>If a place is itself surrounded by fire (falls finally to

>>7464091
You're just not smart enough to understand him.

>>7464098
this meme again

Try applying his ideas to works of literature and you'll be surprised at what you come to see. Derrida is not meant to be taken at face value, it is only through the application of his ideas to the interpretation of literature that he becomes valuable. At least that's the way I see it, I've gained much insight into the things I read with the influence of this guy.

>>7464091
>Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

>>7464091
Where's this extract from

>>7464123

'Speech and Phenomena' is decent but honestly he's written so much shit that is blatant trolling (for example OP quote).

>>7464123
I literally don't have a fucking clue what he's saying there other than there's some kind of metaphysical lack that language and being point to we can never fill. Or something. What a hack.

>>7464147

Not sure but I'm assuming it's about 'Cinders', a book he wrote discussing the Holocaust.

>>7464147
Cinders

>>7464153

If you want a (somewhat) clearer exposition of his view of language, see 'Speech and Phenomena' his first book, like I said: >>7464149

Other than that I mostly concur with the mainstream consensus that a lot of his stuff is nonsense.

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>>7464154
>mfw halfway through it
>mfw forgot it's supposed to be about the holocaust

>>7464091
That's not even difficult to understand. it just seems like you'd actually have to pay attention to what you were reading.

>>7464168

You're the one that needs to learn to pay attention. It should be obvious that OP isn't complaining about the writing being hard to understand, but the triviality of what the writer's expressing.

>>7464098
>>7464168
>i-i-it's not that hard! I-i guess you're just dumb hehe
>thinking the problem is with the difficulty of the passage and not unnecessary obscurantism to dress up what is probably a pretty pedestrian insight

>>7464178

+1

>>7464178
It's not obstructionist at all. If you're not smart enough to understand Derrida, it's not his fault.

>>7464193

>>7464176

>>7464178
>what is probably
If you could understand it you'd be more confident than that. Contrary to what faggots on /lit/ like to believe, just because language is complex doesn't mean it's intentionally obscuring something. Sometimes it's just a complex idea being communicated or a more complex version of a simpler idea.

>>7464091
Derrida is mad.

50% of his stuff is brilliant and the other 50% is absolute horseshit

>>7464201
15 posts and no one can tell me what that passage means in everyday, simple language. Nigga's a fucking meme philosopher, this ain't rocket science. What's he saying?

>>7464201

And sometimes it's a non-idea expressed in self-indulgent masturbatory verbiage.

>>7464193
>obstructionist
>it's not unnecessarily obtuse at all!

Jesus Christ I'd hate to see your bookshelf

>>7464210

It means cinders are left over after something's been burned, so something must have been there before. He's really a meme philosopher.

>>7464218

He probably thinks Baudrillard is good too.

>>7464153
>I don't understand what he's saying
>What a fucking hack
Come on, man. B8 harder.

Like the other anon who is (somewhat) agreeing with me, I'll give you that the passage you quoted isn't a prime example of "good" Derridian thought. And, to be quite honest, I haven't read a ton of Derrida myself. But I'd be lying if I said that what I have read isn't influential to me and that I believe him to be a valuable thinker in contributing to literary theory/criticism.
Check out "The Instant of My Death / Demeure." It's a 3 page story by Blanchot supplemented by ~90 pages of Derrida's analysis. It really speaks to what it means to testify to an event, more specifically a traumatic event, and the problems it creates in transcribing it to literature. I'm not saying you have to agree or like what he has to say, but give that book a shot and maybe don't be so dismissive of somebody who's spent his entire life doing this shit and has been universally praised for it by people way smarter than you (and me).

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>hurr dae derrida = obscurantist XD

wow what a novel thought OP i bet this has never been brought up in the past 50 years someone call CNN or something

>>7464244
>the passage you quoted isn't that bad and an example of one of his more coherent thoughts
>still can't tell me what his thought is

Like pulling teeth with you niggas.

Is there an online version of that book it does sound interesting though

that's probably the most lucid metaphor you'd find from Derrida, and still you find it trouble to understand?

man I don't what to tell you but sometimes you can't blame all your problems on Derrida's lack of clarity.

>>7464224
I like Baudrillard but more so for his aesthetic than for philosophical soundness or meaning.

>>7464271
>that passage
>lucid

No wonder this meme of a board thinks trash like Finnegans wake is high art

>>7464267
the cinders allude to Derrida's notion of absence, which is basically the way a word or speech act is meaningful because of all the past uses of the word (i.e., those past uses define what the word means), which are, of course, absent when the word is being used. there's more to this notion of absence but that's the most basic way to put it.

>>7464244
>has been universally praised

yeah that's not true at all.

>>7464283
I mean, you can quote a metaphor or a part of a larger literary critical application from even the clearest writer and it's probably not going to make sense if you're not familiar with the writers approach. This is obvious.

It's not Derrida's fault you decided to start reading in the middle of the book.

>>7464267
http://ethliterary.com/pdf/351381/by-ethliterary-com/download.html
You can try that, but I'm not sure. I have a physical copy. But I think the idea of an unexperienced experience is really fucking cool and would be more than willing to talk about it if this thread stays alive long enough for you to read that.

>>7464286
>a word or speech act is meaningful because of all the past uses of the word (i.e., those past uses define what the word means)

Linguist here. That is utter horseshit, and not an accurate description of either how language works or what Derrida claimed.

>>7464304
not an empirical claim, retard. get back to doing "science."

>>7464302
>unexperienced experience

Can you explain to me why you think this is even a coherent notion?

>>7464309
>a word or speech act is meaningful because of all the past uses of the word

This is a claim, and moreover a false one. Fuck off.

>>7464302
It's late now but I'll definitely check it out tomorrow

>>7464301
Nah son, I've been reading since I was a tyke, there's dense literary stuff and then there's just shit like this. I could go pasting big grand central metaphors from tons of well known or obscure books willy nilly and even if the context went over my head id still feel something powerful because that's just what a good writer is able to do

>>7464288
Maybe universal was the wrong word. Like some other anon said, he's 50% brilliant and 50% bullshit. But when he's brilliant, he truly is. By "universally" I moreso meant "widely", "internationally", etc. Because he certainly has his fair share of sound criticisms but most people who understand him can find something worth praising

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>>7464304
>>7464309
>mfw even the derridafags in this very thread can't clearly communicate his ideas

>>7464310
Why don't you take the 3 minutes it takes to read Blanchot's story and figure it out for yourself, it's pretty straightforward if you do that and I'm sure the story (without the supplementary Derrida) is easy to find online.

>>7464210
given I understand to be the influence of Nietzsche on his work id imagine he's assigning a value of nil to the cinders as opposed to a negative value which is either the assumption he is critiquing or the valuation of the character—"she"—which valuation I also imagine she has some interest in transvaluing, in reassessing the value of cinders as zero for some context sensitive reason. which also brings me to the point of why you're retarded: because philosophy believe it or not is not just a collection of pithy truisms but on the contrary often requires hundreds of pages of development to draw out the subtleties of a point or concept, and as such deriving any conclusive meaning from the few lines posted in the OP is a fools errand which I've nevertheless taken up just to demonstrate exactly how shallow your critical thinking is seeing as you couldn't even muster something as vague as that.

>>7464315
>This is a claim
again, not an empirical one. I know it might be hard for you to understand, but some claims are not empirical. when Derrida speaks of absence or presence he's refering to them as metaphysical concepts, similar to how they're used in Heidegger.

>>7464304
check out Deleuze and Guattari. their repeated use of the phrase body without organs provides a perfect example of what he's talking about. linguistics is a softer science then literary analysis

>>7464376
Wow what's that you say, I should be familiar with a philosophers body of work and main areas of focus to understand said work. Truly, I'm out of my depth here

None of that is a good argument for being deliberately obtuse you pretentious faggot. As an author, do you want your ideas communicated clearly or not? If not, then fuck off. Derrida is free to be his impenetrable self as long as he likes, but it doesn't make his style immune from criticism

>>7464091
regardless that this is about derrida, regardless of whether he sucks or not, i fucking love the "what a fucking hack" meme

keep it up OP, proud of u