Derrida's last interview

I've been doing a little research on Derrida. In his later works, Derrida applies deconstruction on concepts of ethics like friendship, justice, forgiveness, hospitality. One interviewer raised a question as to whether his childhood had any impact on his writings. As a Jew, Derrida faced a lot of persecution in his elementary school years so much so that he left school. I've also started reading Robert Eaglestone interesting book on postmodernism and the holocaust where he examines the extent to which Derrida and Levinas are haunted by the holocaust. Something strikes me about Derrida as well. For all his work on deconstruction, trace, undecidability, 'slipperiness' and so on i.e. the rejection of any fixed or final transcendental signified, there is a sense that Derrida is always trying to reach for it somehow, the purity of the term, the purity of the concept. He talks about the purity of forgiveness and much of his text defines what the impurity of forgiveness is (not what it is not for that idea cannot be fixed). Yet, isn't the whole paradox the case that there is a grand narrative at work here - which is precisely in the theorizing of the inherent escapability of any transcendental narrative? Perhaps this quote sums it up:

"I am at war with myself, it’s true, you couldn’t possibly know to what extent, beyond what you can guess, and I say contradictory things that are, we might say, in real tension; they are what construct me, make me live, and will make me die. I sometimes see this war as terrifying and difficult to bear, but at the same time I know that that is life" (Derrida, Learning to live finally: The last interview, 2007)

I've started reading Jacques Ranciere's "The Ignorant Schoolmaster" and I find this text really liberating. It begins with a compelling story of a professor who asks his Flemish students who have no knowledge of French to read and analyze a French literary text. The capacity of his students to decipher the text without his help astounds him. Ranciere's text is an important reminder about the notion of believing in an inherent intellectual capacity in every human being. What happens if we begin with equality, this assumption that "all men have equal intelligence (by this he is not referring to IQ but intellectual capacity to learn), instead of inequality (which frames much of educational discourse)? "To explain something to someone is first of all to show him he cannot understand it by himself. Before being the act of the pedagogue, explication is the myth of pedagogy, the parable of a world divided into knowing minds and ignorant ones, ripe minds and immature ones, the capable and incapable, the intelligent and the stupid." What I like about Ranciere's work is his underlying ethics of concern for the empowerment and liberation of those who are continually marginalized or voiceless.

The Elephant Vanishes

Just read the story "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami in his short story collection. One of the points he raises is the manner in which superficiality has pervaded everyday conversations so people no longer know how to communicate beyond the shallow and mundane. We have "markers ... to follow" and unconscious borders that ensure conversations do not move beyond talking about dressing, rents, jobs and mundane news events. In an ultra technocratic modernised world overly concerned with maintaining balance and orderliness, the consequence is an imbalance of perception - of perceiving value in the useless and not finding value in the 'useless'.

Deconstructing 'Forgiveness'

I'm re-reading Derrida's "On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness" for an in-class presentation next week. It's interesting how Derrida expands on Kant's notion of hospitality. This work demonstrates clearly Derrida's work of deconstruction on concepts like hospitality and forgiveness. To forgive what is forgivable is not the pure notion of forgiveness which can only forgive the unforgivable. It is the inherent contradiction of the unconditional versus conditional in the term 'Forgiveness' that renders its undecidability.

http://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolitanism-Forgiveness-Thinking-Action/dp/0415227127

Visual thinking

Privileging the visual over the written - a write-up on one of my articles:
http://creativityseminar.blogspot.com/2011/03/visual-thinking-for-writers.html

Defining 'Poethics'

'Poethics' is a term I have coined to illustrate the necessary intersection between aesthetics and ethics. I am currently working on a research paper integrating the aesthetic theories of Kant, Levinas, Derrida. For example, in the Levinasian distinction between the saying and said, the said is what has been culturally determined and through which language and cultural symbols are derived; the saying is what becomes subjected to the rules of cultural discourse but which resists this subjection at the same time. Thus, the saying has signification beyond totalizing systems. It is in this sense that the aesthetic constantly refers to a transcendental otherness that pushes us to respond to the other. The ethical is necessarily tied to the poetic and hence, the term ‘poethic’ describes the process in which the saying interrupts the said by evoking and placing the suffering face of the other continually before us. In this sense, one may also argue that the role of aesthetics is to rupture all symbolic forms or cultural expression by the face of the other that is both beyond phenomenology and more originary than culture. Yet, this is not compelled by an unconditional love for the other; instead, it is grounded on an unconditional obligation

International conference on new directions in the Humanities at Granada Spain

Just returned from a fabulous and magical trip to Granada, Spain. I was invited to give a plenary talk at the International Conference for New Directions in the Humanities held at the University of Granada. I shared on the role of aesthetic education in its cultivation of cosmopolitan sensibilities.

A write-up on this award appeared on TC’s Arts & Humanities blog: http://artsandhumanities.pressible.org/lizhoelzle/suzanne-choo-award-choo-award

A highlight for me during this short five day trip was also the conference dinner which was held in the open just across from mesmerizing views of the mountains. I also had time to tour the maginficent Alhambra palace in Granada.

New wiki site for creativity conference

We had a fabulous time co-organizing the Creativity, Play, and Imagination across Disciplines conference held at Teachers College, Columbia University from May 26 to May 28, 2011. We've set up a new wiki site as a space for conversations to continue: http://createplayimagine.wikispaces.com/