It was, of course, one of the fatal methodological mistakes of the Lamont’s paper that she did not compare Derrida with any other philosopher, thus giving us no sense of the bars to entry for a philosophical career, which is the only use for her silly ‘market’ metaphor. A better way of understanding Derrida’s career, from the purely formal, Bourdeuian model she is employing would be gained by looking at the other people who were published in, say, the issues of Critique that published the first chapters of On Grammatology and seeing how they fared in the transatlantic world. But that would take work – far better to ask some friends at a dinner party to name ten french philosophers and then write it up as a survey.

The group from the sixties – Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, to some extent Althusser and Balibar, Badiou, Serres – are to French philosophy pretty much what the American philosophers of that generation – Davidson, Putnam, Kripke, Rawls, et al – are to American philosophy – a constant reference. Of course, someone like, say, Joelle Proust is going to refer to Anglosphere work, just as an American phenomenologist is going to refer to Continental philosophers. In general, though, it is just not true by the usual parameter of scholarly influence – citation – that Derrida, Foucault, et all are minor figures in France in any way. Even someone hostile to Derrida – say, Vincent Descombes – would concede as much. In fact, one of the major centers of philosophy in France at the present time, College internationale de philosophie, was pretty much founded by Derrida. It has become one of those prestige heavy places in France where the olympians go, like College de France, to which it is now affiliated.

I frankly think it was his marketing of the whole product that made him famous and, I think, he was never as famous in France as he was in America. There they had multiple pomos vying for rock-star status.

I HATE YOU ALL

Man , now I got tea over everything. You can not possibly be serious, because Derrida is not only a terrible reader of philosophers like Plato and Nietzsche ( carelessly lifting passages out of context and making up stuff ), but he consistently misunderstands their philosophical arguments.

As if this was not enough, the man also comes across as a complete bullshitter because he conceals this intellectual recklessness and weak argumentation ( and a lack of originality I might add ) with a theoretical framework.

Don’t have that one, but a related fun quote from Her Profundity – turns out you don’t even have to read anything:

Hollywood Bible movies of the 50’s, like “The Ten Commandments” and “Ben-Hur,” with their epic clash of pagan and Judeo-Christian cultures, tell more truth about art and society than the French-infatuated ideologues who have made a travesty of the best American higher education.

Philosophers like to mount vigorous critiques of prominent predecessors in order to jumpstart their careers and take advantage of their prestige in the process? Philosophers keep an eye on the cultural currents and tailor their work towards them to gain relevance? Philosophers like to hang together in closely knit networks to further their careers?

Well, yeah! But that’s hardly newsworthy or surprising, nor is it specific in any way to Derrida or Deconstruction. I could name numerous individuals and movements in philosophy that have exhibited some or all of these traits and it’s hard to find outstanding figures in philosophy who exhibit none. The author keeps repeating that it’s not due to the ‘intrinsic value’ of Derrida’s thought, but rather to these seemingly secondary traits and tactics that Derrida and Deconstruction have risen to prominence – that may or may not be true, but to answer that question one would have to dig deep and accept or dismiss ‘Theory’ based on a discussion of the actual arguments and methods. That would involve a rather deep knowledge of both Deconstruction itself and the classic texts that are being subjected to its methods.

While I won’t claim either for myself and certainly not more than ten years after uni, my experience in a nutshell was this: after having initially been appalled by the perceived nonchalance of Deconstruction and the ignorance of some of its champions in the seminar room, who seemed to have skipped the step of reading the original works being deconstructed, I spent quite a while studying those until I reached a level of frustration with these texts which made me appreciate some deconstructionist readings of them, because I finally understood were these people were coming from.

What is there to say?
.