[csaa-forum] Re: The politics of emotion

[Brett Neilson]

Hi Danny,

I think the link here is that the crisis of political representation, of 
which the election result is one symptom, needs to be understood vis-a-vis 
the crisis in linguistic representation, of which the writings of Derrida 
are perhaps our most precise barometer. Not that I think that affect (as I 
would call it when not writing for a newspaper and which is much more than 
emotion) lies outside of textual mediation (or even cognition) in some 
realm of pure experience. As a friend commented yesterday, there's a 
certain luxuriousness to the philosophy of Derrida that we can no longer 
afford. The processes he was tracing seem to have played themselves out 
completely and this is something that Howard, Bush (or rather Loughnane, 
Rove) and the like seem to have understood better than those of us who feel 
strangely orphaned by this death.

Brett


At 03:44 PM 11/10/2004 +0930, you wrote:
>There are also some parallels to be drawn in the prevailing
>political mood perhaps with the terribly sad news of Derrida - I'm thinking
>of the awful attacks on his work from Chomsky, the Cambridge people etc.
>that seem motivated by a similar register of fear that Howard plays upon so
>ruthlessly. Being good, or right, is obviously less important than being
>familiar.