I remember when Jacques Derrida died. I didn’t particularly mourn his passing. I resented the fact that I’d only drilled down on the post-modern claptrap after it was passe and had been replaced by corporate surrealism, it’s logical extension. This ill-marked passage in intellectual history happened I think in the early eighties, when the global corporate culture was locking down nationalism once and for all.
Today I was reminded of old Jake by a post at wood s lot. It was a David Wills translation of Derrida’s “The Animal That Therefore I Am,” including a cute French pun (having nothing to do with seasickness actually, but very much like that): he wanted to substitute a singular word “animot” for the plural “animaux” as well as the singular “l’animal.” Reading of this failure to grasp the thing itself, the animals, the philosopher’s failure to apprehend, to comprehend, and to accurately reflect the physical world and the wonderful various language of animals I flashed on the root cause. I flashed on what must have been true and will be well worth further examination. It seemed to me that Derrida, for all the difference he wanted to make, must have been locked in conflict with the keepers of the mother tongue, l’Academie française. I’m sure this is old hat to the pomo crowd, but it gave me a deeper understanding of perhaps why such intensity attaches to his work.
[gresham’s law of philosophy… or, whatever happened to the marxist disquisition?]
