On Dec 17, 2008, at 4:09 PM, David Goodman wrote:
"But Derrida is a primary source, so no claims requiring specialist knowledge are allowed.
Which effectively rules out all uses of Derrida in the Derrida article."
this is dealt with the same way as in politics or religion: we cite someone for their own viewpoint. for whether it is a complete statement, or a sophisticated one, or the verdict of history---that's another matter. Derrida is an authority on what Derrida says--he is not necessarily an authority on what he ultimately means.
Right. The problem is the claim in NOR that "a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge."
Short of simply quoting Derrida verbatim, there is very little that can be gleaned from Derrida without any specialist knowledge.
-Phil