[untenured]

The biologist and critic of postmodernism Edward O. Wilson once described Derrida's postmodernism as the belief that "No words have any fixed meaning. Except the ones I just wrote."

[wideawake]

Worms are vigorously deconstructing Jacques Derrida as we write.

[Excellence]

bttt

[RightWhale]

“We have to refuse the hegemony of functionality, of the aesthetic, and of dwelling,” Derrida wrote. “It’s a move to free architecture from all those external finalities, those extraneous goals.”

Done. Most any 8000 square foot house housing a family of 4.3 people plus the dog is not functional, not aesthetic, not a dwelling. It is a pavilion, too big to claim functionality, too big to be sensed, too big to be lived in.

[Aquinasfan]

• “The stage is theological for as long as its structure, following the entirety of tradition, comports the following elements: an author-creator who, absent and from afar, is armed with a text and keeps watch over, assembles, regulates the time or the meaning of representation, letting this latter represent him as concerns what is called the content of his thoughts, his intentions, his ideas. He lets representation represent him through representatives, directors or actors, enslaved interpreters who represent characters who, primarily through what they say, more or less directly represent the thought of the ‘creator.’ Interpretive slaves who faithfully execute the providential designs of the ‘master.’”

The emperor has no clothes. Every day I thank God that I'm not in school anymore, and no one can make me read this sh--.

Philosophy, the way it was meant to be.

[jwalburg]

to the effect that the fact that the

need read no more

[x]

Fashion counts for a lot in academia. Derrida was big in previous decades. He's on his way out now. C.S. Lewis may be ready for a comeback, though it may not be in the way AIA would like: liberal or leftist academia isn't just going to adopt conservative heroes and give up.

Is it really so surprising that Derrida is more cited than Jefferson, though? If "theory" rules, you'd have to admit that there's more "theory" in Derrida than in Jefferson. Not to say that it's better theory, but there is more of it.

And since fashion counts, thinkers who have a reputation for being "new" or "difficult" will get more citations than those who are "old hat" or who have been largely "assimilated" or "digested" by the broader culture.

The price of winning politically is that ideas no longer pack the punch that they did when one was a critic on the outside. So Jefferson doesn't earn as many citations as Derrida or Marx when academics try to explain things in the broader culture. If you're an outsider in academia, though, you'll find that enshrined thinkers like Marx and Derrida don't do much to explain what you find there.