On Oct 14, 2005, at 5:18 PM, charles matthews wrote:
I'm glad you've not gone overboard on de Man. It's basically gossip, as is the Cambridge degree controversy. The bust-up with Searle could be more illuminating than either (except I don't really have time for Searle ...).
Not going to go into the bulk of this here, but I think this is the heart of the disagreement here - yes, the Cambridge degree and the de Man controversy are, from an academic perspective, largely gossip. But they're gossip that has generated a tremendous amount of generalist interest, and it's irresponsible of us not to focus on them.
I could deal with seeing a lot of biography trimmed out, but the philosophical sections were, honestly, incomprehensible garbage, particularly the Heideggarian sections. The biography section is somewhat superfluous, in that the biography of Derrida is not really the most interesting pint. But I do think a chronological account of his work needs to go towards the front of the article, along with a summary of deconstruction, and then some major controversies. I think the major controversies - de Man and Cambridge - are the sort of thing that, when described in an NPOV manner, make the critics look shoddy. I also think that they're matters that you just kind of have to know about Derrida - even if they're not that important to a mainstream academic understanding of Derrida, they're so well known. As flawed as the NYT obituary was, it does need to be grappled with as the mainstream understanding of Derrida, and if that voice is silenced, that's bad NPOV writing. Better to let the popular understanding weigh in, and then include information on where its limitations are.
-Snowspinner