09 October 2004
Derrida r.i.p.
AA calls me on the train back from... Oxford (that jumped-up Tamworth) and tells me Derrida is mort. I come home and Adam Kotsko has emailed me to tell me the same news. Then I receive this stunning piece of writing from an occasional correspondent, who shall remain anonymous:
"As tributes continue to pour in for that incomparably compassionate and heroic Liverpudlian street-fighter and odd-job man Kenneth Bigley, it turns out that the infamous Algerian intellectual terrorist Jacques Derrida also died the same day. According to BBC's "Paris correspondent", however, Derrida is only famous for his "absurd doctrines" and for defying proper academic standards -- presumably the same standards that lead this correspondent to ascribe to Derrida the views that texts have "hidden meanings" and (a few lines later) that the meaning of a text "depends on how each reader interprets it". (Was this "Paris correspondent" Roger Scruton perchance?!) But then everyone knows that the latter was Derrida's real view -- which is why it's not worth bothering to read him: you might as well just make some shit up -- after all, that's what he did in his readings of others, isn't it?
Derrida has been doing little else than writing about the deaths of his 'friends' (and the theme of 'death') for a good twenty years now. Who is there remaining to write about Derrida? I'm sure that Critchley and Bennington are busy writing their tributes to their 'friend' right now -- that is, if they don't have one already prepared (which wouldn't surprise me -- and I'm sure that they've at least been taking notes for some time; almost every chapter of Bennington's last book [Interrupting Derrida] was about Derrida's death in some way: 'R.I.P.', 'X', 'Forever Friends', 'Is it Time?', 'Nearly the End'). And imagine the delight of the young deconstructionist who has just finished his paper/thesis/book on 'Derrida on Death' and can now preface it with all kinds of paradoxical (sorry: aporetic) musings on how the death of Derrida was both something always already inscribed within his 'life' as its ownmost condition of possibility/impossibility and yet an also a radically unanticipatable event ... they'll be queuing up to publish stuff on this. I can see the forthcoming volumes now: (Ed.) S. Critchley, 2005, Adieu, Jacques Derrida. Routledge, London. (Ed.) John Caputo, 2005, Death (Of Jacques Derrida). Indiana University Press, Bloomington ... ad nauseam. And no doubt Derrida will have left an envelope next to his bed with a final text on the topic of death and writing (the topic of his entire 'corpus'), written in hospital, running to several hundred pages, and which will make some publisher very happy indeed ($$$$$$...£££££££): 'This volume is Derrida's final text, written on his deathbed, and containing intensely personal reflections on the theme of death and dying ...'"
I think that about sums it up.
"As tributes continue to pour in for that incomparably compassionate and heroic Liverpudlian street-fighter and odd-job man Kenneth Bigley, it turns out that the infamous Algerian intellectual terrorist Jacques Derrida also died the same day. According to BBC's "Paris correspondent", however, Derrida is only famous for his "absurd doctrines" and for defying proper academic standards -- presumably the same standards that lead this correspondent to ascribe to Derrida the views that texts have "hidden meanings" and (a few lines later) that the meaning of a text "depends on how each reader interprets it". (Was this "Paris correspondent" Roger Scruton perchance?!) But then everyone knows that the latter was Derrida's real view -- which is why it's not worth bothering to read him: you might as well just make some shit up -- after all, that's what he did in his readings of others, isn't it?
Derrida has been doing little else than writing about the deaths of his 'friends' (and the theme of 'death') for a good twenty years now. Who is there remaining to write about Derrida? I'm sure that Critchley and Bennington are busy writing their tributes to their 'friend' right now -- that is, if they don't have one already prepared (which wouldn't surprise me -- and I'm sure that they've at least been taking notes for some time; almost every chapter of Bennington's last book [Interrupting Derrida] was about Derrida's death in some way: 'R.I.P.', 'X', 'Forever Friends', 'Is it Time?', 'Nearly the End'). And imagine the delight of the young deconstructionist who has just finished his paper/thesis/book on 'Derrida on Death' and can now preface it with all kinds of paradoxical (sorry: aporetic) musings on how the death of Derrida was both something always already inscribed within his 'life' as its ownmost condition of possibility/impossibility and yet an also a radically unanticipatable event ... they'll be queuing up to publish stuff on this. I can see the forthcoming volumes now: (Ed.) S. Critchley, 2005, Adieu, Jacques Derrida. Routledge, London. (Ed.) John Caputo, 2005, Death (Of Jacques Derrida). Indiana University Press, Bloomington ... ad nauseam. And no doubt Derrida will have left an envelope next to his bed with a final text on the topic of death and writing (the topic of his entire 'corpus'), written in hospital, running to several hundred pages, and which will make some publisher very happy indeed ($$$$$$...£££££££): 'This volume is Derrida's final text, written on his deathbed, and containing intensely personal reflections on the theme of death and dying ...'"
I think that about sums it up.
