Saturday, December 13, 2008

As the Imposing Shadow of 2009 Lurks Close...

As the imposing shadow of 2009 lurks close, time, once again, to give credit where credit is due and to tout the inimitable mind of Jacques Derrida, enfant terrible of deconstruction, and one of my most influential teachers--though I only got to work with him for a week. "The power of ghosts and their ability to haunt us" has everything to do with the ubiquity and unfathomable shelf life of stereotypes:



2 comments:

  1. carlos fuentes and now derrida! lucky! when and where was this?

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  2. God it must have been 1986 or 1987, it may have been the time that Derrida was authoring or revising his Heidegger's Hand lectures; it was quite an event there in Ithaca, the most memorable moment being the time a gaggle of undergraduates burst in before his last lecture and spelled out his name one by one with big letters on their shirts like at a football game and gave a big cheer: D E R R I D A What does it Spell? Who do we want!? DERRIDA..... he was SO taken aback and a little embarrassed! He was a sweet, powerful mensch; i wish i had had more guts to talk to him more at the receptions--one in a million.

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