Going a little bit further: after accusing Derrida elsewhere on your journal of feigning mastery of a text, I started to wonder what counts as true mastery. Extending the idea above, I think that disobedience of a text is only possible from a standpoint of mastery, because you can't disobey what you aren't in a position to obey. So what I see at play in Derrida is not only a feigned mastery but a feigned disobedience, as though he only learned enough from Austin to make a point of spurning him.
If I had critiqued Barthes it would have ended up similarly. There are times when the full articulation of an aversive response counts as a good criticism, but this was not one of them.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-18 02:35 pm (UTC)If I had critiqued Barthes it would have ended up similarly. There are times when the full articulation of an aversive response counts as a good criticism, but this was not one of them.