Derridian dialectic

...what would it be? Could it still be called dialectic? L'economie generale, yes. But this is precisely what is not dialectic in a Hegelian sense (l'economie restreinte).
Or is it? After reading him, one is surprised how much Derrida writes on Hegel. On: that is, not necessarily about, nor simply against Hegel. One is suprised how much Derrida writes not against the dialectic simply, but on it, on top of it, like graffiti, writing over it, lifted above it (Aufgehoben, relevé). One is surprised precisely because Derrida does not seem like the generation that wrote most about or against Hegel in France: the generation of Sartre, Lacan, Bataille, Kojeve, Hyppolite, even Althusser--the "existential" generation (in the sense that they react to existentialism in some way, or, better, to Heidegger). In a way he lifts himself above the fray of those thinkers, bogged down in critiquing dialectical reason, in writing against or about it, and thinks the trace and différance. But that he thinks this trace to lift Hegel above being merely written against or about--this is what one does not expect.
Those interested in Derrida need to think hard about this: Derrida does not write about Hegel (or) to critique him. Deconstruction, if it was the name for those writings about the trace and différance, was precisely what allowed him to write on Hegel and not just simply about Hegel or in such a way as to only critique Hegel.
If this was the case, it means that Derrida was not undoing the dialectic, but precisely lifting it above being written against or written about.
One has to think of this "lifting" if one wants to think what this means for the possibility of a Derridian dialectic. As much as it might mean rescuing or saving, "lifting" can also mean to steal, to pilfer. It is a transgression that precisely does not move into the sphere of a beyond, where something can be written about, comprehended, or written against, definitely opposed. The play on raising up out of the fray of "existential" Hegelianism and also stealing this Hegelianism from the "existential" age is precisely what characterizes the Derridian dialectic. It is what is suppressed and elevated by those Derridians who simply think Hegel exists to be critiqued in the texts of Derrida.
In Derrida's time, this play was also what was being suppressed and elevated--precisely not lifted--by Lacanians. And today, their suppression and elevation is the most tempting way to do away with the lifted Hegelianism of Derrida. Zizek, Badiou: they don't lift Hegel, they comprehend him, they are relieved that they are done with Hegel, that he is over with, that he has been finally made to be commensurate with a postmodernism so he can be used ethically against the old Hegelianism, capitalism. Thanks to Derrida--these Lacanians say--we are able to relieved of Hegel without having the guilt of lifting (relevé) him: thanks to Derrida we can now use him against himself when we write about him. But what--they continue--is all this writing on Hegel in Derrida, this talk about lifting, about relève? We can be relieved of Hegel without lifting him! Stupid Derrida! You do not see how against Hegel you can be in writing about him.
What is dangerous and disgusting about this is that it is a refusal to think about how being relieved of Hegel is precisely lifting him--how relieving (relève) is precisely just another translation of lifting (relève).
What is the Derridian dialectic, then? Can we specify this stolen trace, this trace of a trace? Provisionally: the plunge back into the transgression that Hegelian dialectic effectuates in its negations, but tarrying with this transgression as such, with its negativity just at the point (and time) it negates, so as to make it negate only indeterminately, generally, and yet without reserve. All this means is that the Derridian dialectic is seeing the impossibility of writing against Hegel, and why it could and should always only amount to a lifting of Hegel, a subscription (writing under, which for Derrida is the same as writing on) to the labor of the dialectic. The Derridian dialectic, then, is always a writing on Hegel, a writing that shows how Hegel can never be overcome or elevated (like it is said to be in Zizek, or in Heidegger), never be suppressed.
But what would this dialectic look like? Again, another provisional specification: it would look like "NOUS" (the French word for "we," and, despite or perhaps because of this, also the Greek word for knowing) written on a wall in the Centre Pompidou, traced by Brassaï. A graffiti that writes on something in order to engage what it can't overcome, what it can't write about or against, a dialectic of what can never be suppressed. That is, an infinite lifting, a stealing of what steals, over and over again without reserve.
I'll write on this more in another post. Sketching the relationship to a Hegelianism that seeks to overcome Hegel, and showing that this is precisely not what Derrida does--that he does not want to be relieved of Hegel without lifting Hegel--is all that is crucial here.

"The central front on the war on terror"

Don't we all sense that characterizations of the Bush administration's disgusting rhetoric as "fascist" or "dictatorial"--see Frank Rich's column yesterday if you want one of the more thoroughly executed instances of this--don't really get at the heart of the matter, and end up just sounding paranoid, ineffectual. Why is this the case?
It is because this term as it is used refers to fascism when it is at its height, its fullest manifestation. But wasn't Germany, for example, just as fascist in the years before the National Socialists came to power? That is, in its willingness ("will" is precisely the fascist way to describe it, as we will see) to sacrifice values, the values of the Heimat, etc. it was just as fascist as when it actually took them away. (One should revisit a review by Benjamin of a volume of Jünger, where he says precisely this--I think its in the second volume of the selected writings... Benjamin also sensed this about Heidegger, I think) The impotent will, the longing for a will that characterized Germany after the First World War--that is what fascism is, and this longing is what really pervades the disgusting "war on terror." The contradictions of Bush are not expressions of the double-speak of a Hitler or a Stalin--they are contradictory because they are expressions of a power that is really only the impotent longing for adefinite enemy, for a front on which to face them. Isn't the unbelievablely naive optimism of this administration that they will meet this enemy precisely what cannot be accounted for by every critic of this administration? Who has not explained it away as mere doublespeak in some form? We must ask ourselves, doesn't this impotent optimism resemble someone like Jünger's after the war (or Heidegger's, always) in his longing for another field of battle, for another definite enemy, for another front? (For Heidegger, we should say, another Auseinandersetzung.) That is, isn't this optimism genuinely expressed--in the sense that it also necessarily expresses an impotence to have the future be present?
Along these lines, we might reread a passage from Derrida as applying to our "war" in this way:

...polemos unites adversaries, it brings together those who are opposed (Heidegger often insisted on [this]). The front, as the site upon which the First World War was waged, provides a historic figure for this polemos that brings enemies together as though they were conjoined in the extreme proximity of the face-to-face. This exceptional and troubling glorification of the front perhaps presages another type of mourning, namely, the loss of this front during and especially after the Second World War, the disappearance of this confrontation which allowed one to identify wthe enemy and even and especially to identify with the enemy.
-The Gift of Death, 17.

What is crucial about this passage is that it emphasizes how the mourning for the polemos is already this second mourning, is already a "presaging," and thus is already the mourning for its eventual possibility of being lost. The two move together, and characterize how fasicism shows up on the scene not in the restriction of freedom itself but in the genuine (/contradictory) insistence that there is (the loss of an) enemy. That is, where things get framed in terms of polemos or of will and impotence--even by the opposition (see Rich's column)--and where this language is not taken seriously, there fascist tendencies are really at work. We shouldn't read, then, the blatant idiocy of a phrase such as "the central front on the war on terror" as the machinations of a conniving fascist administration like the NSDAP at the height of its power (when it was fascist as Nazism), but as the very real reframing of the way we talk about our actions in the very real (early) fascist language of longing through power for a definite identification, a definite confrontation. That is, it is precisely in how it makes any characterization of them as "fascist" in the late fully fledged Nazi sense seem paranoid. Insofar as we long genuinely for a will to bring back the rights of the constitution--like Rich does--we've already succumbed to their more subtle fascism, because we too look only for a real confrontation, a real enemy.

Great Blogs

Here are two great new blogs:

The Princeton English Grad Student Forum, where all the stuff going on lately here will be able to be seen and discussed, and

A great blog aligning with the many concerns of this one, particularly with reference to "postmodernist" (whatever that means) stuff and literary criticism, and

Jethro Masís' blog on all things philosophical: which has a lot, lot of good links to things Heidegger-related.

Also, if anyone wants some really awesome fun stuff, check out Jeff Nunokawa's Facebook page which is just full of great things.

And, by the way, the poster of "Who Dat Ninga" is from NBC's "30 Rock," which I find unbelievably hilarious.