Re: [microsound] Derrida Article in N.Y.T.

[Phil Thomson <philthom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

That's one of the smartest obits I've seen. For one 
thing, it doesn't use the ridiculous term "deconstructionism" (a term 
which cries out to be deconstructed!), or posit Derrida as the "father" 
of that "movement".

BTW, I was led to understand there was a page on the TWiki for the Derrida 
Memorial. Where is it?

P


> Hi,
>
> There's a good article on Derrida in the New York Times. You'll probably
> need to log in , here are a couple paragraphs for those who don't want to:
>
>
> Mr. Derrida's name is most closely associated with the often cited but
> rarely understood term "deconstruction." Initially formulated to define a
> strategy for interpreting sophisticated written and visual works,
> deconstruction has entered everyday language. When responsibly understood,
> the implications of deconstruction are quite different from the misleading
> clichés often used to describe a process of dismantling or taking things
> apart. The guiding insight of deconstruction is that every structure - be it
> literary, psychological, social, economic, political or religious - that
> organizes our experience is constituted and maintained through acts of
> exclusion. In the process of creating something, something else inevitably
> gets left out.
>
> These exclusive structures can become repressive - and that repression comes
> with consequences. In a manner reminiscent of Freud, Mr. Derrida insists
> that what is repressed does not disappear but always returns to unsettle
> every construction, no matter how secure it seems. As an Algerian Jew
> writing in France during the postwar years in the wake of totalitarianism on
> the right (fascism) as well as the left (Stalinism), Mr. Derrida understood
> all too well the danger of beliefs and ideologies that divide the world into
> diametrical opposites: right or left, red or blue, good or evil, for us or
> against us. He showed how these repressive structures, which grew directly
> out of the Western intellectual and cultural tradition, threatened to return
> with devastating consequences. By struggling to find ways to overcome
> patterns that exclude the differences that make life worth living, he
> developed a vision that is consistently ethical.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/opinion/14taylor.html?th
>
>  Bill


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: Phil Thomson
: home: http://www.sfu.ca/~pthomson
: label: http://centibel.org/
: group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/databenders/
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