sunday morning mourning thoughts
I never understood why Derrida was more popular in the United States than other parts of the world (wasn't he?) and I wondered what the French made of the American obsession with deconstructionism and its ilk. Or was his work also such a pop phenomenon in Europe? For a philosopher to penetrate mainstream American thought as thoroughly as Derrida is certainly a feat to be admired.
Whenever I read Derrida I felt that I was reading the work of a brilliant showman who was letting me in on the scam at precisely the same moment he was perpetrating it while earnestly seeming to believe that by doing just that, by setting the game up with such precision, we might both be able to get a little closer to a deeper meaning. His work has always seemed to have a Dada-like flavor to it. And his death makes me sad.
links Derrida at Cambridge (a Steve Bell cartoon) + "I'll Have To Wander All Alone" by Jacques Derrida (on the death of Deleuze) + Derrida and Jelinek on Click Opera
I don't know if Derrida impacts their work or not, but tomorrow night there is a nice concert at Mills College in Oakland, I'm planning to go, with performances by Boris Baltschun (sampler) and Serge Baghdassarians (guitar, mixing desk).