1/5 Derrida and the Ends of Man

Transcript: http://rickroderick.org/307-derrida-and-the-ends-of-man-1993/
Part of the seventh lecture in the "Self Under Siege" series. Presented by Dr Rick Roderick for The Teaching Company in 1993. For more, see http://wimpywombat.net

Category:

Education

Tags:

• rick roderick
• deconstruction

[CommunistWarrior1917]

Thanks for uploading this

[LeonSpinx1]

@vanderbilt887 You're right, but hindsight is 20/20. Based on your sn and your writing, I assume you're a student who was born only a couple years before this speech was given. You must remember that Derrida's "teeth" have been extracted in the last fifteen years. In the late 80s and early 90s, Derrida terrified conventional literary scholars.

That said, Roderick's reading is dead on. If he'd delivered this lecture today, he wouldn't have bothered with all the apologist rhetoric.

[TruthJockey]

I love the way Rick always used the word "perhaps", without any "absolute" declarations...he's always struck me as an enlightened dude, a very underrated philosopher.

[vanderbilt887]

as if literature is to be understood only via such a molding process. This has oddly enough led to a loss of attention to literary study itself, qua literature. I don't know in howsofar Derrida is responsible for this, probably not very much, and if he is, it has more to do with his "followers" than the man in person, as he always had a great heart for literature and the classics. Harold Bloom et al. rightly rebel against all of this, altough his ad homs are unfair to say the least.

[vanderbilt887]

Decent lecture, and a very entertaining lecturer :-0 Roderik is one amusing pessemist. While it is true that Derrida probably attracts more straw-man's than all continental philosophers combined, it's also true that literary study *has* suffered from what are called "new theoretical insights" that took place during the latter half of the 20th century. It has transformed into a pseudo-philosophical discourse containing a plethora of theoretical perspectives, which are then stamped on literature..

[BlueNote4003]

Thank you.