Of Grammatology - Jacques Derrida (Johns Hopkins University Press)

[Beats & Pieces]

I was interested to learn that a new edition had been prepared, with Gayatri Spivak being joined by Judith Butler (always worth reading), and was going to buy the 'new' version until I saw this article:

Embarrassing Ourselves - Los Angeles Review of Books

Has anyone bought it, and is this a fair assessment of the new edition?

 

[Idris2002]

The bunfight in the comments section on that is worthy of our own fine board itself.

As for Of Grammatology, I used to know someone who would walk around with it under his arm, so that it might be more prominently displayed. Whether he actually read it or not, I can't say.

 

[Idris2002]

Isn't it "Johns Hopkins", btw?

 

[Pickman's model]

Isn't it "Johns Hopkins", btw?

Yes

 

[Jeff Robinson]

I won't judge it as I haven't read it. But I doubt I ever will read it, because I have seen no reason why I should. In fact, I have never seen an example of somebody citing anything from Derrida's corpus that actually elucidates their argument, and usually it makes it harder to understand.

 

[Pickman's model]

Vive la différance

 

[Idris2002]

I won't judge it as I haven't read it. But I doubt I ever will read it, because I have seen no reason why I should. In fact, I have never seen an example of somebody citing anything from Derrida's corpus that actually elucidates their argument, and usually it makes it harder to understand.

Famously, Derrida spoke at UCD back in the 1990s.

One of the local academics then asked him a long, rambling and very postmodern question - only to have JD tell him, "sorry, I don't understand the question".

 

[butchersapron]

Vive la différance

Vive la differend.

And showing off.

 

[butchersapron]

How easily this stuff was digested and not very visible anymore. Like after 2003 a reality intruded.

 

[malatesta32]

i saw him speak in London with, i think, Helene Cixous. She is a lot more interesting than all Derrida's tortuous post-post-modernist stuff.

 

[butchersapron]

It's not torturous - it's the foundations of a school of thought that need to be worked though if you want to criticise it correctly. Green gartside had no idea beyond the understanding that dropping names/situations has power. See the bolonga skank shit. Embarrassing.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

Isn't it "Johns Hopkins", btw?

Mea culpa. Apologies for the error. Edited to correct.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

It's not torturous - it's the foundations of a school of thought that need to be worked though if you want to criticise it correctly. Green gartside had no idea beyond the understanding that dropping names/situations has power. See the bolonga skank shit. Embarrassing.

I agree, it isn't torturous but it can occasionally be 'clunky'. I'm hoping that someone might already have both of the editions translated by Spivak to give an indication as to how accurate the LARB article might be.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

It's not torturous - it's the foundations of a school of thought that need to be worked though if you want to criticise it correctly.

It can be both torturous and the foundations of a school of thought. Whether it is or isn't torturous is subjective. Personally, like malatesta32, I find Derrida torturous to engage with,

 

[purves grundy]

When I was doing philosophy at Sheffield in the early 90s, one of my classmates left a copy of Of Grammatology on my library desk, along with a note saying 'This copy makes everything clear'. Someone had sliced the pages from it, leaving just the cover. Haha. Next thing I knew, two senior librarians were standing over me; I had to go into a naughty room with them and undergo a full on interrogation on whether I'd nicked the pages. Quite right too, I guess, but I always wish I'd been confident enough in post-structuralism to have got a profound joke out of the situation.

 

[cantsin]

It's not torturous - it's the foundations of a school of thought that need to be worked though if you want to criticise it correctly. Green gartside had no idea beyond the understanding that dropping names/situations has power. See the bolonga skank shit. Embarrassing.

<<<< admits to self he may actually know less about Jacques Derrida than Green Gartside - goes to google "bolonga skank". And "hauntology". Again. >>>>>

 

[Beats & Pieces]

I've just realised that he is still performing! I had no idea!

Green Gartside ¦ Scritti Politti

It's not torturous - it's the foundations of a school of thought that need to be worked though if you want to criticise it correctly. Green gartside had no idea beyond the understanding that dropping names/situations has power. See the bolonga skank shit. Embarrassing.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

 

[purves grundy]

I see this is doing the rounds. An interesting read...

In an intriguing research paper written in 1985, and recently released with minor redactions through the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA reveals that its operatives have been studying the complex, international trend-setting French theory affiliated with the names of Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes.

http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/th...ctual-labor-of-dismantling-the-cultural-left/

 

[Beats & Pieces]

Foucault as a 'leftist'?