File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1996/96-07-26.024, message 41


Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 08:55:21 -0400
From: derekh-AT-yorku.ca (Derek Hrynyshyn)
Subject: Re: Derrida, Bhaskar, etc.


Colin:

I am not sure how far I can go with you on Derrida; a close read of
Grammatology provides much more evidence for the idealist interpretation
and I get really annoyed when I come across quotes by JD saying "I am not
an idealist" when he says idealist things so often. But I do agree that
there is evidence both ways. I have read Norris and think he makes a pretty
case but try p. 20 of "Derrida" where Norris has to say "Oh, well, Derrida
didn't really mean what he said there..." and so on. I just want to blame
Derrida for not being careful in his writing, and not being clear enough to
avoid being read as postmodernist and being "appropriated" by Baudrillard,
etc.

The biggest reason for rejecting Derrida, imho, is the real inconsistency I
see between the need for an intransitive transitive dimension and the
collapsing of everything into text. Maybe Derrida is not an idealist, but
he argues clearly that there is no way to divide ideas into those that
refer to the real world and those that refer to other ideas. This seems to
me to serve the function of making any ontological depth, or at least
knowledge of such, to disappear, leaving us with a flat, depthless world
that exists entirely at the level of Bhaskar's intransitive. I get this out
of Grammatology, but as you say, when we get to Spectres, it turns out that
JD's long-awaited discussion of Marx contains practically no reference to
economics, and what reference there is, is actually pretty darned naive.

Without an intransitive, there can be no economic science.

derek.


Derek Hrynyshyn,           Graduate Program
Phone: 650-2276               in Political Science,
derekh-AT-yorku.ca            York University    Ross S609

Communications Officer,      CUPE local 3903
cupe3903-AT-yorku.ca * Fax: 736-5480 * Office: 736 - 5154
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