mark notes - to conceed anything to the language in which his thought is presented, and indeed will precisely fault derrida for being too caught up with language. because it is so caught such thought cannot grasp 'the vanishing points' ( or in badiou's terms 'the indiscernables' ).
as you know, badiou would rather base philosophy on the matheme which would allow for 'seizing','ratifying', and 'gathering' the multiple indiscernables.
what is worth noting - and this is what i would like to propose for discussion - is that in order to seperate the matheme from language, badiou has to seperate philosophy from poetry.
this is explicitly stated in badiou's 'manifesto for philosophy' where indeed the expulsion of the poets from philosophy is made THE very condition of philosophy. for badiou the 'age of poets' that began with holderlin has to end and it is celan - according to badiou - that brings it to a close.
why the need to repeat the 'inaugural' scene of philosophy, plato expelling the poets from philosophy and the republic? what is repeated here of philosophy and politics?
badiou calls his philosophy a 'platonism of the multiple', but it is a multiple that can be 'seized' and 'gathered'.
whereas for derrida, differance and writing cannot be gathered...
and the poem? as celan says, 'a poem is solitary and on its way, on its way toward an other...'
what is politics if not ways of being-with, being-to...?
badiou has to seperate philosophy from poetry.
this is explicitly stated in badiou's 'manifesto for philosophy' where indeed the expulsion of the poets from philosophy is made THE very condition of philosophy.
This would indeed be a fascinating subject for discussion. Perhaps beyond my scope. But maybe we could localise that passage in Badiou you mention, and start from there, maybe from a new post.
Plato, the expeller of the poet, is also a philosopher who uses always the figurative, the persona, the parable.
The expulsion of the poetic, as of a poison - surely this recurrent philosophical trope has been the subject of a book?
The matheme - doesn't this have a poetry of its own, and the aspiration to a philosophy that takes place in mathemes isn't this a dream of crystalline purity/ cold beauty?
"The expulsion of the poetic, as of a poison - surely this recurrent philosophical trope has been the subject of a book?"
well, at least of one remarkable essay. i'm thinking of derrida's 'plato's pharmacy' and the question of the 'pharmakon.'
in posing the question of the expulsion of poetry, of the poets, which is explicit in badiou and plato, i'm wondering about the philosophical - and political if you will - stakes of this repeated expulsion.
was hoping that some bloggers who take up badiou - and consider derrida 'weak' - might want to join the discussion and say something about the price to pay for badiou's 'strong' position.
you're quite right in pointing out the return of the figural in plato, and the aspirations of the matheme to a certain purity.
that's precisely the crux of the 'problem'. when plato expels the poets he is in effect expelling the 'mimos' ( mimetic beings ), and seperating - decisively - philosophy from mimesis. but what if this decision regarding mimesis is feigned? what if, indeed, it is impossible to decide the fate of mimesis, because - as plato knows full well - it has no essence?
does badiou fall into the trap of thinking that it is possible to decide on mimesis? can one begin to discern why 'derrida' so bothers so many...?
i'm posing these questions rather bluntly to be sure.
"The expulsion of the poetic, as of a poison - surely this recurrent philosophical trope has been the subject of a book?"
'Plato's Pharmacy', of course, and, in a different idiom, Iris Murdoch's essay 'The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato banished the Artists' (collected in Existentialists and Mystics). There's also a book by Martin Warner on this topic, entitled (I think) Philosophical Finesse, though I suspect you wouldn't find it especially congenial.
Some belated follow-up here:
http://pasaudela.blogspot.com/20...08/
hunters.html
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