Examining Descartes’s Cogito, one can find that rather than philosophy and reason being a shield from horror and madness, the truth might be the opposite.
Not School Report: Philip Auslander on Postmodern Theater
Citizens can now listen to the Philosophy and Theater Group’s discussion of Philip Auslander’s From Acting to Performance.
Episode 75: Lacan & Derrida Criticize Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” (Citizens Only)
On Jacques Lacan’s “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter'” (1956), Jacques Derrida’s “The Purveyor of Truth” (1975), and other essays in the collection The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading. How should philosophers approach literature? Lacan read Edgar Allen Poe’s story about a sleuth who outthinks a devious Minister as an illustration of his model of the psyche, and why we persist in self-destructive patterns. Derrida thought this reading not only imposed a bunch of psychobabble onto the story, but demonstrated that Lacan just didn’t know how to read a text.
PREVIEW-Episode 75: Lacan & Derrida Criticize Poe’s “The Purloined Letter”
On Jacques Lacan’s “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter'” (1956), Jacques Derrida’s “The Purveyor of Truth” (1975), and other essays in the collection The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading. How should philosophers approach literature? Lacan read Edgar Allen Poe’s story about a sleuth who outthinks a devious Minister as an illustration of his model of the psyche, and why we persist in self-destructive patterns. Derrida thought this reading not only imposed a bunch of psychobabble onto the story, but demonstrated that Lacan just didn’t know how to read a text.
Not School: Derrida’s “Writing and Difference”
Rian Mitch and Paul Harris discuss the third essay in the book. Recorded on 2/19/13. Does anything lie beyond a text? Can we understand being outside of writing?
What is Mystification? A Review of Derrida (2002)
How strange it is see the banal paired with the almost Talmudic elements of Derrida’s thought. This pairing, this humanizing of Derrida in Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman’s documentary that shares his name is, in an subtle way, the mystification of abstract thoughts. The idea that one must humanize the philosopher still implies a certain alienation from abstraction that one Continue Reading …
Rick Roderick on Derrida
http://youtu.be/LvAwoUvXNzU
Watch on YouTube.
For anyone still trying to sort Derrida out, here’s a hopefully helpful attempt at explication from Rick Roderick. I liked Roderick’s approach in directly opposing Derrida’s theory to the “Theory of Reference.” This is an allusion to Gottlob Frege, who was discussed in an earlier PEL episode.
Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” Dissection, Part I
Yesterday I started trying to record a “Close Reading” on the Derrida essay we read for the podcast, and I just couldn’t get more than a few sentences into it before losing patience, so I thought I’d either as a substitution for that effort or possibly a warm-up do a few posts dissecting the essay here. I want this to Continue Reading …
Paul Fry (Yale) on Levi-Strauss (and the rest of ’em)
On the podcast both Derick and I made some references to Paul Fry’s literary theory course, which includes lectures on Saussure, Levi-Strauss, and Derrida. It’s a much longer course, of course, so you can get ahead of us to get a handle on the dreaded Lacan, or see what Fry has to say on feminism and African-American criticism. The individual Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-51: Semiotics and Structuralism (Saussure, et al)
On Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1916) (Part I and Part II, Ch. 4), Claude Levi-Strauss’s “The Structural Study of Myth” (1955), and Jacques Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966). What is language? What is the relation between language and reality? With guest C. Derick Varn.
Episode 51: Semiotics and Structuralism (Saussure, et al) (Citizens Only)
On Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1916) (Part I and Part II, Ch. 4), Claude Levi-Strauss’s “The Structural Study of Myth” (1955), and Jacques Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966). What is language? What is the relation between language and reality? With guest C. Derick Varn. Learn more.
End song: “Slipped Into Words” by Mark Linsenmayer (1991), released on The MayTricks,
Topic for #51: Semiotics and Structuralism (Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Derrida)
We’ve posted our episode (here) on a historical progression in thought that is still responsible for a lot of the hard-to-read parts of continental (mostly French) philosophy today. First, we read Part I and Part II, Chapter IV of Ferdiand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics(read it online here), published posthumously in 1916 (it’s basically lecture notes by his students; Continue Reading …
Sartre’s Legacy
Our Sartre episode focused on one single, apparently not widely discussed text:The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness. I say not very widely discussed because you would expect Sartre and consciousness to have a ton of videos on youtube and lots of scholarly papers when Googled. Instead, most of the things that come up when you search Continue Reading …