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I agree with John Searle on this one - it's unfair to Foucault (who despite his eccentricities is actually an engaging and lucid thinker IMO) to lump him togeth
by benbreen 10y ago
I agree with John Searle on this one - it's unfair to Foucault (who despite his eccentricities is actually an engaging and lucid thinker IMO) to lump him together with obscurantists like Derrida:
"With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, “What the hell do you mean by that?” And he said, “He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.’ That’s the terrorism part.” And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes.
Foucault was often lumped with Derrida. That’s very unfair to Foucault. He was a different caliber of thinker altogether."
- brudgers 10y agoThere's a bit of slight of hand in criticizing Derrida for not being clear. For example, computer science utilizes obscure notation and concepts and not understanding something is generally attributed to the mental acuity of the reader. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_of_the_Steve_Kind.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_...
- miceeatnicerice 10y agoToo right. And Foucault's conception of power allows this kind of non-scientific practice to be reasoned about.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- canjobear 10y agoThe common response is that with computer science you can easily find an expert who can explain the uncontroversial consensus interpretation of some CS notation, whereas with Derrida et al. you'll just get more confusion.
- psyc 10y agoI think a major difference is that when a professional has to coin new jargon, they are usually intending to achieve as much clarity as possible.
- mbrock 10y agoI've always thought of Derrida as some kind of shaman poet sorcerer who uses philosophy as the material for secretive experiments, which makes me not so upset when I can't understand him.
- ue_ 10y agoI think Derrida is treated rather poorly, even in taught philosophy. Just because a work has multiple possible interpretations, it doesn't mean it's obscurantist or bad.
- brudgers 10y agoA consensus in Computer Science is that monads are like burritos.