{"id":4249,"date":"2013-06-10T07:13:02","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T12:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4249"},"modified":"2013-06-10T07:13:02","modified_gmt":"2013-06-10T12:13:02","slug":"fun-with-derrida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4249","title":{"rendered":"Fun with Derrida"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jacques Derrida<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Adrian Blau<\/a> has an entertaining discussion\u00c2\u00a0of whether Derrida’s analysis of why we refer to 9\/11 in the way we do is bullshit or simply crap.\u00c2\u00a0 A taste:<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll focus solely on Leiter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 2003 blog entry, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDerrida and Bullshit<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, which attacks the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcridiculousness\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of Derrida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comments on 9\/11. This came from an interview with Derrida in October 2001. Here is an abbreviated version; you can see the full thing on p. 85 onwards of\u00c2\u00a0this book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 this act of naming: a date and nothing more. \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 [T]he index pointing toward this date, the bare act, the minimal deictic, the minimalist aim of this dating, also marks something else. Namely, the fact that we perhaps have no concept and no meaning available to us to name in any other way this \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 that has just happened \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 But this very thing \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 remains ineffable, like an intuition without concept, like a unicity with no generality on the horizon or with no horizon at all, out of range for a language that admits its powerlessness and so is reduced to pronouncing mechanically a date, repeating it endlessly, as a kind of ritual incantation, a conjuring poem, a journalistic litany or rhetorical refrain that admits to not knowing what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talking about.<\/p>\n

9\/11 turned the world upside down. Or at least 45 degrees to the side.<\/p>\n

So, is this bullshit, on the Frankfurt and\/or the Cohen notions of bullshit? I would say no. I take Derrida to be saying the following.<\/p>\n

We often repeat the name \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc9\/11\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 without thinking much about it. But the words we use can be very revealing. Why do we try to reduce this complex event to such a simple term? Because the event is so complex we cannot capture it properly. Precisely by talking about it in such a simple way, we admit that we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really understand it.<\/p>\n

If I have understood Derrida \u00e2\u20ac\u201c tell me if I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this explanation is surely wrong.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing and the discussion to follow.\u00c2\u00a0 Reminds me of the game some of us played in graduate school: interpret the work of Derrida using\u00c2\u00a0a simple phrase.\u00c2\u00a0 My favorite: “Aporias or ‘Dead Men Tell No Tales.'”<\/p>\n

Via Leiter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adrian Blau has an entertaining discussion\u00c2\u00a0of whether Derrida’s analysis of why we refer to 9\/11 in the way we do is bullshit or simply crap.\u00c2\u00a0 A taste: I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll focus solely on Leiter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 2003 blog entry, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDerrida and Bullshit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, which attacks the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcridiculousness\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of Derrida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comments on 9\/11. This came from an interview with Derrida in … Continue reading Fun with Derrida<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1677,1678,1676],"class_list":["post-4249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-adrian-blau","tag-brian-leiter","tag-jacques-derrida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4249"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4251,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4249\/revisions\/4251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}