(6:41 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Lurking in the Footnotes

In John D. Caputo, Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, I read the following in the body text:

This misunderstanding of deconstruction, which even supposes that the very idea of "misunderstanding deconstruction" is undermined by deconstruction, is often the result of too hastily construing the texts of a difficult, elusive and playful author. But this distortion of Derrida is not without political significance, for it is frequently attached to a reactionary political agenda which vigorously opposes the efforts of women, homosexuals, and ethnic minorities to have their voices heard, in the academy and in the church. In the world of Anglo-American philosophy, it arises from the hegemonic agenda of the "analytic" establishment, which has succeeded in making philosophy tedious and culturally irrelevant, and which feels threatened by a style of thinking which, to say the least, analytic philosophers have denounced but simply have not read. (15-16)

The lack of an adequate Continental philosophy of science is at least as serious a problem in Continental philospohy as its obscurantist jargon and resistance to making itself understood. (349)

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