An email received this morning draws my attention to 'some recent Zizek essays':
Henning Mankell, the Artist of the Parallax View http://www.lacan.com/zizekmankell.htm ;
Will You Laugh for Me, Please http://www.lacan.com/zizeklaugh.htm; Will She Ever Die (Leni Riefenstahl) http://www.lacan.com/zizekleni.htm; A Cup of Decaf Reality http://www.lacan.com/zizekdecaf.htm
In today's THES there is a series of articles on 'Jacques Derrida's legacy'. Simon Blackburn's piece is rather smug, schoolmasterly and patronising. There is, apparently a sense in which "Derrida and his disciples are like mentors encouraging people not to read." I don't know about the unnamed 'mentors' but as far as Derrida goes, this is pretty much the exact reverse of the truth. Blackburn's article is peppered with nice everyday examples and images - speed bumps and drawers of socks - presumably there to signify 'plain common sense' and upset the unecessarily abstruse applecart of 'Theory'. Theory itself - critcal reflection on uderlying assumptions - is a way of 'avoiding the hard work' and claiming a superior vantage point. (Doesn't anyone who claims access to knowledge claim a 'superior vantage point' or am i being dense?) Derrida is subsumed under the 'pomo' rubric even as we're reminded that he's saying little new, he's both incomprehensible and simply dressing up old verities. I'm unfamiliar with Blackburn's work, but if a writer were to be judged by the strength and plausibility of his invented targets, then this invented target is very weak indeed...
Richard Rorty on the same subject is, typically, eminently and effortlessly lucid; not that I agree with him, but at least he entertains. Simon Critchley also has a piece which, as you might expect, is the most generous of the lot.