Jacques Derrida RIP

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but that's how everything ends, cozen!

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 27 June 2001 02:46 (twenty-four years ago)

three years pass...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3729844.stm

― Jack Battery-Pack (Jack Battery-Pack), Saturday, 9 October 2004 15:16 (twenty-one years ago)

wow

― RJG (RJG), Saturday, 9 October 2004 15:18 (twenty-one years ago)

RIP

― RJG (RJG), Saturday, 9 October 2004 15:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, I just started a thread about this. But yeah, it is sad.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Saturday, 9 October 2004 15:19 (twenty-one years ago)

i don't think he was nearly as incomprehensible as he was made out to be. dangerous, maybe...RIP

― tricky (disco stu), Saturday, 9 October 2004 15:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Whoah.

Years ago I did an essay for an English course in which I illustrated the parallels between remix culture and the Deconstructionist movement.

So, thank you, Jacques.

― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Saturday, 9 October 2004 15:26 (twenty-one years ago)

very sorry to hear it.

i just saw the documentary the bbc article cites. good stuff.

― Germany's Fun-Loving Beer (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 9 October 2004 15:32 (twenty-one years ago)

!!!

― mark p (Mark P), Saturday, 9 October 2004 15:34 (twenty-one years ago)

:( :( :(

shit

― mark p (Mark P), Saturday, 9 October 2004 15:35 (twenty-one years ago)

RIP

my prof told me a (kind of) funny story yesterday about Derrida. he was able to attend one of his classes in France, and that day one poor girl had to give a presentation, and she was so nervous to be giving a presentation to Derrida that she was chain smoking like a chimney the entire time.

― ryan (ryan), Saturday, 9 October 2004 15:35 (twenty-one years ago)

rip!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Wow, I don't think I've been so shocked at the death of a public personality since Serge Gainsbourg went. I didn't know he was ill. Something about the way he read text made it almost seem like he could defy time, fixed meaning, and even death. Like he could have deconstructed death before it deconstructed him. Like he was the knight in 'The Seventh Seal', playing chess with the Reaper, and I really thought he might somehow have won.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:25 (twenty-one years ago)

should be some interesting articles written the next week. i have his book on death "Aporias." maybe i will take a look at it. the last line is pretty neat.

i forgot to mention that my prof said he was very kind and considerate to that student giving the presentation.

― ryan (ryan), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, I can guess what'll be happening at my workplace soon enough. It's about time for them to rotate the standing exhibit in the library lobby anyway.

More seriously: he was looking not all that well last time I saw him on the UCI campus. I was crossing the bridge back from the demi-shopping mall across from the admin building and passed by him -- he was looking less sprightly than before, more careworn and considered. A very elegant man every time I saw him around, though, and while at the time I was a student I was somewhat annoyed at the abject worship in the department (not universal, I'll admit), on balance he was one of the most creative folks in a field that too easily can extinguish or redirect that spark. RIP, indeed.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:29 (twenty-one years ago)

What's also shocking is that he's the last of France's really great 20th century philosophes. It's really the end of an era.

Barthes (1980); Lacan (1981); Aron (1983); Foucault (1984); Braudel (1985); Debord (1994); Deleuze (1995); Lyotard (1998); Bourdieu (2002). Derrida (2004).

Actually, that's not quite true. Levi-Strauss is still alive. He's 95. And I guess there's Virilio and Baudrillard left.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I didn't even realize Levi-Strauss was still going! I somehow suspect Baudrillard will be the last to go and will leave behind a repeating file on a server somewhere discussing whether or not he is really dead if QuickTime can interpret him.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:35 (twenty-one years ago)

I do very much like the picture the BBC picked, he would have approved:

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40160000/jpg/_40160454_derrida203bafp.jpg

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I've tried to start several posts about how much his work has meant to me, but that of course lives on. For the man, RIP.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:43 (twenty-one years ago)

It's true that philosophers come to life in a certain way only when they die. They also get to remain relevant right up to the last moment.

Nice photo indeed, Ned. Derrida was a handsome man. BBC teletext is headlining the story 'Deconstruction icon Derrida dies'. You don't usually get to be an 'icon' unless you're someone people look at as well as read.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh man, I just realized -- we'll never put a reserve list on for him again. He never handled that directly, that was always up to the grad student helping with the class, of course. ;-) But it was always interesting to see what he was recommending and also what new texts the library had ordered for the spring seminar each time.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:48 (twenty-one years ago)

The Mac lover in you, Momus, will approve of this site if you've not found it already:

http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Meanwhile, UCI had this small but useful resource up that links to a couple of bibliographies and other details.

http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~scctr/Wellek/derrida.html

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 9 October 2004 16:52 (twenty-one years ago)

It is odd that philosophers truly become defined at their death - it's easier to cement and evaluate their contribution when you know it won't be added too further, at least not by them; not that Derrida didn't have more to say, I'm sure he did: he produced such a huge amount of work during his life. There are so many philosophers who totally changed their thinking totally in the course of their life, it's odd to think about the way they would have been seen had they died before these changed, or what other thinkers could have become had they lived on.

Yeah, he was a handsome man - I think French intellectuals tend to be, even if not in a strict sense, there is a certain sense of grandeur to to the way France treats it's thinkers. It's something I think more countries could learn from, but I guess there is little chance of our culture ever respecting intellectual creativity as much as it does wealth or physical beauty.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Saturday, 9 October 2004 17:01 (twenty-one years ago)

I attended a 3-class seminar he delivered at NYU in '99 and he was charming, graceful, and accessible--not at all pompous. RIP.

― Mary (Mary), Saturday, 9 October 2004 17:32 (twenty-one years ago)

man. rip, jaques.

― g--ff (gcannon), Saturday, 9 October 2004 19:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't usually get sad when people I wasn't personally aquainted with die, but...rest in peace good sir.

― mouse (mouse), Saturday, 9 October 2004 19:20 (twenty-one years ago)

"Have you read all the books in here?"

"No," he replies impishly, "only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully".

RIP

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Saturday, 9 October 2004 19:22 (twenty-one years ago)

I am in the middle of his religous work for the book i am in the middle of writing, and i think that he was one of the few philosophers of the 20th century who took god seriously, not just as a source of power, but as a mystery.

i wonder what he would think if i lit a candle for him.

― anthony, Saturday, 9 October 2004 19:27 (twenty-one years ago)

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 9 October 2004 19:30 (twenty-one years ago)

deconstruction and necessity

― tricky (disco stu), Saturday, 9 October 2004 20:55 (twenty-one years ago)

― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 9 October 2004 20:59 (twenty-one years ago)

that was great tricky, thanks.

― ryan (ryan), Saturday, 9 October 2004 21:03 (twenty-one years ago)

One of the first people to spin my head around.

― bnw (bnw), Saturday, 9 October 2004 21:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I remember him speaking at Oxford as part of the Amnesty International lecture series and the Radcliffe Camera was insanely packed, it was like the Beatles were reuniting or something, people were crammed in. He delicately parried his interviewer's attempts to put a populist and positivist spin on deconstruction (including the inane question "wouldn't it be better to call it re-construction, really?") and held his ground. Very dapper too of course, purple tie and all.

The Politics of Friendship says that the duty to mourn is consitutive of the very nature of friendship's contract, and I guess this is where it comes due. RIP

― Drew Daniel, Saturday, 9 October 2004 21:39 (twenty-one years ago)

people like this should be allowed to live forever.

― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 9 October 2004 21:44 (twenty-one years ago)

:-(

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Saturday, 9 October 2004 22:22 (twenty-one years ago)

― g--ff (gcannon), Saturday, 9 October 2004 23:20 (twenty-one years ago)

RIP

There were some rather cute and charming scenes in that documentary

― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Sunday, 10 October 2004 01:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Sigh. I have no poignant words, only that his passing has quite an impact on me, both b/c of the influence of his work on my ways of thinking and on so many others who have inspired me and b/c, as with Cartier-Bresson's death, this reminds me of how very real life is, how everybody dies, but you really can do so much with this here life - I mean, great things are all around us, so of course we can be great too (in our own ways.)

― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Sunday, 10 October 2004 01:56 (twenty-one years ago)

how everybody dies, but you really can do so much with this here life

my cynical stubborn side tells me I got to add : there are ideas and actions for longer, healthier lives

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Sunday, 10 October 2004 02:02 (twenty-one years ago)

please.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 10 October 2004 02:06 (twenty-one years ago)

whatever u say

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Sunday, 10 October 2004 02:11 (twenty-one years ago)

do you ever feel tired?

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 10 October 2004 02:23 (twenty-one years ago)

don't be a stranger, be a friend?

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Sunday, 10 October 2004 02:26 (twenty-one years ago)

you're right.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 10 October 2004 02:27 (twenty-one years ago)

― etc, Sunday, 10 October 2004 04:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Wait, where are all the people who are ready to slam Derrida, like on some of the other boards? This is weird.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 10 October 2004 04:39 (twenty-one years ago)

this isn't weird, it might not be the thread for this?

― no respect, Sunday, 10 October 2004 04:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, I'm not advocating that it should happen here, don't get me wrong.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 10 October 2004 04:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Skipping 29 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

At the risk of seeming insensitive, I'm wondering, with Derrida having deserted us, who is the new king (or queen) of theory hill? Zizek, Habermas, Judith Butler, Bourdieu, Spivak?

― lysander spooner, Tuesday, 12 October 2004 01:37 (twenty-one years ago)

He was a parrot, clutching a candle of illuminated truth in a crackden full of the dead clowns of modernism. I often imagined tea parties at which he was the guest of honour. He'll never get to drink the worm now.

― Michael Stuchbery (Mikey Bidness), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 01:50 (twenty-one years ago)

i wouldn't put it on butler, not general enough.
is her new book any good

― anthony, Tuesday, 12 October 2004 02:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Couldn't tell you. I've only ever read Gender Trouble, which completely blew my mind.

― lysander spooner, Tuesday, 12 October 2004 02:33 (twenty-one years ago)

gender trouble blew everyones mind, this new one is sweeping up the fragments, apparently

― anthony, Tuesday, 12 October 2004 02:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Bourdieu died a year or two ago, yeah?

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 02:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Did he? I bought a book of his that came out last year, so I thought he was still going. That shows how little qualified I am to get theoretical. More on my level, I'm wondering if Joe Pesci or Peter Falk should play Derrida in The Desconstructionist or whatever the biopic would be called.

― lysander spooner, Tuesday, 12 October 2004 03:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Bourdie obit

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 03:15 (twenty-one years ago)

BOURDIEU, obv.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 03:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I thought you were just being posthumously affectionate.

― Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 04:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Some fool actually took the time to write this. Momus, for kicks, maybe you can get the rights and set this to music.

Pavane pour un philosophe defunt

Dirge for Jacques Derrida

NJL

Derrida, oh Derrida, say have you met Derrida
Derrida the Deconstructionist.
His works, all told, form quite a pile,
But in a style completely vile.

Derrida, oh Derrida, that encyclo-pedi-yah
Derrida the world’s greatest fake!
The feminist scholar still on the make,
The cultural theorist whose job is at stake,
And the English professor who’s barely awake,
They can learn a lot from Derrida!

He’ll deconstruct, per your order, for a buck and a quarter
Whatever football game is on,
Or a building of Gehry, or superstring theory,
Or the memoirs of Jenna Jameson.

Derrida oh Derrida, say have you met Derrida,
Derrida the Deconstructionist.
When his brain cells start a-wheezin’,
Out the door goes western reason.

Derrida, oh Derrida, that encyclo-pedi-yah,
Derrida the world’s greatest fake!
You can deconstruct Plato inside and out,
Or Wittgenstein’s Ladder, or Cartesian Doubt.
You don’t have to know what you’re talking about!
You can learn a lot from Derrida.

Come along and learn what you want about differance,
(You needn’t have the price of a ticket on Air France).
Here’s linguistics (well sort of) a la Sassure,
Here’s Althusser’s wife being placed sur rasure.

Here is Martin Heidegger, a-heilin’ his “Heil!”
And there’s Paul de Mann, see him smilin’ his smile,
Watching the MLA fall for his ruses,
And here’s Jacques’s tedious list of excuses.

Derrida, oh Derrida, that encyclo-pedi-yah,
Derrida the world’s greatest fake!
He once swept the Yalies clear off their feet,
The quips from his lips made their hearts skip a beat,
But now the old boy’s really feelin’ the heat!
For they’ve gone and buried Derrida!

― lysander spooner, Tuesday, 12 October 2004 04:27 (twenty-one years ago)

it's a strange world where a crippled g-grade actor gets more press than a philosopher who emancipated our minds

― Queen G-grade personality steaks, Tuesday, 12 October 2004 05:15 (twenty-one years ago)

The interview Le Monde published yesterday is very good. He doesn't talk much about philosophy; it's quite personal and he talks a lot about death. It's very much in the genre of the "last interview" and reminds me of the last interviews Foucault gave. For those who read French:

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3230,36-375883,0.html

― Jonathan Z. (Joanthan Z.), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 07:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Queen G harshly OTM.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 08:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Strange perhaps, but all that unexpected? More people know about/saw Reeve's work as Superman than ever read a word of Derrida, to be blunt.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 11:46 (twenty-one years ago)

All deaths are sad to those who happen to care and are touched.

People respond in different ways.

I think that I, personally, am finding Reeve's sadder, to me, than Derrida's.

Possible silver lining to the dark Derridean cloud: there is now a vacancy in the intellectual world that Barry Davies suddenly has the time to fill.

― the bellefox, Tuesday, 12 October 2004 12:18 (twenty-one years ago)

An Australian cricketer from the fifties died in Australia, which has overshadowed Reeve. I have not seen an Australian media organ even mention Derrida yet.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 23:38 (twenty-one years ago)

There was a full page obit in the SMH, Tim!

― Colin Beckett, Wednesday, 13 October 2004 02:58 (twenty-one years ago)

In the Guardian, Reeve's obituary ran alongside that of the Australian cricketer, and the cricketer had the longer article.

― caitlin (caitlin), Wednesday, 13 October 2004 10:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Here's some stuff I've been reading (via radio free narnia):

BOP on deconstruction and action - http://www.bopnews.com/archives/001880.html#1880

also this- http://www.nplusonemag.com/

The guardian and its derrida orbituary (via FT): http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1324160,00.html

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 13 October 2004 11:41 (twenty-one years ago)

The response to the snide NY Times obit.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Wednesday, 13 October 2004 21:16 (twenty-one years ago)

This is great!

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/remembering_jd/

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 13 October 2004 21:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Including our own Drew Daniel!

Cool that Samuel Delany's on there.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 13 October 2004 21:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Judy Butler's letter makes me feel much better.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 13 October 2004 21:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Terry Eagleton (briefly) on JD

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1328214,00.html

― lysander spooner, Thursday, 21 October 2004 14:48 (twenty-one years ago)

The NY Times crowed some more about the death of "Big Theory' on Sunday, and got Stanley F1sh to help twist the knife. It's truly weird how nakedly slanted this coverage is getting: I mean, if a pioneer of disco died, would you interview Roger Rockist to comment on why all those disco records sounded the same? Sheesh.

― Drew Daniel, Thursday, 21 October 2004 14:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Did anyone notice that the Onion finally mentioned his death in Yesterday's edition, which seems very topical.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 21 October 2004 15:08 (twenty-one years ago)

The University of Chicago had a conference on the death of theory or some such a year or two ago. Fish was there and some of the other Big Names. I know the backlash began long ago but resentment still flares up violently.

I didn't notice the Onion thing. I'll look again. It's funny, I'm guessing.

― lysander spooner, Thursday, 21 October 2004 15:12 (twenty-one years ago)

It's funny, I'm guessing

No, it's tiny, and obvious. Online Edition, of course.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 21 October 2004 15:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, if you were the New York Times, long a "culture war" lighting rod*, I can't imagine openly cherishing deconstruction would do you any good. And Derrida being "French" probably does not help matters any, either.

*I mean, fuck, for years you had Hilton Kramer devoting a regular column in the NY Post to do nothing but bray his ass off about how horrible the NYT was. Hilton Kramer!

Maybe when Donna Summer dies you'll hear some snide grumbling from the edges of rock discourse, but on the whole, if a disco pioneer died, Roger Rockist wouldn't even take notice.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Thursday, 21 October 2004 15:27 (twenty-one years ago)

That NYTimes piece is ridiculous. It's the same regurgitated critiques of theory that have been around for decades.

"Advances in neuroscience upended Freudian assumptions about the brain, and psychoactive drugs replaced psychoanalysis"

"When a student in the audience asked the panelists, more than two dozen distinguished scholars, what theory was good for, the answer came back amid much hand-wringing over the Bush administration and the war in Iraq: very little."

Please.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 21 October 2004 16:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Apparently there was a column in the Independent on Sunday this last weekend which began "So Derrida has croaked it. Hahahahaha."

Nice to see Drew Daniel contributing here! (I'm assuming it's the Matmos / Soft Pink Truth one)!

― Momus (Momus), Thursday, 21 October 2004 16:44 (twenty-one years ago)

The Onion headline is: Derrida 'Dies'

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 21 October 2004 16:53 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm afraid that I don't agree with what's being said re. Fish. Almost everything I've ever read by Fish on Derrida has been respectful to a fault. Like Rorty, he has some bizarre inferiority complex about him. Fish is not the rockist to Derrida's death disco, though doubtless many others would be.

― the bellefox, Thursday, 21 October 2004 19:21 (twenty-one years ago)

eight months pass...

what a fitting way for it to end, in death

― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 18 July 2005 15:58 (twenty years ago)

i miss this guy.

― jeffrey (johnson), Monday, 18 July 2005 16:13 (twenty years ago)

two years pass...

i miss u boo

― max, Saturday, 29 September 2007 19:55 (eighteen years ago)

"word"

― Noodle Vague, Saturday, 29 September 2007 19:56 (eighteen years ago)

im reading "acts of religion" and i almost cant put it down. the best essay in it, "force of law," is sort of terrifyingly good--the best kind of critique, where the essay is both a comment on and a movement past the text w/ which it concerns itself. a good 2/3ds of the whole thing is qualification and prolegomena and it still offers more up for thought than whole volumes by other philosophes.

― max, Saturday, 29 September 2007 19:57 (eighteen years ago)

he also has a reputation as very well-dressed, too

― max, Saturday, 29 September 2007 19:58 (eighteen years ago)

well, as having been very well-dressed

― max, Saturday, 29 September 2007 19:58 (eighteen years ago)

o max

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 29 September 2007 20:07 (eighteen years ago)

what a fitting way for it to end, in death
-- cozen (Cozen), Monday, July 18, 2005 4:58 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

^^^this

― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Saturday, 29 September 2007 20:23 (eighteen years ago)

I guess there's Virilio and Baudrillard left.

-- Momus (Momus), Saturday, October 9, 2004 4:32 PM

;_;

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 29 September 2007 20:46 (eighteen years ago)

i guess there's momus and BIG HOOS left.

― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Saturday, 29 September 2007 20:50 (eighteen years ago)

I'm still curious as to the source of your hatred for Cultural Studies students. Were you inundated with freshly minted Deconstructionist-wannabes spouting nonsense during Uni or what?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 29 September 2007 21:25 (eighteen years ago)

"Cultural Studies"

― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 29 September 2007 21:31 (eighteen years ago)

His term, not mine.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 29 September 2007 21:34 (eighteen years ago)

Well ok, his and lots of others that use it, but not mine.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 29 September 2007 21:34 (eighteen years ago)

um yeah do your fucking homework guys, no need for scare quotes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Contemporary_Cultural_Studies

but yeah i'm generally talking about the colonization of the field by linguistic structuralism in the 70s and 80s rather than that.

― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Saturday, 29 September 2007 23:05 (eighteen years ago)

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