Derrida Quote of the Day

I do not have confidence in just any conceptual distinctions. When this or that conceptual opposition does not oper­ate distinctly, when  it functions only by virtue of a too  ”weak”  idealization  that pays the price of excluding all phenomena called “marginal” and of being inca­pable of describing  or accounting  for  anything whatsoever, then,without re­nouncing either the concept or  the  distinction, without  capitulating  to empiri­cism,  for example, to the “a little fictional” or the “somewhat  ironic,”  I believe one must search to comprehend what  is going on, to analyze the presuppositions of discourse, to  transform its axiomatics, to propose other conceptual distinc­tions and even, however troubling that may appear, another general “logic.” This logic can  be  ”other”  to  the  point of overturning a good many habits and comforts. It can lead us  to  complicate–distinctly–the  logic of binary opposi­tions and to a certain use of the value of distinction attached to  it. The latter has indeed certain limits and a history, which  I have precisely tried  to question. But that leads neither to “illogic” nor to “indistinction” nor to “indeterminacy. ” This other  ”logic” does not authorize,  in theoretical discourse as such,  any kind of approximative statement.  It never renounces…clear and rigorous distinction.

From the Afterword in Limited INC (pp. 126-127). Italics in original, bold lines added by me.

So much for irrationalism, poetic obscurantism and lack of argumentative discipline.

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~ by Fabio Cunctator on November 16, 2010.