Columbus Day Weekend - a time of transatlantic arrivals, ethno-historical (counter)protests and Brown student exoduses to Manhattan or Boston - was bookended this year by two notable departures. On Friday, poststructuralist (I never promised not to use that term) intellectual Jacques Derrida died of pancreatic cancer. And early Monday morning, Christopher Reeve P'01, actor and activist, succumbed to heart failure.
Derrida was a radical, a man whose projects of reversal and "de-sedimentation" (his word, not mine) threatened - well, actually delighted in - the total dismantling of the assumptions underlying Western philosophy. Reading his seminal "Of Grammatology" (which I happened to do on a Bonanza ride back from my own Columbus exodus), one becomes implicated in a remarkable act of defiling with a remarkable number of targets: Rousseau and Levi-Strauss, Hegel and Heidegger.
In honor of these guilty readings - a guilt shared by a generation of academics, students and rock stars - Jacques Chirac, that custodian of Old Europe, offered this glowing appraisal, "In (Derrida), France gave the world one of the greatest contemporary philosophers, one of the major figures in the intellectual life of our time. Through his work, he sought to find the free movement which lies at the root of all thinking."
Reeve attempted nothing of the sort. An all-American actor whose portrayal of all-American hero Superman proved to be merely an opening act for his later paraplegic's defense of all-American (and probably anti-Derridean) empirical scientific knowledge, Reeve's entire persona rested on a singular lack of controversy. George W. Bush, likely miffed by the actor's support of stem-cell research, has expressed "sadness" at Reeve's death, but acknowledged little of substance about his later advocacy.
Thus lies the foundation for a pretty tidy column. A historical coincidence provides an opening for an unlimited expanse of easy oppositions: The public intellectual versus the pop icon; the philosopher's work of the mind versus Superman's work of the body. And, of course, those contemporary political allusions made above would not be for naught: France/America, Chirac/Bush, Continental Cultivation/Incurious Provincialism would be wonderful binary oppositions through which to make a safely contained argument. An argument that would probably lead to an endorsement for John Kerry - that beautiful amalgamation of Reeve's muscle and Derrida's intellect (not to mention his unruly gray coif).
But what would such a column accomplish? More importantly, what would it conceal? For one thing, what is it to say The French Intellectual or The Deconstructionist (that is not the word); what is it to say The Man Who Played (Was) Superman or The Noble Actor/Activist? What, for that matter, is it to say France and America, to allow ourselves to believe in the fundamental integrity of borders, not merely the borders of France and America the countries, but "France" and "America", those words that transcend the landmasses they purport to only represent. Indeed, is Reeve - famous for playing an alien, after all - truly American? Is Derrida, a Jew born in Algeria, truly French? Is anyone?
What would a tidy column conceal? Perhaps the fact that Derrida's philosophy was more popular in the United States than in France; perhaps that, indeed, philosophy, that detached work of the enlightened subject's inner life, is as reliant on the whims of popularity as say, Reeve's "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace". Derrida was derided for much of his life, implicitly and explicitly, for his "trendiness", yet can it then be concluded that philosophy proper should be free of trends, free of popularity? Is real philosophy entirely isolated from book sales figures - that is, box office returns? If so, who reads philosophy; to whom does philosophy philosophize?
Christopher Reeve, of course, was not a philosopher; he was Superman. But does Superman - the embodiment of the perfectibility of man introduced from outside mankind, as an American - not include philosophy at all? Is Christopher Reeve, the paralyzed man who placed all his hopes on the fundamental perfectibility of human knowledge and science, not a philosophical subject? No, "Christopher Reeve" - the trace of him that transcends death - will constantly defer the approach to philosophy, because philosophy as we conceive it has an origin, and between our memory of Reeve and the truth of an actual man is Superman.
What would Derrida say about such things? He'd be obscure, certainly; obscurity is the one thing that all the obituaries since last Friday have agreed on. Another easy binary: Reeve's (America's, Bush's) simplicity; Derrida's (France's, Chirac's) complexity. But that ignores the object of Derrida's complexity, the direction of his obscurity.
A cute metaphor presents itself: Derrida's obscurity was the Kryptonite in the face of the established West. Yet Derrida couldn't destroy philosophy altogether, because he was a part of it and wanted to study it, wanted to achieve the broadest vision through the paradoxical examination of the most marginal detail, the most unstable nuance. Derrida's obscurity allowed him to take flight. His density of words - his fascination with words and writing - allowed him to observe his objects from above by drilling himself into their very core.
Last weekend, Christopher Reeve, serious philosopher, and Jacques Derrida, pop Superman, died. Now, this column ends.
Jonathan Liu '07 is a Nader 2000 supporter voting for John Kerry.
