Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies:
"The Continental Origins of Postmodernism"

Week 9: November 8-14 and Week 10: November 15-21

Shawn Klein's Comment on William Thomas's Review of Jacques Derrida's "Cogito and the History of Madness" and "Structure, Sign and Discourse in the Human Sciences"

To: TOC Cyberseminar <cybersem@objectivistcenter.org>

Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 1999 8:56 AM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Comment on WT on Derrida

[From: Shawn E.Klein ]

Madness and more madness

Will Thomas's review essay captures much of the essence of this very
difficult Derrida piece. I especially appreciated his comments on
deconstructionism in general.

I am going to come right out and say it: this essay by Derrida is madness.
I admit I might be dismissing Derrida too quickly, or that I might be
missing important insights that Derrida brings to the table. I am also very
willing to concede that I just do not understand what Derrida is trying to
do.

Now that I've bolstered everyone's confidence in my ability to write on
Derrida, here are some of my thoughts on Derrida.

A lot of what it seems Derrida is trying to do is to set up oppositional or
binary poles; for example, existence and non-existence, reason and madness,
and presence and absence. I take it that everything has a contrary, that
everything exists in a binary relationship. According to Derrida, it is the
difference of the thing from its other that brings it into existence.
Going one step further than Sartre, not only does existence precede
essence, but difference precedes existence.

So what? Well, the problem is not, I think, in things having contraries.
It is the implied idea that the contraries have equal footing, or that they
have an equal importance or impact. This troubles me. Something and
nothing do not have the same metaphysical status, contrary to Heidegger.

Or maybe there is a more troubling idea contained within the idea of
contraries as presented by Derrida. I think we can see this within
Derrida's discussion of the pre-classical logos. Derrida refers to this as
"undivided Logos" (40). This logos had no contrary because it absorbed or
assimilated the two binaries, it has "'enveloped' the contrary of reason"
(40). What we normally divide into logic and illogic is combined into one
system. The further implication is that all the binaries are joined, that
is, the binaries are really a part of the same thing.

This seems, also, to apply to reason and madness. Before the "great
internment" of madness, reason and madness co-existed in a similar manner
to the undivided Logos. Afterwards, madness was exiled and reason
enshrined. The task, it seems, of Derrida's deconstructionism is to allow
madness to return and rejoin with reason.

I am reminded of Rand's well-known statement, and I am paraphrasing from
memory, that any mixing of poison with food allows the poison to "win" and
results in death. By combining logic and illogic or reason and madness into
one unified totality, we do not allow ourselves to move beyond reason to
some higher process of knowing, but force ourselves into madness.

Now, this descent into madness may be precisely the point. Or maybe I just
can't break out of my own western historical context and see madness, as
itself, and can only see it through the lenses of reason. Derrida seems to
think that we need the deconstruction project in order to break out of this
context, and our inability to see madness as itself serves to confirm this
need.

Or maybe there really is no point, other than the typical Objectivist
response that Derrida is just an evil monster out to destroy reason and
civilization(a characterization I'm not all that uncomfortable with).

In conclusion, I could be, and probably am, getting the Derridean
deconstructionist program all or partially wrong. There might very well be
something in Derrida or deconstructionism that is worthy of more attention
and more study. I personally only see it worthy of study in order to "know
thy enemy."

Shawn Klein
Arizona State University

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Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

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