What exactly are you interested in here? Derrida's politics? Or the politics of Derrida's philosophy? To my mind, they are most definitely not identical (just as Heidegger's politics are not identical with the political import of his philosophy).
pollian | Homepage | 05.11.05 - 10:21 pm | #

Yes, certainly that's an important distinction. I was merely responding to something particular, but you're right those two examples do seem to refer to different sorts of politics. Derrida was definitely a moderate liberal in some respects. (Nietzsche would have been a boring conservative.) I would agree that the "political import" of his "philosophy" is something entirely other, harder to judge, and ultimately more interesting, if that's what you're suggesting. And yet the tension between the two is also rather fascinating..
Matt | Homepage | 05.11.05 - 10:34 pm | #

But: the acceptance of such a distinction surely involves a total rejection of 'Derrida's thought' as wrong, while not necessarily preventing an examination. No?
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.12.05 - 3:40 pm | #

Why?
Matt | Homepage | 05.12.05 - 4:31 pm | #

Yes. Why?

My own sense is that the politics of the philosophy are vastly more interesting than the rather conventional leftism of the late philosopher.

In other words, the distinction was meant to enrich the examination, not to denude it.
pollian | Homepage | 05.12.05 - 5:17 pm | #

Because the neat distinction - here is the practise of academic philosophy and here is journalism, love letters, postcards, bumper stickers - implies and requires a highly intentional instrumentalist deployment of language and 'thought.' We have to be able to say 'oh, that's not part of my philosophical output, that's just my signature on this Fedex slip, outside the text and untouched by the rest.'

I mean, how, in Derridean terms, would this distinction be made? Where would the line be drawn between the professional practise of philosophy and other uses of language? And how would a person change heads, and the charachter of what spukt in them, at the moment of changing hats?

Additionally, you would have to assume that the discourse in which Philosopher/Journalist immerses himself from between 10:30 and 2 in the afternoon, and that into which he swims from 2 to 4:15, are separated by some watertight barrier; that they have been isolated historically forever. That a word/concept like 'messiah' is voided and disinfected before being transported from the synagogue to the Strasbourg lecture hall.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 4:30 am | #

Sorry is this appears twice, I think I pressed preview and then closed window.

Because the distinction - here is the practise of academic philosophy, and here are love letters, journalism, postcards - implies and requires a highly intentional instrumentalist deployment of language and 'thought.' To make it we have to assume obviousness and simplicity in the function of language such as 'oh that's not part of my philosophiscal output, that's just my signature on this fedex slip.'

How, in Derridean terms, would this distinction be made? One would additionally need to assume that the discourse in which Philosopher/Journalist immerses himself between 10:30 and 10:55 and that in which he swims from 11:00 to 1 are separated by a watertight barrier and have been isolated historically forever. That 'messiah' is a rubber ducky voided, dried and disinfected before being transported from the synagogue to the Strabourg lecture hall.

So how does someone change heads, and what spukt in them, when changing hats?
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 4:40 am | #

Sorry Matt. Please delete one of these comments.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 4:43 am | #

Here is how I would make the distinction (in Derridean terms)--provisionally. The distinction would never be allowed to calcify in rigid boundaries. The boundary separating philosophical statements from personal statements would be permeable, and every effort at tracing that line would be a positing rather than a finalizing. But the posited line would be more than adequate to the compare and contrast-style task of examining the relationship between philosophical and personal politics.

This is how I read Derrida, not as dissolving the boundary between all binaries and all distinctions, but as reminding as that at all times those boundaries must be susceptible to dissolution (even as we use them for our intellectual work).
pollian | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 9:01 am | #

In Derridian terms there can be no strict apartheid separating his personal positions from his philosophic texts. That said, we can of course observe the context in which an utterance or philosopheme is discussed. What is interesting about Derrida is that his early texts ( Speech and Phenomena, Of Grammatology, Writting and Difference) give the feeling of something radical, the start of some sort of Revolutionary politics, even if it is unclear what that would look like. As he got older, and started writing about social and political themes more explicitly, his views sound like Habermas or even Rawls. I think for those of us who take his work seriously this disconnect should give us pause. And Zizek has been good at pointing out the "conservative" or quitetistic streak in his thought, that undecidability can lead to an indecisiveness or passivity.
alain | 05.13.05 - 12:42 pm | #

Okay, but it seems to me this is to judge Derrida's work somewhat frivolous, inconsequential, not of any particular importance, and best noted in passing and ignored rather than dpeloyed, used, taken seriously and +put into practise+.

It seems a common take on Derrida: admire him but don't believe it, don't be convinced, don't adopt his propositions as actively meaningful. One can discuss Derrida but not Derrideanly; one doesn't imitate him to the point where what his work seeks to disturb +is+ actually disturbed, really disturbed, so that you can never again say well Heidegger's Nazism and his philosophy exist in different universes, and so one need not prove in any detail how the latter is incompatible/compatible with the former. Because while a derridean approach might call this barrier into question in the course of deconstruction, that's just for fun. Just playing. We know the certainties still stand and we honour them the more for enduring all the Derridean handball we play against them.

Which may be your point - even many JD-acolytes point - I don't know.

I don't have any problem with that judgement, of course. Just it seems ironic to bother with Derrida's 'thought' or Derrida's 'politics' or 'the politics of Derrida's thought' if this is how little one can make of any of it, how little one can use his work to contribute to thinking or politics. If the philosophical works he deconstructed reconstruct themselves instantly, the way Wile E Coyote's head pops out of the anvil shape again, and sit comfortably on the shelf next to his own, then he just wasn't very important +from the pov of politics+. Because Derrida didn't really introduce many new propositions to philosophy, but those he did introduce are really incompatible with a host of prior assumptions such as those encrusted in Heidegger and cannot co-exist with them. I personally am persuaded by Derrida's principle innovations, really persuaded, to the point of believing them accurate, and bearing them in mind when approaching texts, but I can't support them better than he did and I find it easy to see the rejection also. But what sometimes confuses me is the attempt to just soften Derrida into nothing new for the purposes of appreciating his thought happily beside the work of thinkers he deconstructed restored to their undeconstructed forms.

If its basically not important that these boundaries upon which, say, the quick version of the de-Nazification of Heidegger's philosophy depends, are not only historically constructed but obstacles and deceptions of a kind, - if we can approach them just as if they were as obvious as can be and Derrida never noticed anything with regard to them - what do we need Derrida for? he was principally a radical reader of the western philosophical cannon. If we strip him of any success in that vein, and instead appoint him to one of the thrones there, and read him and his fellows as if he never existed, he becomes sca
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 1:16 pm | #

Sorry, Alain, your comment appeared while I was writing the above reply to pollian, which the haloscan has truncated, happily enough.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 1:18 pm | #

I think you'[re right alain and would add that the disconnect is also a connect, and that the energy the examination of it has to run through that circuit both ways, from what is apparently subversive in his books, to what is banal in his pronouncements, and back again, until we find...something. I think the something we find is 'genre' actually, the apolitical, anti-political pressures and imperatives of 'philosophy' per se.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 2:15 pm | #

I would strongly disagree with Alphonse's characterization of my argument as a trivialization of Derrida.

The subversive, disruptive element of deconstruction was always just one of its moments. To take Derrida's clearest expression of this, archive fever is both what compels us to create distinctions/origins/narratives and what dissolves those things from the inside out.

What I was suggesting is that the personal/philosophical distinction would be one valuable avenue of examination (even if the distinction itself does violence to the an-archic nature of language/truth).

The an-archival impulse is certainly not just "for fun" but it is also not the only thing that can be said.
pollian | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 2:27 pm | #

Part of the truncated post, I'll add, was that I am aware of exaggerating to perhaps absurdity the consequences of your position, just in an attempt to blow up and make visible what I think is going on in the issue at hand. And so I don't mean to accuse you of trivializing JD- in any case, Derrida may actually be trivial, this is the issue ar hand is it not, that the upshot of his thought, when put to the test of practise, apparently is banality and triviality in his own case - but of pointing out that I think that way lies a defanged deconstruction.

"disruptive element of deconstruction was always just one of its moments."

Yes, but the only really new one, and the only one which makes itself available for translation into realms beyond academic publishing. The search for the 'politics of Derrida's thought' begins and ends there, I think?

Your point about mal d'archive is pointing precisely there, to the centrality of this subversive impulse - its desperate lunge - and that everything is stacked against it. If this is not to be a kind of despairing fatalism - which it may be, I can't decide - it must be because the two vectors of the mal are antagonistic, serving different ends, overdetermined by material reality, with a relation of shifting dominance, and because it is possible through will to make one dominant, or at least this possibility is imaginable.

And 'philosophy,' of all houses of cards, which quarantines Heidegger from his Nazism, is surely one of the most problematic fungal growths of enlightenment inventory-mishigas, not one of the least.

(I don't mean to dismiss or even challenge you views, btw. Just to explore them from this angle, or rather explore JD from an angle suggested by them.)
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 3:08 pm | #

just two series of questions:
1. i'm sure everyone commenting above is very 'conversant' with derrida's writing ( though the frequent use of 'derridean' makes one wonder ),nevertheless, wouldn't it be worthwhile to actually cite, examine specific texts? would such a practice (or its absence )engage something 'political'?
2. from what place does one pose the question of derrida's 'politics'? from a place that would determine politics and the political from philosophical foundations? or from one that would seek to have nothing to do with philosophical (over)determinations of the political?

taking up some of the above comments -- zizek's comment on derrida and passivity require at least thinking through what derrida wrote of passivity, particularly regarding blanchot. waggish's comment that derrida only alludes to the grey area between 'binary oppositions', makes me think of baudelaire's "save the grey, save the nuance." the least one can say about derrida is that his writing is attentive to the nuance, the fold,to singularities. wouldn't this require thinking the 'political' other than in terms of essences? and also that existence isn't essentially political?
hum | 05.13.05 - 3:53 pm | #

Interesting discussion. I don't have to time to add much at the moment as I'm busy earning a paycheck, but would second hum's suggestion that a useful place to begin might be D.'s own writing, whether "on" Heidegger or the need to complicate some sort of theory/practice binary.

Hum is not myself, just for the record.
Matt | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 4:14 pm | #

Remembering this from a while back...
Matt | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 4:38 pm | #

Spivak has some remarks here, I believe, that may be of interest.
Anonymous | 05.13.05 - 4:53 pm | #

Recourse to specific textual moments seems to me a good idea in terms of precision, though it carries the risk of atomizing this debate (I post a passage, you post a passage, and then the terms of argument shift to determining which passage to emphasize.)

As a first step, let me quote the passage I had in mind when I adduced Archive Fever:

The trouble de l'archive stems from a mal d'archive. We are en mal d'archive: in need of archives. Listening to the French idiom, and in it the attribute en mal de, to be en mal d'archive can mean something else than to suffer from a sickness, from a trouble or from what the noun mal might name. It is to burn with a passion. It is never to rest, interminably, from searching for the archive right where it slips away. It is to run after the archive, even if there's too much of it, right where something in it anarchives itself
pollian | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 5:03 pm | #

I don't think snippets are very helpful at all. They are really just vast erasures disguised as spotlights.

Nor can I imagine it legitimate to seek politics in philosophers via philosophy's own roadmap: that's circular.

Placing that option as the only alternative to an historical approach seems to be an assertion disguised as a question. We would probably all agree JD would have rejected that assertion - these aren't alternatives; neither is strictly possible - but maybe not as persuasively as would be possible.

But, anyhoo, imagine all of Cosmopolites...encore un effort! reproduced here.

We see Derrida putting hospitality through its philosophical paces. A lot of ideological work, digging in european middle ages. All this is building toward the appearance, the drumroll and unveiling, of the Kant quote.

And the punchline is the ostentatious announcement, after the unveiling, that 'this isn't the place' to discuss it. The whole thing is dropped abruptly. Not the place for philosophy. Matters are a bit too urgent to waste time with the detour into Kant, or the middle ages.

This is a fairly consistent tic, gesture, shtick of JD's when he is addressing people concerned with political action. At some point he says, 'well, this isn't the place to talk about this.' I'd suggest he believed that, and was repeating the performance of the drama of the marginality of philosophy to the urgent concerns of human affairs.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 5:47 pm | #

It strikes me as a common yet important frustration you're voicing Alphonse to be sure, but it's simply not enough when D. has in fact produced nuanced readings of Kant, especially in his later years.

I have to agree though, on a visceral level. Witness this tick of his in Acts of Religion when discussing feminism in particular. One could reasonably get erm ticked off about it, as it seems like an evasion or indulgence almost. But then it's not like he closes off certain possibilities; rather it's in the spirit of a certain openness I think one could argue (perhap open to the most "vulgar" Marxism, even).

If anything he was deeply and conscientiously attuned to the 'performative' dimension, whether in "urgent affairs" or Kant's day.
Matt | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 6:30 pm | #

I think I've been vague.

I like that sudden 'oh forget it' thing. And of course its just in certain situations - those to which D is invited to bring philosophy to bear on specific plans on actions, in the case of cosmopolites, the actions to alleviate the problems of sans papiers and refugees. He says, 'oops, sorry, really can't. This isn;t the place for what I do.' It's theatrics surely, and has what seems to me to be a fairly direct import which may have been pretty sincere.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.13.05 - 7:05 pm | #

Derrida is pseudo-philo-intellectual aristoldeuropean douche par par excellence! He is not serious! He has no sense of play!

Surely that settles things.
Anonymous | 05.13.05 - 9:19 pm | #

Ok I confess, that was me.
Matt | 05.14.05 - 12:10 am | #

No, +I'm brian+ and so is my wife!
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.14.05 - 5:15 am | #

"when D. has in fact produced nuanced readings of Kant, especially in his later years"

Of course, but for whom? Where? To what end? He didn't produce them at sans papiers rallies. He didn't produce them as journalism.

All my comments are under the heading: Politics? and in attempted answer to the initial kvestchun, which seemed to be what is the relationship between Derrida's actual political activity and what could be vaguely concieved as the political implications of such things as his detailed readings of Kant (or Marx or whomever).

I was trying to point out that Derrida performed a little play about this, frequently, in which his detailed readings of Kant are hooked off the stage of politics like a bad comedian. By himself.

So at least it seems that Derrida himself felt he oughtn't waste the time of activists with his readings of Kant. Which is not to say he thought there was nothing in there useful for those disposed to search, only that he seemed to feel there were better, faster, more important things for people trying to alleviate the difficulties of people in certain situations to be doing. Which is to say, JD's view on this whole question has a pragmatic slant: perhaps one can usefully separate the political implications of a particular philosophical production from politics in the world per se, perhaps one cannot, does it matter? To whom ought this matter? Whom ought this concern?

That's a political question and a stance. It's not for those who would seek the political implications in philosophy in order to produce more philosophy and in doing so produce less politics. I think JD, despite being principally a producer of philosophy- product, ultimately sided with the former position. 'Philosophy has no place here'': not meaning, its inimical, its totally irrelevant, just so so low on the list of players suitable for the 'main stage' of the citizenry's concerns.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.14.05 - 7:39 am | #

I take the "philosophy has no place here" tic, as you say, to be doing a rather different kind of work. It is more a case of "by indirection find direction out." It doesn't remove philosophy from the stage of politics, it uses philosophy to enrich politics, to deepen it. It is designed not to avoid politics but to talk about politics in a new way (actually, in an older way, in the way that people did talk about politics in the years when Derrida was writing his seminal works, and Adorno and Debord led a revolution that didn't quite happen).

It moves us, in other words, from Derrida's politics to the politics of Derrida's philosophy--and thus back to the original question. As a new way to phrase it, the politics are much more interesting when they are indirect, half-hidden, disguised--rather than when they are pronouncements about the war in Iraq or the enlargement of the EU.
pollian | Homepage | 05.14.05 - 9:02 am | #

I find interesting the two different, but related, trajectories of 'faithfulness' to Derrida exhibited in most of the posts thus far.

Pollian/Matt (pardon the conflation) are faithful in the sense that they seek to rehabililate a Derriden (i.e., 'indirect, half-hidden, disguised') politics, at the loss of explicit engagement in his philosophical discourse. The (ostensible) absence of such engagement, it would seem, is precisely the mark of his political efficacy.

I find Alphonse's 'faithfulness' even more provocative, because it hints at a rehabilation of the political import of Derrida's maneuvers toward radical disruption. Interestingly, and this is what I find so provocative about it, Alphonse can apparently only do this by means of a critique that borders -- but not crosses into -- dismissal of Derrida's political importance. At their core, are all political disruptions like this, I wonder? -- which is to say, always nearly dismissable ... dismissable up until the moment, that is, until the disruption happens, typically from within (a la deconstruction), and holy hell breaks loose in a sublime moment of intensity that has the potential to cause the ruling bodies to add more structural reinforcements (as in a region prone to earthquakes) and/or police, or perhaps to provoke the momentary hesitation needed for a spontaneous eruption of freedom.
Brad | Homepage | 05.14.05 - 11:20 am | #

" I take the "philosophy has no place here" tic, as you say, to be doing a rather different kind of work. It is more a case of "by indirection find direction out." It doesn't remove philosophy from the stage of politics, it uses philosophy to enrich politics, to deepen it. It is designed not to avoid politics but to talk about politics in a new way (actually, in an older way, in the way that people did talk about politics in the years when Derrida was writing his seminal works, and Adorno and Debord led a revolution that didn't quite happen)."

I'm not clear on whether you are putting this forward as your intuition of D's intention, or your own view of the ultimate effect. If the former, I think I buy that, esp. because that allows for us to believe ultimately JD felt he was fulfilling an oft-stated commitment, somehow or other, and that seems right to me in the sheer personality sense, all content of his work aside. But I cannot say, or see, how Derrida enriches politics specifically with his philosophical work. Obedience to the construction fever of the mal is involved in making philosophy-product, regardless of what it actually contains. The question then is, on that point, is the singularity of the specific content of JD's philosophy-product an equal and opposite force?

I think he himself might have said, 'not yet. perhaps this will be up to you.'

If you mean the latter, I would say I can see that pov but I'd argue that he must have know how many meters this would fly over the heads of the audience he tended to entertain in this fashion; if that matters (I think it does) I would say, the effort could only have been a very partial success (to date anyhow. Again, we could make it more successful, with effort ourselves, and I think this is something JD liked to leave readers and audiences highly conscious of.)
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.14.05 - 12:19 pm | #

I would highly recommend Philosophy in a Time of Terror to fill in the gaps between those two thinkers philosophy and politics and to better recognize the connections between the two--its ridiculous to seperate the philosophy from the politics (and vice versa)...
Thivai | Homepage | 05.14.05 - 1:52 pm | #

"But I cannot say, or see, how Derrida enriches politics specifically with his philosophical work"

I should have written, 'enriches +his own politics+ (that is, socialist politics in the current conditions) specifically with his philosophical work.' Broadly, one could say he enriches 'politics' with philosophy but this would require the invention of 'politics'as a fairy on the level of 'philosophy' - a gesture I'd fight tooth and talon.
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.14.05 - 2:22 pm | #

Yes, I'd agree with you there Alphonse. Indeed that gesture seemed to me very imposed on him from outside (that is, from Giovanna Borradori). Granted, she was trying to walk a line between him and Habermas (no easy feat).
Matt | Homepage | 05.14.05 - 9:25 pm | #

I am in partial agreement here. I do not think that Derrida's philosophy enriches "his own politics (that is, socialist politics in the current conditions)." It is always an evasion of that. But an evasion, as I said before designed to enrich (and in response to Alphonse's posited distinction--I think the enrichment is both his intention and the actual effect.)

Now--and here we seem to touch upon a real difference of perspective--the question is: an enrichment of what, if not "his own politics." Well, something broader that the term politics still designates. To my mind, this does not mean turning politics into "a fairy on the level of philosophy." It means following the Marxist lead and restoring politics to the absolute horizon of all philosophical thought--the human implications of philosophical investigation. There is enough of Marx in Derrida for that project to linger.

It is only at this point that the question of the content of Derrida's philosophy (as politics) can be interrogated in its own right--is it progressive and radical (as someone ilke Jean-Joseph Goux would make it) or conservative (as de Man makes it) or purely anarchic (as Alphonse seems to be suggesting).
pollian | Homepage | 05.15.05 - 10:39 am | #

indeed, and enough of Hegel in Marx.
Anonymous | 05.16.05 - 10:39 am | #

Perhaps I joint reading of Badiou's new book, Metapolitics, in October?
Matt | Homepage | 05.16.05 - 2:09 pm | #

As Matt already knows, as far as I'm concerned Derrida is a traditional Orthodox hist. materialist with a certain idiosyncratic style and focus. I agree with pollian that the whole project of Derrida is to restore and reinvigorate - or buttress or something - the Marxist project. I think my disagreement is about how this is gone about and the role D.'s philosophy product is playing in his efforts toward that end.

As a reader, JD especially interests me as a follower of Macherey, and I think in many ways the nature and tactical quality of JD's application of Marx is a lot clearer if assumed to be following very strictly Macherey's theory and at the same time supplying it, and imitating his practise, but at once on the atomic and universal levels rather than intermediate molecular and planetary levels to which Macherey applied himself.

I do think there is an extreme-left-marxist, that is 'anarchist,' character to JD's whole project, the whole thing that is, the complex of 'philosophy-producer' 'public intellectual' 'entertainer' 'novelist' [post card is strictly a philosophical novel] and - this JD hat is neglected but I think really important - 'educator.'
AlphonseVanWorden | Homepage | 05.17.05 - 8:53 am | #

It's lamentable of course, that so many American "disciples", so much by turns pragmatic or new agey writing sought, a bit too enthusiastically, to imitate him, and then proceeded to sound so silly over time (not to mention the whole deMan affair) and to some degree curse his project and name. The analytics would have it that the long fall of the PC police (they don't exist of course, or only as a trend (beyond) academia and into culture), whose mythical, smug, habitual (as if self-evident) invocation of the sociology category-speak... "patriarchy" "gender" even "capitalism"...also seems to have calcified into a mere defensive cartoon or unintending self-parody...signals the fall of Derrida as well. But they are thinking wishfully (as usual), as well.

The 'anarchy' in Derrida seems to have its origins in Blanchot primarily, it seems to me.
Matt | Homepage | 05.17.05 - 12:11 pm | #

http://rob.ifanything.org/detrim...? p=426#comments
Anonymous | 05.20.05 - 4:31 pm | #