In How to Read Derrida, philosopher Penelope Deutscher describes Derrida’s tendency to take apparently definitive statements and turn them inside out: Anytime someone posits an essence, claims that something “is” a certain way, that can be seized upon as an opportunity, a veiled question: What makes it so you can claim that? What’s at stake in closing off the other implicit possibilities? A statement by an authority figure invariably “deconstructs itself, drawing itself to alternative possibilities and performing far more imaginative work than the speaker would admit.” That is, even the most depressing or affirmative assertions imply the possibility of overcoming them; they betray the weakness of the position in the very need to assert them. Rather than read them at face value, we could see them as casting the negative outline of other possibilities, bringing them into a potentially sharper focus. When Gene Simmons insists that he wants to "rock and roll all night and party everyday," we should understand that as an admission that not only does he fail to do those things, but he is in dire need of convincing himself that he actually wants to.
Something's Happening
Something's Happening
Something's Happening
In How to Read Derrida, philosopher Penelope Deutscher describes Derrida’s tendency to take apparently definitive statements and turn them inside out: Anytime someone posits an essence, claims that something “is” a certain way, that can be seized upon as an opportunity, a veiled question: What makes it so you can claim that? What’s at stake in closing off the other implicit possibilities? A statement by an authority figure invariably “deconstructs itself, drawing itself to alternative possibilities and performing far more imaginative work than the speaker would admit.” That is, even the most depressing or affirmative assertions imply the possibility of overcoming them; they betray the weakness of the position in the very need to assert them. Rather than read them at face value, we could see them as casting the negative outline of other possibilities, bringing them into a potentially sharper focus. When Gene Simmons insists that he wants to "rock and roll all night and party everyday," we should understand that as an admission that not only does he fail to do those things, but he is in dire need of convincing himself that he actually wants to.