tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post4868712364445403590..comments2023-11-02T02:14:31.901-06:00Comments on ReadMoreWriteMoreThinkMoreBeMore: Bon Mots: Derrida on the future of the HumanitiesDoctor Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13189506916480012553noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-44188662944884866322010-07-22T20:53:08.136-05:002010-07-22T20:53:08.136-05:00I am struck by the manner (but this is conventiona...I am struck by the manner (but this is conventional in Derrida's work) in which the present state of things, in terms of politics or in terms of the <i>line of thought</i> is made to depend, hang in the balance, on what is still, always, to come. The emancipatory ideal is joined to a prophetic voice, which is necessarily fragile at the very moment it announces the strength to bring about a historical change.<br /><br />I don't think that this is confined to Derrida's frequent use of the future perfect tense (and here the conditional "would"), but there is without a doubt an element in Derrida's work that announces the future, not as an alternate "place" in time, but as what the present opens onto, sometimes making of time not a line, but an asymptote. That is, an ever extended "learning curve" that adds to and disrupts any simple principle of presence. <br /><br />Finally this passage seems to hint at what Derrida means by "the animal", both in terms of entities within nature and the life world (animals) and the sometimes threatening figures of the superhuman, or at the furthest limit of the human ("the animal" as an unknown we face, possibly signified by its own heraldry, its totems, its symbols).Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04740079839363651376noreply@blogger.com