I haven’t wanted to tread into the recent Speculative Realist debates over Derrida, in part because I haven’t had time for them (and my internet access has been a little unreliable), but in part also because I think they’re mostly reiterating themes that have already been well covered. OOO makes a valid and important point about Continental philosophy’s overall neglect of the nonhuman world, but it pushes too hard with its Meillassouxian critique of correlationism, which I don’t think ultimately holds up. (That’s a much larger topic than I want to get into here, but it should be enough to say that I think I agree with Chris Vitale’s Whiteheadian “absolutization of the correlation, with a multiplicitous twist.“)
And of course, as Graham and Levi argue, Derrida wrote mostly about texts. But he also wrote about death, mourning, friendship, cats, politics, and many other things, either directly or by way of texts about those things. Derrida’s defenders are right to defend him from the “correlationist” charge insofar as he did, at least in his later work, address the nonhuman world (animals) in innovative and useful ways, and insofar as his ideas lend themselves well to “non-correlationist” uses. But that doesn’t get most Derrideans (except those like Calarco) off the hook for what they haven’t done – which is OOO’s point.
All that aside, the recent exchange between Chris, Levi, and Graham has piqued my interest. In fact, Levi’s and Graham’s point about there being a “real Paris” is one I can almost get myself comfortably on board with — and I think that Chris could, too, if the terms of the exchange were made a little clearer. Here’s what I mean, and why the hesitant “almost”…
