From: Gerald A. Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Mon Oct 18 2004 - 10:51:53 EDT
> Just to make it clear. For me Derrida is not an object of hatred. But I do > not admire him as a big thinker. He often makes difficult things less > clear, he is like a shaman, dancing and uttering words. Not meaningless, > not without insight, and not very informative for those who are not > able/willing to get into the same kind of trance. Anders, I remarked in my previous post that my comments were not specifically directed at what you had written. Perhaps a bit of clarification on my part is in order: I did not state the stimuli for my post but it was actually a reaction to what some had written on _other_ lists following the death of Derrida. More specifically, it was a reaction to the oft-stated canard that the inspiration for Derrida and for post-modernists in general was a self-serving desire for career advancement in the academy. I am repelled by that type of 'reasoning' in the best of times --I found the timing of its dissemination last week, to coincide with the death of Derrida, particularly offensive. btw, I think that Derrida might have liked the analogy to a shaman. If we are under a trance from language, in any event, this is surely not the fault of Derrida but is rather a product of systems and forms of communication which are diffused under late capitalism. In solidarity, Jerry
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