David Carrier: Review: The Truth in Painting by Jacques Derrida

Carrier, David. “Review: The Truth of Painting by Jacques Derrida.” Journal of Philosophy, 85. No 4 (April 1988), pp 219-223.

Key words: transitions, quotations, marginal elements, context, style, argument, boring

Other words: "unfair quotations"

“This book is very difficult to read, and—what is worse—extraordinarily boring,” writes David Carrier in his review of Derrida’s The Truth of Painting (222).

Boring?

Boring—albeit it boring with a purpose.

Which is?

To keep readers waiting, waiting expectantly for Derrida’s next (random) transition. While Carrier claims Derrida’s style and argument together highlight subject-to-subject transitions as a key locus of meaning in his texts, the reviewer’s most interesting suggestion is that, “Everything Derrida can talk about is linked with everything else, not because—as idealists think, 'the world is one'—but because there is no text which cannot be linked with another” (222). Everything, it seems, is simultaneously relative and residual, in relation with everything else, insinuated with contexts and associations past, present and future. More exactly, argues Carrier, Derrida uses transitions to (a) break apart the text’s normative meanings, and to (b) explore marginal elements that are often overlooked: Kant’s (dis)interest in wild flowers (in Kant’s third critique); Van Gogh’s shoes in Heidegger’s discussion on equipment (“The Origin of the Work of Art”).

How then does this coupling of style and argument shape the aesthetics of Derridian thought? On the one hand, asserts Carrier, we can domesticate Derrida as a philosopher with a curious style; on the other, we can embrace him as primarily a stylist. No serious engagement with Derrida’s work can ignore either option completely. A useful point of entry into his philosophical project might well involve considering the ways in which these aspects affirm one another—or don’t.

Reading Carrier’s reflections on Derrida’s readings of other philosophers, one is struck by how reviewer’s emphasis on Derrida's style foregrounds Carrier's own mode of communicating. Indeed, reading about Derrida’s transitions sensitises us to Carrier’s shifts and switches, how he rocks from one subject to the next. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the review’s final few paragraphs, where Carrier entertains the possibility of imitating Derrida by writing an even longer text than The Truth In Painting on the interplay between this books’s cover photo and content (inside/outside). This idea is inspired by Derrida’s curious pose, a posture emblematic of his (de)constructionist project. “Is he rising or kneeling down?” wonders Carrier, a question equally relevant to his evaluation of Derrida’s book (223).

So much for critiquing Carrier’s review. Were I a reader of Derrida, I might be able to streak this reviewer’s gloss. As merely a reader of Derrida’s readers, however, I can only identify the central topic of this review; namely, that Derrida’s deconstruction is generative, especially when we remain attentive to how writers inhabit the writings of others, how they decontextualize and recontextualize one another’s ideas. This (re)purposing provides a useful heuristic for locating trains, schools and other aggregates of thought in our current era of post-modern hyper-connected “glocalization”.

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comments:

Okay, but it remains unclear how transitions figure in Derrida's work. What is it about his style/argument that makes his transitions distinct? Perhaps direct engagement with his writing will help clarify this significance. (Allison Jones 09/13/08)