INTELLECTUALS & THE DIVISION OF LABOR--SARTRE ET AL

[Noelle McAfee]

I'd like to join malgosia askanas and kenneth mackendrick in wondering why
some frankfurters are so put off by the likes of kristeva, derrida,
foucault et al.  I confess that I once shared their antipathy, even going
so far as to write a scathing review of Derrida's performance at an APA
meeting in the late 80s for the Washington City Paper.  But the difference
between my antipathy and others' is that I decided to actually _read_
Derrida et al.  And now I'd like to take back most of what I wrote.  For
anyone interested, a good place to start would be Derrida's footnote 9 on
pages 156-8 of _Limited Inc_, in which he asks why the defenders of reason
(namely Habermas) attack him so irrationally. To quote at length,

"Everywhere, in particular in the United States and in Europe, the
self-declared philosophers, theoreticians, and ideologists of
communication, dialogue, and consensus, of univocity and transparency,
those who claim ceaselessly to reinstate the classical ethics of proof,
dicussion, and exchange, are most often those who excuse themselves from
attentively reading and listening to the other, who demonstrate
precipitation and dogmatism, and who no longer respect the elementary rules
of philology and interpretation, confounding science and chatter as though
they had not the slightest taste for communication or rather as though they
were afraid of it, at bottom.  Fear of what, at bottom? Why?  That is the
real question.  What is going on at this moment, above all around
'deconstruction,' to explain this fear and this dogmatism?  Exposed to the
slightest difficulty, the slightest complication, the slightest
transformation of the rules, the self-declared advocates of communication
denounce the absence of rules and confusion.  And they allow themselves
then to confuse everything in the most authoritarian manner."

This list is probably not the place for it, but if Ralph Dumain had an
actual text he wanted to take issue with, by reading it openly and
attentively, then some kind of rational and undogmatic discussion could
take place.

--Noelle

___________________________________

Noelle McAfee
Department of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712
voice: (512) 708-9633
fax: (512) 708-8795
noelle@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu