[MD] Deconstruction (What Derrida Really Meant)

[Ron Kulp]

 David M,
I've been looking at Ludwig Wittgenstein too, whats your opinion on his philosophy?

-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org [mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of David M
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 3:08 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] Deconstruction (What Derrida Really Meant)

Hi Ron

I have thought for a long time that an acquaintance with Derrida's writing is an object lesson in what DQ can do.

Regards
David M


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Kulp" <RKulp at ebwalshinc.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 4:26 PM
Subject: [MD] Deconstruction (What Derrida Really Meant)


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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