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The Domestication of Derrida: Rorty, Pragmatism and Deconstruction PDF

159 Pages·2008·2.57 MB·English
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The Domestication of Derrida Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from Continuum. The series features first-class scholarly research mono- graphs across the field of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the field of philosophical research. Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan Badiou and Derrida, Antonio Calcagno Badiou, Balibar, Ranciere, Nicholas Hewlett Deconstruction and Democracy, Alex Thomson Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy of History, Jay Lampert Deleuze and the Meaning of Life, Claire Colebrook Deleuze and the Unconscious, Christian Kerslake Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan-Wortham and Allison Weiner Foucault’s Heidegger, Timothy Rayner Heidegger and the Place of Ethics, Michael Lewis Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, Jason Powell Husserl’s Phenomenology, Kevin Hermberg The Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas Levinas and Camus, Tal Sessler Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Du¨ttmann Sartre’s Ethics of Engagement, T. Storm Heter Sartre’s Phenomenology, David Reisman Ricoeur and Lacan, Karl Simms Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari?, Gregg Lambert http://avaxho.me/blogs/ChrisRedfield The Domestication of Derrida Rorty, Pragmatism and Deconstruction Lorenzo Fabbri Translated by Daniele Manni English translation edited by Vuslat Demirkoparan and Ari Lee Laskin (University of California, Irvine, USA) ContinuumInternational Publishing Group TheTowerBuilding 80MaidenLane 11 York Road Suite704 London NewYork SE1 7NX NY10038 www.continuumbooks.com # Lorenzo Fabbri 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrie- val system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-10: HB: 0-8264-9778-0 ISBN-13: HB: 978-0-8264-9778-9 Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by YHT Ltd, London Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction: Taking Rorty Seriously 1 1. The Contingency of Being 7 Two Ideas of Philosophy: Kant and Hegel 7 The Desire for Autonomy and the Anxiety of Influence 15 Histories of Writing and Masturbation 26 Deconstruction as Circumvention: ‘Envois’ 37 2. Derrida, the Transcendental and Theoretical Ascetism 45 The Double Privacy of Deconstruction 45 On the Very Possibility of Biographical Writing 53 Rorty’s Hidden Reductionism 60 The Disposal of Philosophy 74 3. The Resistance of Theory 87 The Desires We are, The Languages We Speak 87 Casting a Maybe at the Heart of the Present 99 Politics of Conciliation and Politics of Monstrosity 115 Notes 129 Bibliography 141 Index 147 Acknowledgements Manypeoplehavebeenclosetothisbookinthedifferentphasesofits realization. My warmest gratitude goes to my family for having sup- portedmeinallmyendeavours.DonatellaDiCesarehadthepatience of following and encouraging my work from its very beginning. I am grateful to Ari Lee Laskin, Arianna Lodeserto, Daniele Manni and Nicola Zippel, who provided extensive and lively comments to earlier drafts. I would also like to thank David Carroll, Ellen Burt, Franca Hamber, Gol Bazargani and my friend James Chiampi for their impeccable hospitality in the department of French and Italian at the UniversityofCalifornia,Irvine.ManythanksalsotoNgu˜g˜ıwaThiong’o andthe InternationalCenterfor Writing andTranslation at UC Irvine for the generous financial support to this project. Without Vuslat Demirkoparan, this book would have never come to light. While I take full responsibility for its weaknesses, she should be credited for all the good moments of The Domestication of Derrida. I am also grateful to the following: Milan Kundera and Faber & Faber Ltd for the permission to quote from The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Cambridge University Press for the permission to quote from Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity; Fata Morgana for the permission to quote from Maurice Blanchot’s L’instant de ma mort (# 1994); Les Editions de Minuit for the permission to quote from Gilles Deleuze and Fe´lix Guattari’s Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (# 1991); Random House Inc., for the permission to quote from Michel Fou- cault’s ‘Polemics, politics, and problematizations: an interview with Michel Foucault’ (in The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow); Routledge for the permission to quote from Jacques Derrida’s ‘Remarks on deconstruction and pragmatism’ (in Deconstruction and Pragmatism, edited by Chantal Mouffe); Stanford University Press for thepermissiontoquotefromGiorgioAgamben’s‘Pardes:thewritingof potentiality’ (in Potentialities, edited by Daniel Heller-Roazen); Verso for the permissionto quote fromJacques Derrida’s‘Marx& Sons’and Terry Eagleton’s ‘Marxism without Marxism’ (both in Ghostly Demar- cations, edited by Michael Sprinker). An earlier andvery different version of this project was published in ItalianbyMimesisin2006underthetitleL’addomesticamentodiDerrida. Pragmatismo/Decostruzione. Rome–Irvine November 2007 Introduction Taking Rorty Seriously ThefirsttimeIreadRichardRorty’sContingency,Irony,andSolidarity–it was 1999 and I was a sophomore in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Rome – I clearly felt that I was reading one of the most influential books in contemporary philosophy: not surprisingly, nobody on the stuffy Italian philosophical scene was talking about it. Withitsatoncelight-heartedandcorrosiveironyagainstphilosophers’ egotism, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity changed the way I looked at philosophy both as a discipline and as a faculty. And yet there was somethingunsettlinginRorty’sattempttostrippost-Hegelianironyof anykindofpublicdimension:forme,thebookwasapowerfulcritique of the rigid organization of the programI was attending. I started reading Jacques Derrida at the same time: Rorty’s inter- pretation of deconstruction was fundamental for orienting me in Derrida’s apparently senseless writing. And yet, the more I read Der- rida, the more I became aware that Rorty’s reading was missing something very important. Rorty’s account of deconstruction as an anti-philosophy,asmerelyabrilliantartisticcreation,wastooreductive insofar as it completely ignored all the essays in which Derrida clearly resisted the possibility of taking leave from the metaphysical language. Rorty’s attempt to confine Derrida to prestigious yet strictly academic venues was excessively disengaged and clashed against the Deleuzian idea of concepts as weapons to interfere with and intervene into ‘the real’. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity – the book that changed my way of thinking about philosophy, the book whose dancing and laughing style is still unmatched for me – eventually appeared to be profoundly inadequate. The Domestication of Derrida also tells the story between Rorty and me (a story of which he was informed only by a couple of quick emails). The first chapter is marked by my initial trust in Rorty’s pragmatism, the second and the third testify to my deep disappoint- ment with it. In the first section of this book, I will show the strong points of Rorty’s reading. In order to challenge effectively his attempt to align deconstruction with the American liberal and pragmatist traditions, I believe it is important to take some time to get attuned to the reasons behind Rorty’s interpretation of Derrida. In fact, the vast majority of the essays that have been dedicated to the relation between

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