derridean
Lately I have been reading The Post Card and having discussions offblog with Carol (whose book is coming out very soon now) about schisms between Foucault and Derrida, and the tendency to fold both back into a generalised ‘post structuralist’ hermeneutic that erases difference: both the crudely empiricist reading of their methodological difference as one separating signification (language) and discourse (which can be more easily recruited into talk of acts, reality) where Foucault gets marginally more brownie points; or the more complex reading of the argument about whether it was essential to return to a consideration of metaphysics and the violence at the heart of all language, rather than ‘merely’ relying on genealogical or historical question of how.
Rewriting my thesis introduction (which doesn’t quote Derrida once, at yet) I realise that all the way along, I have been pretending to be a total Foucauldian/marxian/anticolonialist/feminist. When in fact, the whole thing begins as a problematic of language, the impossibility of language, the violence of not being able to think transness in many other frames than geographical traversal. Which is a Derridean problem. Even as what I’m doing shoots off straight away into genealogical method and critique of political economy and so on.
Who can say why I’ve been ignoring Derrida until now? Maybe it’s because for a long time I have only read Derrida for pleasure. For quoting in letters. For play. But perhaps this is the point. Eli Clare, who (just like Jacques) refuses to step on one side of the line between play and work, poetry and theory, brought me back to an awareness of this — and even more, an awareness of the specificity of language’s violence as it adheres to gender variant bodies:
In English there are no good words, no easy words. All the language we have created—transgender, transsexual, drag queen, drag king, stone butch, high femme, nellie, fairy, bulldyke, he-she, FTM, MTF—places us in relationship to masculine or feminine, between the two, combining the two, moving from one to the other. I’m hungry for an image to describe my gendered self, something more than the shadowland of neither man nor woman, more than a suspension bridge tethered between negatives. (“Gawking, Gaping, Staring,” GLQ: Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9: 1-2, 2003: 260.)
oh, thank you for reminding me of that essay. it’s great, isn’t it?
Comment by nix — August 24, 2008 @ 8:33 am
have you read derrida’s essay, ‘to do justice to freud’?
Comment by Sail — August 24, 2008 @ 11:15 am
no, but this is the essay where derrida critiques foucault’s history of madness, right? it’s on my list.
and yeah, that essay is so great.
Comment by Az — August 24, 2008 @ 3:49 pm
hey az - i’m sure your thesis will read just fine without reference to derrida! which isn’t to say derrida’s work isn’t interesting or useful in itself. you just need to ask, to what extent will your work benefit by quoting him?
To what extent is your argument a ‘derridean’ one?
oh, and what was that ‘embodied globalisations’ conference u mentioned in your last post?
Comment by jay — August 26, 2008 @ 11:21 am
Hey Az, I would of thought based on my understanding of writing a thesis that it is best to have your own theory basis rather than rely on that of another person as being the basis for your views , but instead to give it academic rigour one would be analytical and critical as to the distinctions between your own perspective and that of other theorists
Comment by marcus — August 27, 2008 @ 12:53 am
Um, if I do use Derrida it will neither be because of utility or ‘benefit’ to the thesis but because writing demands it. (I can’t think of another philosopher I’d rather insert willy-nilly for ‘benefit’ less than Derrida.) And by this stage, I fervently hope I can see that writing theoretically is always informed by other theorists, thus to call any thought my ‘own’ and rely on it solely would be arrogant, not to mention dodgy scholarship. In mentioning the lack of Derrida quotations, I was more interested in the subconscious of my elision. Maybe I was thinking out loud a little too unsubtly.
And Jay, the Embodied Globalisations event was a workshop convened by Vera Mackie, in History at Unimelb.
Also, finding “To do justice to Freud” I discover it is actually Derrida’s late response to the argument, after Foucault’s death.
Comment by Az — August 27, 2008 @ 9:29 am
I think JD himself would have been most happy to have been perhaps influential “behind the scene” of your conscious argument within the thesis :).
Comment by db — August 28, 2008 @ 9:38 am
I can’t think of another philosopher I’d rather insert willy-nilly for ‘benefit’ less than Derrida.
And this is just one of the reasons why YOU ROCK. (Oh, the thesis I saw where someone had told the student to ‘put some Derrida in’, oh dear God…)
Comment by Ika — August 28, 2008 @ 10:42 am
and on another tack - i love that eli clare quote from above. a pity the melbuni library no longer subscribes to GLQ, it forces me to get my credit card out and go n buy it!
Comment by jay — August 28, 2008 @ 12:21 pm
Jay — you know they hold GLQ in the electronic journal collection? You should be able to find it in SuperSearch. And anything they don’t have — order it on ILL. (I guess I’m stingy, but I try not to pay for journal articles. I spend enough money on books as it is.)
Comment by Az — August 28, 2008 @ 2:33 pm
nor should you pay for journal articles!!
derrida was fond of drinking lemonade. he didn’t drink alcohol. did foucault? hmmm. talk about care of the self!
i’m drinking some colombian aguardiente and rallying for a trip to europe to present at a sociology conference. barcelona-madrid-london. looking forward to get out of the hellfire of semester. we all pay for our sins ! ; )
Comment by vek — August 30, 2008 @ 1:06 pm
(Oh, the thesis I saw where someone had told the student to ‘put some Derrida in’, oh dear God…)
. . . i’m sorry, what?
Comment by nix — September 4, 2008 @ 1:58 am
does “rewriting the intro” mean you’re nearly done?!
Comment by Nate — September 13, 2008 @ 4:46 am
And let me add, sorry if my question implies a closure offensive to your newfound Derridean sensibilities… ;)
Comment by Nate — September 13, 2008 @ 4:47 am
I wish! I’ve still got at least four months to go. And heh, closure at this point is like a wet dream.
Comment by Az — September 13, 2008 @ 11:36 am
great to be here…
Comment by Parantar — October 19, 2008 @ 3:20 am