Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 16:50:18 -0400
From: "Shawn P. Wilbur" <swilbur-AT-wcnet.org>
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] Re: End of Post modernism?


The National Post article appears to refer to a jointly signed essay, written by Habermas, published under various titles in a number of journals. This is a different text than the collection of dialogues. The co-signed piece is slated to appear in
Constellations, where it should be downloadable (for a fee) off the Blackwood site.

Excerpts have been translated here:

http://marston.blogspot.com/2003_06_01_marston_archive.html#200382079

I suspect the entire document will be best understood, at least where Derrida's position is concerned, in the context of works like _The Other Heading_. It's important to remember that, although Derrida has assented to descriptions like "responsible
anarchism," his practical politics are not generally those of a "card-carrying" anarchist. Beyond that, talk of "postmodernism" in relation to Derrida can be expected to be more or less empty - particularly when the comments assume some simple opposition
(modern vs. postmodern) or rejection (of the enlightenment, etc) which simply doesn't exist in his writing.

-shawn


"J.M. Adams" wrote:

> The Village Voice article seemed to me to be more
> accurate than the National Post one - for instance in
> the latter it was claimed that the book consisted of
> one article, co-signed by both Habermas and Derrida
> rather than two seperate interviews. This raised red
> flags for me since its pretty clear that the latter is
> the case as did the assertion that they supposedly
> both called for people to rally around the WTO (!) -
> most likely this was what Habermas said and then the
> NP writer just grafted that onto Derrida (who has
> proclaimed his affiliations with a certain reading of
> Marx). I do admit that I can see them potentially
> calling for the strengthening of other international
> institutions like the United Nations however,
> especially Habermas. Anyway I don't think it is that
> surprising that 'postmodernists' occasionally
> vacillate back and forth in regard to modernism -
> Derrida has been saying since the early 1990s that the
> one undeconstructable thing is "justice" which is
> certainly a modernist concept. Personally I think that
> any kind of poststructuralist anarchism would have to
> embrace at least the very best elements of modernism,
> for instance the belief that even if people are
> constructed to be a certain way (i.e., biopolitically
> engineered) we at least have the potentiality to
> 'decolonize' and govern ourselves directly without
> mediation - anarchism itself is a product of modernity
> so it seems hard to avoid completely, in that sense;
> not to mention that certain thinkers usually thought
> of as 'postmodern' like Paul Virilio could more
> properly be called "anarcho-modernists" despite their
> affiliations in certain regards with Foucault, Deleuze
> and Guattari - at core, Virilio considers himself a
> phenomenologist since he was a student of
> Merleau-Ponty who was a very heavy influence on his
> insights into the field of perception and he is also
> heavily influenced by literary modernism such as
> Kafka, etc. as are many other so-called postmodern
> types.
>
> Jason
>
> ====> "The world is the natural setting of and field for all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not 'inhabit' only 'the inner man' or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world and only in the world does he know himself."
>
> — Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com