Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 13:35:53 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Rooney <rooney-AT-tiger.cc.oxy.edu>
Subject: RE: dialectic (can non-philosophers read?)




On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, michelle phil lewis-king wrote:

> > > > You're avoiding the issue.  D&G (especially G.)
> > > > are critical of Derrida's notion of writing and
> > > > do not base their postulates of linguistics on it.
> > >
> > > I'd be very interested in examples of this critisism.
> >
> > Again, I would refer you to the beginning of
> > Guattari's "The Place of the Signifier in the
> > Institution".  N.b. the remarks about archi-
> > ecriture being a "retrospective illusion" (or
> > somesuch -- again, I don't have it with me).
> >
> You're wrong. That was the example I sent in where Guattari criticises the
> Imperialism of a single signifying substance an arche-writing, arche-writing
> "but not in Derrida's sense".MRpp75. 

And this passage strikes me as plainly critical
of Derrida -- that JD's archi-ecriture is too
textual, not concrete and historical.  Perhaps
we can look at this passage explicitly.  But as
I don't have a copy of MR handy, I'll concede
the issue.


> Rather than a poly-centred substance, writing simply becomes
> fetishized as the expression of a single authentic voice (letting
> Deleuze, Nietszche speak for themselves, listening to Hegel as the 
> only authority on Hegel.)

Reading Hegel seems to me the best route to
understanding Hegel.  This does not amount to
"fetishizing" the Voice of the Author.  Let 
me put it this way: would you rather someone
read your posts to understand (or appreciate)
you, or read my posts about you? 


> The writer Nietzsche's 'ignorance' of Hegel is vital because it
> places his scratchings beyond,below,ect the State signifier 'Philosophy'.

This cedes too much to Hegel.  And how would
anybody know if we're all busy being studiously
ignorant?  Suppose we inadvertently say the
same thing as Hegel?


> Writing, thinking becomes another kind of operation. Sovereign because it is
> not subjected to spoken discourse, to reciprocity. To stupid q+a sessions.

It doesn't seem very sovereign -- it's following
Derrida's heavy philosophical machinery.


> Now as I discussed with Nathan there may well be another Hegel.. we agreed
> that this might be in the Hegel learning as he develops the 'phenemology'..
> A Hegel in movement. Nathan generously indicated that work was being done in
> this area by Andrew Benjamin and others.

At this level, such a reading is hopelessly
crude.  It's very easy to say, oh, yes, let's
find "another Hegel" or "another Heidegger"
or "let's read Aristotle differentially" --
such is the rot on which academic conferences
thrive.  Frankly, most people proposing such
things haven't read Hegel, Heidegger, or any-
body in the first place.  At any rate, to do
so, you must, at some point, actually read
x, y, or z.  Not just sample what other people
have said about them.


> I'm only specifically interested in the liasson
> between Derrida's general characterisation of a  'writing' (in 'On
> Grammatology' and 'From Restricted to General Economy.") I'd say on the
> evidence of the passages that I quoted you from 'anti-oedipus' that this
> characterisation is at the root D+G's theory of a 'nonsignifying language'
> a language of 'decoded flows'.
[...]
> D+G accept Derrida's notion of 'writing' in the largest sense and follow
> Lyotard in conceiving of it as a thick substance. 

I agree with your general point of comparison
(as I said before): both Derrida and d+g point
to an extra-textual field working through 
language.  But I disagree about your specific
renderings of this (very general) similarity:
that d+g's notion of writing owes much to Derrida's
archi-ecriture; or that either notion enables
us to ignore Hegel in writing about him, much less
to go "beyond philosophy".


> I'd say the danger of your line of crude pragmatism is that
> it has a 'Passion for abolition." and a fixation on Clarity and Power.I'd
> say  that you've lost sight of the fact that lines are not necessarily or by
> nature bad or good. You've become a 'new knight' with a mission terrorising
> with one line 'mots d'ordre' and too hastily drawn conclusions. You think
> you have understood everything. Micheal the self appointed judge, dispenser
> of justice. Your fixation on power is manifest in your love of the closed
> system of the 'q+a' session and your futile desire to 'dismiss' others from
> what you'd implicitly like to be a closed list, an artificial debating
> chamber. I have the impression that you've gone too far, but instead of
> connecting you've to turned to abolishing. The only power you have is the
> force of your words and this is no power at all. 

Like, duh.  If I were your power-drunk bogeyman, 
I wouldn't waste my time replying to your clumsy
assumption of the psychiatrist's chair.  I leave 
the completion of this example of modus tollens
as an exercise for the reader.


Cordially,

M.