Three Prophets of Postmodernity

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Three Prophets of Postmodernity

• Derrida, Foucault, and Rorty

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Jacques Derrida Viva la Différance

• Most rigorous of the postmodern academics
• Most famous work was Of Grammatology (1974)
• Father of Deconstructionism

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Derrida Key Terms

• Deconstruction
• Différance Differing and Deferring
• Grammatology
• Autodeconstruction
• Repudiation of Logocentrism
• Writing versus Speaking
• Archiecriture (Absence vs. Presence)
• Bricolage
• Alternative Logic
• Messianicity

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Derridas Grammatology

• For Derrida, a text presents innumerable possible
  structures and meanings.
• Texts (or writing) have their own structures and
  are inherently self-referential. The study of
  these structures is called grammatology.
• Derrida claims that interpretation (hermeneutics)
  in the traditional sense is not possible, since
  texts do not have only one meaning. The job of
  the reader, therefore, is deconstruction. (i.e.
  exposing all possible interpretations of the text
  apart from those of individual users, including
  the author)

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The absence of a center

• Henceforth, it was necessary to begin thinking
  that there is no center, that the center could
  not be thought in the form of a present-being,
  that the center had no natural site, that it was
  not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of
  nonlocus in which an infinite number of sign
  substitutions came into play. Writing and
  Difference, 280.

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God

• God is the name of the possibility I have of
  keeping a secret that is visible from the
  interior but invisible from the exterior. . . .
  Once I can have a secret relationship with myself
  and not tell everything, once there is secrecy
  and secret witnessing within me, (it happens
  that) I call myself God . . . God is in me, he is
  the absolute me or self, he is that structure
  of invisible interirotiy that is called in
  Kierkegaards sense, subjectivity. The Gift of
  Death, 17.

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Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

• Led a tragic life of abuse, revolt, and sexual
  perversion.
• Considered Nietzsches greatest disciple.
• Most famous work The Archeology of Knowledge

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Foucaults anti-philosophy

• Influence of Nietzsche
• Denies that language refers to an objective
  reality. (i.e. sign ? thing signified)
• Each historical period has a distinct worldview
  which determines knowledge. (genealogy,
  contextualism) The character of this knowledge is
  called episteme or discursive formation.

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Power

• The human being is a product of discourse rather
  than human beings creating discourse.
• Whoever controls the episteme, then, controls
  reality. Hence, knowledge IS power.
• Opening Illustration from Madness and
  Civilization.

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Foucaults Axiology

• In a sense, all the rest of my life Ive been
  trying to do intellectual things that would
  attract beautiful boys.
• Foucault in an interview with Edmund White,
  cited in in James Miller, The Passion of Michel
  Foucault (1993), 56.

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Richard Rorty Mirror, Mirror

• Most famous work, Philosophy and the Mirror of
  Nature.
• Most noted American philosopher of the late 20th
  century.
• Known as the founder of neo-pragmatism.

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Rorty Get to work

• In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty
  contends that the (T)ruth should not be the
  object of our quest (because it doesnt exist!).
  Rather, we should seek to find what methods work,
  and exploit them. Rorty is a nonrealist.
• Truth then is not the actual state of things,
  but a term we assign to practical conventions.
• Democracy, therefore, is the only path to
  realizable community.
• Publicly called for an end to philosophy as an
  enterprise unto itself. At best, the philosopher
  creates conversations between the disciplines.