Customer Reviews

Derrida Vis--vis Lacan: Interweaving Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The latest statement published in the Fordham University series "Perspectives in Continental Philosophy" advances a promising scholar whose work has already been favorably esteemed within academic circles. Andrea Hurst here expands on a project she had begun while at the University of Villanova a few years ago, titled "Derrida or Lacan: The Revolutionary's Choice On the 'Plural Logic of The Aporia' in Deconstruction and Lacanian Psychoanalysis." As acknowledged in her introduction this volume observes a multiplicity of ideas on Lacan that have been developed, albeit here rendered with a collusive accent, by the author's good friend and intellectual counterpart Bert Olivier. Both are engaged in South Africa's social unrest and economic troubles in such a way that Derrida's call to a socially engaged philosophy seems invested to a satisfying degree by the aforementioned philosophers. Andrea Hurst deserves respect and gratitude for her lead and courage, may more follow.
When reviewing the book "Derrida vis-a-vis Lacan" we must begin by applauding the tenacious and perspicacious labours of its author. The quality of its arguments is first rate, the erudition brisk, and the expositions are always conducted with intellectual integrity. What we do lament however is the preposessive implications that derive from her tendentious insistence on a terminology that, pandemic, informs the work as a whole. Moreover it is unfortunate that Dr. Hurst's equivocal, if Lacanian (in its abstruse formulation) hyperliberal deconstructive ascendancy is frustrated by allusions to the likes of Rorty's misinterpretation of Derrida, and Nietzsche's ideological blindness: whereas the first inscription fails to elucidate the seminal concept of quasi-transcendental thinking; the latter is read as a complimentary component to assumptions that expand the boundaries rather than frame the territory. Nietzsche is deconstructed and rendered human-all-too-human for his blind ideological conditioning, whereas a reading more in tune with Hurst's Freudian survey would have been more in keeping with the concentration of the essay. Remarkably this accretion is one of a few unnecessary pregnant diversions that illuminate the focus of the book in too feeble a way to justify its voluble digressions, as intresting and compelling as they may be.
The core of the book's argument is refracted in its claim that the Lacanian "Real" and Derridean "différance" are of a similar stamp, notwithstanding the diverse complex logic that produces such gestative matrices. The conceptual premise is often circumvented and relegated to a peripheral presence within the economy of the arguments, as if one too many prospects were being developed simultaneously for the sake of an aporetic indulgence that qualifies in a brilliant fashion the "plural logic of the aporia" discussed in the work. While the merits of this process are undeniable, for a less keen audience the fact that the arguments are developed in a style that personifies the content is not a desirable reality altogether. The problem that the reader will encounter while suffering the anxious distention evoked across the journey of this read is a loss of orientation. In this respect it mirrors the logic of the Mobius Strip ominously exhibited on the cover of the book. The deconstructive elegance is tout court effectively employed, all the more provoking in its paralogical and paradoxical construal. Pragmatic and institutional assemblages are admirably, if occasionally set forward, but the eccentric economy of the work lacks the creative ingenuity of many of the philosophical minds the author discusses. To her credit Andrea Hurst is endowed with a sublime aptitude for the subtleties of arguments, and a worldly pragmatism that amplifies the synthetic fluidity she evinces in her writing. Hence the inopportune straned recalcitrance she adopts is lamentable. Such moments induce stupor where they ought to enlighten, while Hurst's prose swells to enigmatic graphemes that stifle the portentious logic of the message, thus she sublates her own insightful essence. Her command of Derrida's oeuvre is thorough and formidable, while her "feel" for Nietzsche is astute and entertaining. One wonders why Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous and Julia Kristeva are absent because they would have been a fertile correspondence to the claims sown by Hurst' labours. Maybe this work was published a year or two too early. At times the author seems to be able to color the pages with astounding strokes of genius and originality, whenas, as if by penance, she inexplicably resorts to an excess of verbal disquietude and turns of phrases congested beyond the stress of a subconscious glare.
This is a work of exceptional promise. One that is distinguished by its precocity both for its intuition and because of its having been published antecedently to the author's full commitment to providing the field with a masterpiece, which I dare say is yet in the making. Poe's literary device of hypnotic suspension, the aticulo mortis, is abrasively deployed here, for we would rather read about the incomprehensible and the impossible instead of experiencing it as sharply as the dissecting knife wielded by Andrea Hurst herself.
We expect excellence from a talented philosopher such as Dr. Hurst. Why she denies us her full brilliance is, shall we say, unforgivable. John Caputo, we hold you responsible to some extent as well. Given Time we'll reach the abyss in a way we had never dared to dream. But if the demands of publishing houses keep our void in check, we'll be left with our prayers and tears conspicuously unheeded. And our mourning but a way to kill time...