Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: risk

"I thinik it's reasonable to criticize Derrida, but are ideas themselves dangerous?"

I'd say some systems of ideas contain inherent self-contradictions which, if the ideas are applied, are intrinsically destructive to the socio-cultural fabric (one might think on analogy with a computer virus); and I'd put deconstruction in that category.


12 posted on 10/20/2004 12:38:59 PM PDT by Fedora
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies ]


To: Fedora

Fortunately, even deconstructionism is just another text.


13 posted on 10/20/2004 12:41:53 PM PDT by js1138 (D*mn, I Missed!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]

To: Fedora

Ideas don't kill people, people kill people. As ideas are always contained within a brain, no idea has ever been destructive to the "socio-cultural fabric." It's how people act upon ideas that causes the problems.


16 posted on 10/20/2004 12:45:50 PM PDT by BikerNYC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]

To: Fedora
I'd say some systems of ideas contain inherent self-contradictions...

I think post-structural analysis is like a tool. It actually can be applied from the right (in our political context). For example, we can deconstruct the Democrats by finding the nexus of power on a given policy, and then find their polarity. We can find a reference to our own position in that context and shred theirs without even saying what we're doing.

Furthermore, I would argue that it is the application of post-structural thought that leads to self-contradiction. I found arguments around the Internet suggesting that Derrida accepted external reality; but he went much further than supplying us with tools to rethink the world (the interior of which was more interesting to him).

I don't think he'd complain if we said he wanted to destroy the west with his ideas. And I doubt he or Foucault would be surprised to find out that we can use them to intellectually destroy his apostles today.

18 posted on 10/20/2004 12:49:14 PM PDT by risk
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson