I.
One of the things I most disliked about presenting papers to an audience, was the fact that the latter invariably felt themselves entitled to ask questions afterwards.
And the most annoying of all questions was being asked to elaborate on some point ... Meaning, could I provide more details, or further examples. Could I - in other words - just work a little bit harder and, in answering their question, not only negate the carefully constructed ambiguity of the text, but effectively do their thinking for them.
I hate the expectation that things must be worked out and all problems solved, contradictions overcome, etc. Do people not see that to explain an idea is to level it and thus provide a safe foundation for thinking? As a Nietzschean, my aim was always to refine ideas to the point at which they become dangerous and unstable, shifting like desert sands ...
II.
Happily, I can find support for this from the king of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, who, in a filmed interview with Amy Ziering Kofman, says that one of the first things he noticed when teaching at an American university (back in 1956) was that people would quite casually ask one another - both in a social and an academic context - Could you please elaborate on X, Y, or Z? Here's a word - now get to work!
Students, for example, would visit his office and expect him to philosophise on the spot, as it were. Something, says Derrida, that just wouldn't happen at a French university; not because French students are more reserved or polite, but because the expectation that a thinker can and should always elaborate, doesn't exist in France.
Of course, that's not to say no one ever requests more information in France. But it's far less common and the people who do demand such tend to be manipulative journalists who are always in a hurry and looking to lead the interviewee into saying something rash or foolish. Derrida is scornful of individuals who think that because someone is a philosopher, they can ask them to speak about being at the drop of a hat, or act as if they can push a button and voila! be given an instant discourse on love.
As he says, it simply doesn't work like that: any genuine philosopher will hesitate in answering even the most straightforward of questions. Not because they wish to appear vague or obscure, but because they have nothing ready-made. They're not comedians always happy to do a bit or perform a short routine; nor are they politicians who always stick to a script and thereby attempt to stay on-message.
Note: Although, as far as I recall, the scene discussed here doesn't appear in the final edit of the movie, I'm assuming it was an outtake from Derrida (2002), a documentary film dir. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman. Anyway, readers who are interested can click here to watch the interview; or here to watch the film in full.
And the most annoying of all questions was being asked to elaborate on some point ... Meaning, could I provide more details, or further examples. Could I - in other words - just work a little bit harder and, in answering their question, not only negate the carefully constructed ambiguity of the text, but effectively do their thinking for them.
I hate the expectation that things must be worked out and all problems solved, contradictions overcome, etc. Do people not see that to explain an idea is to level it and thus provide a safe foundation for thinking? As a Nietzschean, my aim was always to refine ideas to the point at which they become dangerous and unstable, shifting like desert sands ...
II.
Happily, I can find support for this from the king of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, who, in a filmed interview with Amy Ziering Kofman, says that one of the first things he noticed when teaching at an American university (back in 1956) was that people would quite casually ask one another - both in a social and an academic context - Could you please elaborate on X, Y, or Z? Here's a word - now get to work!
Students, for example, would visit his office and expect him to philosophise on the spot, as it were. Something, says Derrida, that just wouldn't happen at a French university; not because French students are more reserved or polite, but because the expectation that a thinker can and should always elaborate, doesn't exist in France.
Of course, that's not to say no one ever requests more information in France. But it's far less common and the people who do demand such tend to be manipulative journalists who are always in a hurry and looking to lead the interviewee into saying something rash or foolish. Derrida is scornful of individuals who think that because someone is a philosopher, they can ask them to speak about being at the drop of a hat, or act as if they can push a button and voila! be given an instant discourse on love.
As he says, it simply doesn't work like that: any genuine philosopher will hesitate in answering even the most straightforward of questions. Not because they wish to appear vague or obscure, but because they have nothing ready-made. They're not comedians always happy to do a bit or perform a short routine; nor are they politicians who always stick to a script and thereby attempt to stay on-message.
Note: Although, as far as I recall, the scene discussed here doesn't appear in the final edit of the movie, I'm assuming it was an outtake from Derrida (2002), a documentary film dir. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman. Anyway, readers who are interested can click here to watch the interview; or here to watch the film in full.
It's quite amusing, in the extract in question, how Derrida is protesting about requests to elaborate in American academic life precisely by elaborating (at considerable Gallic length) on this. The irony here seems lost on him - I'm not sure if it's lost on the blogger. Either way, as we are essentially discussing power and prestige in the context of academic discussion, one can hardly let a phrase like the 'king of deconstruction' go uncommented (is there a queen, one wonders?). As with everything and everyone, to appropriate a Felt song title, the king needs to be dismantled, and taken off his throne. How to deconstruct the deconstructors?
ReplyDeleteWhat is the function of an (intelligent) audience - which is to say the function of, strictly speaking, one or more active listeners? If the legitimacy of one of its traditional activities, namely asking questions, is debarred by an authoriarian speaker in advance because they make him uncomfortable or resentful, what does that leave them with - apart from the opportunity to sit there like silent sponges? (As I recall, even the convention of applause - by which an audience shows its appreciation for what it has heard - was disputed during a series of talks by the blogger at Treadwell's bookshop.)
I'd suggest the boot is on the other foot - if anything a speaker or performer is at the mercy of an audience. It's one of the reasons I enjoy watching stand-up in a fractious club, where hecking is de rigueur and comics actually cut their teeth by learning how to deal with it. To play devil's advocate, interaction purges preciousness and, as a poet, I think even aesthetes like ourselves should have to work hard for the privilege of silencing a room.
At its best, the request for elaboration is motivated by a desire to complicate the material interestingly: to work it harder, to add detail, nuance and complexity. At its worst, I might agree, it could threaten the aesthetic precision of its construction, or dilute its ambiguity/opacity (though, on reflection, this might be 'for better or worse'). This process is something not unreasonably led by a speaker (whose very presence as a paid - or at least separated - participant implies his/her privilege). Ideally, the process of thinking through a lecture, of 'digesting' it, is a dialogue between all parts of a room, as a transpersonal acoustic happening.
Thanks very much for these remarks.
DeleteThe irony of Derrida having to elaborate on why he doesn't like to elaborate wasn't lost on me (you'll be pleased to know). Nor, I very much doubt, was it lost on Derrida himself, who seems to be speaking here with an amused tone and a playful twinkle in his eye.
Is there a queen of deconstruction? Yes, if you like, though we might argue who best deserves the title: Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva ... take your pick!
I think members of an audience should ask questions; what's at issue here is the nature of the questions being asked. Surely a dialogue places a duty on the interlocutor to do some work as well and not just expect the speaker to put complex arguments in a nutshell so that they conform to common sense.
Ultimately, the philosopher-as-speaker is there to proliferate questions, not answer them and do the audience's thinking for them.
Personally, I also hated the expectation that I should defend the ideas presented (the assumption being that I have some sort of ownership over and moral responsibility towards them).
And, please note, if I discouraged an audience from clapping like seals, I encouraged them to throw rose petals and pound notes if they really wanted to show their appreciation.
I thought I'd indicated in the post why a philosopher is not the same as a comic performer. And would you really wish to recite a poem and have some idiot in the audience shout out whilst so doing? Or be asked to explain your verse, as if poetry were merely a fancy method of passing the word along or communicating ideas that could just as easily be stated prosaically?
I doubt it.
I suppose what I'm suggesting is that philosophy - as an art - is closer to poetry than to to plain speaking.
It might also have been interesting to know how Derrida would have viewed Heidegger's concept of 'Erlaueterung' (elucidation) in this context - a practice of elaboration which formed the basis for the latter's substantive work on Hoelderlin. In Nick Land's vituperative essay, 'Spirit and Teeth', his opening remarks on Derrida's 'De L'Esprit' give further food for thought:
ReplyDelete'A certain intricately intertextual of spirit unfolds, at a languourous pace, inspired by uninterrogated principles of decency and justice. Everything is mediated by elucidations, re-elucidations, elucidations of previous elucidations, conducted with meticulous courtesy, but never inattentive to the complicity of elucidation with the history of metaphysics from Plato the last paragraph of "De L'Esprit"'.
Derrida clearly likes a bit (or a lot) of elucidation/elaboration after all – though as long as the piper's calling the tune, it seems!
Interesting: thanks.
DeleteIs elucidation a practice of elaboration?
Bringing into the light can of course be just as deadly as working to death through hard labour.
Nick hated Derrida, it's true. I remember him saying he was our Hegel. I'm not a great fan of D.'s writing either, but sympathetic to his project and he seems like a good egg to me.
We suppose what Heidegger meant by 'elucidation' requires further eludication/elaboration ;-).
DeleteThe idea of 'leaving people in the dark' as far as possible is certainly congenial to our own writing practice. The auteur David Lynch is a cinematographic
master of this.
One learns a lot about people like Nick L. through the enemies they cultivate (and keep close, as Nietzsche enjoined). We suspect more than a little philosophical envy was involved, brilliant though Land's attack on Jackie D was.
It seems odd to talk about 'kings' and 'queens' of deconstruction of all things, given the project of power destabilisation the latter enjoins.
ReplyDeleteWe can agree on the mutuality of the work implied by good questions, we think, insofar as such labour shouldn't fall solely on the shoulders of any one speaker/writer - but what counts is the complication of thinking, and, as such, it matters only secondarily to us who is seen to 'own' or 'be responsible' for this. In the best conversations, some might argue, one sometimes can't even tell where one's own thoughts stop and the other's begin. Ultimately, the best thinking, like the best art, depersonalises itself.
At the same time, to play devil's advocate to ourselves, we'd say a philosopher IS there to think better and harder than an audience - indeed, that's virtually a summary of his/her job description. Better, though, is the concept of making one's project more Cioranian, i.e. 'thinking against oneself, so one's listeners and readers don't have to keep pointing out an author's disavowed contradictions, evasions and unconscious resistances. Reader-response theory makes this clear: a text means nothing without the reader, and likewise a talk without an audience puts one in mind of the sound of a tree falling in a deserted wood.
Presumably, even if it can be agreed no one 'owns' ideas in the end (another complex discussion in itself), one has some kind of special interest or relationship to the ideas one espouses. Otherwise, why say anything at all?
People don't clap like seals, since they have hands, not flippers - which we thought was also part of the point of another recent TTA post on Heidegger and the hand. It seems rather self-evident, either way.
As for philosophy, poetry and comedy, we think curdling the distinctions here is all well and good. We're all idiots of some kind or another in the end. People should be allowed to behave as they like in the presence of art - whether it's 'vandalising' with inks and eggs (and hence supplementing) a Myra Hindley hand portrait at the Royal Academy, the poet John Clare tragicomically storming the stage of a Shakepepare play in 19C London, or the fascist kicking sustained by Mussolini's would-be assassin, the self-styled Irish nun Violet Gibson, in Rome in 1926. At such times, one throws oneself on the mercy (or hostility) of the rest of an audience in 'balancing' such reactions. But it still seems odd for a writer to profess on the one hand zero accountability for their ideas, while expectiing an audience to conform to pre-conceived standards of response in other respects.
That said, we can agree it's clearly inane for an artist to be asked to explain their art 'in other words' - and recall here the bafflement of the Cocteau Twins in interviews with the 1980s music press when asked to shed light on their music.
Finally, the idea that philosophy is (or aspires to be) 'poetic' (i.e creative/imaginal) in the end has interesting affinities with the later Wittgenstein. Is the allusion here to Deleuze and Guattari in 'What is Philosophy', and their view of philosophising as the development of 'creative concepts'?