Levi on the generational aspect of OOO

I don’t disagree with any of this post:

“We have lived– as does the current generation that grew up in this ecology –in a world awash in objects of all sorts… And what we discovered, perhaps, as we began our studies in the world of theory was that that theory was deeply inadequate in helping us to understand this strange new world we were living in. Roughly we were presented with three options: the linguistic turn focusing on signifiers, texts, and signs, phenomenology focusing on the analysis of intentionality and lived embodied experience, and the new historicists with their focus on networks of power and discursive structures.”

I hadn’t stated it quite this way to myself, but it’s very much to the point. The main reason I was never captivated by Derrida or Foucault even though most of the people around me were completely swept up in them was simply because they didn’t seem to be a very good match for the world in which I thought I was living. Phenomenology probably doesn’t do much better in that respect, but I was excited early on by the resources I was finding there and so wasn’t put off by it.

To this day virtually any page of Derrida leaves me completely unmoved (this may sound harsh, but he always reminds me of someone who comes to a party and talks only about himself for the whole 4 hours), and Foucault I can enjoy only in the interviews, where we find a witty and flexible person who seems willing to be surprised by ideas that occur to him as he’s talking along. His books just don’t do it for me, for whatever reason(s). I’m always willing to decide I’ve been wrong, but…