Jacques Derrida

"September 11 [le 11 septembre] gave us the impression of being a major event, one of the most important historical events we will witness in our lifetime, especially for those of us who never lived through a world war. Do you agree?"

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/066649.html

jd can generally take an awful long time to say stuff - but there's more to what he's saying as a whole (on that link) than my redux: he's saying it that way to get you in a mood to be attentive to what's not being said

(ie like elmer fudd: "be vewwy vewy quiet, i'm hunting wabbits)

jonathan z. i take yr point, i'm just not sure if the best way to get ppl to think for themselves abt the shadow side of eloquence and rhetorical power is by being ALWAYS snappy and zippy and grabby

(on the other hand JD is *never* any of those things, though in some ways his problem is that he is too compressed haha)

this phrase is one of both Derrida and DeMan's favorite red herrings

What he says about philosophy has not always been banal, or has not always been obvious.

(haha "like nations on a map with no names" -- WHERE the fuck did i just read that!?)

im not sure what that means but it seemed very funny.

they're like monads except they throb

is this like saying that naming something necessarily means "we do not know what we are talking about"? (and therefore means that we never know what we are talking about - we just talk about words) or does this only apply to metonyms?

crown -- > king
shake your ass -- > shake your entire body
9/11 -- > ?

then once he's actually GOT himself started, where he gets to (which comes after this little section), is the important bit

it isn't arbitrary (the name of the event is the DATE the event happened on); it *is* unusual (holidays often get metonymised this specific way - 4th of july - but what else does? off the top of my head can't think of any other political-military events)

(black friday? bloody sunday? that's the best i can do...)

it could almost suggest that 9/11 was instantly commemorated, which is kind of creepy.

is there a difference between "1066" and "the Norman Conquest"?

Didn't people immediately start using 9/11 because of those numbers specifically? People would not use 9/10 or 9/12, would they, if it happened on these dates instead?

it's still a fairly minor throat-clearing of an idea in itself: just the route JD comes at stuff

x-post re battle of boyne

oh right: but even so, it's the holiday celebration that's created the metonymy, surely?

'In this regard, when compared to the possibilities for destruction and chaotic disorder that are in reserve, for the future, in the computerized networks of the world, "September 11" is still part of the archaic theater of violence aimed at striking the imagination. One will be able to do even worse tomorrow, invisibly, in silence, more quickly and without any bloodshed, by attacking the computer and informational networks on which the entire life (social, economic, military, and so on) of a "great nation," of the greatest power on earth, depends. One day it might be said: "September 11"—those were the ("good") old days of the last war. Things were still of the order of the gigantic: visible and enormous! What size, what height! There has been worse since. Nanotechnologies of all sorts are so much more powerful and invisible, uncontrollable, capable of creeping in everywhere. They are the micrological rivals of microbes and bacteria. Yet our unconscious is already aware of this; it already knows it, and that's what's scary.'

Possible argument: the problem lies with the people who keep asking people like JD about things like 9/11, when there is no very good reason to think that he will have anything more brilliant to say about it than the rest of us.

Perhaps his banal replies signify commendable politeness, in their refusal to say 'Why are you asking me?'.

I can understand him: he is banal!

Sometimes Derrida says banal things - or at least, obvious things, which lots of other people could easily have come out with.

Sometimes his obfuscatory words may be saying something banal.

Sometimes he may not be banal.

Sometimes perhaps he does not obfuscate.

what, sound pompous on a derrida thread? impossible.

Haha. Fair point.

He taught at NYU at least one semester while I was there. I didn't try to get into his class. Probably should have.

i guess the good thread i'm suggesting would be a place to brainstorm ways *out* of the current impasse

― mark s, Wednesday, 24 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

One day I will read something on TV from a left journal with absolutely no mention of politics.

https://jacobin.com/2023/05/succession-television-devestating-critique-ultrarich-review/

I'm a bit bemused at myself that I only posted twice on this thread over the years and in both cases tried to say something by implication rather than fully spelling it out, but honestly there's not much to tell. Anyway: so I was a grad student in English lit at UC Irvine in the early nineties, switched over to working in the library system there through 2015, and as such was in the mix of Derrida being here for his spring quarterly visits until his passing. I always heard his lectures were crowded/overbooked affairs and actually being in grad school made me realize how my eyes quickly glazed over on a lot of things in the general field, so I admit I never bothered with said appearances, but it was interesting/bemusing to sense him as presence in the air. I essentially saw him in person only a handful of times over the years, never spoke with him directly, but he seemed either affable in conversation with others or lost in thought on his own, which I chose not to disturb, tempted though I was to ask him about a certain Scritti Politti song. Ultimately my strongest memory of him was walking past him casually one morning on the footbridge connecting the campus to the mid-size open air mall across the street, and I like imagining he was going over for a burger or something. (Plus, to add another memory, per my earlier comments, TAs coming in to put lots of books for his course on reserve, and indeed a number of them were his.)

Are you able to confirm a bit of apocrypha about his time there - that over his office door was a "French Only" sign?