Re: deconstructionist-founder deceases: pancreatic c

From: Edward G. Nilges (spinoza1111_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 10/29/04 

Date: 28 Oct 2004 22:46:23 -0700

robtcohen@aol.com.spam.no (Robert Cohen) wrote in message news:<20041010095453.24357.00001691@mb-m16.aol.com>...
> i just read an interesting obituary about the very controversial professor
> derrida in the online los angeles times
>
> he was apparently a pushcart over-turner ("paradigm" breaker?)

No, he was simply a person who read in a way that is unusual today:
deeply. He found that most texts depend on their reverse thesis in a
subtle way. In a sense this is trivial. If we all agreed on
everything, there would be no need for books other than fiction.

But it can be used as an opening to get people who disagree to agree.
In the medical field and in the patient's world, it might constitute a
way to look at "disease".

In other words, "deconstruct" your disease by noting whether it has
any relation to health. Many Eastern thinkers believe that "cancer"
may be "health" because the body is wise and protests against (for
example) an environmental stress or smoking by something we call a
"growth", but which is in the context of cancer not "good", like the
"growth" of a child.

>
> please read the obit, and ...think....is the death-cause itself
> philosophically-related or un-related ?

I think (and I don't have good sources) that like many French people,
Derrida was a smoker and that may have caused the cancer that killed
him.

>
> hey, mho is that "everything inter-relates"-- i'm just trying to stimulate
> thinking/insight about c

No, but he would say, trivially, that there is no "purity" in the way
we imagine it.

In a way he was saying things that good Americans just know because of
our political culture, in which we don't believe any institution is
perfect and needs checks and balances.

>
> when i last took a couple of education school graduate courses in the mid
> 1970s, "deconstructionism" was not yet mentioned/formally recognized, and i've
> been ....uhhh....handicapped yet fascinated in being on the "out"

It was at that time almost unheard of in part because American
universities conducted a *kulturkampf* against Continental philosophy,
because of what was thought to be Herbert Marcuse's bad influence.

Marcuse said that societies run on "surplus repression" which is our
internalized unwillingness to enjoy life, and I interpret sr as the
false idea that if you sacrifice a licit pleasure, you will
automatically be a better person.

To Marcuse, it's people like de Maupassant's hero in his short story
The Necklace. A poor woman is invited to a fancy ball, but has now
jewels. A wealthy cousin loans her "diamonds".

Cinderella loses the jewels and is too ashamed to tell her cousin of
her stupdity, so she borrows a huge sum to replace the diamonds.

The heroine, Cinderella, then works overtime at lousy jobs for TWENTY
YEARS to pay the money-lender.

At the end of this period, Cinderella, a grey, bowed, exhausted woman,
meets her cousin on the street, elegant and
well-preserved...well-rested. They get to talking about the ball long
ago, and without revealing her loss, Cinderella tells her friend how
beautiful the jewels were.

Her friend says, but, my dear, I thought you knew. They were costume
jewels: paste!

Marcuse's thesis was that society in fact runs because enough of us
are sold some sort of bill of goods.

Derrida, I think, would buy this but be skeptical about neatly
reversing it, and concluding that we should kick back and not be taken
in. For he'd point out that at times we have to kid ourselves to
survive.