noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Heh. Edited by a Mr. Robert Dobalina.
Hauntology
- Thread starter labrat
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N
nomadologist
Guest
I watched Michael McCarthy rip Jurgen Habermas to shreds in person, I would probably edit that post and mention how even if Marx is relevant, Derrida may not be.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
he looked good though. great hair.
N
nomadologist
Guest
Ha yeah he was cool looking in an Algerian/French multiethnic sort of way.
swears
preppy-kei
I made that post 'cause Dom Passantino is a piss-taking UK music journalist, and some wag had put his name in there with those academics. Hence the italics.
N
nomadologist
Guest
Yup I know about Dom he's a funny guy. Philosopher? ha.
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
I've read parts of that public sphere book, thought it was kind of interesting and wanted to pick it up at some point -- worth it?
Isn't Derrida on the way out as far as theory trends in academia? Not that it makes a difference as to his worth (though I haven't found the little Derrida I've read very worthwhile), just wondering if my assessment was accurate.
Whether or not Derrida is worthwhile for your own work and thinking will depend of course on your own intellectual interests and projects (he is for me, certainly, but I know plenty for whom he is not), in some cases he may be and in others perhaps not useful at all. Really depends on one's work, I'd say. But of course Derrida and Habermas are both important to the intellectual history of post-WWII thought, whether one's stance towards them is oppositional, in conversation, enthusiastic, or whatever. I mean, why not arm yourself with as much fluency in contemporary thought as possibe, even (or especially) if you view a thinker as someone to whom your own approach/methods/thought will be opposed? I wouldn't myself place much of a premium on "academic trends" ....
N
nomadologist
Guest
I wrote my undergrad thesis on "Différance" from Margins of Philosophy, so I would never say not to read Derrida. I think you're right that he's falling out of favor, but I agree with Tate in that he and Habermas are worth reading if you're serious about the move from structuralism to post-structuralism, or 20th century philosophy in general.
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
Yah, not trend-hopping, just something I noticed back in grad skool, was wondering about. Time&money are a bitch, and I don't have a good grounding in intellectual history so I don't feel the need to be completist. Like how I wanted to read Hardt & Negri Empire for a while, never got around to it, and now it seems like there's no point -- from reviews & excerpts I already can see the problems I would have with it, and people aren't even talking about it as much now. I guess theory should be above petty consumerist concerns, but it definitely ain't, no use pretending.
Yep, it's definitely true that Derrida's gone out of fashion, there's no question about it, though it makes me feel a bit icky talking about intellectual 'fashions' given how quickly they mutate. Part of the shift away from Derrida is the feeling that 'it's difficult to take deconstruction any farther' (in quotes because I hear it said fairly frequently) but also because he was in many ways a very traditional philosopher whose work is less immediately transferable for new problematics, questions, and domains. The question of Derrida's role in academic studies is one of those topics that is a bit like a chinese box, it sort of depends on how inside baseball you want to get in terms of the past forty years or so, and how many layers deep you want to take the discussion.
N
nomadologist
Guest
And also how many languages you want to learn well in order to do justice to his writing as a reader. I've heard him dismissed as a "Jewish mystic" one too many times, but at the same time I find the application of "hauntology" to music strange just because he was clearly talking about a metaphysical condition in much the same way Lyotard was when he talked about "post-modernism." To limit "hauntology" to music with spooky sonics misses the point.
N
nomadologist
Guest
Yeah one of my friends wrote an amazing paper on that at the time. Maybe I can get him to send it to me...
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
Don't forget producers with "Ghost" in their name!
Yes, ideally I would learn French (though not nec. to read Derrida)... How are the translations? Gayatri Spivak frightens me, actually I think she might be the reason I've put off diving into Derrida! I think Eagleton described her writing as "tone-deaf" which was pretty spot on (and funny since she is a lit crit!)
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
from the Wiki on Habermas...
Man doesn't watch much TV or Bush press conferences, eh? Though I seem to remember liking what I had read for the historical description and good writing as well... I see he had an acrimonious debate with Mr. D as well, maybe worth checking out some of that stuff. That Foucault-Chomsky debate was a highlight of my theory class, though not because I learned anything about theory -- more about the creepy way Foucault was constantly picking at himself!
N
nomadologist
Guest
from the Wiki on Habermas...
Interestingly enough, after reading Habermas on "ideal speech acts" and all of that I was surprised to hear him speak in person--he had one of the worst speech impediments I've ever heard, and I'm not just talking about a thick German accent. He truly garbles everything he says.
Foucault was an interesting guy in his personal life, too. Got really involved in the S&M circuit in San Francisco and eventually died of AIDS.
As for the translations of Derrida: I really couldn't tell you, my French is absolutely terrible, I learned mostly from going to Montreal, and it was sad to learn this was nothing like written French. This is something I want to work on when I get around to applying for a PhD.
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N
nomadologist
Guest
Also, I would say "telos" has a meaning that leans more toward "completion" or "end"--teleology deals with "the ends"...of time, etc. It also can mean something like "the realization of a goal" but it mostly means "the end."
Actually I'd guess that Habermas is very well apprised of recent Bush press conferences and I'd bet one hundred german marks that he would be able to diagnose and critique them at long, long length.from the Wiki on Habermas...
One thing maybe to keep in mind about Habermas is that his fundamental questions, tasks, and burdens were formulated in response to the experience of Nazi Germany. The possibility of taking up a philosophical position in response to it, and one that wasn't merely negative or negating, was taken up as the philosophical task. Hence he often appears quite traditional and to many observers 'foundationalist' because he fully assumed the responsibility of trying to formulate methods, models, and modes of analysis that would try to respond to and preemptively critique that kind of catastrophe again. And of course the influence of Heidegger was perceived by Habermas to be a particularly pernicious thing. So, in the midst of post-war post-structuralism, Habermas proposed a version of rationalism -- though fully fitted out with the latest research in systems theory, sociology, anglo-american pragmatism, speech act theory, and the like -- that could be embraced as a toolbox in the struggle against fascisms and political nihilisms.
Which is why public discourse and 'communicative reason' were explicitly stated bedrock concerns for him: his self-appointed task was not to take things apart, to deconstruct, and to demolish, but to attempt to formulate the best possible means for providing models of communication in which dissonances and noise and brute manipulation of socio-political power could be recognized, diagnosed, discussed, and where possible, reduced. He was also raised/educated in the tradition of German hermeneutics, which explains his emphasis on the possibility of achieving an interpretation in dialogue with both the phenomenon in question and other possible interpreters. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Habermasian and am far from an expert on the details - so take this as general chit-chat commentary, not hard and fast doctrine, please :insert smiley: ).
Of course for many, especially outside of Germany, his thought was seen as quite conservative and in many ways completely wrongheaded - I mean, if your concerns are literature or avant-garde art and you didn't feel the press of German history in the way that he did, then of course semi-foundational models for achieving human understanding aren't going to be very appealing. Especially if your concerns are primarily in aesthetic domains, where so often (esp in modern forms and modernist modes) the aesthetic work is questioning, confronting, challenging, and asking new questions that rip holes in the traditions, discourses, and sedimented perceptions/thought that came before - if those types of techniques, art works, and effects are your primary analytic concern, then Habermas's multi-decade-long meditation that fuses continental philosophy, anglo-american analytic thought, sociology, communication studies, speech act theory, systems theory, and myriad other intellectual resources, in the name of developing a 'communicative reason' may seem repellant and completely beside the point. But given his explicitly stated task and problematics, one can understand -- and, I would say, intellectually admire -- the thoughtfulness, industriousness, and single-minded devotion that he gave to his work.
As far as acrimony between Habermas and Derrida is concerned, that gets overplayed, I think--they ended up becoming friends and admired each other quite a lot, from what I understand.
In the early 90s, Habermas' Philosphical Foundations of Modernity was the big whipping post for the post-structuralists, and for good reason. Habermas himself admitted that it was too superficial and I think that even Habermasians would today admit that the readings of Foucault and Derrida put forward there were wholly unsatisfactory. I haven't followed what's gone on in Habermas studies in the past ten+ years, though, so take what I say with a well-advised grain of salt.
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
Yes, I tried to make at least one fisting joke whenever he came up in class.
Tate, thank you for that excellent description, he does sound interesting and I have been reading some Kant lately, so it seems like it might fit with some of the Enlightenment stuff I've been reading... Also I'm more than a bit tired of a lot of post-structuralism, might be nice to see someone giving a shot at building something up for a change!