Derrida is what I refer to as an intellectual barn burner. He shows up to the already spectacular barn dance, sets the barn on fire and walks away. Sometimes I am uncertain if he is starting the fire or just pointing out that the fire already happened and we missed it in our delusional joy...and we are now dancing naked and charred amidst our failed ideas.
Derrida is the intellectual badboy. He does his own thing. It does not matter what you say or do Derrida is Derrida. He is hard to sift through. I tried very hard to read and understand every line of The Animal That Therefore I Am. I failed horribly a few pages in (and I'm certain I cheated through a few sentences). I'm also certain I am in good company at least.
I have a couple things in common with Derrida: 1-I love cats, 2-I love Alice in Wonderland. Derrida, however, goes somewhere entirely different with both of those commonalities. His reference to that damn cat eventually confuses you. But I think he consistently argues his same point. I'm not sure though as it is Derrida after all. I try to understand the linguistic genius of Alice but I fall very short of Derrida.
What I liked most about Derrida was that he pointed out (at least) two things I had never completely considered. First, he pointed out the dominance of man over animal in the Bible. I have read a few translations of the sections he references and I can honestly say I never thought twice about the violence and mayhem directed to the animals, the devaluing of their being, their essence. Now I can't help but think of it in this light. Second, he pointed out how violent our language and ways of life are toward the animals. I never considered the act of calling ourselves the rational animal (or the thinking animal or the human animal) something dominating. We managed to separate ourselves from the entire animal kingdom, not only are we separate but we are better. How absurd an assumption is that? We are not that special. Well, we are equally special with the rest maybe. But because I've had 29 years of feeling one way I'm going to go radically in the opposite as I feel I have been tricked! (Even though I likely tricked myself).
Another great thing Derrida does is openly discuss shame. He discusses shame about shame. An oddly human thing it appears. I see shame-about-shame as an emotionally immature thing, it is only natural to develop this though depending on your environment and upbringing. Derrida does a pretty good job calling it out how it is.
He says: hey, I respect all these guys...and here is where they went wrong. By the end of his episode of stirpping them bare, as bare as he is to the cat, he moves on like nothing happened. It would be really easy to call Derrida an asshole, but then he'd launch into a 10-hour lecture on that word and in the end you'll have died from boredom or you'll be hiding from shame at what he did to you.
Don't invite Derrida to your party is my closing message. Pray he doesn't find your barn dance either. He'll show up and set it ablaze. Or, more scary, he'll point out it burned down around us. And where does that leave you? Does that mean you have to do some actual work? Heaven forbid.
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