A post inspired by Casaubon’s Book: The Familiarity of an Idea
It’s always hard to find ways of connecting Derrida’s work to everyday life – I find that it does, every now and again, but often his work is alienating, esoteric and intimidating. Reading the above post from Causabon’s book was one of the times when it did connect.
Derrida’s work is the focus of quite a few of my thesis chapters. One section focuses on Derrida’s discussion of invention. One of the paradoxes of invention is that it involves making room for the absolutely new to enter into our understandings. One thing Derrida points out about this, is that in a sense this is impossible. We are only able to recognise those things which we have at least some familiarity, or things which can be compared with something we already know. If something is completely new we effectively have no way of comprehending it.
This opens up interesting and frightening questions for social change, particularly in our current situation where our ability to survive global warming and the depletion of world oil reserves appears to demand the development of ways of life which are pretty much unimaginable from our current situation.
However one of the interesting ways Derrida’s work can help us negotiate this impasse is in his focus not on what these ways of life might be exactly, but rather on the way the demand itself works. Often a demand is contained within certain context which allows us to know what must be done in order to meet the demand. For example, if I am told to return an overdue library book, I understand clearly what is being asked of me. I understand the context surrounding the demand – I know what a book is, what a library is, what overdue means, and I understand why this is being demanded of me.
However this is only one kind of demand that I can experience. Another is one which is devoid of context, one which is a demand for something so new and radical that I do not have the experience or the understanding to know clearly what I must do and why. Even so, I feel the injunction to act and I know I must act.
There are a variety of different ways we can respond to this, three that I can think of include; 1. I can try to ignore the injunction to act 2. I can act immediately, forcing the injunction into a framework I already understand or 3. I can try to respond to the demand by attempting to develop a new context or framework.
The first two responses fit into our traditional framework for deciding to act, ie the first is a refusal to respond and is thus seen as passive, while the second is an active response. The third response, however, is not quite either. Derrida argues that any attempt to force the injunction into a current framework makes us unable to welcome that which is truly new. In our attempt to welcome a radically new future, we are therefore seemingly passive. It must come to us. However, in welcoming the new, there is also room for activity in our attempts to develop spaces and gaps in our old frameworks and contexts so they are more easily reworked. Our response to the demand for change becomes an active waiting.
The demand to respond to the new is like something we can’t stop picking at, we try to ignore the demand or dismiss it, but we are constantly being brought back to worrying at it again. This process is important, as it allows us to sort through out worries and fears, while also reworking our understandings. This is why I think the demand to always be active leaves out important aspects of the process of working for change.
The process of radical change is insightfully discussed in the above post from Causabon’s book. What I love about this post is the way Sharon Astyk makes a clear case for the importance of the active process of challenging our preconceived ideas, but also points out that this process will not automatically change a person’s behaviour. Part of the process is also passive, in that we also wait for the “click” moment when the new starts to make sense, or indeed, suddenly makes complete sense. But what I love even more is the way Astyk presents clear suggestions of how to go about this type of work, without being proscriptive or dogmatic.
