His concrete political positions certainly aren't always convincing. I know that Christopher Wise has some good criticism of his ambiguous statements about Israel, for instance. But I don't see how this vitiates his entire body of work. His primary concern is the history of Western philosophy and I always felt that there was more than a hint of Marx in the way he criticizes texts immanently with a focus on binary opposites. Now, you might say that it is no longer necessary to read philosophy at all because the science of dialectical materialism has made it obsolete, but that is not the position of Marx, Lenin or Mao. All of them take elements of their thought from Hegel because they have read him critically. Why should we not do the same? And in a way, basically everything Derrida wrote concerns the problem of reading. As far as I know, there is no dialectical materialist method of reading, so it's not like there's an obvious substitute for his work.
Regarding his effect on the intellectual esteem of Marxism in his time, I find it difficult to make a judgement. It seems to me that after 1968, there was no longer any possibility of worthwhile Marxist praxis in the West (for the time being at least). So I'd say there's a lot of blame to go around for the weakness of the Marxist left in Europe in the past decades, and I do not think that French intellectuals are a major factor here. If anything, the whole intellectual environment of "continental philosophy" seems more amenable to Marxist thought than Anglo analytic philosophy, which is the only alternative in Western universities. Maybe Specters of Marx didn't do anything for the Communist movement, but it did help a bit to make Marx seem intellectually respectable again after the decades of the Cold War.
In any case, Derrida's thinking about text and reading seems irreplaceable to me. Literature has always been a difficult topic for Marxism (the great names have almost nothing to say about it), so I think a kind of literary theory that is actually aware of the problems and history of philosophy instead of shunting that off to another discipline seems worthwhile, and I don't see how you get that without Derrida or thinkers like him.
There's a good case that deconstruction and Derrida's method of differance is just applying Marxist dialectics to reading. Derrida was obsessed with finding the "sediment" of words and thoughts, the underlying and historicised meaning behind texts left unsaid. That's a very materialist and Marxist thing to do!
Yes, that's pretty much what I think. If looking at how the matter of writing always resists its reduction to meaning, resulting in a history of conflict between matter and ideas, isn't at least inspired by Marx, I don't know what is.
deconstruction has never been Marxist, no more than it has ever been non-Marxist, although it has remained faithful to a certain spirit of Marxism, to at least one of its spirits.
Welcome to Derrida bud, there's no "meaning," we're just signifiers trapped in a world of signifiers where nothing can be signified. This is partially why Derrida is stupid even though I love him.
Hmm. That definitely interesting as a suggestion.
Personally I didn't get that impression of any materialist project reading, for instance, Writing and Difference or Grammatology.
Just to reference his first book on Husserl and geometry (not actually about geometry, but which I once found, hilariously, in the maths section of my uni library), he emphasized the lack of any actual immediate relation, that the voice we speak or hear, or for that matter consciousness, it never in an absolute, ideal immediacy with itself. It is always mediated. Sure. But this point can also be found in analytic philosophy (Sellars, who read Hegel and had started as a Marxist) and is literally the first section of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (On Sense Certainty).
TBH my main issue is not even with Derrida, but with derrideans. Similar shit with Foucault and Deleuze. The work has some good ideas, points, analyses, insights. But in the hands of their self-described disciples in modern bourgeois academia is has really, mostly become scholastic masturbation, bar some exceptional cases like Spivak (but who I try to translate into more materialist, dialectical language).
It appeared to me like deconstruction ends up becoming basically just a directionless, interminably system of signification signifying further signifiers. A similar thing happens in Lacan (a whole other kettle of fish). The insights they arrive at sometime strike me as to have been arrived at equally in spite of the methodology as because of it. Hence why I'm still convinced its idealist.
I mean on the whole you're definitely right, the decontructionist legacy Derrida left has mostly been used by brain dead academics to keep their jobs and doing close readings of nothing. I think Derrida does some interesting things and I enjoy reading him.
Some of his political takes are good, many are bad. I don't disagree with you there.
I'm not saying we should stop doing philosophy. Not that we should take his word as gospel, but when Marx speaks about philosophers only understanding the world, rather than changing it, he is not saying we should stop doing philosophy to engage in the general projects of understanding and determining out most general theories.
I also agree that we should keep reading philosophy, including non-Marxist philosophy. It arrogant otherwise and it often shows. But unless you're specifically something like a historian of ideas and are studying the history of 'western' philosophy, I'm personally don't see the reason to keep spending time reading these dudes like Derrida which we could spend reading far more grounded works of philosophy and political thought.
On the topic of 'continental' vs 'analytic' philosophy, I think it depends. Most analytic philosophers are equally useless, intellectually masturbating navel-gazers as continental philosophers. But tbh, if what you're interested in is mathematics, or the philosophy of the natural sciences, the 'continental' thinkers who tend to talk about these topics often display profound ignorance of them, imo. So do many analytic thinkers, but I still think the gold standard in the west for reflection on those topics, because analytic philosophy was founded by actual mathematicians who are important in the development of modern mathematics.
For the record, there are analytic philosophers who are/were genuine leftists. Putnam at some point was a Maoist, before becoming a soc-dem. Neurath was a Marxist. Carnap tried to join the communist party. That being said, none of their important philosophical work has anything to do or really to offer to political, social or economic philosophy, imo, and the work in the tradition has become more and more of a performative scholastic arena for academic credentials since the mid-century.
I honestly can't think of any really good analytic political or social philosophy. But I also think most of the 'continential' work is a waste of time. There's a world of Marxist theory outside of this done by people, above all in the Global South, which is of far greater value to political, social or economic thought.
I think part of Derrida's value lies in problematizing notions that seem fundamental to us. For example, one might feel that politics on one hand and the history of (Western) philosophy on the other are disparate fields where one is concrete, useful and practical while the other is minor and abstract. Is that a valid distinction we should make or do we get into trouble if we investigate it too closely? I feel like that's an issue worth thinking about and on which old Hegel may have something useful to say.
In any case, Derrida is mostly a critic of philosophy. His point is not that we need to recapture valuable insights from old wise men, but that we are still operating with their ideas and concepts, whether we like it or not, and if we want to do something about that, we need to investigate them. I think that's another point in which he is close to Marx.
Totally agree that they are not separate issues. There is no such thing as an absolute separation of the abstract-theoretical and the practical-concrete (we can obviously spell out what that last statements means in alot of different, valid directions).
Yh that a good role of his thought. But I don't think you need to read Derrida (which, lets be honest, for most people is hell) to know that.
Marxism on the left was certainly weaker, certainly, after the late 60s, but I think this is an excessively academic point of view.
This was also the period of Maoist revolutionary violence in Europe, and the Years of Lead in Italy, ineffective as they ultimately have been, also leading to the further development of ultra-leftist and eurocommunist reformism and opportunism in light of their exhaustion and failure.
There were also multipler people's wars and revolutionary struggles being waged globally, which many (including western) Marxists dealt with. Alot of very important Marxist work was done in the 70s. There is a slowdown by the early 80s, i.e. the full onset of neoliberalism, imo.
I totally agree we should still read them critically. But their dominance within the post-new-left critical theory traditions has definitely occupied a space which excludes Marxism, as most of it is premissed on an explicit rejection of Marxist notions and methods, and when modern rad-lib critical theorists attack Marxism as outdated, reductionist, or totalizing (which often leads on in practice to them arguing that Marxism is totalitarian), they frequently do it using derridean and co. Tbh the bottom line for me is not that he problematizes concepts we often essentialize, but that he attack on them is not productive. I don't see it as dialectical. A concept should be maintained in its development to the extent that it continues to aim with theoretical understanding and praxis.
I've read Hegel and yh, I read him as a Marxist so the idealism is the standout issue. Like I have beef with Zizek because he's more of a hegelian than a marxist, and this shows in his liberal, reactionary views and practices. I don't think you need to real Hegel to understand Marx, but the main value of reading him, for me at least, is the epistemological and methodological importance of dialectics, although for ontology there is also importance insofar as he seems to have an process-based ontology, which Marxism also does.
When it comes to Derrida, the difference is that I'm not really convinced on the substantial ontological, epistemological or methodological importance of deconstruction. At the end of the day the proof for me is in the pudding, and there are no militant derrideans.
I actually completely agree with you when it comes to literature. I'd say something similar about how many marxists have engaged with ethical thought (see: https://alt.politics.communism.narkive.com/Sb205tXJ/ho-chi-minh-on-revolutionary-morality). Marxists in general have been weaker in their analyses of literature and the arts. A good deal of this comes from mistaking describing the external material conditions of something's historical context for exhaustively describing everything that can be said about it in material terms. I don't see any reason why materialist analysis of art, literature, music, film etc. can't still make or musn't make reference to the forms of the arts and the types of experiences these forms tend to produce in the audience who experience them, if those things are understood materialistically and properly placed in their historical context.
In other words its often vulgar materialism dressed up as Marxism and applied to culture.
If anyone finds Derrida helpful for their understanding of something important to them like literature, then yh no hate from me, bless up. I personally think there are more productive sources to appropriate, even for literary analysis, but I'm happy to be convinced that I'm wrong. I also like getting stoned and reading Joyce.
What's the utility of an Derridan analysis of text if one of his own students accuses him of intentionally misrepresenting text he was supposed to be analyzing
Why should we trust that guy more than Derrida himself? And anyway, shouldn't we check it out ourselves instead of trusting someone else's interpretation?
His concrete political positions certainly aren't always convincing. I know that Christopher Wise has some good criticism of his ambiguous statements about Israel, for instance. But I don't see how this vitiates his entire body of work. His primary concern is the history of Western philosophy and I always felt that there was more than a hint of Marx in the way he criticizes texts immanently with a focus on binary opposites. Now, you might say that it is no longer necessary to read philosophy at all because the science of dialectical materialism has made it obsolete, but that is not the position of Marx, Lenin or Mao. All of them take elements of their thought from Hegel because they have read him critically. Why should we not do the same? And in a way, basically everything Derrida wrote concerns the problem of reading. As far as I know, there is no dialectical materialist method of reading, so it's not like there's an obvious substitute for his work.
Regarding his effect on the intellectual esteem of Marxism in his time, I find it difficult to make a judgement. It seems to me that after 1968, there was no longer any possibility of worthwhile Marxist praxis in the West (for the time being at least). So I'd say there's a lot of blame to go around for the weakness of the Marxist left in Europe in the past decades, and I do not think that French intellectuals are a major factor here. If anything, the whole intellectual environment of "continental philosophy" seems more amenable to Marxist thought than Anglo analytic philosophy, which is the only alternative in Western universities. Maybe Specters of Marx didn't do anything for the Communist movement, but it did help a bit to make Marx seem intellectually respectable again after the decades of the Cold War.
In any case, Derrida's thinking about text and reading seems irreplaceable to me. Literature has always been a difficult topic for Marxism (the great names have almost nothing to say about it), so I think a kind of literary theory that is actually aware of the problems and history of philosophy instead of shunting that off to another discipline seems worthwhile, and I don't see how you get that without Derrida or thinkers like him.
There's a good case that deconstruction and Derrida's method of differance is just applying Marxist dialectics to reading. Derrida was obsessed with finding the "sediment" of words and thoughts, the underlying and historicised meaning behind texts left unsaid. That's a very materialist and Marxist thing to do!
Yes, that's pretty much what I think. If looking at how the matter of writing always resists its reduction to meaning, resulting in a history of conflict between matter and ideas, isn't at least inspired by Marx, I don't know what is.
As Derrida himself wrote:
Yh I'm going to need some help spelling out what that means (lol)
Welcome to Derrida bud, there's no "meaning," we're just signifiers trapped in a world of signifiers where nothing can be signified. This is partially why Derrida is stupid even though I love him.
damn it I knew it
Hmm. That definitely interesting as a suggestion. Personally I didn't get that impression of any materialist project reading, for instance, Writing and Difference or Grammatology.
Just to reference his first book on Husserl and geometry (not actually about geometry, but which I once found, hilariously, in the maths section of my uni library), he emphasized the lack of any actual immediate relation, that the voice we speak or hear, or for that matter consciousness, it never in an absolute, ideal immediacy with itself. It is always mediated. Sure. But this point can also be found in analytic philosophy (Sellars, who read Hegel and had started as a Marxist) and is literally the first section of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (On Sense Certainty).
TBH my main issue is not even with Derrida, but with derrideans. Similar shit with Foucault and Deleuze. The work has some good ideas, points, analyses, insights. But in the hands of their self-described disciples in modern bourgeois academia is has really, mostly become scholastic masturbation, bar some exceptional cases like Spivak (but who I try to translate into more materialist, dialectical language).
It appeared to me like deconstruction ends up becoming basically just a directionless, interminably system of signification signifying further signifiers. A similar thing happens in Lacan (a whole other kettle of fish). The insights they arrive at sometime strike me as to have been arrived at equally in spite of the methodology as because of it. Hence why I'm still convinced its idealist.
I mean on the whole you're definitely right, the decontructionist legacy Derrida left has mostly been used by brain dead academics to keep their jobs and doing close readings of nothing. I think Derrida does some interesting things and I enjoy reading him.
Some of his political takes are good, many are bad. I don't disagree with you there.
I'm not saying we should stop doing philosophy. Not that we should take his word as gospel, but when Marx speaks about philosophers only understanding the world, rather than changing it, he is not saying we should stop doing philosophy to engage in the general projects of understanding and determining out most general theories. I also agree that we should keep reading philosophy, including non-Marxist philosophy. It arrogant otherwise and it often shows. But unless you're specifically something like a historian of ideas and are studying the history of 'western' philosophy, I'm personally don't see the reason to keep spending time reading these dudes like Derrida which we could spend reading far more grounded works of philosophy and political thought.
On the topic of 'continental' vs 'analytic' philosophy, I think it depends. Most analytic philosophers are equally useless, intellectually masturbating navel-gazers as continental philosophers. But tbh, if what you're interested in is mathematics, or the philosophy of the natural sciences, the 'continental' thinkers who tend to talk about these topics often display profound ignorance of them, imo. So do many analytic thinkers, but I still think the gold standard in the west for reflection on those topics, because analytic philosophy was founded by actual mathematicians who are important in the development of modern mathematics.
For the record, there are analytic philosophers who are/were genuine leftists. Putnam at some point was a Maoist, before becoming a soc-dem. Neurath was a Marxist. Carnap tried to join the communist party. That being said, none of their important philosophical work has anything to do or really to offer to political, social or economic philosophy, imo, and the work in the tradition has become more and more of a performative scholastic arena for academic credentials since the mid-century. I honestly can't think of any really good analytic political or social philosophy. But I also think most of the 'continential' work is a waste of time. There's a world of Marxist theory outside of this done by people, above all in the Global South, which is of far greater value to political, social or economic thought.
I think part of Derrida's value lies in problematizing notions that seem fundamental to us. For example, one might feel that politics on one hand and the history of (Western) philosophy on the other are disparate fields where one is concrete, useful and practical while the other is minor and abstract. Is that a valid distinction we should make or do we get into trouble if we investigate it too closely? I feel like that's an issue worth thinking about and on which old Hegel may have something useful to say.
In any case, Derrida is mostly a critic of philosophy. His point is not that we need to recapture valuable insights from old wise men, but that we are still operating with their ideas and concepts, whether we like it or not, and if we want to do something about that, we need to investigate them. I think that's another point in which he is close to Marx.
Totally agree that they are not separate issues. There is no such thing as an absolute separation of the abstract-theoretical and the practical-concrete (we can obviously spell out what that last statements means in alot of different, valid directions).
Yh that a good role of his thought. But I don't think you need to read Derrida (which, lets be honest, for most people is hell) to know that.
Marxism on the left was certainly weaker, certainly, after the late 60s, but I think this is an excessively academic point of view. This was also the period of Maoist revolutionary violence in Europe, and the Years of Lead in Italy, ineffective as they ultimately have been, also leading to the further development of ultra-leftist and eurocommunist reformism and opportunism in light of their exhaustion and failure. There were also multipler people's wars and revolutionary struggles being waged globally, which many (including western) Marxists dealt with. Alot of very important Marxist work was done in the 70s. There is a slowdown by the early 80s, i.e. the full onset of neoliberalism, imo.
I totally agree we should still read them critically. But their dominance within the post-new-left critical theory traditions has definitely occupied a space which excludes Marxism, as most of it is premissed on an explicit rejection of Marxist notions and methods, and when modern rad-lib critical theorists attack Marxism as outdated, reductionist, or totalizing (which often leads on in practice to them arguing that Marxism is totalitarian), they frequently do it using derridean and co. Tbh the bottom line for me is not that he problematizes concepts we often essentialize, but that he attack on them is not productive. I don't see it as dialectical. A concept should be maintained in its development to the extent that it continues to aim with theoretical understanding and praxis.
I've read Hegel and yh, I read him as a Marxist so the idealism is the standout issue. Like I have beef with Zizek because he's more of a hegelian than a marxist, and this shows in his liberal, reactionary views and practices. I don't think you need to real Hegel to understand Marx, but the main value of reading him, for me at least, is the epistemological and methodological importance of dialectics, although for ontology there is also importance insofar as he seems to have an process-based ontology, which Marxism also does. When it comes to Derrida, the difference is that I'm not really convinced on the substantial ontological, epistemological or methodological importance of deconstruction. At the end of the day the proof for me is in the pudding, and there are no militant derrideans.
I actually completely agree with you when it comes to literature. I'd say something similar about how many marxists have engaged with ethical thought (see: https://alt.politics.communism.narkive.com/Sb205tXJ/ho-chi-minh-on-revolutionary-morality). Marxists in general have been weaker in their analyses of literature and the arts. A good deal of this comes from mistaking describing the external material conditions of something's historical context for exhaustively describing everything that can be said about it in material terms. I don't see any reason why materialist analysis of art, literature, music, film etc. can't still make or musn't make reference to the forms of the arts and the types of experiences these forms tend to produce in the audience who experience them, if those things are understood materialistically and properly placed in their historical context. In other words its often vulgar materialism dressed up as Marxism and applied to culture.
If anyone finds Derrida helpful for their understanding of something important to them like literature, then yh no hate from me, bless up. I personally think there are more productive sources to appropriate, even for literary analysis, but I'm happy to be convinced that I'm wrong. I also like getting stoned and reading Joyce.
What's the utility of an Derridan analysis of text if one of his own students accuses him of intentionally misrepresenting text he was supposed to be analyzing
Seems like a vehicle for academic grift
Why should we trust that guy more than Derrida himself? And anyway, shouldn't we check it out ourselves instead of trusting someone else's interpretation?
I mean for one he acknowledges the existence of class
A concept Derrida seems to struggle with