Wednesday, May 15, 2013

DERRIDA, A DOCUMENTARY I WATCHED FOR EXTRA CREDIT (WITH MATT)

    First of all, there is a three-minute scene of Derrida getting a haircut. Which is completely ridiculous. You cannot tame Derrida’s hair in only three minutes. Derrida tried for  years to look unimposing and still failed.
    Second, Derrida’s position as in the documentary is remarkable. He actively deconstructs himself, pointing out the artificiality of his conditions and the disconnection between the representation of his life and the always already deferred reality of his life. This might mean that Derrida is obsessed with himself. Actually, it does mean that Derrida is obsessed with himself, since he calls all human interaction and thought narcissist and refers to himself as a king narcissist.
    At one point in the documentary, Derrida is asked about love. After belittling his interviewer, pointing out that love is a topic, and not even a topic, but always already you-know-what, Derrida avers that a better question about love would be between who and what, objectivity and subjectivity. When a person is in love with another person, asks Derrida, are they in love with the person as an object or with their attributes? Is it love for the ontological essence of an individual or their performative abilities? Because performative abilities, Derrida is quick to point out, are predicated upon particular circumstances, and circumstances, being dynamic, naturally alter the possible actions of an individual. However, even though actions and identities are shifting, Derrida points out that it would be impossible to know an individual outside such arbitrary attributes and therefore impossible to love an ontology outside a teleology.
    Apparently, this distinction relates to all philosophy, everywhere. Is it possible to talk about objects without talking about its attributes? And if it is only possible to talk about attributes, where then are Plato’s forms? Since human beings are oriented towards objects relationally, it follows that a person’s experience of an object would be dynamic, relative to the disposition of that individual (their expectations and desires) in a given instant. That being the case, it would be at all times impossible to get to an object, since an object is only an attribute interpreted through a person’s relationship. That being the case, it would seem that Derrida suggests Deconstruction is in fact a description of an individual’s interaction with the world: objects, participants in discourse, are also always already deferred.

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