Platt, DMB
There's something I don't understand about this debate over the un-read book.
How are Derrida and Focault shown to 'close their eyes to brutality,
coercion, and state terror?' Derrida and Focault (Derrida mainly) were
forerunners of a literary movement called Deconstruction, popularized in the
late 60's/early 70's. They tried to show the inability of language to
provide a stable basis for communication and how language can be manipulated
to make people buy into ideologies such as the superiority of capitalism. I
dont know that they were directly influenced by Communism, only reluctant to
wholeheartedly embrace western Capitalism as a stable, foolproof system, as
they were with all prevailing ideologies of the time.
The statement about intellects being inept at running society was illustrated
in a Simpsons episode-- the one where Lisa was disgusted with the town's
stupidity and wrote a letter of protest to the local newspaper. This got her
into MENSA, who, after the mayor was involved in a scandal, assumed control
over the laws of the town. While some of their suggestions were helpful,
such as making the traffic lights only red and yellow (people drive the
fastest through yellow), some of them were outright ridiculous, such as
implementing a mating system from Star Trek which would allow intercourse
once every seven years (the Comic Book Guy says, "For most people, this will
mean much less, for me, much more.") Luckily, Stephen Hawkings arrives to
remind them that there is no way to form a Utopian society because of
unresolvable conflicts between intellectuals and grunts and their pursuit of
happiness. A bit of a digression, I know, but interesting all the same.
Rasheed
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