Jacques Derrida (1930-2004).

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). With the death of Jacques Derrida Noun 1. Jacques Derrida - French philosopher and critic (born in Algeria); exponent of deconstructionism (1930-2004)Derrida on October 8, 2004, some thirty-seven years after he first burst upon the scene in 1967 with three explosive books of philosophy, the world lost one of its deepest, most original and most provocative figures. Born of an assimilated French speaking Jewish family in Algeria on July 15, 1930, he emigrated to France to study philosophy in 1950 and in 1957 made his first visit to the United States United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , to which he would be linked by the stars. Named after the American child movie star Jackie Coogan--his birth name was "Jackie"--he was to achieve here an astonishing a��ston��ish?tr.v. as��ton��ished, as��ton��ish��ing, as��ton��ish��esTo fill with sudden wonder or amazement. See Synonyms at surprise. and long-standing celebrity perhaps even greater than in France. His death was greeted with both an outpouring of moving eulogies from his admirers and several sharp attacks on his legacy from both liberal and conservative media. On what passes for an American left these days, the New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times obituary was so mean-spirited and unfair that it elicited a letter of protest that ended up going on line, and collected the signatures of thousands of academics, architects, writers, artists and other intellectuals, while the Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, simply put a right wing hit man on the job. Scott McLemee's pieces in The Chronicle of Higher Education higher educationStudy beyond the level of secondary education. Institutions of higher education include not only colleges and universities but also professional schools in such fields as law, theology, medicine, business, music, and art. stood out as a glaring and thoughtful exception to this media attack. (1) Why the controversy? Because the genius of Derrida lay in brushing against the grain. He showed the left that Enlightenment "reason" was to a great extent an historical construction, a more scrupulous account of which would have to include a lot more about faith, contingency and context. He showed the right that "tradition" was also a construction that was a far more complex and polyvalent polyvalent/poly��va��lent/ (-va��lent) multivalent. pol��y��va��lentadj.1. Acting against or interacting with more than one kind of antigen, antibody, toxin, or microorganism.2. mix, a more scrupulous study of which would turn up a lot more than family values family valuespl.n.The moral and social values traditionally maintained and affirmed within a family. and proof that God was on your side. He did this, to boot, in a sometimes playful punning style of writing and of thinking--he was a great and early admirer of James Joyce--that violated the protocols of received academic discourse, a transgression TRANSGRESSION. The violation of a law. that even the Marxists had avoided. Those who knew Derrida know that he always had the devil in his eyes. Pursuing a program calculated to madden everyone, his care for more scrupulous renderings of reason and of tradition was greeted with unscrupulous attack. This is not without precedent. The same of course could have been said for Socrates, who had the same fatal genius for stirring up the great sleeping Athenian steed steedsee nag. , for St. Paul St. Paulas a missionary he fearlessly confronts the “perils of waters, of robbers, in the city, in the wilderness.” [N.T.: II Cor. 11:26]See : Bravery , who was run out of more towns than he could count, and for Kierkegaard, at whose burial there was actually a riot. The fuss was about something Derrida called "deconstruction," a word that has actually made it into high-popular culture and shows signs of making it into the common vocabulary. What everyone has more or less picked up about deconstruction, even if they have never read a word of it, is its destabilizing effect on our favorite texts and institutions. Derrida exposes a certain coefficient of uncertainty in all of them, which causes all of us, right and left, religious and non-religious, male and female, considerable discomfort. That was the side of deconstruction that grabbed all the headlines and made it in the 1970s a kind of academic succes de scandale. Without reading very closely, it all looked like a joyous nihilism nihilism(nī`əlĭzəm), theory of revolution popular among Russian extremists until the fall of the czarist government (1917); the theory was given its name by Ivan Turgenev in his novel Fathers and Sons (1861). . But what his critics missed (and here not reading him makes a difference!), and what never made it into the headlines, is that the destabilizing agency in his work is not a reckless relativism or an acidic skepticism but rather an affirmation, a love of what in later years he would call the "undeconstructible." The undeconstructible is the subject matter of pure and unconditional affirmation--"viens, oui, oui" (come, yes, yes)--something unimaginable and inconceivable by the current standards of imagining and conceiving. The undeconstructible is the stuff of a desire beyond desire, of a desire to affirm that goes beyond a desire to possess, the desire of something for which we can live without reserve. His critics had never heard of this because it was not reported in Time, but they did not hesitate to denounce what they had not read, like the famous signatories of the letter to Cambridge University Cambridge University,at Cambridge, England, one of the oldest English-language universities in the world. Originating in the early 12th cent. (legend places its origin even earlier than that of Oxford Univ. , who disgracefully declared Derrida's unworthy of an honorary degree because he undermined the standards of responsible scholarship--the most elemental tenet of which would surely have been first to read what you criticize in public (a close second being, if you do read it, try to understand it). It was not surprising that in the last fifteen years Derrida would start talking about religion, telling us about his "religion (without religion)," about his "prayers and tears," and about the Messiah. He would even write a kind of Jewish Confessions called "Circumfession," a haunting A Haunting is a television series on Discovery Channel that, according to its website[1] chronicles the "terrifying true stories of the paranormal told by people who experienced real-life horror tales. and enigmatic journal he kept while his beloved mother lay dying in Nice, a diary cum dialogue with St. Augustine, his equally weepy "compatriot com��pa��tri��ot?n.1. A person from one's own country.2. A colleague.[French compatriote, from Late Latin compatri ." Modern day Algeria is the ancient homeland (Numidia) of Augustine and Derrida even lived on a street called the Rue Saint Augustin. In this text, the son of these tears (Augustine/Jacques) circum-fessed (to God/ "you") about his mother (Monica/Georgette), who lay dying on the northern shores of the Mediterranean (Ostia/Nice), to which both families had emigrated. This side of Derrida even makes some admirers nervous, for they would prefer their Derrida straight up, not on what seems to them religious rocks. (2) His critics failed to see that deconstructing this, that and everything in the name of the undeconstructible is a lot like what religious people, especially Jews, would call the "critique of idols." Deconstruction, it turns out, is not nihilism; it just has high standards! Deconstruction is satisfied with nothing because it is waiting for the Messiah, which Derrida translated into the philosophical figure of the "to come" (a venir), the very figure of the future (l'avenir), of hope and expectation. Deconstruction's meditation on the contingency of our beliefs and practices--on democracy, for example--is made in the name of a promise that is astir in them, for example, of a democracy "to come" for which every existing democracy is a but a faint predecessor state A predecessor state is an established state in international law that is succeeded by a new state or states. ExampleChina . (3) But if this religious turn made his secularizing admirers nervous, it made religious people still more nervous. For after all, by the standards of the local rabbi or pastor, Derrida "rightly passes for an atheist," which gives secular deconstructors much comfort (but giving comfort is not what deconstruction was sent into the world to do). When asked why he does not say "I am" an atheist (je suis, c'est moi), he said it was because he did not know if he were, that there are many voices within him that give one another no rest, and he lacks the absolute authority of an authorial "I" to still this inner conflict. So the best he can do is to rightly pass for this or that and he is very sorry that he cannot do better. That, it seems to me, is an exquisite formula not only for what might be called Derrida's atheism atheism(ā`thē-ĭz'əm), denial of the existence of God or gods and of any supernatural existence, to be distinguished from agnosticism, which holds that the existence cannot be proved. , but also for faith. Rightly passing for this or that, a Christian, say, really is the best we can do. It reminds me of the formula put forward by Kierkegaard's "Johannes Climacus" (more Socratic figures!) who deferred saying that he "is" a Christian but is doing the best he can to "become" one. (4) Derrida visits upon all of us, Christian and Jew, religious and secular, left and right, the unsettling un��set��tle?v. un��set��tled, un��set��tling, un��set��tlesv.tr.1. To displace from a settled condition; disrupt.2. To make uneasy; disturb.v.intr. news of the radical instability of the categories to which we have such ready recourse and he raises the idea of still deeper idea of ourselves which (religiously?) confesses its lack of categories. He exposes us to the "secret" that there is no "Secret," no Big Capitalized Secret to which we have been wired up--by scientific reason, by poetic or religious revelation, or by political persuasion. We make use of such materials as have been available to us, forged in the fires of time and circumstance. We do not in some deep way know who we are or what the world is. That is not nihilism but a quasi-religious confession, the beginning of wisdom, the onset of faith and compassion. Derrida exposes the doubt that does not merely insinuate in��sin��u��ate?v. in��sin��u��at��ed, in��sin��u��at��ing, in��sin��u��atesv.tr.1. To introduce or otherwise convey (a thought, for example) gradually and insidiously. See Synonyms at suggest.2. itself into faith but that in fact constitutes faith, for faith is faith precisely in the face of doubt and uncertainty, the passion of non-knowing. Violence on the other hand arises from having a low tolerance for uncertainty so that Derrida shows us why religious violence is bad faith. On Derrida's terms, we do not know the name of what we desire with a desire beyond desire. That means leading a just life comes down to coping with such non-knowing, negotiating among the several competing names that fluctuate undecidably before us, each pretending to name what we are praying for. For we pray and weep for something that is coming, something I know not what, something nameless that in always slipping away also draws us in its train. Notes 1. These obituaries are available on line at: http://www.hydra.umn.edu/Derrida/obits.html 2. See Jacques Derrida, "Circumfession: Fifty-nine Periods and Periphrases" in Geoffrey Bennington Geoffrey Bennington is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature, Emory University, as well as a member of the International College of Philosophy. and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including , 1993). I have spelled out the question of the religious dimension of Derrida's work in John D. Caputo John D. Caputo (born October 26 1940) is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Humanities at Syracuse University and the founder of weak theology. Much of Caputo's work focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction, and theology. EducationCaputo received his B.A. , The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is a publishing house at Indiana University that engages in academic publishing, specializing in the humanities and social sciences. It was founded in 1950. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. , 1997). 3. See Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994) 4. See "Epoche and Faith: An Interview with Jacques Derrida," in Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments, eds. Yvonne Sherwood and Kevin Hart (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 46-47.