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Some wee soul has withdrawn Spurs from the library, so I`m stuck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.
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