[MD] Deconstruction (What Derrida Really Meant)

[Heather Perella]

Interesting.  Reminds me of masks, and he gave those
childern masks, mentioned at the end of the article. 
Many cultures wore masks during rituals.  Mask=analogy

thanks.

snow, snow, snow, the day is snow,
SA


> What Derrida Really Meant
> By MARK C. TAYLOR
> 
> Published: October 14, 2004
> 
>  Along with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin
> Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, who died last week in
> Paris at the age of 74, will be remembered as one of
> the three most important philosophers of the 20th
> century. No thinker in the last 100 years had a
> greater impact than he did on people in more fields
> and different disciplines. Philosophers,
> theologians, literary and art critics,
> psychologists, historians, writers, artists, legal
> scholars and even architects have found in his
> writings resources for insights that have led to an
> extraordinary revival of the arts and humanities
> during the past four decades. And no thinker has
> been more deeply misunderstood.
> 
> To people addicted to sound bites and overnight
> polls, Mr. Derrida's works seem hopelessly obscure.
> It is undeniable that they cannot be easily
> summarized or reduced to one-liners. The obscurity
> of his writing, however, does not conceal a code
> that can be cracked, but reflects the density and
> complexity characteristic of all great works of
> philosophy, literature and art. Like good French
> wine, his works age well. The more one lingers with
> them, the more they reveal about our world and
> ourselves. 
> 
> What makes Mr. Derrida's work so significant is the
> way he brought insights of major philosophers,
> writers, artists and theologians to bear on problems
> of urgent contemporary interest. Most of his
> infamously demanding texts consist of careful
> interpretations of canonical writers in the Western
> philosophical, literary and artistic traditions -
> from Plato to Joyce. By reading familiar works
> against the grain, he disclosed concealed meanings
> that created new possibilities for imaginative
> expression. 
> 
> 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.
> 
> And yet, supporters on the left and critics on the
> right have misunderstood this vision. Many of Mr.
> Derrida's most influential followers appropriated
> his analyses of marginal writers, works and cultures
> as well as his emphasis on the importance of
> preserving differences and respecting others to
> forge an identity politics that divides the world
> between the very oppositions that it was Mr.
> Derrida's mission to undo: black and white, men and
> women, gay and straight. Betraying Mr. Derrida's
> insights by creating a culture of political
> correctness, his self-styled supporters fueled the
> culture wars that have been raging for more than two
> decades and continue to frame political debate.
> 
>  To his critics, Mr. Derrida appeared to be a
> pernicious nihilist who threatened the very
> foundation of Western society and culture. By
> insisting that truth and absolute value cannot be
> known with certainty, his detractors argue, he
> undercut the very possibility of moral judgment. To
> follow Mr. Derrida, they maintain, is to start down
> the slippery slope of skepticism and relativism that
> inevitably leaves us powerless to act responsibly. 
> 
> This is an important criticism that requires a
> careful response. Like Kant, Kierkegaard and
> Nietzsche, Mr. Derrida does argue that transparent
> truth and absolute values elude our grasp. This does
> not mean, however, that we must forsake the
> cognitive categories and moral principles without
> which we cannot live: equality and justice,
> generosity and friendship. Rather, it is necessary
> to recognize the unavoidable limitations and
> inherent contradictions in the ideas and norms that
> guide our actions, and do so in a way that keeps
> them open to constant questioning and continual
> revision. There can be no ethical action without
> critical reflection.
> 
> During the last decade of his life, Mr. Derrida
> became preoccupied with religion and it is in this
> area that his contribution might well be most
> significant for our time. He understood that
> religion is impossible without uncertainty. Whether
> conceived of as Yahweh, as the father of Jesus
> Christ, or as Allah, God can never be fully known or
> adequately represented by imperfect human beings. 
> 
> And yet, we live in an age when major conflicts are
> shaped by people who claim to know, for certain,
> that God is on their side. Mr. Derrida reminded us
> that religion does not always give clear meaning,
> purpose and certainty by providing secure
> foundations. To the contrary, the great religious
> traditions are profoundly disturbing because they
> all call certainty and security into question.
> Belief not tempered by doubt poses a mortal danger. 
> 
> As the process of globalization draws us ever closer
> in networks of communication and exchange, there is
> an understandable longing for simplicity, clarity
> and certainty. This desire is responsible, in large
> measure, for the rise of cultural conservatism and
> religious fundamentalism - in this country and
> around the world. True believers of every stripe -
> Muslim, Jewish and Christian - cling to beliefs
> that, Mr. Derrida warns, threaten to tear apart our
> world. 
> 
> Fortunately, he also taught us that the alternative
> to blind belief is not simply unbelief but a
> different kind of belief - one that embraces
> uncertainty and enables us to respect others whom we
> do not understand. In a complex world, wisdom is
> knowing what we don't know so that we can keep the
> future open. 
> 
> In the two decades I knew Mr. Derrida, we had many
> meetings and exchanges. In conversation, he listened
> carefully and responded helpfully to questions
> whether posed by undergraduates or colleagues. As a
> teacher, he gave freely of his time to several
> generations of students. 
> 
> But small things are the measure of the man. In
> 1986, my family and I were in Paris and Mr. Derrida
> invited us to dinner at his house in the suburbs 20
> miles away. He insisted on picking us up at our
> hotel, and when we arrived at his home he presented
> our children with carnival masks. At 2 a.m., he
> drove us back to the city. In later years, when my
> son and daughter were writing college papers on his
> work, he sent them letters and postcards of
> encouragement as well as signed copies of several of
> his books. Jacques Derrida wrote eloquently about
> the gift of friendship but in these quiet gestures -
> gestures that served to forge connections among
> individuals across their differences - we see
> deconstruction in action.
> 
> 
> Mark C. Taylor, a professor of the humanities at
> Williams College and a visiting professor of
> architecture and religion at Columbia, is the
> author, most recently, of "Confidence Games: Money
> and Markets in a World Without Redemption."
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