MAN: here comes the airplane!
here it comes! here comes the airplane!
BABY DERRIDA: to pretend, you actually do the thing
you have therefore only pretended to pretend
WOMAN: Peekabo! I see you!
Peekaboo! I see you!
BABY DERRIDA: How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself?
WOMAN: and here is the bunny
do you see the bunny?
BABY DERRIDA: pbthtbhth
WOMAN: can you say bunny?
BABY DERRIDA: bunny
WOMAN: can you pat the bunny?
BABY DERRIDA: there is nothing outside the text
BABY DERRIDA [crying]: waaaaaauuugghhh
MAN: what is it?
what’s wrong, baby?
can’t you sleep?
BABY DERRIDA: monsters
MAN: monsters? Where?
BABY DERRIDA [points under bed]: there
MAN: do you want me to chase the bad monsters away for you, baby?
BABY DERRIDA: specters of Marx
MAN: i’ll chase the bad specter of Marx out from under your bed
BABY DERRIDA: ok
MAN: ok?
BABY DERRIDA: ok
WOMAN: goodnight sweet baby
I love you very much
can you say “love you”?
BABY DERRIDA: how can I say “I love you” if I know the love is you?
the word love either as a verb or a noun would be destroyed in front of you
Baby Derrida is very similar to drunk me, especially with the spectrers of Marx thing
I’d imagine it’s a lot harder to put drunk texts under erasure.
That last one sounds like my friend’s ex. He broke up with her because the vastness of the universe made him incapable of feeling love for an individual.
that’s….an official New One.
Wow. Bullet dodged, there.
Not before he made her feel responsible for being sexually assaulted! Seriously, if I could inject this guy with spiders, I would.
So, just like Amy Schumer’s sketch … he broke up with her because the universe told him to.
I have not actually seen that sketch and this predates Amy Schumer so I guess that proves that there’s no behaviour any comedian could come up with that’s ridiculous enough to have not actually been perpetrated by some arsehole, somewhere.
he has got to meet my ex!! they’d get along.
This is pretty much the plot of the sheltering sky by Paul Bowles. Man encounters universe, forgets wife – the only difference is in the book they stay married because hes not a selfish git.
Nooo. NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Knowing this day would come doesn’t make it any easier. Derrida and his impenetrable writings (to me at least) cost me a paper in undergrad. My grudge remains.
I feel you, I had that experience with Barthes.
I only had to read one piece from each of them for an art class but I stared at the pages and thought, jfc, what exactly am I reading. I can’t imagine having to try to read/comprehend more of their work.
when we say cat WHAT DO WE MEAN BY CAT there is no cat you cannot have a cat there is only the cat that has been or the cat that we hope to have coming in the future*
*most traumatic class of my undergrad experience
AND THEN THE CAT STARED AT ME AND I WAS NAKED BUT WAS I NAKED BECAUSE CAT KNOWLEDGE
Someone once pointed out to me that semiotics makes sense to me because I’m dyslexic, so I learned to read from the perspective of deconstruction. It was the best grade I ever got, and I didn’t even have to study. I might be misremembering, but I think Derrida was one of those people who took back his whole body of work before he died. And no one cared.
We had to study him in high school and while I don’t remember a single thing about deconstruction I do distinctly recall getting some kind of award for a paper on Lacanian analysis that made zero sense, even to me, and mostly revolved around asserting that every stick-like thing in the collected works of Shakespeare is a penis while every hole-like thing is a vagina and something something Oedipus.
Realizing so early that the right formula would let me generate Incisive Academic Lit-Crit without even having to read the source materal pretty much ruined college for me.
I had the same problem until I realized that the impenetrability was sort of the point; Derrida is less a philosopher than a performance artist who chose philosophy as a medium.
It helped a lot that I had an open minded professor who would debate me when I pointed out that a particular line of argument reeked of bullshit.
Dangit baby Derrida you shouldn’t be afraid of the specter of Marx, you should be afraid of the ghouls of bourgeois capitalism.
Capitalism is bad, but Marx the person is terrible. I might be okay with being alienated from myself if it means Marx isn’t around.
Yeah but specters can’t hurt you, and ghouls are slavering for your flesh.
WOMAN: goodnight sweet baby
I love you very much
can you say “love you”?
BABY DERRIDA: how can I say “I love you” if I know the love is you?
the word love either as a verb or a noun would be destroyed in front of you
I never thought of Derrida as tender.
Mom: Oh, sweetie. You’ve destroyed the entire lego castle we built!
Derrida: Deconstruction.
Marry me.
It is probably fair, but I think of Derrida as one of those philosophers who had one idea, and just used it everywhere. Like Foucault (also probably unfair).
edit: I mean UNfair. Poor Derrida
I love this series with all my heart. Yesterday my baby gave me a look that I can only describe as of utter ennui, so I’m hoping for some Baby Existentialists.
Doting aunts: We’ve brought Jackie a present!
Baby Derrida: You have drawn me into an eternal cycle, expecting recompense for the thing you call a gift. Altruism is a construct.
I don’t really know how I got into this website but I’m loving it. May someone explain to me what is The Toaster? Thanks in advance, and sorry if I misspelled something.
It’s one of these things
Oh man, I’m having grad school flashbacks. I was working on an essay in the pub and the bartender came over to make fun of me for struggling. “I’ll read through this one and let you know what’s important,” he said, grabbing Derrida.
…two minute later…
“What is this shit?!?! ‘Is communication communicable????” He slammed it down on the table and poured me a free pint. “You’ll need this.”
Hee, sometimes in college we would have contests where we would all bring our reading and see who could find the most incomprehensible sentence.
The center is not the center. *sigh*
That is a man who (possibly paradoxically) understands his role in the universe.
Friend and I in a French bookstore saw two entire shelves devoted to Derrida; picked one off and found an employee and just asked “How do you say that name?” We had seen him pop up in readings but never heard anyone SAY it and couldn’t figure out the emphasis: DERida or DerRIda, and was the i an ee or a aye? (We were told it’s DARE-eee-dah, I think)
I believe he preferred to pronounce is own name with a silent A.
It's easy to screen for this: just bring up books and ask if they've ever read Nietzsche. If that leads to any sort of positive reaction, sever immediately.