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Saturday, May 07, 2005
Plotnitsky on Derrida
Of the many tributes to Derrida, I find Arkady Plotnitsky’s to give the best general overview of his thought. Here’s his introduction, but you should certainly read it all:
With the death of Jacques Derrida, the world has lost one of its
greatest philosophers, as well as one of the most controversial and
misunderstood. But then, controversy and misunderstanding are part and
parcel of philosophical greatness. Plato is still controversial and
misunderstood, and is still our contemporary. So are René Descartes,
Immanuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, to name, by way of an
Einsteinian metaphor, arguably the heaviest philosophical masses that
define and shape, curve, the space of modern philosophy. Derrida is no
exception, especially because his work in turn transforms the fabric of
this space by its own mass and by its engagement with these figures.
Modern physics no longer thinks of space as ever empty but instead as a
kind of fabric or, to use the Latin word, textum of energy, or (once we
think of the quantum fabric of this never empty space) that of energy and
chance. So one might as well use this rather Derridean idea--of a textum
of energy and chance--as a metaphor for the field of philosophy. The
fortunes of Derrida’s philosophy, or “his chances,” lie partly in the
controversy surrounding his work ("My Chances” 1).
Comments
Maybe this is too obvious, but I think that this tribute to Derrida is actually typical of the assessments of his work that emerged after his death. These tended to be either hagiographic (as in the case of this essay) or uncritically and ignorantly dismissive (as in the case of the infamous New York Times obituary).
I don’t think it’s possible to underestimate the effects of Derrida on literary studies or the brilliance and rigor of many of his readings. However, a lot of his work - especially his later work - was very sloppy according to his own standards. I’m thinking in particular of Specters of Marx, which Plotnitsky makes much of, but in which Derrida gets away with some utterly banal stuff. I.e., as in many of his later books, there’s an occasional “vintage” Derridean reading that goes on for a few pages or so - like his dissection of Fukuyama or, when he finally gets around to it, his too-brief reading of Marx. Then he degenerates into totally obvious commentary on current events, as in his top ten list of the things that are wrong with the world (81-84). Maybe this is unfair, but I wish that Derrida had written a different book, one that would have taken him longer to write and that would have been more lasting. I.e., it would have been very impressive if Derrida had actually done a careful, extended reading of Marx for the duration of the book, like his reading of Rousseau in Of Grammatology. Or, if Derrida were really interested in political science, he could have written a work in that vein - something, obviously, that he would never have done, since it wasn’t his thing. I realize that he was mostly interested in the ways in which Marx’s thought lives on in the present in the work of various people who think they have disavowed him. But anyhow, the result is a ghastly hybrid that was tossed off way too quickly and slickly packaged for his followers in America.
There’s something really weird about later Derrida, in the sense that he was no longer a rigorous academic intellectual. But nor was he a public intellectual - in the sense that he wasn’t trying to write for a general audience (note - I’m not suggesting that Derrida should have ever written for a general audience). Instead, he was an academic intellectual who was pretending to be a public intellectual and thus massaging the egos of a lot of the academics who read him. Even though I personally find some of Derrida’s work extremely useful, I also see this aspect of it as symptomatic of a lot of the things that I think are wrong with literary studies.
Specters is admittedly not his best work. It was, however, delivered in lecture form and was an invited event, rather than some self-directed course of study. I think that when you say “later work,” you are really referring to his more occasional pieces, because there are plenty of his later works that are every bit as rigorous as what went before—Given Time, The Gift of Death, Politics of Friendship, Aporias, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas... I could go on. The key is whether he’s addressing something with which he’s totally comfortable or not—when he’s on, and when he’s deeply familiar with a body of work, he’s really on. That’s why the books I mention are so good, because they’re dealing with structuralism and phenomenology.
I’m sure that many of his unpublished seminars are also more likely to reflect the “good Derrida” than are many of his published works, because the seminar was a self-chosen and self-directed thing. He did sometimes write outside of his areas of greatest competence and, surprise surprise, he’s not as good when he writes in those areas—and arguably, maybe he shouldn’t have bothered. I still think that on balance, though, he’s easily the most significant thinker in the last fifty years. It’s a little bit cranky to insist that eulogistic writings (published a little over six months after his death) should focus more on his uneven work rather than on his truly great accomplishment.
Any truly critical reconsideration of Derrida at this point is going to have to meet the standards that he himself set in his critical reconsiderations of Levinas, or Heidegger, or Husserl—that is, it is going to have to be a reworking and a rereading guided by an intimate knowledge of Derrida’s texts. I don’t impugn your knowledge of his texts at all, but I don’t think that a kind of detached “honest” assessment ("Come on people, let’s not get carried away! I mean, the guy wrote some fairly weak books later on in his life!") is ultimately any more helpful than a haiography or a hatchet job.
To my mind, Plotnitsky is one of the most creative and rigorous theorists working with Derrida’s ideas, and I don’t think this essay’s hagiographical.
I tried to read Derrida once, when I was an undergrad, and I did not understand any of it. I suppose I didn’t try all that hard though, so perhaps he really is a good, or even great philosopher, but I just didn’t put in enough effort to figure that out. So I don’t want to make any claims about how good a philosopher Derrida really is, or how much of an influence he *ought* to have on modern philosophy. But as someone who actually studies *philosophy* at an important graduate program (perhaps some will claim that I don’t *really* study *philosophy*, but rather mere logic puzzles), and who is therefore aware of which philosophers have a large influence on contemporary philosophy (i.e., philosophy that is done by philosophy professors in major philosophy depts.), I know that it is *completely ridiculous* to claim that Derrida, or even Hegel for that matter, has a large influence on contemporary philosophy. In fact, as anybody remotely aware of the state of play in major philosophy depts. in the english speaking world would know, Derrida, when mentioned at all, is offered as a paradigm example of someone who writes useless nonsense (whether this is a just characterization I dare not judge).
So I have to completely disagree with the claim about Derrida’s influence. I suppose this is just nitpicking. But why do people who know absolutely nothing about contemporary philosophy feel free to make assertions about it? I suppose *they* think they *do know* something about contemporary philosophy. But since they clearly don’t know anything about what I and my peers/professors do (and are presumably aware of this ignorance on their part), they must think that what I and my colleagues do does not really count as philosophy. And I guess I find that slightly offensive and highly arrogant.
What you and your colleagues do is only a small part of what philosophy is. That’s not an attempt to denigrate it, just to say that there are many more approaches, even in the English-speaking world, to philosophy than the dominant Anglo-American “analytic” approach.
I would also venture the claim that a lot of philosophy is taking place outside of official philosophy departments in the English-speaking world precisely because the analytic establishment tends to be so openly hostile toward all other approaches, as your account of the reception of Derrida and even Hegel illustrates. And rather than finding your remarks “slightly offensive and highly arrogant,” I’m just going to say—you don’t know what you’re missing.
And I’m even going to say that maybe the hostility of philosophy departments to people like Derrida turned out for the better, because instead of merely influencing philosophy, he managed to influence a large swath of disciplines other than philosophy—literature, religion, legal theory, etc., etc. (Which is why I called him an important “thinker” rather than just focussing on philosophy, though obviously you were referring to the article rather than to my comment.)
I have no doubt about Plotnitsky’s abilities as a Derrida scholar, or any illusions about the fact that I’m not one. However, his article is hagiographic. I.e., take the following excerpt:
“Derrida’s works are complex because they explore the ultimate
complexity (intellectual, ethical, cultural, and political) of our world.
One might even argue that a refusal to engage seriously with his thought
and writing is often a refusal to confront this ultimate complexity,
perhaps in particular insofar as this complexity is also that of the
world that has moved from modernity to postmodernity and is defined by
this transition.”
That last sentence is the kind of claim that, I can imagine, makes philosophy majors such as Ari legitimately furious. And it’s a rhetorical gesture that Derrida’s followers make very frequently.
Claiming that Derrida’s work engaged those spheres, which are complex I think we have to agree, is hardly hagiography, nor is claiming, however justly, that critics of his work don’t see such areas as legitimate philosophical. If Plotnitsky had claimed that Derrida’s work was that complexity itself, then you’d be right.
One might even argue that a refusal to engage seriously with his thought and writing is often a refusal to confront this ultimate complexity, perhaps in particular insofar as this complexity is also that of the world that has moved from modernity to postmodernity and is defined by this transition.
Shorter version: Those who don’t take Derrida seriously are probably just afraid of his genius.
Anbody else find the physics metaphors a bit belabored and annoying?
Blah--you’re just completely wrong there. Plotnitsky’s talking about areas of inquiry, not Derrida. But you won’t like Plotnitsky’s work if you’re not fond of the physics metaphors.
That sounds to me like a personal problem.
I grant that he’s not saying that the complexity of Derrida’s thought is the complexity of the world, as if Derrida were trying to be Hegel. But he is saying that refusing to understand one is often the same as refusing to understand the other. So people who don’t try to read Derrida are often stupid and right-wing.
Heh. “... you won’t like Plotnitsky’s work if you’re not fond of the physics metaphors...” which are complete nonsense--not that I was tempted to read him, anyway. Derrida has some value as a playful fool (he is our Bottom), but to take him any more (or less) seriously seems like a grave error.
A lot of people don’t take Derrida seriously because they find him difficult to understand and don’t know what he is trying to say, not because they find the postmodern world too complex. That is just silly.
Anyway, I do prefer Rorty’s version of Derrida. I understand, though, that many Derrida fans do not like this version because Rorty denies that Derrida is “rigorous” or even doing philosophy at all (at least the later Derrida).
Ah, one must go to the blogosphere to find out about a fellow faculty member. I have only read this professor’s name, I have never seen him, heard him speak, or heard anyone refer to him. How embarrassing...his building is a mere 200 yards from mine…
Joel, why don’t you learn something about Plotnitsky (what he’s written, what his background and education are)? I prefer some content in my emphatic bullshitting.
Plotnitsky’s point is about what’s regarded as a legitimate area of philosophical inquiry and how those attitudes overlap with dismissive attitudes towards Derrida. The direct causal relation is a misreading.
I don’t think Rorty would deny that Derrida’s doing philosophy.* I think Rorty’s point is that Derrida isn’t doing the philosophy he thinks he’s doing. As I understand Rorty, Derrida belongs to that long traditional of Continental “narrative” philosophy interested, above all, in Romantic acts of self-creation. He should be an heir to Heidegger, Husserl, Nietzsche and Hegel, but his insides were so twisted by the faux rigors of structuralist thought he could only offer “clever answers to pointless questions.” (The lecture notes from which I crib are from Rorty’s recent lecture on Fine, Davidson, and Brandom, during which he used this memorable phrase in reference to both Russell and Derrida.) Derrida, in this account, evolved into a philosopher who asked questions he couldn’t ever answer. He couldn’t say anything about anything because he shucked off the pragmatic anti-foundationalism of Romanticism and its heirs but decided to address their thought anyway. Rorty thought he should’ve been interested in pushing beyond the old limits instead of meticulously cataloguing them. In short, Derrida would read Hegel’s “poetic observations” like an analytic philosopher and Rorty thought that a pointless enterprise: “If when reading Hegel or Continental philosophers you stop to see if the points are all supported you’ll never finish. Requests for premises and definitions won’t be answered because they’re not interested in anything except the Emersonian project of ‘trying to draw a larger circle.’” And that, boys and girls, is what I think Rorty thinks about Derrida.
*Fair Warning: I could be more wrong about this than I’ve ever been wrong about anything I’ve written on the Valve. So for what its worth, this is what I think he means. Whether it bears any relation to what he actually means is not a determination I’m qualified to make.
I’m sure that many of his unpublished seminars are also more likely to reflect the “good Derrida” than are many of his published works, because the seminar was a self-chosen and self-directed thing.
As someone who took one of the last of what would be his “unpublished American seminars,” I can say that I don’t think we’ll find much “good Derrida” in there. (I still remember watching Derrida sit in stunned silence as a M.F.A. candidate in Dance “presented.” After what felt like 16 hours in an off-all-books Saudi Arabian “hostel,” she stopped, he mumbled something under his breath and the seminar ended.) I should also mention that after days and months and years of arguments, Stephen managed to convince me of the value of the “good Derrida,” so I don’t think he’s dismissing deconstruction in its entirety. He and I have more experience than most with the irritating pretences of sycophantic deconstructionists, so I think we’re more likely to assume the worst of overwhelmingly positive assessments of his intellectual legacy.
That said, I don’t think Stephen was being that critical. Personally, I’d kill to have a paragraph in my obituary begin “After 20 years of unparalleled brilliance...”
Derrida’s works are complex because they explore the ultimate
complexity (intellectual, ethical, cultural, and political) of our world.
This is the perennial escape-hatch of the bullshitter. The goal of theory is not to reproduce the awful, myriad complexities of the world. The world’s complexity can be experienced directly, by living in it. Good theory simplifies the world. It makes some part of it comprehensible to us.
"Explore,” not “reproduce,” is what he writes.
At least they read the article at Slashdot. More than this, anyway.
Jonathan -
I live by a very simple rule w/r/t my reading: Abel’s “Study the Masters and not their pupils.” Just browsing the article to which you linked made me realize how ungenerous, arrogant, and, in their way, totalizing so many of Derrida’s pupils are… the crap about physics and algebra in that article is downright laughable. Derrida himself (and I have only ever attempted The Post-Card, Glas, and Spurs) strikes me as at least being entertainingly and interestingly wrong—while also potentially guilty of those same faults.
In the meantime, I’m in the middle of two books and raising a daughter… I wish I could add more, but if my bullshitting doesn’t suffice--well, you have the luxury of ignoring it: this is a blog, not a refereed journal, no?
If you want to use a heuristic which causes you to make inane value judgments in certain contexts based on half-remembered things you read on the internet, that is indeed entirely your right. I ask that you think twice before printing out the results of this subroutine for the world to see, however. You might want to give others who once as you were a fighting chance, etc.
Now if you had actually had some evidence to support your various emphatic assertions, that’d be great. But as it stands, you are personally destroying this blog and the internet in general.
“Explore,” not “reproduce,” is what he writes.
Yes, but it seems clear from what follows (all that crap about physics) that the guy is arguing in bad faith right from the beginning. The goal is to make you feel that any objections of yours to the great Derridean project are grounded in your dullness—your inability to grasp his explorations of all that complexity, in all their space-time-fabric-bending greatness.
"you are personally destroying this blog and the internet in general.”
Um, Jonathan, kind of large bore you’re using there, isn’ it?
As to Plotnisky, what Kieran said! He’s got the acolyte nailed.
Kieran, you and Turnipseed are committing the same error: you see physics and Derrida in place, and you no longer think that you have to pay the slightest attention to what’s being said or why. Now this is a blog, and blogs wouldn’t exist if people didn’t frequently air their uninformed opinions in an emphatic manner. I, however, have a more forward-looking view of what a blog could become.
This very conversation could be the tipping point of this blog—does it devolve into uninformed snark where people spout off their pre-formed prejudices ("Physics metaphors are always inappropriate when talking about Derrida!"), or does it become a place where minds and hearts alike are shaped and molded by intellectual rigor and a willingness to learn?
If it’s the latter, then we’d almost have to change our definition of what a blog is.
I have no opinion about whether physics metaphors might, somehow, be appropriate when discussing Derrida. But Plotnitsky’s is pretty lame. Basically, he’s arguing that Derrida is like a new planet, who warps the space-time continuum of philosophy like Hegel, etc. did before him. That’s just Eliot’s argument from “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” only given a shiny Einsteinian veneer so as to make Plotnitsky look less retro-New Critical. And pointing out the lameness of this metaphor (and discussing it’s usefulness for a certain kind of critical theory) seems to me a valid point of discussion. It hearkens back to our earlier debate about the nature of interdisciplinary work in literary and cultural studies.
Well, shoot—that’s the last time I post an obviously hyperbolic comment.
Have a single one of you read more than the paragraph of this I quoted? Even those who’ve read that don’t seem to have done it well. There’s an elaborate metaphor there, but it does not claim that Derrida is the equal of Descartes, Kant, or Hegel. Plotnitsky argues that Derrida’s advancement lies in the introduction of chance. This is very simple to understand w/r/t to the quantum mechanics metaphor, I think (much more sensible than Eliot’s half-beakered chemical metaphors, I might add).
I myself don’t agree with it and am by no means full of admiration for all of Derrida’s work. It tells a lot about the Valve’s audience that I, who would be considered a Derrida skeptic in almost any circumstances, am, along with Adam Kotsko, the only person willing to grant his ideas even elementary rational consideration.
Derrida is about a hundred years late to “the introduction of chance"--ever read Emerson’s “Experience?” Of course, that’s just the post-Kantian insistence: “chance” has been alive in thinking about human action since humans began to think (Nussbaum and Williams both did good work in bringing this back into play in recent philosophy).
As for Plotinsky: Einstein’s Relativity has nothing to do with epistemological relativity, which Plotinksy seems to be claiming; Quantum Mechanics does not underwrite “chance” in everyday life (though no doubt, it’s operative there--just not as Derrida thinks)... and the inheritance of the rhetorical “metaphysics by etymology” (from Heidegger) is not only tired, but usually wrong (and pretentious: “tekhne”? Who transliterates thusly?). It would be easy enough to enumerate the other errors in that piece, but it would also be tedious. Honestly, why do English professors continue with this stuff more than a decade after the great Sokal hoax disrobed them? It’s one thing to try to understand science/mathematics, to use it as metaphor or heuristic--another altogether to “interrogate” it from a position of absolute ignorance. If you want to “cross boundaries,” you had better pack the gear to survive the trip.
Meantime, sorry for breaking the Internet… I’ll get on the horn to MAE West and see if we can’t get it up for you.
I know there’s little hope of those in dire need actually reading this, but Plotnitsky wrote a response to Sokal, which led to the following exchange with University of Florida math professor Richard Crew.
I read the entire Plotnitsky article on the Sokal hoax, and I take it as fairly convincing evidence that the ones who were hoaxed in that incident were those who took it as evidence for their own previously held prejudices, and to move from simple indifference toward Derrida (which is a perfectly acceptable attitude—there’s only so much time, and there’s always too much to read) to an open hostility that makes ignorance of Derrida into a badge of honor.
This is where I think Kieran is missing the point—the problem is not people deciding not to read Derrida, or reading him and finding him too complicated to be worth the time, but actively refusing to read him. One only technically “refuses” to read someone when one is in a position where it could be reasonably expected and required to read that person—for example, when one is harshly criticizing the person’s work. That’s what it means to “refuse” to read him—it doesn’t just mean that only stupid people choose not to read Derrida.
I’ve done probably as much reading of Derrida (a pretty fair bit) as I’m ever gonna do in my time, and as much as Plotnitsky as I’m interested in, and I don’t think Kieran is missing the point. His claim is that Plotnitsky engages in rhetorical manipulation by suggesting that there’s a flaw in the intelligence or character of anyone slow to recognize the grandeur of Derrida. I think Kieran’s right. That’s in bad faith.
Adam, you say, “One only technically ‘refuses’ to read someone when one is in a position where it could be reasonably expected and required to read that person—for example, when one is harshly criticizing the person’s work.” I’m with you till that last clause. All the expectation in this thread is created by Plotnitsky and his defenders. If someone tells you that you’re weak or bad for refusing to see matters as they prefer, it’s perfectly reasonable to thumb your nose at them. No one has an obligation to submit graciously to being harangued.
I looked at the first few paragraphs of Plotnitsky’s essay on the Sokal contretemps, and it was enough for me. My memory of the whole Sokal thing is that it wasn’t particularly about Derrida. It was about the way the Social Text collective had been easily bamboozled into printing nonsense. Plotnitsky’s begins by taking one corner of the argument and suggesting that it should count as the whole--by saying that references to Derrida in the debate were merely “a symptom of a broader problem affecting the current cultural landscape and shaping the opinions of a significant portion of the scientific community.” This is the same kind of tactic Kieran pointed out: if you don’t think as I do, that’s the sign of an underlying pathology.
Let’s grant that Plotnitsky is right that Derrida has been misread and was really quite cautious and reasonable in his references to science. (I’m doubtful that’s so, but let’s assume that it is.) That would still leave untouched the major issue of the whole Sokal debate. Arguing one corner of an issue, while also implying that it stands in for the whole subject, is tendentious.
Kieran, you and Turnipseed are committing the same error: you see physics and Derrida in place, and you no longer think that you have to pay the slightest attention to what’s being said or why.
Just for the record, I never mentioned Sokal in my comments or claimed that his little hoax demonstrated anything worthwhile, or said anything about whether I thought Derrida was worth reading. It was Jonathan, not me, who saw “physics and Derrida in place” and immediately assumed he had me and my views pegged.
All I said was that Plotnitsky was working pretty hard rhetorically to dig himself in: the goal is to make it seem that doubts about the value of Derrida’s thought must be grounded in a lack of understanding—an inability to grasp its complexity—rather than honest disagreement. That’s arguing in bad faith. Of course there’s nothing special about Derrida in this regard: wherever gurus are challenged, you’ll find acolytes mounting this defence.
Now that I say it, I notice Jonathan is engaged in much the same tactic as he repeatedly asserts that people who disagree with him must be trolls: “you are personally destroying this blog and the internet in general ... this is a blog, and blogs wouldn’t exist if people didn’t frequently air their uninformed opinions in an emphatic manner. I, however, have a more forward-looking view of what a blog could become. ... little hope of those in dire need actually reading this...” etc, etc.
Is there a version of the original essay online that preserves the formatting?
Kieran--I resort to absurdity often because I increasingly don’t think it’s possible to have a serious conversation on a blog. I don’t know how many times I’ve repeated the fact that Plotnitsky is not, in that one paragraph, making the claim you think he’s making. Sean misses it too. The only way that you can miss it, seems to me, is to read what you expect or want to read rather than what it actually says. And I accept the blame for bothering to respond, however humorously, when I could see from the beginning that it was perfectly pointless.
A little discussion of Derrida, “The Eyes of the University”, say, would transfigure this whole “debate.”
I know there’s little hope of those in dire need actually reading this, but Plotnitsky wrote a response to Sokal, which led to the following exchange with University of Florida math professor Richard Crew.
So people actually read these things? My oh my. In the future, I’ll have to be more careful…
The amount of energy you people expend in taunting/baiting readers of Derrida and patting each other on the back for being clevererer, while quite conspicuously neglecting to cite, let alone explore or respond to a single iota of his actual writing...well, it’s irresponsible, to say the least. (Oh, but you’re not “literary scholars” so you’re excused). Is this supposed to be genuine “play”?
You know, it even begins to sound a bit mantric, jubilatory and desperate. And trust me (if you can), I’m not gloating. In fact it’s rather sad.