RIP Jacques Derrida

[jbor]

on 11/10/04 6:16 PM, jbor wrote:
 
>> 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.
> 
> In Step 2 Searle refers to "Words in the language .... " ("the"?!) Whose
> language? Which language?
> 
> Then he says that these words "can be used to refer to" stuff. Sure they
> can, 

Saying that they "can be used to refer to" stuff doesn't mean that there is
ever a 1:1 correlation between words and things, which is what Searle
believes he is saying. That they "can be used" introduces agency, which is
what Searle & co. are attempting to dispense with.

best

> but they can also be used, both volitionally and non-volitionally, both
> productively and receptively, not to refer to stuff, to conceal or
> exaggerate or otherwise manipulate references to stuff, to differ or defer
> "meaning/s".
> 
> A Christian has a very different understanding of what it means to be "dead"
> than does an atheist. Or a Buddhist. In many cultures the word "mother"
> applies to any older female relative. Step-mother, godmother, motherf***er,
> mothership, mother lode, mother hen, the Virgin Mother, the mother of all
> whatevers .... Semantic content (i.e. "meaning") *always* relies on context,
> subject-object orientation, agency. In speech acts in many languages a
> speaker's "meaning" is conveyed by tone -- in any language the notion that
> there is an ultimate or inherent "meaning" to any given sequence of phonemes
> or graphemes is absurd. See de Saussure, F.; Bakhtin, M.M.; et al.

>> 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