26 ms·

Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman (1997) [pdf]

59 points by benbreen 12y ago

EGKW 12y ago
The original transscript of that interview, in French. http://www.lesinrocks.com/1997/08/20/musique/ornette-coleman-et-jacques-derrida-la-langue-de-lautre-11232142/ http://www.lesinrocks.com/1997/08/20/musique/ornette-coleman...
derr342 12y ago
Why is this here? What's the relevance? For those who don't know, Derrida was a French postmodern intellectual charlatan with absolutely no redeeming qualities. A good example of what one should strive not to become.
- sysk 12y ago
  I kind of agree with you. I've seen some of his interviews on Youtube and tried to read some of his work but couldn't find anything of substance. On the other hand, many smart people seem to disagree so it's very possible I am missing something. There's been a few debates on HN about deconstruction and both sides had good arguments.
  - TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
    Noam Chomsky summarized as follows: "As for the "deconstruction" that is carried out (also mentioned in the debate), I can't comment, because most of it seems to me gibberish. But if this is just another sign of my incapacity to recognize profundities, the course to follow is clear: just restate the results to me in plain words that I can understand, and show why they are different from, or better than, what others had been doing long before and and have continued to do since without three-syllable words, incoherent sentences, inflated rhetoric that (to me, at least) is largely meaningless, etc. That will cure my deficiencies --- of course, if they are curable; maybe they aren't, a possibility to which I'll return."
    - bitwize 12y ago
      Normally, I admire Chomsky, but this seems like a version of "if you won't educate me, how can I learn": http://www.derailingfordummies.com/derail-using-education/ http://www.derailingfordummies.com/derail-using-education/ Put in plain words, the point of Derrida is "there's no such thing as plain words". So the task which Noam Chomsky is setting before deconstructionists is not only onerous and a waste of their time, it is -- fundamentally, according to deconstructionist thought -- impossible. It's like trying to grok zen. You either get it or you don't.
      - TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
        Reminds me of the parable of the Emperor And His New Clothes. All the smart people who understand math, physics, chemistry, and biology are just too dumb to understand this wonderful new science. And those that understand this wonderful new science can't actually produce anything useful.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      A number of these "deconstruction" texts are bad, like any other philosophy or attempt in any field. Not because of how it's written - the thinking behind it is bad. Other of these can indeed be stated in simpler words, and remain enlightening and profound observation (what Chomsky asks). But in general, what Chomsky says is BS. It's analogous to: this Charlie Parker jazz piece is meaningless. Play it to me with conventional harmony, and show me how it's better than John Phillip Soussa. Oh, and stick to 4/4 and triad chords. The whole idea behind those philosophical attemps is that they work in the limits of the language, e.g. in "advanced mode", and deal with stuff that's not relatable with "plain words", the same way "fuck my life" is not analogous to "oh, how unfortunate I feel at this moment", even if they mostly convey the same message.
      - TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
        If plain words don't work, then invent new notation like physics and math do. Its nonsense because there is no "higher" concept. They are expressing pretty conventional concepts ... like for example the simple concept that language and meaning have a cultural context ... a concept which can be expressed both with simple language and simple anecdotes. You ever notice how the best practitioners of Math, Physics, and Computer Science produce great output in multiple fields. Not just their chosen field. Like they might be 99.99 percentile in one field, and in another field they are 99 percentile. In other words they produce useful and interesting artifacts across a whole slice of human endeavors. Whereas it seems to me these post-modernists mainly focus on one thing ... this post-modern bullshit. And everyone I meet that spends time on this post-modern stuff is pretty third-rate in everything else they do.
- arketyp 12y ago
  That is very harsh critique which you leave unsubstantiated. Did you have something particular in mind? Preferably something you have made an honest attempt to benevolently interpret. This being said, I too am confused about this being popping up on the front page uncommented.
- steve-benjamins 12y ago
  "For those who don't know, Derrida was a French postmodern intellectual charlatan with absolutely no redeeming qualities." This is a ridiculously inaccurate way to explain Derrida to "those who don't know" him. Derrida is one of the most important continental philosophers of the 20th century.
  - TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
    If important means talking in confusing ways about simple concepts. Noam Chomsky said it best in his essay about Post Modernism: http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-pos... This quote contains his criticism very clearly: "As for the "deconstruction" that is carried out (also mentioned in the debate), I can't comment, because most of it seems to me gibberish. But if this is just another sign of my incapacity to recognize profundities, the course to follow is clear: just restate the results to me in plain words that I can understand, and show why they are different from, or better than, what others had been doing long before and and have continued to do since without three-syllable words, incoherent sentences, inflated rhetoric that (to me, at least) is largely meaningless, etc. That will cure my deficiencies --- of course, if they are curable; maybe they aren't, a possibility to which I'll return."
  - derr342 12y ago
    > Derrida is one of the most important continental philosophers of the 20th century. I never stated otherwise. What we both wrote is in no way contradictory.
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      That's not fair. Daniel Dennett and Thomas Metzinger have said interesting things.
      - lambdaphage 12y ago
        Are you suggesting that Dennett is a continental philosopher?
- nwatson 12y ago
  I haven't finished reading whole interview/discussion, but to bridge Coleman's treatment of improvisation vs composition over to the software domain: the "philharmonic" wanted a "waterfall" version of music composition, where everything was written down in advance and completely choreographed, with no notes, chords, phrasing, tempo, volume, tone left to chance; this upset Coleman, who believed in a more "agile" version of music. In Coleman's life in the jazz community with jazz musicians, he said he'd rehearse to review brand new pieces with them and lay down the framework; in the second rehearsal, the other musicians would riff on the themes, find new things to say, fill in the gaps. The jazz performances would work out just fine, just-in-time, like "agile". The classical "philharmonic" musicians couldn't relate to this at all.
- analog31 12y ago
  Ironically, many folks have said the same thing about Coleman, except for the French bit. I happen to enjoy free jazz, but I can't claim to understand it well enough to defend it.
- DeadHitchhiker 12y ago
  John Searle on 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. http://reason.com/archives/2000/02/01/reality-principles-an-intervie http://reason.com/archives/2000/02/01/reality-principles-an-...
  - derr342 12y ago
    Thank you for writing this. I wish I could upvote you more than once. This is a very accurate way of describing him. He used the usual tactics, creating a cult like following and dismissing those poor souls that actually tried to understand him in good faith. These hacks (in the pejorative sense) also had a penchant for using math sounding language because in their sociopathic minds it lended credibility and gravitas to their speech. Nothing but contempt for charlatans like him. Some excerpts to give a taste. >The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability-it is, finally, the concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of something—of a center starting from which an observer could master the field—but the very concept of the game which, after all, I was trying to elaborate. > This differential topology [topique différantielle] adjourns, guardian after guardian, within the polarity of high and low, far and near (fort/da), now and later. The same topology without its own place, the same atopology [atopique], the same madness defers the law as the nothing that forbids itself and the neuter that annuls oppositions. The man is glorified poorly trained Markov chain.
- deleted 12y ago
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daviddaviddavid 12y ago
"Lonely Woman" is one of the most iconic and haunting melodies in jazz. I'm glad that the interview explains where its title came from. Though, I'd always assumed it must have come from a much darker place. Also, this quote is a gem: OC: I had a niece who died in February of this year and I went to her funeral, and when I saw her in her coffin, someone had put a pair of glasses on her. I had wanted to call one of my pieces She was sleeping, dead, and wearing glasses in her coffin. And then I changed the idea and called it "Blind Date."
TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
Derrida is one of those guys, that if you find a fan of his, you have almost certainly found someone who has a love of complicated verbiage over simple straightforward explanations. Derrida takes a really simple concept and then dresses it up in so much complicated irrelevant nonsense that you have to take 30 minutes to deconstruct and understand an essay, that could be sufficiently restated in perhaps a paragraph of clear English.
- _delirium 12y ago
  Is this a generic comment, or based on reading the linked interview? He doesn't seem particularly verbose to me in the interview.
  - TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
    Accidentally commented on the main post instead of the comment where someone said Derrida is one of the most important philosophers of the 20th Century or something like that.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Derrida takes a really simple concept and then dresses it up in so much complicated irrelevant nonsense that you have to take 30 minutes to deconstruct and understand an essay, that could be sufficiently restated in perhaps a paragraph of clear English. Can you give an example? Because I've read Derrida (and other continental and US philosophers) and I've not seen that. It should be easy. Just post an essay of his, and then your paragraph of clear English that "sufficiently restates" it. I find that most people conflate "sufficiently restates" with something like Cliffs Notes. Or with "seeing the movie" (e.g. War And Peace) instead of reading the book. Or even worse with some general "plot", like: "War and Peace is the story of some families in Russia when Napoleon invades and a guy that tries to kill him" as opposed to the whole philosophical, artistic, literature, poetic etc content of the book.
sighsigh 12y ago
Derrida spoke of the absurdity of deriving meaning from an infinitely recursive and self referent system of language. Pureness of axiom isn't detectable in a mergable feedback loop. However, his critique doesn't show the shortcomings of how we neurologically handle symbols, it shows the incompleteness of human cognition. Derrida is to political epistemology as Turing is to serial bits or Godel is to arithmetic. Keep this in mind for compiler design and neural network structure.
- mynameishere 12y ago
  infinitely recursive and self referent system of language No idea if this is actually what he said, but when I say the word "dog" while pointing at a dog, the recursion of language stops. It's amazing how so much philosophy is almost intentionally incorrect.
  - sighsigh 12y ago
    ... until a later bystander asks you, "What is a dog?" and you now have to define it without the associated dog present. Or someone looks at another breed of dog and asks "What is that?" because he isn't aware of canine taxonomy and thinks only that original breed is a creature called "dog". Welcome to Derrida's version of the halting problem. These are actual problems of NLP today.
    - rspeer 12y ago
      That's not what people do in natural language processing. Don't appropriate the terminology of other fields for your own purposes and claim you're doing that field.
      - sighsigh 12y ago
        That's not what is done in NLP because that cannot be done by NLP... for the reasons that Derrida pointed out decades ago.
        12y ago
quinndupont 12y ago
Just so everyone is clear here, while Derrida had an "uncertain" reception in some parts of the academy (those crusty old anglo-American philosophers), he was deeply influential, and by some peoples' accounts, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. So, dismissing him out of hand (especially rejections based on his ostensible obscurantism) is akin to saying that Donald Knuth is no good. If you got the chops to critique Knuth, be my guest, but until then, I'll just revel in genius and struggle and struggle.
- derr342 12y ago
  > So, dismissing him out of hand (especially rejections based on his ostensible obscurantism) is akin to saying that Donald Knuth is no good. This is an invalid analogy if I ever saw one. Let me try to make it more accurate. For Knuth to be like Derrida his magnum opus would have to have been generated by just typing cat /dev/random and later claiming that MIX was somewhat defined in there as well as programs written in it. Then he would become famous Paris Hilton style and get a bunch of sycophants that defend his void verbiage no matter what (some because their entire carreers depended on it, others just because they are useful idiots).
  - conatus 12y ago
    Hi. How much Derrida have you actually read? Like sat down, with a pre-existing understanding of the fields he is interfacing with (particularly phenomenology and structuralism and semiotics a la Saussure) and then begin reading? Most approaches to continental philosophy I read on these pages are like someone jumping into a halfway point of a complex essay on functional programming, quoting it and declaring it nonsense. To people outside particular discourses, things often seem like nonsense. Within them, with enough background, one can see that these things are meaningful, while one might, of course, disagree.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >For Knuth to be like Derrida his magnum opus would have to have been generated by just typing: cat /dev/random You seem to have an uncanny knowledge of philosophy for a throwaway account. Tell us more about anything that you don't understand (not that you've actually tried or even went anywhere near Derrida/Continental philosophy) is /dev/random...
mbrock 12y ago
Since the onslaught of ignorant anti-continental quips has already begun, I'd like to suggest two texts by Richard Rorty—an American pragmatist with an extremely lucid writing style—that show how it is indeed possible to find Derrida interesting without being a charlatan or stupid: Here, a short review that gives a very brief introduction/defense (in a sort of backhanded way, though): http://www.lrb.co.uk/v06/n03/richard-rorty/signposts-along-the-way-that-reason-went http://www.lrb.co.uk/v06/n03/richard-rorty/signposts-along-t... "Derrida’s principal theme in these essays is the attempt of the tradition to make language look less sprawling by trimming off unwanted growth. This is done by making invidious distinctions between true (e.g. ‘literal’ or ‘cognitively meaningful’) language and false (e.g. ‘metaphorical’ or ‘meaningless’) language. He is arguing that this attempt cannot succeed, because it is just the latest version of the onto-theological attempt to contrast the Great Good Resting-Place with the sprawling world of time and chance. He wants to convince us that there is no natural hierarchy of discourses or jargons, no structure topped off by the super-language which gives us a grip on all the others, the words which classify all the other words. There is no privileged language in which to state invidious distinctions between true and false language. There is no linguistic material out of which we can forge clippers with which to snip off unfruitful linguistic suckers. He thinks Heidegger betrayed his own project by trying to separate ‘real’ language (the Call of Being, the kind of language which ‘is what it says’) from ‘inauthentic’ language (words used as means to technocratic ends, chatter, the jargon of this or that disciplinary matrix)." And here, a full essay on Derrida titled "Philosophy as a Kind of Writing": http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Rorty-Philosophy-as-a-Kind-of-Writing-1978.pdf http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Rorty-Philosoph... I don't have time to write more in depth about this. It's at least heartening that the most cynical and flippant comments have been downvoted.
- wfn 12y ago
  > And here, a full essay on Derrida titled "Philosophy as a Kind of Writing": http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Rorty-Philosophy-as-a-Kind-of-Writing-1978.pdf http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Rorty-Philosoph... Thanks for this, I haven't read it before. For anyone curious, it is a very clear-headed and well-articulated take by an American philosopher (analytic and later (him becoming a prominent participant of) pragmatic (if you could call it that?) tradition) on Derrida's conception of philosophy / approach to truth (so to speak.) There's a very nice part about what he considers to be the constructive component in Derrida's system/view, and it is detailed and honest (in the sense of capturing many nuances), I think. A very nice and easy-going read, would recommend to anyone interested.
ritchiea 12y ago
Funny how Ornette Coleman is the subject of the interview but all of the discussion here is about Derrida.
hblanks 12y ago
What a pleasure this interview was to read. And plain spoken, too. Many here have complained that Derrida is hard to read, or worse, simply makes no sense. You may take a side in this, if you like. But I would encourage you to read some short piece of his instead. In so doing, and as the interview itself remarks on reading, you may make your own interpretation. @mbrock has listed several items. To these, I add what my instructor for composition at Deep Springs (himself a student of Derrida) assigned us, "Declarations of Independence." It is but a nine page talk on the US Declaration of Independence. But within it, many of Derrida's persistent concerns on language and action come to light. You can find it online, starting at page 5 in this PDF: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cole0384/academics/files/Derrida.PDF http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cole0384/academics/files/Derrida.PDF
- martingoodson 12y ago
  I took your advice and read a "short piece of his" (http://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Derrida/Differance.html http://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Derrida/Di...) I found this monstrosity in the third paragraph: "I will speak, therefore, of the letter a, this initial letter which it apparently has been necessary to insinuate, here and there, into the writing of the word difference; and to do so in the course of a writing on writing, and also of a writing within writing whose different trajectories thereby find themselves, at certain very determined points, intersecting with a kind of gross spelling mistake, a lapse in the discipline and law which regulate writing and keep it seemly." This is a single sentence. Is it that Derrida's thought is so complex that it is simply inexpressible in simpler language? Or it this sentence wilful obsurantism? I find many supporter's of Derrida claiming that if you don't agree with Derrida it must be that you don't understand him. This is a dangerous intellectual cul-de-sac - verging on mysticism.
  - wanda 12y ago
    Derrida had some actual things to say. But most of the valuable ideas he had to express had already been explored by Heidegger in a more complete way, or by Wittgenstein in an uncannily clear, concise and orderly way.
  - 12y ago

59 points by benbreen 12y ago

EGKW 12y ago

The original transscript of that interview, in French. http://www.lesinrocks.com/1997/08/20/musique/ornette-coleman-et-jacques-derrida-la-langue-de-lautre-11232142/ http://www.lesinrocks.com/1997/08/20/musique/ornette-coleman...

derr342 12y ago

Why is this here? What's the relevance? For those who don't know, Derrida was a French postmodern intellectual charlatan with absolutely no redeeming qualities. A good example of what one should strive not to become.

sysk 12y ago
I kind of agree with you. I've seen some of his interviews on Youtube and tried to read some of his work but couldn't find anything of substance. On the other hand, many smart people seem to disagree so it's very possible I am missing something. There's been a few debates on HN about deconstruction and both sides had good arguments.
- TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
  Noam Chomsky summarized as follows: "As for the "deconstruction" that is carried out (also mentioned in the debate), I can't comment, because most of it seems to me gibberish. But if this is just another sign of my incapacity to recognize profundities, the course to follow is clear: just restate the results to me in plain words that I can understand, and show why they are different from, or better than, what others had been doing long before and and have continued to do since without three-syllable words, incoherent sentences, inflated rhetoric that (to me, at least) is largely meaningless, etc. That will cure my deficiencies --- of course, if they are curable; maybe they aren't, a possibility to which I'll return."
  - bitwize 12y ago
    Normally, I admire Chomsky, but this seems like a version of "if you won't educate me, how can I learn": http://www.derailingfordummies.com/derail-using-education/ http://www.derailingfordummies.com/derail-using-education/ Put in plain words, the point of Derrida is "there's no such thing as plain words". So the task which Noam Chomsky is setting before deconstructionists is not only onerous and a waste of their time, it is -- fundamentally, according to deconstructionist thought -- impossible. It's like trying to grok zen. You either get it or you don't.
    - TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
      Reminds me of the parable of the Emperor And His New Clothes. All the smart people who understand math, physics, chemistry, and biology are just too dumb to understand this wonderful new science. And those that understand this wonderful new science can't actually produce anything useful.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    A number of these "deconstruction" texts are bad, like any other philosophy or attempt in any field. Not because of how it's written - the thinking behind it is bad. Other of these can indeed be stated in simpler words, and remain enlightening and profound observation (what Chomsky asks). But in general, what Chomsky says is BS. It's analogous to: this Charlie Parker jazz piece is meaningless. Play it to me with conventional harmony, and show me how it's better than John Phillip Soussa. Oh, and stick to 4/4 and triad chords. The whole idea behind those philosophical attemps is that they work in the limits of the language, e.g. in "advanced mode", and deal with stuff that's not relatable with "plain words", the same way "fuck my life" is not analogous to "oh, how unfortunate I feel at this moment", even if they mostly convey the same message.
    - TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
      If plain words don't work, then invent new notation like physics and math do. Its nonsense because there is no "higher" concept. They are expressing pretty conventional concepts ... like for example the simple concept that language and meaning have a cultural context ... a concept which can be expressed both with simple language and simple anecdotes. You ever notice how the best practitioners of Math, Physics, and Computer Science produce great output in multiple fields. Not just their chosen field. Like they might be 99.99 percentile in one field, and in another field they are 99 percentile. In other words they produce useful and interesting artifacts across a whole slice of human endeavors. Whereas it seems to me these post-modernists mainly focus on one thing ... this post-modern bullshit. And everyone I meet that spends time on this post-modern stuff is pretty third-rate in everything else they do.
arketyp 12y ago
That is very harsh critique which you leave unsubstantiated. Did you have something particular in mind? Preferably something you have made an honest attempt to benevolently interpret. This being said, I too am confused about this being popping up on the front page uncommented.
steve-benjamins 12y ago
"For those who don't know, Derrida was a French postmodern intellectual charlatan with absolutely no redeeming qualities." This is a ridiculously inaccurate way to explain Derrida to "those who don't know" him. Derrida is one of the most important continental philosophers of the 20th century.
- TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
  If important means talking in confusing ways about simple concepts. Noam Chomsky said it best in his essay about Post Modernism: http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-pos... This quote contains his criticism very clearly: "As for the "deconstruction" that is carried out (also mentioned in the debate), I can't comment, because most of it seems to me gibberish. But if this is just another sign of my incapacity to recognize profundities, the course to follow is clear: just restate the results to me in plain words that I can understand, and show why they are different from, or better than, what others had been doing long before and and have continued to do since without three-syllable words, incoherent sentences, inflated rhetoric that (to me, at least) is largely meaningless, etc. That will cure my deficiencies --- of course, if they are curable; maybe they aren't, a possibility to which I'll return."
- derr342 12y ago
  > Derrida is one of the most important continental philosophers of the 20th century. I never stated otherwise. What we both wrote is in no way contradictory.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    That's not fair. Daniel Dennett and Thomas Metzinger have said interesting things.
    - lambdaphage 12y ago
      Are you suggesting that Dennett is a continental philosopher?
nwatson 12y ago
I haven't finished reading whole interview/discussion, but to bridge Coleman's treatment of improvisation vs composition over to the software domain: the "philharmonic" wanted a "waterfall" version of music composition, where everything was written down in advance and completely choreographed, with no notes, chords, phrasing, tempo, volume, tone left to chance; this upset Coleman, who believed in a more "agile" version of music. In Coleman's life in the jazz community with jazz musicians, he said he'd rehearse to review brand new pieces with them and lay down the framework; in the second rehearsal, the other musicians would riff on the themes, find new things to say, fill in the gaps. The jazz performances would work out just fine, just-in-time, like "agile". The classical "philharmonic" musicians couldn't relate to this at all.
analog31 12y ago
Ironically, many folks have said the same thing about Coleman, except for the French bit. I happen to enjoy free jazz, but I can't claim to understand it well enough to defend it.
DeadHitchhiker 12y ago
John Searle on 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. http://reason.com/archives/2000/02/01/reality-principles-an-intervie http://reason.com/archives/2000/02/01/reality-principles-an-...
- derr342 12y ago
  Thank you for writing this. I wish I could upvote you more than once. This is a very accurate way of describing him. He used the usual tactics, creating a cult like following and dismissing those poor souls that actually tried to understand him in good faith. These hacks (in the pejorative sense) also had a penchant for using math sounding language because in their sociopathic minds it lended credibility and gravitas to their speech. Nothing but contempt for charlatans like him. Some excerpts to give a taste. >The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability-it is, finally, the concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of something—of a center starting from which an observer could master the field—but the very concept of the game which, after all, I was trying to elaborate. > This differential topology [topique différantielle] adjourns, guardian after guardian, within the polarity of high and low, far and near (fort/da), now and later. The same topology without its own place, the same atopology [atopique], the same madness defers the law as the nothing that forbids itself and the neuter that annuls oppositions. The man is glorified poorly trained Markov chain.
deleted 12y ago
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daviddaviddavid 12y ago

"Lonely Woman" is one of the most iconic and haunting melodies in jazz. I'm glad that the interview explains where its title came from. Though, I'd always assumed it must have come from a much darker place. Also, this quote is a gem: OC: I had a niece who died in February of this year and I went to her funeral, and when I saw her in her coffin, someone had put a pair of glasses on her. I had wanted to call one of my pieces She was sleeping, dead, and wearing glasses in her coffin. And then I changed the idea and called it "Blind Date."

TheMagicHorsey 12y ago

Derrida is one of those guys, that if you find a fan of his, you have almost certainly found someone who has a love of complicated verbiage over simple straightforward explanations. Derrida takes a really simple concept and then dresses it up in so much complicated irrelevant nonsense that you have to take 30 minutes to deconstruct and understand an essay, that could be sufficiently restated in perhaps a paragraph of clear English.

_delirium 12y ago
Is this a generic comment, or based on reading the linked interview? He doesn't seem particularly verbose to me in the interview.
- TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
  Accidentally commented on the main post instead of the comment where someone said Derrida is one of the most important philosophers of the 20th Century or something like that.
coldtea 12y ago
>Derrida takes a really simple concept and then dresses it up in so much complicated irrelevant nonsense that you have to take 30 minutes to deconstruct and understand an essay, that could be sufficiently restated in perhaps a paragraph of clear English. Can you give an example? Because I've read Derrida (and other continental and US philosophers) and I've not seen that. It should be easy. Just post an essay of his, and then your paragraph of clear English that "sufficiently restates" it. I find that most people conflate "sufficiently restates" with something like Cliffs Notes. Or with "seeing the movie" (e.g. War And Peace) instead of reading the book. Or even worse with some general "plot", like: "War and Peace is the story of some families in Russia when Napoleon invades and a guy that tries to kill him" as opposed to the whole philosophical, artistic, literature, poetic etc content of the book.

sighsigh 12y ago

Derrida spoke of the absurdity of deriving meaning from an infinitely recursive and self referent system of language. Pureness of axiom isn't detectable in a mergable feedback loop. However, his critique doesn't show the shortcomings of how we neurologically handle symbols, it shows the incompleteness of human cognition. Derrida is to political epistemology as Turing is to serial bits or Godel is to arithmetic. Keep this in mind for compiler design and neural network structure.

mynameishere 12y ago
infinitely recursive and self referent system of language No idea if this is actually what he said, but when I say the word "dog" while pointing at a dog, the recursion of language stops. It's amazing how so much philosophy is almost intentionally incorrect.
- sighsigh 12y ago
  ... until a later bystander asks you, "What is a dog?" and you now have to define it without the associated dog present. Or someone looks at another breed of dog and asks "What is that?" because he isn't aware of canine taxonomy and thinks only that original breed is a creature called "dog". Welcome to Derrida's version of the halting problem. These are actual problems of NLP today.
  - rspeer 12y ago
    That's not what people do in natural language processing. Don't appropriate the terminology of other fields for your own purposes and claim you're doing that field.
    - sighsigh 12y ago
      That's not what is done in NLP because that cannot be done by NLP... for the reasons that Derrida pointed out decades ago.
      - 12y ago

quinndupont 12y ago

Just so everyone is clear here, while Derrida had an "uncertain" reception in some parts of the academy (those crusty old anglo-American philosophers), he was deeply influential, and by some peoples' accounts, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. So, dismissing him out of hand (especially rejections based on his ostensible obscurantism) is akin to saying that Donald Knuth is no good. If you got the chops to critique Knuth, be my guest, but until then, I'll just revel in genius and struggle and struggle.

derr342 12y ago
> So, dismissing him out of hand (especially rejections based on his ostensible obscurantism) is akin to saying that Donald Knuth is no good. This is an invalid analogy if I ever saw one. Let me try to make it more accurate. For Knuth to be like Derrida his magnum opus would have to have been generated by just typing cat /dev/random and later claiming that MIX was somewhat defined in there as well as programs written in it. Then he would become famous Paris Hilton style and get a bunch of sycophants that defend his void verbiage no matter what (some because their entire carreers depended on it, others just because they are useful idiots).
- conatus 12y ago
  Hi. How much Derrida have you actually read? Like sat down, with a pre-existing understanding of the fields he is interfacing with (particularly phenomenology and structuralism and semiotics a la Saussure) and then begin reading? Most approaches to continental philosophy I read on these pages are like someone jumping into a halfway point of a complex essay on functional programming, quoting it and declaring it nonsense. To people outside particular discourses, things often seem like nonsense. Within them, with enough background, one can see that these things are meaningful, while one might, of course, disagree.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >For Knuth to be like Derrida his magnum opus would have to have been generated by just typing: cat /dev/random You seem to have an uncanny knowledge of philosophy for a throwaway account. Tell us more about anything that you don't understand (not that you've actually tried or even went anywhere near Derrida/Continental philosophy) is /dev/random...

mbrock 12y ago

Since the onslaught of ignorant anti-continental quips has already begun, I'd like to suggest two texts by Richard Rorty—an American pragmatist with an extremely lucid writing style—that show how it is indeed possible to find Derrida interesting without being a charlatan or stupid: Here, a short review that gives a very brief introduction/defense (in a sort of backhanded way, though): http://www.lrb.co.uk/v06/n03/richard-rorty/signposts-along-the-way-that-reason-went http://www.lrb.co.uk/v06/n03/richard-rorty/signposts-along-t... "Derrida’s principal theme in these essays is the attempt of the tradition to make language look less sprawling by trimming off unwanted growth. This is done by making invidious distinctions between true (e.g. ‘literal’ or ‘cognitively meaningful’) language and false (e.g. ‘metaphorical’ or ‘meaningless’) language. He is arguing that this attempt cannot succeed, because it is just the latest version of the onto-theological attempt to contrast the Great Good Resting-Place with the sprawling world of time and chance. He wants to convince us that there is no natural hierarchy of discourses or jargons, no structure topped off by the super-language which gives us a grip on all the others, the words which classify all the other words. There is no privileged language in which to state invidious distinctions between true and false language. There is no linguistic material out of which we can forge clippers with which to snip off unfruitful linguistic suckers. He thinks Heidegger betrayed his own project by trying to separate ‘real’ language (the Call of Being, the kind of language which ‘is what it says’) from ‘inauthentic’ language (words used as means to technocratic ends, chatter, the jargon of this or that disciplinary matrix)." And here, a full essay on Derrida titled "Philosophy as a Kind of Writing": http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Rorty-Philosophy-as-a-Kind-of-Writing-1978.pdf http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Rorty-Philosoph... I don't have time to write more in depth about this. It's at least heartening that the most cynical and flippant comments have been downvoted.

wfn 12y ago
> And here, a full essay on Derrida titled "Philosophy as a Kind of Writing": http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Rorty-Philosophy-as-a-Kind-of-Writing-1978.pdf http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Rorty-Philosoph... Thanks for this, I haven't read it before. For anyone curious, it is a very clear-headed and well-articulated take by an American philosopher (analytic and later (him becoming a prominent participant of) pragmatic (if you could call it that?) tradition) on Derrida's conception of philosophy / approach to truth (so to speak.) There's a very nice part about what he considers to be the constructive component in Derrida's system/view, and it is detailed and honest (in the sense of capturing many nuances), I think. A very nice and easy-going read, would recommend to anyone interested.

ritchiea 12y ago

Funny how Ornette Coleman is the subject of the interview but all of the discussion here is about Derrida.

hblanks 12y ago

What a pleasure this interview was to read. And plain spoken, too. Many here have complained that Derrida is hard to read, or worse, simply makes no sense. You may take a side in this, if you like. But I would encourage you to read some short piece of his instead. In so doing, and as the interview itself remarks on reading, you may make your own interpretation. @mbrock has listed several items. To these, I add what my instructor for composition at Deep Springs (himself a student of Derrida) assigned us, "Declarations of Independence." It is but a nine page talk on the US Declaration of Independence. But within it, many of Derrida's persistent concerns on language and action come to light. You can find it online, starting at page 5 in this PDF: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cole0384/academics/files/Derrida.PDF http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cole0384/academics/files/Derrida.PDF

martingoodson 12y ago
I took your advice and read a "short piece of his" (http://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Derrida/Differance.html http://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Derrida/Di...) I found this monstrosity in the third paragraph: "I will speak, therefore, of the letter a, this initial letter which it apparently has been necessary to insinuate, here and there, into the writing of the word difference; and to do so in the course of a writing on writing, and also of a writing within writing whose different trajectories thereby find themselves, at certain very determined points, intersecting with a kind of gross spelling mistake, a lapse in the discipline and law which regulate writing and keep it seemly." This is a single sentence. Is it that Derrida's thought is so complex that it is simply inexpressible in simpler language? Or it this sentence wilful obsurantism? I find many supporter's of Derrida claiming that if you don't agree with Derrida it must be that you don't understand him. This is a dangerous intellectual cul-de-sac - verging on mysticism.
- wanda 12y ago
  Derrida had some actual things to say. But most of the valuable ideas he had to express had already been explored by Heidegger in a more complete way, or by Wittgenstein in an uncannily clear, concise and orderly way.
- 12y ago