"For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelise in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realised itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the ‘end of ideologies’ and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved or exterminated on the earth."
—
Derrida, Spectres of Marx (via grandejouissance)
this has been a big week for necessary re-reblogs
(Source: dagseoul, via sybaritic-scribblings)
"Now, nevertheless, the way I tried to read Plato, Aristotle, and others is not a way of commanding, repeating, or conserving this heritage. It is an analysis which tries to find out how their thinking works or does not work, to find the tensions, the contradictions, the heterogeneity within their own corpus. What is the law of this self-deconstruction, this “auto-deconstruction”? Deconstruction is not a method or some tool that you apply to something from the outside. Deconstruction is something which happens and which happens inside; there is a deconstruction at work within Plato’s work, for instance. As my colleagues know, each time I study Plato I try to find some heterogeneity in his own corpus, and to see how, for instance, within the Timaeus the theme of the k hôra is incompatible with this supposed system of Plato. So, to be true to Plato, and this is a sign of love and respect for Plato, I have to analyze the functioning and disfunctioning of his work."
—
- Jacques Derrida, The Villanova Roundtable (via tinyjuggernaut)
put on recipe cards, hand out to strangers
"Is my death possible? Can we understand this question? Can I, myself, pose it? Am I allowed to talk about my death?"
— Jacques Derrida, Aporias (via poeticsofdeath)
"I have to - and that’s an unconditional injunction - I have to welcome the Other whoever he or she is unconditionally, without asking for a document, a name, a context, or a passport. That is the very first opening of my relation to the Other: to open my space, my home - my house, my language, my culture, my nation, my state, and myself. I don’t have to open it, because it is open, it is open before I make a decision about it: then I have to keep it open or try to keep it open unconditionally. But of course this unconditionality is a frightening thing, it’s scary. If we decide everyone will be able to enter my space, my house, my home, my city, my state, my language, and if we think what I think, namely that this is entering my space unconditionally may well be able to displace everything in my space, to upset, to undermine, to even destroy, then the worst may happen and I am open to this, the best and the worst"
— Jacques Derrida, Politics and Friendship (via rhizombie)
