From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Sat Oct 29 2005 - 08:55:08 EDT
---------------------------- Original Message ------------------------- Subject: Derrida's ghosts From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <adsl675281@tiscali.nl> Date: Sat, October 29, 2005 7:32 am ----------------------------------------------------------------------- If a complete, objective or even coherent understanding of "texts" is impossible - as deconstructionists assert - because every text is read in a "context", it has to be explained why most people will nevertheless interpret a text in a particular way and not others, and ultimately how it is possible to communicate at all, including communication across different contexts. For example, why do people typically understand Derrida in a certain way, and not others? Presumably, because they share a context beyond "thought". This problem is similar to Hegel's dialectical mutation of meanings - meaning can evolve in all sorts of ways, but the real question is, why meaning evolves in certain ways and not others, something which cannot be understood purely in terms of the logic or semantics internal to those meanings. As Frederick Engels wrote, "Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker. Consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces." You can of course call those "imagined forces" ghosts. But why then do "All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism (or fairy stories, for that matter) find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice", as Marx suggests? Presumably because for humans, as social beings, communication is practically NECESSARY for survival and growth, and a communication which could be interpreted in any way whatever, is no communication at all, i.e. meanings must be constructed in certain ways, so that they are understood, and can really orient behaviour. In this sense, Derrida is nothing but a big baby learning to say "blah" and "duh" while mama coos at him, a regression from Hegel, which seems appealing only to spoilt twits who demand lots of money for saying nothing profound at all. It is "critical criticism" all over again, with Saint Derrida leading the way. The sad thing about deconstructionist Marxism is that a myopic focus on the meaning of texts substitutes for an analysis of the experiential reality behind those texts, guided by those texts.... suggesting really that the true problem is, that the texts cannot provide any guidance to the analysis of experiential reality, because of the way they are (mis-)understood. Thus, Marxism becomes the religion of the bureaucrats of knowledge, a holy icon dragged out of its niche in the wall occasionally - for the self-edification of pontificating "authorities" posturing their so-called "erudition". Jurriaan There's something weird in the neighborhood, who're you gonna call? Ghostbusters! There's something strange and it don't look good, who're you gonna call? Ghostbusters! I ain't afraid of no ghost. Seeing things running through your head, who're you gonna call? Ghostbusters! Invisible man sleeping in your bed, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! I ain't afraid of no ghost.
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