Loren,
I applaud Nathan's response to your question but would like to approach it
from a different angle. The question you raise is central to the social and
textual practice of deconstruction. Deconstruction tends toward a kind of
schizophrenia in my opinion since on the one hand it senses and endorses a
historical dimension to its own production and its reverberation, if you
will, in the body politic while, on the other hand, it is trying to throw
into relief the ahistorical movement of thought and understanding which it
dreams will liberate social praxis and textual production from the bonds of
historical determinacy and conditioning. Derrida's relationship with
Heidegger I think is relevant here insofar as Derrida criticizes Heidegger
for remaining within a metaphysical frame by positing two times in Being and
Time among other aspects of Heidegger's work. But I would argue that
Derrida does "essentially" the same thing that Heidegger does, e.g. he
privileges certain texts from the tradition and uses them as literary foils
to make his arguments and develop his views. (And besides, to say there
ain't no essence don't make it so.) Heidegger seems the more Hegelian of
the two at first glance since he seems committed to the idea of historical
development and a "progress" or advancement in the field of philosophy from
one era or generation to the next. Yet Derrida is yoked or yokes himself
just as much to Hegelian projections or tendencies insofar as he is
committed to, at least, a movement or a perception of a movement which
transcends historical conditions and determinacy.
As for whether Derrida's bifurcating the origin by introducing the notions
of differance and trace and thereby rendering deconstruction metaphysical, I
think it is too facile a criticism to say that this is just another polar or
binary opposition or a clever ruse to cut in two what has always been
thought of as unitary and the source of all wholeness.
In re deconstruction shallow textual practice, I think there is a studious
"avoidance" of political matters and projecting historical necessities on
the part of deconstuctionists. Not so much because they don't think they
are there but because once stated they can always be negated or changed.
Isn't the Derridian critique of Foucaultian genealogy simply that one is
trading in, at best, ghostly figures when one talks about the origins of
values and social praxis?
>From: "Widder,NE" <N.E.Widder@xxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: "'foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'"
><foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: RE: Foucault & Derrida
>Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 11:33:14 -0000
>
>Hi Loren,
>
>OK, fair enough. This is your question, and I took quite a bit of license
>with it in responding to Nick's post. But I think that the concerns you
>are
>outlining here really feed in to what I was saying. More important, I
>think
>they have to feed in, or else you end up seeing the Derrida/Foucault
>exchange as a series of knee-jerk reactions to each other, or you reduce
>important distinctions between the two thinkers. You suggest a reduction
>yourself when you say that if you treat the world as a text than
>deconstruction and genealogy fit rather well together. Perhaps, but they
>only fit together in the broadest sense of being anti-foundationalist.
>Further, there are certainly knee-jerk responses on both sides of the
>divide: Derrida consistently states that Foucaultian archeology is
>history,
>when Foucault explains over and over again that it is not. Foucault
>suggests that Derrida's texts are nothing more than books, which is silly.
>And both the debate between Derrida and Foucault and among interpreters of
>their exchanged is tinged with a rather odd understanding of the division
>the early Foucault enacts between the discursive and non-discursive,
>whereby
>everyone seems to suggest that the discursive is the realm of meaning and
>the non-discursive is not.
>
>Still, since I said in the last post that I'm on Foucault's side here, I'll
>suggest a way of making sense of his claim that Derrida fails to take
>context into account. It's not that Derrida focusses on writing rather
>than
>wider social and economic factors; it's rather, I think, that he remains
>committed to a certain relation between identity and meaning while ignoring
>the conditions of emergence of that commitment. Irigaray says the same
>thing about Lacan and psychoanalysis generally when she says that they
>remain committed to the economy of the Phallus as the only economy
>possible,
>precisely because they haven't taken the time to examine the real
>capitalist
>economy which supports such a commitment (and Lacan precisely refuses to
>look at such things, saying that if one does than one is not doing
>psychoanalysis anymore, one is doing sociology or even something else).
>That's why, from Foucault's perspective, Derrida has illicitly reduced his
>(Foucault's) options to thinking within a broken ontotheological framework
>(while failing to see that the framework idea is itself an ontotheological
>remnant) or engaging in some idealistic impossibility to breach language
>all
>together and get at some immediate truth. It's because deconstruction, for
>Foucault, ends up staging things in terms of this last binary option that
>it
>refuses to give up, that it ends up being a shallow practice, and why it
>really effects a return to metaphysics.
>
>Nathan
>n.e.widder@xxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: loren [SMTP:lorendent@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> > Sent: 14 February 2000 23:22
> > To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: Foucault & Derrida
> >
> > Thanks for the responses. However, my question focuses more on whether
> > Derrida's reference to differance and the trace might replicate 2
>origins
> > that seems to indicate a return to metaphysics.....It seems that this
>was
> > Foucault's critique of Derrida---It also seems that foucault critisizes
> > the
> > shallow textual practice of deconstruction--that it ignores the specific
> > historical and political formations of a text or a particular origin.
> > That
> > foucault is perhaps more concerned with not just dispelling origins and
> > binaries, but understanding how they are produced and in what context
>they
> > emerge-. I'm not saying I agree w/ foucault, it seems to be a knee-jerk
> > response, because it seems to me that if one reads the social space as a
> > text, then geneology and deconstruction would align themselves rather
> > nicely.
> >
> > Loren
______________________________________________________
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I applaud Nathan's response to your question but would like to approach it
from a different angle. The question you raise is central to the social and
textual practice of deconstruction. Deconstruction tends toward a kind of
schizophrenia in my opinion since on the one hand it senses and endorses a
historical dimension to its own production and its reverberation, if you
will, in the body politic while, on the other hand, it is trying to throw
into relief the ahistorical movement of thought and understanding which it
dreams will liberate social praxis and textual production from the bonds of
historical determinacy and conditioning. Derrida's relationship with
Heidegger I think is relevant here insofar as Derrida criticizes Heidegger
for remaining within a metaphysical frame by positing two times in Being and
Time among other aspects of Heidegger's work. But I would argue that
Derrida does "essentially" the same thing that Heidegger does, e.g. he
privileges certain texts from the tradition and uses them as literary foils
to make his arguments and develop his views. (And besides, to say there
ain't no essence don't make it so.) Heidegger seems the more Hegelian of
the two at first glance since he seems committed to the idea of historical
development and a "progress" or advancement in the field of philosophy from
one era or generation to the next. Yet Derrida is yoked or yokes himself
just as much to Hegelian projections or tendencies insofar as he is
committed to, at least, a movement or a perception of a movement which
transcends historical conditions and determinacy.
As for whether Derrida's bifurcating the origin by introducing the notions
of differance and trace and thereby rendering deconstruction metaphysical, I
think it is too facile a criticism to say that this is just another polar or
binary opposition or a clever ruse to cut in two what has always been
thought of as unitary and the source of all wholeness.
In re deconstruction shallow textual practice, I think there is a studious
"avoidance" of political matters and projecting historical necessities on
the part of deconstuctionists. Not so much because they don't think they
are there but because once stated they can always be negated or changed.
Isn't the Derridian critique of Foucaultian genealogy simply that one is
trading in, at best, ghostly figures when one talks about the origins of
values and social praxis?
>From: "Widder,NE" <N.E.Widder@xxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: "'foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'"
><foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: RE: Foucault & Derrida
>Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 11:33:14 -0000
>
>Hi Loren,
>
>OK, fair enough. This is your question, and I took quite a bit of license
>with it in responding to Nick's post. But I think that the concerns you
>are
>outlining here really feed in to what I was saying. More important, I
>think
>they have to feed in, or else you end up seeing the Derrida/Foucault
>exchange as a series of knee-jerk reactions to each other, or you reduce
>important distinctions between the two thinkers. You suggest a reduction
>yourself when you say that if you treat the world as a text than
>deconstruction and genealogy fit rather well together. Perhaps, but they
>only fit together in the broadest sense of being anti-foundationalist.
>Further, there are certainly knee-jerk responses on both sides of the
>divide: Derrida consistently states that Foucaultian archeology is
>history,
>when Foucault explains over and over again that it is not. Foucault
>suggests that Derrida's texts are nothing more than books, which is silly.
>And both the debate between Derrida and Foucault and among interpreters of
>their exchanged is tinged with a rather odd understanding of the division
>the early Foucault enacts between the discursive and non-discursive,
>whereby
>everyone seems to suggest that the discursive is the realm of meaning and
>the non-discursive is not.
>
>Still, since I said in the last post that I'm on Foucault's side here, I'll
>suggest a way of making sense of his claim that Derrida fails to take
>context into account. It's not that Derrida focusses on writing rather
>than
>wider social and economic factors; it's rather, I think, that he remains
>committed to a certain relation between identity and meaning while ignoring
>the conditions of emergence of that commitment. Irigaray says the same
>thing about Lacan and psychoanalysis generally when she says that they
>remain committed to the economy of the Phallus as the only economy
>possible,
>precisely because they haven't taken the time to examine the real
>capitalist
>economy which supports such a commitment (and Lacan precisely refuses to
>look at such things, saying that if one does than one is not doing
>psychoanalysis anymore, one is doing sociology or even something else).
>That's why, from Foucault's perspective, Derrida has illicitly reduced his
>(Foucault's) options to thinking within a broken ontotheological framework
>(while failing to see that the framework idea is itself an ontotheological
>remnant) or engaging in some idealistic impossibility to breach language
>all
>together and get at some immediate truth. It's because deconstruction, for
>Foucault, ends up staging things in terms of this last binary option that
>it
>refuses to give up, that it ends up being a shallow practice, and why it
>really effects a return to metaphysics.
>
>Nathan
>n.e.widder@xxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: loren [SMTP:lorendent@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> > Sent: 14 February 2000 23:22
> > To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: Foucault & Derrida
> >
> > Thanks for the responses. However, my question focuses more on whether
> > Derrida's reference to differance and the trace might replicate 2
>origins
> > that seems to indicate a return to metaphysics.....It seems that this
>was
> > Foucault's critique of Derrida---It also seems that foucault critisizes
> > the
> > shallow textual practice of deconstruction--that it ignores the specific
> > historical and political formations of a text or a particular origin.
> > That
> > foucault is perhaps more concerned with not just dispelling origins and
> > binaries, but understanding how they are produced and in what context
>they
> > emerge-. I'm not saying I agree w/ foucault, it seems to be a knee-jerk
> > response, because it seems to me that if one reads the social space as a
> > text, then geneology and deconstruction would align themselves rather
> > nicely.
> >
> > Loren
______________________________________________________
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