RIP Jacques Derrida

[jbor]

Searle:
> The problem that all these guys have is that once you give me that first
> premise--that there is a reality that exists totally independently of us--then
> the other steps follow naturally. Step 1, external realism: You've got a real
> world that exists independently of human beings. And step 2: Words in the
> language can be used to refer to objects and states of affairs in that
> external reality. And then step 3: If 1 and 2 are right, then some
> organization of those words can state objective truth about that reality. Step
> 4 is we can have knowledge, objective knowledge, of that truth. At some point
> they have to resist that derivation, because then you've got this objectivity
> of knowledge and truth on which the Enlightenment vision rests, and that's
> what they want to reject.

You've got to be joking. Step 2 doesn't even follow from Step 1, let alone
Steps 3 & 4. Talk about your "excluded middles"! Searle's attack was never
taken seriously by Derrida, nor by most reasonable persons within the fields
in which Derrida worked, and it's easy to see why.

The contiguities between Derrida and Pynchon have been remarked on by many
readers and critics. The dt -> DT thing in _Lot 49_ is just one example that
springs readily to mind.

The wikipedia entry on Derrida provides an even-handed coverage of his
career, including the hostility with which his work has been met by
political extremists and clunky positivists like John Searle. And there were
apparently just 20 signatures on that Cambridge protest letter which Ruth
Barcan Marcus worked up, not "hundreds".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida

Derrida had had pancreatic cancer for some time, so his passing wasn't a
shock. One of his final interviews is on-line, and well worth reading also:

http://www.indymedia.be/news/2004/04/83123.php

best