From: Pedro_Pereira-AT-Brown.edu
Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 20:32:48 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: PLC: "Deconstruction"


On Sunday, November 2, 1997, James Westfall wrote:

>I'd have to take respectful exception with the above contention. Derrida
>and Lacan's admittedly different trajectories intersect at numerous
>points. One might say that the oeuvres of both represent slightly
>differing takes--or translations--of Saussure, Freud, and Heidegger. And,
>both thinkers, D & L, are united in bearing a slightly askance relation to
>European structuralism. Neither are, in a word, "poststructuralist"--a
>word that seems to hold meaning only for idle talkers on this side of the
>lake (and maybe in the U.K. too).


James: I agree with you, but let me just add that, when I complain about
the readings that mix together Derrida and Lacan (and Lacan was here only
an example), I'm only trying to say that one should be very carefull about
how one reads a text, and mainly about how one builds analogies between
different philosophical paths, which, in the case you've mentioned, do have
points in common. What I'm trying to say is that we can't just quote in an
article two different thinkers (In support of the point we're trying to
demonstrate in that same article), in this case Derrida and Lacan, without
keeping in mind the fact that, although he owes a great deal to
psychoanalysis, Derrida is a lot closer to Freud than to Lacan, because of
the linguistic orientation of the latter's trajectory of thought. According
to Derrida, linguistics is a "logocentric" or "phalogocentric" discipline.
(Cf. "L'Oreille de l'autre", a roundtable on translation and autobiography)

Thanks for your reminder, though.


Pedro Schachtt Pereira




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