Trumpery, Heidegger and Derrida

Posted on July 29, 2010
Filed Under Derrida, Heidegger, Philosophy | 7 Comments

Graham Harman has had up a few posts on what he calls trumpery. The latest includes some bits about Heidegger and Derrida. First let me quote the Derridean bit.

Orthodox Derridean: “…as in the shallow and naive charge that Derrida ‘reduces the world to a text.’”

Comment: But Derrida does reduce the world to a text. That’s the source from which he draw his strengths no less than his weaknesses, and Derrideans shouldn’t be so quick to saw off the limb on which Derrida himself is sitting.

That’s true to a point but, I think, misleading. I think Derrida clarified what he meant.

One of the definitions of what is called deconstruction would be the effort to take this limitless context into account, to pay the sharpest and broadest attention possible to context, and thus to an incessant movement of recontextualization. The phrase which for some has become a sort of slogan, so badly understood, (“there is nothing outside the text” [il n'y a pas de hors-texte]), means nothing else: there is nothing outside context. In this form, which says exactly the same thing, the formula would doubtless have been less shocking. I am not certain that it would have provided more to think about. . . .

. . . A few moments ago, I insisted on writing, at least in quotation marks, the strange and trivial formula, “real-history-of-the-world,” in order to mark clearly that the concept of text or context which guides me embraces and does not exclude the world, reality, history. Once again (and this probably makes a thousand times I have had to repeat this, but when will it finally be heard, and why this resistance?): as I understand it (and I have explained why), the text is not the book, it is not confined in a volume itself confined to the library. It does not suspend reference–to history, to the world, to reality, to being, and especially not to the other, since to say of history, of the world, of reality, that they always appear in an experience, hence in a movement of interpretation which contextualizes them according to a network of differences and hence of referral to the other, is surely to recall that alterity (difference) is irreducible. Différance is a reference, and vice-versa. (Limited Inc, 136-37)

So to a degree Graham is right. However the Other to the text is what Derrida is most concerned with. When we speak of “world” we have to ask what we mean. Do we merely mean the set of experiences within contexts? If so, then there is nothing else. The question, as I see Derrida asking is the relationship between nothing and the Other. Now in one sense we can’t call that the world. Yet in an other it is very much our concern and very much a part of what in common vernacular we call the world.

The problem is, I think, that “world” is a very overloaded word with lots of different senses. It’s all too easy to equivocate. So when a Derridean objects to the claim that the world is reduced to text what they are objecting to isn’t the idea of experience and context but the concern with the Other to experience. (They also object to how people read the word “text” incorrectly, although I think it fair to say that’s a misreading Derrida himself is responsible for as the above quotation clearly shows him admitting) What we mean by “world” in common vernacular (rather than in technical jargon) clearly is more than text.

The other bit from Graham is targeting Heidegger and technology.

But Heidegger is anti-technology. In an effort to defend his position from all the various weapons that can be used against such conservatism, they posit in advance that any critique of Heidegger as anti-technology must always already be viewed as naive and simplistic.

This I’m much more sympathetic to. I do think Heidegger is needlessly anti-technology and overly romantic about the rural life. That’s not to say a lot of the analysis of technology isn’t correct. Just that the values he communicates about rural German life seems as ridiculous to me as some of his Nazism.

I tend to agree with Graham on Husserl. Graham on scientism is a bit harder to buy. I’m sure most of the scientists Graham speaks with are fascinated with philosophical questions. I know many who are myself. However I know many more who have a disdain for philosophy characteristic of Richard Feynman. Of course Feynman was probably burned on philosophy by taking a class on Whitehead at MIT. Hardly a great way to get introduced to philosophy in my opinion. Philosophy had its revenge when Feynman’s son became a philosopher.

Related posts:

  1. Derrida and the Text
  2. Thoughts on Derrida and Realism
  3. The Derrida Debate
  4. Davidson and Derrida
  5. Derrida and Basic Ontology
  6. One Last One on Realism

Comments

7 Responses to “Trumpery, Heidegger and Derrida”

Heidegger may have been personally anti-technology, or more precisely, anti-technological change. He hated the typewriter, but loved his fountain pens.

Philosophically, one would first have to define one’s term – techne or technicity? – but I don’t understand Heidegger’s philosophy to be anti-technology.

I’d love to hear Harman debate Sheehan about this.

Well I think one can be anti-technology without being a luddite. Like you I don’t see Heidegger’s formal philosophy entailing anti-technology but perhaps that’s just because I don’t have trouble picking and choosing. But when I read especially the later Heidegger there is an anti-technological tone that I think goes beyond the formal arguments and which can be annoying at times.

I find lots of annoying bits, that I skip over. With over 100 volumes of raw material, it pays to be selective.

Well you’ve probably read considerably more than I. There’s probably about six books I’ve read a lot due to my interests, probably about that many again I’ve read, and probably about the same I’ve skimmed. The rest I just haven’t read although in some cases I probably should. This is why I’m an amateur rather than a PhD candidate…

5 Michael Dorfman on August 5th, 2010 7:04 am

Harman:: But Derrida does reduce the world to a text. That’s the source from which he draw his strengths no less than his weaknesses, and Derrideans shouldn’t be so quick to saw off the limb on which Derrida himself is sitting.

If Harman thinks that Derrida’s maneuver is in any way a reduction, he really has no idea which limb Derrida is sitting upon.

Good point. One I should have brought up although that gets even more complex. Clearly the text, for Derrida, isn’t something determinate. (Once again this is a place where I think reading Derrida in terms of semiotics is helpful – it’s all signs and signs are ambiguous in key ways)

7 Michael Dorfman on August 7th, 2010 7:06 am

It’s particularly ironic that a phrase about the (critical) importance of context would be taken so often out of context– precisely as “iteration” permits, but ironic nonetheless, as it shows the failure of the one quoting to heed the ethical call….

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