Continental Philosophy

Beyond the Sea
By Simon Critchley

Thinking is thanking. So, let me begin by thanking the readers of “Happy Like God” for their thoughtful and voluminous responses. It is obviously impossible to do justice to the range of the many responses or indeed assuage the outrage that my words seemed to inspire in some. But several interconnected themes were echoed in many of the comments and I’d like to address some of them.

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An unidentified corpse found in the basement of a Berlin hospital could be that of murdered revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, say German authorities.
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Sarah Palin : opération « castration » – Jacques-Alain Miller

Jacques-alain Miller, psychanalyste

Le choix de Sarah Palin est un signe des temps. En politique, l’énonciation féminine est désormais appelée à dominer. Mais attention ! Il ne s’agit plus des femmes qui jouaient des coudes en se modelant sur les hommes. Nous entrons dans l’ère des femmes postféministes, qui, sans barguigner, font la peau aux hommes politiques. La transition a été parfaitement visible durant la campagne de Hillary : elle a commencé par jouer le commandant en chef, et ça n’a pas marché. Alors, elle a envoyé un message subliminal qui disait quelque chose comme : « Obama ? Il n’a rien dans le pantalon. » Elle a aussitôt remonté, mais trop tard. Sarah Palin prend le relais, mais, plus jeune de quinze ans, elle est autrement féroce, elle manie le sarcasme féminin avec un naturel incomparable, elle châtre ouvertement ses adversaires mâles, et avec une franche jubilation, tandis que les malheureux restent cois : attaquer une femme qui joue de sa féminité pour les ridiculiser et les réduire à l’impuissance, ils ne savent pas. Pour l’instant, une femme qui abat la carte « castration » est imbattable.

En France, on avait pu voir Ségolène accomplir l’opération « castration » sur Fabius et Strauss-Kahn, mais par la suite, toute à se polir une image de madone, elle négligea Sarkozy, qui sut la peindre en évaporée nunuche. Quant aux Martine Aubry ou Michèle Alliot-Marie, c’est l’ancien modèle.

Quelle est précisément la différence entre les femmes de ces deux époques ? Les premières imitent l’homme, elles respectent le phallus, et font comme si elles l’avaient. Les nouvelles savent que ce n’est qu’un semblant, elles ne le prennent pas au sérieux : c’est la féminité décomplexée. Une Sarah Palin n’affiche aucun manque, n’a peur de rien, pond des enfants tout en maniant le fusil, se présente comme une force qui va, « un pitbull avec du rouge à lèvres ».

Obama a-t-il déjà perdu ? En ne choisissant pas Hillary comme partenaire-sur les instances de son épouse, dit-on, elle aussi très pitbull-, il a ouvert un boulevard à McCain, qui s’y est engouffré. Grâce à Palin, McCain est revenu dans la course. Sarah passionne l’Amérique, elle apporte en politique un nouvel Eros. Si Obama gagne, elle a les meilleures chances d’être son challenger dans quatre ans. Si c’est McCain, Hillary sera son adversaire numéro un. Dans tous les cas, une nouvelle race de femmes politiques monte en puissance.

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On the BBC

h/t: Marcus Allion

Nach dem irischen Nein zum Vertrag von Lissabon sind die Regierungen mit ihrem Latein am Ende: Sie müssen die Bevölkerung über Europa entscheiden lassen.

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Interview with Axel Honneth, in Le Monde, obviously in French.

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Slavoj Žižek is less a philosopher than a phenomenon. The son of Slovenian Communists, and the representative on earth (so to speak) of the late French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Žižek has been travelling the globe like an intellectual rock star for the past twenty years, gathering as he goes an immense fan club. He is outrageous, provocative and entertaining. He was, he tells us, tempted to suggest for the dust jacket of one of his books: “In his free time, Žižek likes to surf the internet for child pornography and teach his small son how to pull the legs off spiders”.

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From New York Times:

It was in sometime in the ’80s when I heard someone on the radio talking about Clint Eastwood’s 1980 movie “Bronco Billy.” It is, he said, a “nice little film in which Eastwood deconstructs his ‘Dirty Harry’ image.”

That was probably not the first time the verb “deconstruct” was used casually to describe a piece of pop culture, but it was the first time I had encountered it, and I remember thinking that the age of theory was surely over now that one of its key terms had been appropriated, domesticated and commodified. It had also been used with some precision. What the radio critic meant was that the flinty masculine realism of the “Dirty Harry” movies — it’s a hard world and it takes a hard man to deal with its evils — is affectionately parodied in the story of a former New Jersey shoe salesman who dresses and talks like a tough cowboy, but is the good-hearted proprietor of a traveling Wild West show aimed at little children. It’s all an act , a confected fable, but so is Dirty Harry; so is everything. If deconstruction was something that an American male icon performed, there was no reason to fear it; truth, reason and the American way were safe.

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An interview on French TV with Alain Badiou, discussing his politics. He just published a book on Sarkozy. Link. (h/t: Ed Pluth)

The weekly Vendredis de la philosophie (Philosophy Fridays) focused on Deleuze and Guattari. Link

Slavoj Zizek on love




And a recent article by Zizek on Turkey, which appeared in the Guardian (h/t: Ian Maley)

André Gorz passed away during my blogging hiatus so this is not news to most readers. I have put together a few links that may be of interest:

• Le Monde obituary (in French)
• Guradian article
• Welt Online article (in German)
• Ari Sitas of Monthly Review
• The radio show "Vendredis de la philosophie" (audio, in French)

Finally two pieces by Gorz himself. His short article (in French) entitled Sartre malgré lui?. And his "The Social Ideology of the Motorcar". Here is the first paragraph:

The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don't have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratised. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and frustrated in return.

Via John Protevi:

Peter Hallward, the excellent philosopher working at Middlesex University in London — also part of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective — has written an outstanding article on the interests of the British press. He contrasts the blanket coverage of a missing child to the almost total overlooking of the death of 80 Haitians at sea, deaths for which British authorities are responsible due to their callous disregard of the lives of those they intercept fleeing the poverty of Haiti. Poverty for which, it should always be recalled, American policy bears great responsibility. The article appears on what looks to be an important resource, www.haitianalysis.com. Check it out.

Continuing from the previous story on Derrida and the UCI affair: From the comments here is a link of interest: http://www.jacques-derrida.org/UCI%20Affair.html

More Rorty articles:

From the New York Times

From Slate (H/t: Carrie Golden) 

An essay by Ron Santoni, “Bush as the Stranger”:

As did so many others, I’m sure, I broke out in laughter when informed that George W. had included Camus’ The Stranger on his last summer’s reading list. Was this another Karl Rove production, specifically designed to impress an academic population totally disenchanted with our misguided, deceptive, and double-speaking president?

Surely, I quickly concluded, even a distressingly conniving political strategist like Rove would recognize that such a pretense would be transparent and soon become another episode of the tragic make-believe of the Bush administration. Or maybe, I continued, George the Lesser wanted to extend a small conciliatory gesture to the French, on whom—after they dared to disagree with his murderous and counterproductive incursion into Iraq—he had poured scorn and ridicule, going so far as to encourage the imposition of new freedom-loving labels on some of France’s gustatory delights (“freedom fries,” anyone?). So perhaps the inclusion of a work by Camus was intended as a “salute” to France by way of honoring one of its Noble laureates in literature? Noblesse oblige!

Here is the rest

(And the video from The Daily Show on the President and Camus)

Chris S as well as Roy Rivenburg of LA Times brought this to my attention:

A philosophical view of sex
Deconstructionist Jacques Derrida reportedly had tried to use his coveted archives as leverage to derail a sexual harassment case against a professor at UC Irvine.
By Roy Rivenburg, Times Staff Writer
February 25, 2007

When a vampire expert allegedly seduced a tipsy UC Irvine student four years ago, he inadvertently set off a chain of events that now jeopardizes the school’s control of a dead philosopher’s prized archives.

The story came to light after UCI announced last week that it would drop a lawsuit against the widow and sons of philosopher Jacques Derrida, the acclaimed founder of deconstruction, an influential but bewildering theory that questions the concept of absolute truth.

In 1990, Derrida signed an agreement to donate his scholarly papers to UCI, where he taught part time. But after his death in 2004, Derrida’s heirs began questioning the pact. The university tried to negotiate, then sued three months ago, a maneuver that outraged professors in California and beyond.

Buried in the news that UCI would resume negotiations with Derrida’s family was a mysterious footnote: The feud over his archives was sparked by a letter Derrida sent to UCI shortly before his death.

In it, the pipe-puffing Frenchman threatened to pull the plug on the archives because he was furious about “some things the university was doing,” said Peggy Kamuf, a USC professor and Derrida friend.

More here (or here)

I have been quite busy and have not had time to post much over the past few days. Chris S keeps up the good work and has this new tip:

Correction: French philosopher story
IRVINE, Calif. – In a Feb. 14 story about a lawsuit involving the writings of French philosopher Jacque Derrida, The Associated Press reported erroneously on the status of the case. The University of California, Irvine, is negotiating with the family and has not dropped the suit, according to Christine Byrd, a spokeswoman for the university. She intends to release more details if an agreement is reached.

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In continuation from the previous story on Derrida:

The University of California, Irvine, has dropped a lawsuit against the family of world-renowned French philosopher and professor Jacques Derrida after an outcry from the late scholar’s followers.


The university had sued in an attempt to get manuscripts and correspondence from Derrida’s widow and children that it believed the philosopher had promised to UC Irvine’s collection.


This week, however, a school spokeswoman said the university had resumed negotiations with Derrida’s family and would drop the lawsuit.


“We feel confident that in the very near future this issue will be resolved in a manner that satisfies the Derrida family,” said UCI spokeswoman Christine Byrd.


Derrida, who died in 2004 at age 74, was the founder of an intellectual movement called deconstruction and taught part-time at UC Irvine from 1986 to 2003. Deconstruction rejects the idea that a text can have a single, authoritative interpretation; it became popular on U.S. college campuses in the 1970s.


Until his death, Derrida had slowly been turning over lecture manuscripts, journals and other materials to UCI’s special collections library under an agreement he signed in 1990.


UCI had spent more than $500,000 on the project, installing two copy machines at Derrida’s house near Paris and hiring French-speaking graduate students to help catalog the documents, according to the lawsuit.


But in 2004, Derrida sent a letter to UCI’s then-chancellor, Ralph Cicerone, threatening to withdraw permission for scholars to photocopy or quote material from the archives, a move that would have rendered the papers virtually useless, said Peggy Kamuf, a friend of the Derrida family and chairwoman of USC’s comparative literature department.


Derrida was “quite unhappy with some things the University of California was doing,” Kamuf said, adding that she couldn’t discuss details except to say it didn’t involve Derrida’s own relationship with the university.


After Derrida’s death, his widow and sons said they wanted copies of UCI’s archives shared with the Institute of Contemporary Publishing Archives in France, Kamuf said.


“Irvine is not exactly the center of the world,” Kamuf said, so the family requested duplicate archives to assure wider scholarly access to the philosopher’s work.


Derrida’s estate also sought changes in how UCI managed the papers, said Jackie Dooley, who heads the school’s special collections and archives.


About a year ago, the family cut off negotiations, she said, so UCI sued in November, seeking $500,000 in damages and a court order requiring the family to transfer its stash of papers to California.


On Feb. 1, following a meeting of UCI professors, librarians and administrators, the university “began the process of dismissing the lawsuit,” said Karen Lawrence, UCI’s dean of humanities.


Kamuf said she was told that UCI would agree to share copies of its archives with the French institute. Byrd, the UCI spokeswoman, said a more complete description of the agreement would be made public later this week.


“This is what should have happened all along,” said Kamuf. “One hundred years from now, Derrida will be considered the most important philosopher since (Immanuel) Kant.”

Source (h/t Chris S)