Sunday, July 25, 2004
(1:52 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Embarrassing Personal Disclosure
Inspired by Jared's picture of his unread books -- which truly pales compared to mine, conveniently scattered throughout my bookshelves -- and subsequent comments, I have to disclose a few things.First, just as one usually reads "around" a book, browsing the table of contents, the preface (usually disposable, if one is honest, but still helpful as a warmup), the index, looking at the exact number of pages, digging perhaps for the actual spots where chapter breaks occur, checking to see if the footnotes occur on the same page (good) or at the end of the book (not as good, but doable) or at the end of the individual chapters (should be outlawed -- curse you, Verso!), so also I usually write "around" a paper. There is now a Word document on my hard drive, under the title "c:\My Documents\CTS\Derrida\Force of Law Paper.doc". Here is the full text of that document:
Adam Kotsko
Prof. Jennings
Derrida and Theology
August 1, 2004
[Title censored]
Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1998.
Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Trans. Peter Hallward. New York: Verso, 2001.
Derrida, Jacques. “Declarations of Independence.” Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews 1971-2001. Ed. and trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002. 46-55.
Derrida, Jacques. “Force of Law.” Trans. Mary Quaintance. Acts of Religion. Ed. Gil Anidjar. New York: Routledge, 2002. 228-298.
It also contains appropriate MLA-style page numbers ("Kotsko 1" and "Kotsko 2" so far), with a "section break (next page)" so that content endnotes, if any, will appear at the end of the body text rather than after the Works Cites page. I would do footnotes -- since I have had a fascination with footnotes ever since junior high and would in fact insert footnotes into every possible document, including my periodic newsletter, Swifty Spotlight, a lifetime subscription to which was available for the low price of $5 -- but no amount of customization seems to be able to make my copy of Word put footnotes on the appropriate page. It's really a shame. Badiou will probably get a very long endnote.
I have all the books listed on my works cited in my room, together with a few others: Margins of Philosophy, Phenomenology of Spirit, and The Crying of Lot 49. I listened to Coldplay today, which made me think of my "Heidegger phase," and I realized that I have completely lost hold of Heidegger. I read a massive amount of his work and wrote two papers on him within a year, but now all I can do is make "clever" Heideggerian references in casual conversation, describing conveniently-placed objects as being "ready-to-hand." I've done considerably less work on Hegel, but I feel orders of magnitude more comfortable digging something out of Phenomenology of Spirit than I would citing one of the Heidegger essays I've read ten times.
I suppose the truth of the matter is that I just don't care that much about the Greeks. I enjoy working with them every so often, and in fact I even tried my hand at teaching myself classical Greek, but I can't see making the Greeks into a fixture of my intellectual life. Perhaps the Bible just got to me first. And on saying that, I must disclose this: I hate it when theologically educated people are constantly talking about the infinite qualitative difference between the "Greek" and "Hebraic" mindsets and blame every supposedly negative development in Christian doctrine and practice on the nefarious infiltration of "Greek" ideas -- it seems like they're ascribing too much power to "the Greeks," still allowing them to determine the shape of theology, but negatively. Like a lot of things in contemporary Christian theology, it strikes me as lazy -- just the ticket for all those smart, enthusiastic ex-fundamentalists looking for someone to blame for the fact that Christianity has failed them, just like they probably used to blame the "liberals" for the failures of Christianity and of America. (Moltmann in particular strikes me as lazy in this regard, as though Jesus died on the cross to free us from Greek philosophical constructs. In contrast, witness Barth's genuine indifference toward the Greek heritage, his ability to use it or not as circumstances arise. I know that Moltmann is a wonderful left-liberal, though, so he must be a pretty good theologian nonetheless.)
Undecidability -- say what you will about the man, Derrida got at least that much right. Heidegger may not have sunken in, but I feel like Derrida is beginning to, because I cringe every time I hear someone talk about the infinite qualitative distinction between Greek and Hebrew, with every possible good predicate being ascribed always and only to the latter, or even -- lately -- between right and left, an ontological distinction I learned from Žižek. Agamben may detect a "peculiar misunderstanding" in Derrida's worry that a certain kind of Messianism has affinities with the Nazi "Final Solution," and yes, there is a problem with the mindset that every possible hope or program for change will lead inexorably to another Auschwitz, but I don't think that Derrida's really that far off here. And even if Derrida's style is always hesitant, always holding back and considering the million options, that may be because he's a philosopher who refuses to become a party hack -- or the kind of philosopher who's waiting for a party for whom he can be a hack, waiting upon the party hackery à venir.
UPDATE:
Two pages today. Pathetic.
I bought a book at Barnes and Noble, however, that should help me to build some French vocabulary, and I read several articles in the latest Foreign Policy. Turns out that China isn't that big a challenge to American hegemony.
