Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. He was also the most incomprehensible, and I’m sure those two facts are related somehow. As the father of deconstructionism, his style of writing has become quite common in academia -humanities and social sciences mostly-. So, if you have ever been attacked by an academician wielding an arsenal of “problematic logocentric normativities and politico-sexual assumption in an ideological impregnating semantic space,” you can thank Derrida.
The rules of the game are simple: Pick up a random book by Derrida. Open it randomly and try to understand and translate into a normal human language what you just read. It’s an impossible game, of course. You can’t win, but like some old Zen Master, perhaps by not-knowing and not-winning you will attain enlightenment. Or not.
Random Book: Who’s Afraid of Philosophy
To retain but one sign of this ambiguity today, let us not forget that this critique, while supporting the progress of modern academies, belong to the pedagogical relation of a preceptor to a prince. And, a more lasting characteristic, it reproduces the idea of self-pedagogy for a virgin body, an ideal that supports a powerful pedagogical tradition and finds its idea form precisely in the teaching of philosophy: the figure of a young man who, at a very specific age, fully grown and yet still a virgin, teaches himself, naturally, philosophy. The body of the master (instructor, intercessor, preceptor, male midwife, repeater) is there only long enough to efface itself. Always withdrawing, the body of a mediator simulating his disappearance in the prince’s self-relation, or for the benefit of another essential corpus, which will be at issue later
pages 85-86
Well, I always suspected there was something virginal about some philosophy students. Now I have proof from the master.
Emperor's Notepad 
Este texto es de Andrés Ortiz Osés a quien dedique dos entretenidos años de mi vida y culpable de mi (escaso) conocimiento de Derrida: “Ahora bien, mientras que en Heidegger se observa una concepción del ser/sentido lastrado por rastros cuasi sacros, Derrida y socios nihilistas pretenden borrar todo lastre ontoteológico secularizando la huella del ser/sentido en su pura inmanencia lingüística. Aquí el sentido es un espejo sin otro lado, columna trasparente de cristal o mercurio (Hermes-Mercurio). El sentido como el número no quiere decir nada (trascendente): la otra imagen de un tal sentido-juego es la mujer con himen, la mujer clausurada y especular. Derrida parece estar fijado a la madre estéril, pues tratando de liberarse del sentido acaba librándose de él estructuralmente (abstractamente).” Un juego de sugerencias. Juro que tiene sentido aunque no, tal vez, significado. Lo pongo porque también remite la obra de Derrida a la virginidad (o virginalidad que diría un posmoderno de pro) y porque no poner un comentario a un post sobre Derrida es delito grave.
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Juas. Heidegger comentando a Hegel, Derrida comentando lo que comentó Heidegger, y Ortiz Osés comentando lo que comentaron ambos. Ahora solo falta un comentario a ese último y ya está perfecto.
A mí me gusta leer estas cosas, si me lo tomo como un juego. No porque lo entienda (si hay algo que entender) como porque no. Es como intentar traducir un idioma extraterrestre y -de repente-, quizás, entender alguna idea.
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