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Yo, Keston, Some wee soul has withdrawn Spurs from the library, so I`m stuck trying to guess at what Derrida might have said, would have been likely to say. The only part of the book which really sticks in my mind is an exposition of a passage from Mallarme`s Igitur. >Derrida chooses to lug Nietzsche out of this error, since he >(Derrida) fashions it as an error demanding immediate attention, and so >feels obliged to claim that Nietzsche's (otherwise quite uniformly >antidialectical (Deleuze)) style of argument is a kind of necessary >ambivalence, jettisoning accountability. This seems unlikely, and since you have the luxury of being able to quote from the book... D`s The Ear of the Other [also on Nietzsche] explicitly states that N`s own text is To Some Extent accountable for its appropriation by the Nazis - he is not in the business of using undecidability or whatever to get his pet writers off the hook. [Not wanting to be mistaken for a Derrida groupie, I`ll mention that I felt this part of TEoftheO to be remarkably casual and unsatisfactory] The "error" he is supposed to diagnose...if he is demonstrating how N`s text operates within a set of oppositions (which IS metaphysics), the "error" is one that N could not have failed to make, is not just an "error" to be corrected, but is an essential determinant of his text`s logic. The deconstructive reading then makes it its business. via a strong reading (hello!), to trace the spoor of another (sous rature) logic (sous rature)...which is not simply some wafty and irresponsible let`s-keep-`em-guessing evasive shit. Er, in the absence of the book, that`s my hunch. Perhaps Martin Corless-Smith could be persuaded to come back on this topic. Re: Derrida-baiting and Keston`s preference for Adorno - Ben Watson`s new book indulges in a similar but more unhinged tendency...I remember there`s a quote from Derrida and a footnote below it saying something like, "Have you ever heard anything as stupid as that in your life? What a dangerous, mad, old bastard." (that`s a caricature, of a caricature) Drew Milne. He`s another one that won`t have Derrida in the house, but goes on about Adorno all the time. Now I wonder whose fault this is? But I guess Ira is anxious to get going. robin > let the mereness stand, it should be recognized as such >so that we might react against, rather than seek through sophisticated >argumentation to recharacterize and annex it. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%