Margins of Derrida

Pieces on Derrida continue to appear in the media, mainly uninformed.

To their credit, the Wall Street Journal and New Republic managed to publish critical items without mentioning deconstructionism. Although the New Republic's editors managed to assert their ignorance of the subject when constructing the subtitle to the article.

Marco Roth wrote a nice memoir in n+1.

I found a surprisingly cogent interview with Derrida in the LA Weekly, from a couple of years ago:

In an interview he gave shortly after World War II but ordered withheld from publication until after his death in 1976, Heidegger said, "Philosophy after Nietzsche could offer neither help nor hope for mankind's future. All we can do is wait for a god to reappear. Only a god can save us now." Do you agree?

I wouldn't use the term "a god," but what interests me in this statement is that Heidegger was anti-religious. He was raised Catholic, but he vehemently rejected Christianity, so the god he refers to is not the god we know. He refers to a god who not only hasn't come yet, but perhaps doesn't exist. He gives the name of god to the one who is hoped for, and implies that the one who'd come and save us will have the name of god. I don't agree with this if it encourages hope for salvation, but if the statement means that we're waiting for the arrival of an unpredictable one, and that we must be hospitable to the coming of this one, then I've got no objection. This is a form of what I'd describe as messianicity without messianism, and we are by nature messianic. We cannot not be, because we exist in a state of expecting something to happen. Even if we're in a state of hopelessness, a sense of expectation is an integral part of our relationship to time. Hopelessness is possible only because we do hope that some good, loving someone could come. If that's what Heidegger meant, then I agree with him.

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