Derrida was an intellectual aesthete. It is a common malady, particularly in France. He was fashionable because different. Fashion plays a large role in post-rational societies, because what else is there, but naked conformity–waves of this and that that sweep in and over everyone? You cannot be alone too long: that is why the tides of style come and go, to keep you preoccupied, to help you remember to forget what must be forgotten. But in the end what good did Derrida do? No doubt he was very clever, but what life burden did he lighten? What struggling soul did he free?
You, Terry Eagleton, are obviously a supporter for a simple reason: the habit Derrida helped build of rejecting logical analysis has made your own “Marxist” project easier.
Plainly things do not fit in boxes. But if we grant that this is simply an HEURISTIC, and recognize the bounds, then logic remains not only a valuable tool, but the one that has generated the most human well being of any creed in human history. We are only plummeting back into chaos as a result of its rejection. And PLEASE, don’t try and argue that our choices are either/or’s or gobbledy gook. That, itself, is symptom of the cognitive maladies that go with Marxist habits of creating false oppositions.
Things can be placed on continuums. It is not necessary to indulge in post-rational idiocies to see this. You want an actually useful thinker? Try Edward de Bono.