My dad's (Ab) business trip to New Orleans has brought him to Chicago twice in the past week on layovers. We've had a good chance to catch up. He's reading Alan Sokal's investigation into the questionable (Ab)use Postmodern intellectuals have made of science. If you haven't heard of Sokal, he wrote a famous bogus lit. crit. piece that cited fashionable French critical theory in the late 60's. Not to the credit of English depts. around the country, it was published by Duke University under the false pretenses of any academic worth. My dad, once a Mathematics Ph.D candidate himself, has good reasons for inquiry into the validity of this jargon. But seldom mentioned in Sokal's book is the man on the pedestal of all this talk: Jacques Derrida. Why? There is only one short reference to when Derrida, in a conference, cites an Einstein theory in passing. But even Sokal gives Derrida a free pass and tears into Lacan.
So why would a book that sets to dismantle postmodernism not extensively explore Derrida? The name itself radically polarizes most prof's here in the DePaul English dept. And when Derrida died last October, I believe there was a tribute in the NY Times that pooped on his philosophy. Regardless, there is something in Derrida that either offends people or greatly excites them. I was never clear what that was.
I've now had two courses on Derrida in Literary Criticism & Theory (one in undergrad and now one in grad school) and the lectures on him always fly over my head. If you've tried reading his Dissemination on Plato's Pharmaka, then you might sympathize.
Finally, in Monday night's lecture, there was a nice little analogy that poked its way in. Think of a footnote in a text. Why is a footnote significant? Well, you might say it illustrates and further informs you about the text you're reading. So why then is it left out in the first place? If it's important information, then why doesn't the author include it to begin with? Why do scholars have to go in and add it later? For Derrida, this embodies a much larger philosophical term he calls the supplement. The supplement acts as secondary, and yet without it, the text changes and does not have its full value. It may act as secondary, but it is indeed primary in nature. Derrida applies this way of thinking to EVERY TEXT he reads. You might call this deconstruction. No text is without its important supplement. Every word and every syllable of everything you read has a very external, referential and other meaning. And to further complicate your readings, Derrida says that over the course of time, the context of the meaning changes.
So, in under a paragraph, I've given you a very unsturdy base where Derrida stands. But shit though, I could be wayyyy off. Your thoughts on Derrida are welcome.
Well, I'm writing this at work and need to run. Off to Iowa for the weekend and back with some photos.
