TyG - post-10/24 post - Derrida, Derrida, Wherefore Art Thou, Oh Derrida?

As most English majors are aware, Juliet's impassioned cry is NOT asking WHERE her lover Romeo's gone, but rather asks WHY does he exist, WHY has he entered her life.

Likewise, me and old Jacques: WHY do you exist, and especially, WHY have you come into my life?!?

I'll have to take the usual cop-out and blame the hegemony, i.e. Dr.(not)Rog; although he may mean it that way, I doubt greatly that I'll ever find this experience has been for either MY GOOD, or for the "GREATER GOOD."

So the "wherefore" of this paper is established: to comply.

The "therefore," though, is obviously more complex, witness the variety of responses on our blog.

My "therefore," therefore, is as follows:

What, or who, could be the "binary opposition" of Jacques Derrida?

In an alternate life, I could have been a close follower of Derrida's writings, as he began to grow his immense body of work in the mid-60's, not all that long before my formative school years. Distracted by other, more easily-understood authors, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Carlos Casteneda, I never had occasion to chisel away at Derrida's formidable constructions. But neither Vonnegut nor Casteneda is nearly far enough away from Derrida's approach to be an "opposite."

Religious writings, too, have far too much in common to be viewed as truly the "other side of the coin," the yin to Jacques' yang.

"Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" begins to get close: a basic vocabulary and a simple presentation of profound concepts -- "Are you my neighbor?" -- is almost as far away from Derrida's deliberate and insistant unnecessarily verbose intellectual tangles.

The binary opposition of Jacques must be the communication of a two-to-three-year-old child, probably a girl, simply because Jacques is male:
As with most toddlers, she is not yet literate. Her words are clearly linked to her feelings, her delivery is blunt, her demands, immediate. Nothing about her is subtle (this is not every little girl, I am speaking of Derrida's hypothetical alter-ego).
Happy, she grins, so broadly and unembarrassedly that it infects all those around her. Sad, and her cries drive even crusty curmudgeons from her presence, or rally supporters to her aid. And when she is angry, family pets slink under sideboards, and houseplants near her seem to droop (only her parents are able to suppress grins at her display).

This youngster, call her "Jacqui," is the closest I can come to constructing Derrida's opposé.

And, sorry, but I would much rather spend hours listening to her than minutes reading her counterpart's writings.