I would like to begin this film response with a quote from the beginning of the documentary Derrida.
“…work of miners who explode the beams supporting the shafts”
I thought this was a clever way to describe Derrida’s work and development of deconstructionism. I like to think of the text as a mining shaft and Derrida as the miner that destroys the support in the shaft. Instead of searching for unity and symmetry in the text as structuralism does, Derrida searches for the contradictions of the text. He reads “against the grain” and takes apart the structure of the text to find what it is saying and not saying. Therefore, he explodes the beams supporting what we thought the text was before searching for inconsistency and contradiction.
To say that Derrida has a “different” way of analyzing not only text, but life, would be an understatement. I must say, however, that the man makes sense. I particularly like his thoughts about love. Derrida asks if we love someone for who they are or for what they are. It would seem that the answer for many would be we love the “who” of a person, but Derrida makes a convincing argument that when love is lost, it is often for the things that a person is and is not. Therefore, the argument remains open, although I got the feeling through the documentary that Derrida believes in the “what” concerning love. In correlation with Derrida's theory of the "what" and love, he explains that love is narcissistic. Narcissism is a person's concern with his or her self, and love is narcissistic because it looks for the "what" in other people. They look for qualities that fulfill their own needs in a relationship. If one doesn't agree with this theory, he/she only needs to go to eharmony.com and search the profiles of people searching for potential life partners (their success may depend on whether the other person enjoys dogs, hiking, or goes to bed too late). Internet dating websites are a perfect example of Derrida's concern with love and narcissism.
I am more interested than anything about Derrida’s pessimistic views concerning forgiveness. The easier forgiveness is to give, the less it means in form. The harder it would be to give, the more meaningful it is. Derrida says that because of these truths, true or ‘pure’ forgiveness is impossible to give. If the forgiveness is given with the promise of change and repenting, the forgiveness is directed at a subject and not at the person being forgiven. Therefore, there is no true forgiveness. Derrida’s argument makes sense. I think this is a very negative way of thinking but nonetheless a fascinating thought by a fascinating man.
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2 comments:
I'm glad you made reference to the mining comment used in the film because I feel as though that comparison helps explain Derrida as well as the theory of deconstruction. It helps shed a little light on the sometimes blurry picture. I will say that I had a small chuckle at your eharmony comment because it is true. More and more we are seeing commercials and advertisments telling people to go and set up an account. Well these accounts really help us attract ourselves. The qualities or characteristics that we see/look for in others are often the ones see in ourselves. So I guess all that eharmony does is just allow us to fall even more in love with ourselves.
I think that your ideas on Derrida and forgivness are interesting. I guess that is the point of deconstruction to make us question our preconceived ideas and see beyond the surface. Just like the miners in the mine, it wouldn't make sense for them to colapse the mine aorund them, but, they do it anyways.
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