This is very funny. In the spirit of Derrida responding to Searle, I'll just go ahead and fully exerpt Kotsko's annotated version of the first two paragraphs of "Structure, Sign, and Play:"

Perhaps [weasel-word!] something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an “event,” if this loaded word [loaded according to whom?] did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function [is this really its only function?] of structural–or structuralist–thought [which is it?] to reduce or to suspect [again, which?]. But let me use the word “event” anyway, employing it with caution and as if in quotation marks. In this sense, this event will have the exterior form of a rupture and a redoubling [why?  Unpack this].

It would be easy enough to show [then show it!  This is a big generalization that you never support!] that the concept of structure and even the word “structure” itself are as old as the episteme [is this a reference to Foucault?  In that case, cite]–that is to say, as old as western science and western philosophy [this is a big claim, citation?]–and that their roots thrust deep into the soil of ordinary language, into whose deepest recesses the episteme plunges to gather them together once more, making them part of itself in a metaphorical displacement [unclear — I think I see what you're getting at, but it could be expanded and unpacked a bit more]. Nevertheless, up until the event which I wish to mark out and define [maybe you should lead off with what this event is supposed to be, rather than making the reader wait? I'm already losing the thread], structure–or rather the structurality of structure–although it has always [careful with these generalizations] been involved, has always been neutralized or reduced, and this by a process of giving it a center or referring it to a point of presence [this feels jargony to me], a fixed origin. The function of this center was not only to orient, balance, and organize the structure–one cannot in fact conceive of an unorganized structure–but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the freeplay of the structure [what does this mean?  Unpack]. No doubt [this does not seem as immediately obvious to me] that by orienting and organizing the coherence of the system, the center of a structure permits the freeplay of its elements inside the total form. And even today the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself [this seems a bit overblown — maybe nuance?].

I think with the very best satire there is always instability concerning the target. Moreover, as Kotsko's effort makes clear, a measure of how ideological you are might be the extent to which you fail to realize this. Here one could with equal justification view Kotsko as satirizing either Derrida or his detractors. The inability to see it as both would be a clear example of the way that ideological commitments trump aesthetic ones. Not that that's always a bad thing. The early Nietzsche was, after all, wrong about the primacy of aesthetic norms over moral ones. I do, however, wonder what the final draft of The Birth of Tragedy would have read like if he'd turned it in to me for comment.

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6 responses to “Adam Kotsko provides helpful feedback to Derrida”

  1. Artxell Knaphni Avatar

    “Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless.” Derrida
    A reading that emphasises hypothesised authorial ‘positions’, & the sedimentation of earlier ‘detractions’: restricted to an oscillating ambiguity between such ‘hypothetics’ & sedi-mentation: this circulation, under the sign of ‘Satire’: in what way is this circulation not the nervous laughter of a a domesticating contextualisation that Derrida’s name solicits?: the reductive & contrived aporetics ‘thrown up’ around Derrida’s text, not actually an ontological demand for the ‘Same’, preventing any reading that ‘differs’? Of such ‘satires’, one tires…

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  2. Jon Cogburn Avatar

    No, I think you are viewing it one-sidedly in the way I described above. Surely part of the point is that one could do exactly this kind of thing to the texts of nearly any of the mighty dead. And thus the weirdness of institutionalizing* philosophy is being mocked just as much as the portentousness of English language translations of some French philosophers.
    [*Students of Foucault, jump in.]

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  3. Terence Blake Avatar

    I think Artxell’s point is that the satire is doing as little work here as the the stereotypes that it is satirising. The ambiguity here is otiose and so backward looking, or as Artxell says caught up in sedimented stereotyped detactions. Whether what is being satirised is pretentious grading annotations or portentous oracular formulations, or both, one is oscillating between two domesticated subjective positions. Derrida’s ambiguity is dynamic, making use of modalisation and intertextuality to disrupt subjective certainties and to hinder the formation of a new set of stereotypes. The fecundity of such strong ambiguity is that the extract in question still works today, to destabilise for example Badiou’s doctrine of the event, or to provide reinforcement for Latour’s idea of a hermeneutics of performance. I tried to unpack some of the work being done in the first paragraph of the extract (but you chose not to reference my reply: http://terenceblake.wordpress.com/2014/07/26/on-the-incipit-to-derridas-structure-sign-and-play/).

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  4. Artxell Knaphni Avatar

    [JC] “Here one could with equal justification view Kotsko as satirizing either Derrida or his detractors.”
    I don’t disagree with this.
    [JC] “The inability to see it as both would be a clear example of the way that ideological commitments trump aesthetic ones.”
    {AK} You’re presupposing that cultural aesthetic norms aren’t already ideological: & doesn’t ideology often have an aesthetic?
    [JC] “The inability to see it as both would be a clear example of the way that ideological commitments trump aesthetic ones. ”
    {AK} Of course, both are always in operation, but one has to ask what animates the satire in the first place?
    Is it that the discrepencies between Derrida’s questioning-expression & the institutional demands of an Anglo-American academia, constrained to produce stable images of formalised, proficiency, conducive to generalised cultural expectation (funding, etc.,), are somewhat at odds with each other? Even after 47 years of reception, why does the same ‘holding pattern’ repeat itself? Why the same narcissistic institutional preoccupation with its own role & objectives? This seemingly uncertain “stasis” is telling us something. But is anyone listening?
    [JC] “The early Nietzsche was, after all, wrong about the primacy of aesthetic norms over moral ones.”
    {AK} I would say that such ‘wrongness’ is very much contingent on how the respective norms are characterised. If you’re going to oppose the ‘aesthetic’ against ‘morality’ (custom), sure, you can critique any primacy. Wasn’t Nietzsche, perhaps, just reacting against what he perceived to be an opposing valorisation, with the evaluatory resources of an Ancient Greek paganism? In any case, all instances of the moral could be seen as aesthetic, & vice versa.
    [JC] “And thus the weirdness of institutionalizing* philosophy is being mocked just as much as the portentousness of English language translations of some French philosophers.”
    {AK} Perhaps so, but then, if you’re right, doesn’t the entire scenography, of philosophy, pass under the general sign of ‘Mockery’?
    And isn’t that, itself, an ideology?

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  5. Jon Cogburn Avatar

    Great stuff! Thanks.
    I didn’t chose not to link to you. I either hadn’t read your reply at that point (I think that’s the case) or I didn’t recall it when I did the post. The general principle of not attributing ill will when an attribution of incompetence does the same explanatory work surely applies here.

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  6. Terence Blake Avatar

    If mockery is ideology, as Artxell says, it is of the same nature as irony, which Deleuze defines as an art of principles, and of a movement of ascent to those principles. Irony implies a subjectivity capable of maintaining itself in the element of principles and of judging what is according to those principles. A good example of such a subjectivity is the academic subjectivity of two philosophy lecturers who are capable of laughing at their profession, a laudable detachment. I have never accused you of ill-will Jon, but I have sometimes manifested a sort of generic disappointment at how corporatist perceptions can hinder the potentially open dialogues made possible by digital platforms such as this blog (amongst others). Thus rather than accusing you of “incompetence” as your ironic invocation of principle applied to yourself would incite me to do, I think that I must be hinting at your competence as coding and conditioning your perception (and no doubt your will, and your memory, etc). When I said you “chose” not to reference me, that was in no way an accusation, after all people are free to talk about what they want, and besides, as you said, sometimes an oversight is just an oversight. So I prefer to think that your implicit accusation of me as guilty of unjust attribution is just as much a piece of mockery as was my first statement. If we are both now at the stage of gently making fun of each other, surely that is a good thing?

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