Hägglund

One of the things I’ll have the chance to do once the index is finished, aside from write that article on asymmetrical causation, is finish reading Hägglund’s book on Derrida, which left a good impression when I took a test-drive in early March.

And yes, I did agree with the following unknown blogger that Hägglund’s method was cut from the same cloth as my own. Namely:

“Similar to how Graham Harman interprets Heidegger in Tool-Being, Hagglund extracts and explicates what he claims is the core idea of Derrida’s work, writing without the piousness, esoterism, or obliqueness that has critically imprisoned his subject.”

It’s certainly the most readable thing (though not the only readable thing) I’ve seen on Derrida, but I’ll have to wait to see if it’s enough to make me rethink my intense dislike for J.D.’s work and style. I am fully aware that the stifling Derrida hegemony that suffocated the intellectual surroundings of my twenties may lead to some unfairness on my part. (I’m just a bit too young to have found him a liberation from stuffy Husserlianism. And it’s not just a matter of “fashion”… Schools of philosophy show two completely different faces when they are rising insurgents and when they are decadent, oppressive hegemons. I almost always hate the latter phase of any philosophical school, no matter which one. At that point the imitators and low-risk operators have a chance to take over. I don’t care what school we’re talking about; it always begins to happen. Someone please detonate speculative realism when I’m in my grave if it ever gets to that point– which is inevitable if it succeeds. Please, start a neo-correlationist insurgency at that point.)

In any case… Derrida up through the early 1990’s was treated as the philosophical Messiah in continental circles, but with the passage of time there are notably fewer people who want to come out and make that claim. So in a way, Hägglund deserves much credit for taking a spin with Derrida at a time when Derrida is no longer so hip.

I’m not sure if it’s up on the web yet, or if I already mentioned it here on the second incarnation of the blog, but there’s going to be a “21st Century Materialism” event in Zagreb, Croatia on June 20-21, where I’ll be joining Hägglund, Hallward, and Brassier.