Apology for Earlier Derrida Post
Oct. 14th, 2004 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zalenaHere is a very thoughtful, beautiful, elegy on the work of Jacques Derrida and it's impact on Western thought:
What Derrida Really Meant
October 14, 2004
By MARK C. TAYLOR
What makes Jacques Derrida's work so significant is the way he brought insights of major philosophers, writers, artists and theologians to bear on contemporary problems.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/opinion/14taylor.html?ex=1098774819&ei=1&en=9b457679a1624c37
This article has one of the clearest explanations of "deconstruction" I have ever encountered, and also very clearly explores the consequences of the oppositions Derrida was striving to undo. It also reminded me of my very first literary theory class, and the professor who introduced me to theory. It was like falling in love. For the most part I took to it easily, as though someone had finally thought to define things I'd known all along; but some of the ideas were a little hard for me, particularly Feminism.
One day, after a particularly heated discussion in class, the Professor asked me to accompany him back to his office. "I can see that this really upsets you," he said, "And I am trying to understand why. Could you please talk with me some more about what you're thinking?"
As we walked across the quad to his cell in one of the universities older buildings, I tried to explain how I was incredibly disappointed with Feminism as a criticism, that it didn't seem to do anything but co-opt theories already in existence and apply politics to them. "Feminism doesn't even have a vocabulary uniquely it's own. It borrows from Marxism and Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is perhaps the worst because it has so long been used to oppress women and define the feminine as something inherently sick or twisted."
He listened to my arguments, and tried to straighten things out where he was able, but mostly he just let me be upset. I even cried. Ultimately, he told me that my criticisms were valid, and that there were no easy answers to solve the problems I was running up against. "I think you should spend the rest of the summer working on this problem," he said, and recommended some books to get me started. I spent the rest of the semester working on a paper called, "A Language of One's Own" which was about the history of feminist criticism and the fundamental failure of language to adequately describe a feminist perspective. It was never a very good paper. I was a young scholar and unused to the rigors of logic or research. But it did me a world of good and comforted me about a subject that for some reason was causing a great deal of pain at the time. Guess what I found at the end of that rainbow? Deconstruction, which I didn't understand, and caused no end of frustration, but which also offered options for new directions in thought I could not find in other theories. It is for that, and in memory of my beloved professor, that I honor Derrida. No doubt he will be considered one of the greatest thinkers of the 20C, particularly once Academia decides to stop deliberately misunderstanding the realms of possibility that exist within his thought.
An article about my professor, who is no longer at CU: http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=7371
S
What Derrida Really Meant
October 14, 2004
By MARK C. TAYLOR
What makes Jacques Derrida's work so significant is the way he brought insights of major philosophers, writers, artists and theologians to bear on contemporary problems.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/opinion/14taylor.html?ex=1098774819&ei=1&en=9b457679a1624c37
This article has one of the clearest explanations of "deconstruction" I have ever encountered, and also very clearly explores the consequences of the oppositions Derrida was striving to undo. It also reminded me of my very first literary theory class, and the professor who introduced me to theory. It was like falling in love. For the most part I took to it easily, as though someone had finally thought to define things I'd known all along; but some of the ideas were a little hard for me, particularly Feminism.
One day, after a particularly heated discussion in class, the Professor asked me to accompany him back to his office. "I can see that this really upsets you," he said, "And I am trying to understand why. Could you please talk with me some more about what you're thinking?"
As we walked across the quad to his cell in one of the universities older buildings, I tried to explain how I was incredibly disappointed with Feminism as a criticism, that it didn't seem to do anything but co-opt theories already in existence and apply politics to them. "Feminism doesn't even have a vocabulary uniquely it's own. It borrows from Marxism and Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is perhaps the worst because it has so long been used to oppress women and define the feminine as something inherently sick or twisted."
He listened to my arguments, and tried to straighten things out where he was able, but mostly he just let me be upset. I even cried. Ultimately, he told me that my criticisms were valid, and that there were no easy answers to solve the problems I was running up against. "I think you should spend the rest of the summer working on this problem," he said, and recommended some books to get me started. I spent the rest of the semester working on a paper called, "A Language of One's Own" which was about the history of feminist criticism and the fundamental failure of language to adequately describe a feminist perspective. It was never a very good paper. I was a young scholar and unused to the rigors of logic or research. But it did me a world of good and comforted me about a subject that for some reason was causing a great deal of pain at the time. Guess what I found at the end of that rainbow? Deconstruction, which I didn't understand, and caused no end of frustration, but which also offered options for new directions in thought I could not find in other theories. It is for that, and in memory of my beloved professor, that I honor Derrida. No doubt he will be considered one of the greatest thinkers of the 20C, particularly once Academia decides to stop deliberately misunderstanding the realms of possibility that exist within his thought.
An article about my professor, who is no longer at CU: http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=7371
S
