Derrida

This post about the late Jacques Derrida comes from my son Chris who is a Junior at Brown University. "The slew of New York Times articles are both despairing in their anti-intellectualism (that categorizes US politics and media) and inspiring in how much discourse has spiraled out of the first NYTimes obituary. The constant possibility of expanding discourse, as exemplified by the NY Times and theorized by Derrida, is just what this country needs to reinvent itself. Questioning what is given, as well as all other kinds of subversions can and must continue. They should only be limited by the particular (however general) point the discourse makes. Nothing can be taken for granted. No one authority can tell us what is what (is)."

He recommends searching though all New York Times articles containing the word Derrida. Also look at the homage by "Judith Butler (Cal gender theorist and arguably the most important American academic) which contains an unpublished letter to the NYTimes as well as her own remarks on mourning." And he directs our attention to an article by a Brown student "who doesn't define deconstruction but instead enacts it with the coincidence of Christopher Reeves' death the same weekend."

Chris concludes by reminding me that Derrida was the thinker who brought him "beyond the economics of Marx and the implicit philosophy of Nietzsche to real critical thinking and intellectualism. Derrida's thoughts truly bring us beyond the empiricism and imperialism of the West."