The ends of pedagogy: From the dialectic of memory to the deconstruction of the institution

Educational Theory

Volumn 46, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 303-333

  Trifonas, Peter ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0037895115     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1996.00303.x     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 235.
2. For a most comprehensive discussion and documentation of this phenomenon of anti-Hegelianism, see Vincent Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, trans. L. Fox-Scott and J. Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
3. See Michael Ryan, Marxism and Deconstruction: A Critical Articulation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).
4. Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frank Lawrence(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1985) and Gerald Graff, Literature Against Itself (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
5. Barbara Johnson, The Wake of Deconstruction (Oxford U.K.: Blackwell, 1994) and Jeffrey T. Nealon, Double Reading: Postmodernism after Deconstruction (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993).
6. See Roy Bhaskar, Plato Etc.: The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution (London: Verso, 1994).
7. In Gregory L. Ulmer, Applied Grammatology: Post(e)-Pedagogy from Jacques Derrida to Joseph Beuys (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ), the metaphysical standards of a Hegelian pedagogy are outlined according to the demands of the dialectic and its protection of memorization for what is an "enlightened" learning, Ulmer, of course, uses deconstruction to move beyond a mnemotechnical competence to learning or teaching. 1985
8. See Jacques Derrida, "Afterword: Toward an Ethic of Discussion" in Limited Inc., ed. Gerald Graff (Evanston, III.: Northwestern University Press, 1988). In this retort to his critics Derrida does much to dispel the myth that deconstruction is apolitical and that its textualization of human experience does not take ethics into account. See also William B. Stanley in Curriculum for Utopia: Social Reconstructionism and Critical Pedagogy in the Postmodern Era (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).
9. This is the basis of the critique of Derrida and deconstruction in Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity.
10. The (non)relation of deconstruction with apophatic thought (for example, negative theology) is discussed in Jacques Derrida, "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy," trans. John P. Leavy Jr., Oxford Literary Review 6, no. 2 (1984): 3-37.
11. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York: Routledge, 1993) and Rodolphe Gasche, Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994).
12. Even though many have hailed the most "politicized" statement of deconstruction to be Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), the continuation of an elaboration on general themes taken up in this text around the problems of ethics, democracy, ideology, and history have been addressed before in earlier texts.
13. Jacques Derrida, "Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority," trans. Mary Quaintance, Cordozo Law Review 11, nos. 5-6 (1990): 919-1045. Jacques Derrida, Du Droit à la Philosophie (Paris: Galilée, 1990), a collection of previously published texts (from 1975 to 1990) on the ethico-juridical and socio-political sphere of the institution of philosophy education in France; and Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'Amitié(Paris: Galilee, 1994).
14. Jacques Derrida, "On Colleges and Philosophy," in Postmodernism: ICA Documents, ed. Lisa Appignanesi (London: Free Association Books, 1989), 22.
15. Jacques Derrida, "Mochlos; or The Conflict of the Faculties," trans. Richard Rand and Amy Wygant, in Logomachia: The Conflict of the Faculties, ed. Richard Rand (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 22-23.
16. See Jacques Derrida, "Some Statements and Truisms about Neo-Logisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other Small Seismisms," trans. Anne Tomiche, in States of Theory: History, Art, and Critical Discourse, ed. David Carrol (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 63-95.
17. Derrida, "Deconstruction and the Other," 118.
18. This anti-phenomenological theme (the dissimulation of autoaffection) goes back to an early text, Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press). See also Rodolphe Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
19. For an example of incorporating deconstruction in post-Marxist social theory, see Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1986); for a feminist nod to deconstruction as related to research and education, see Patti Lather, Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy with/in the Postmodern (New York: Routledge, 1991); for smatterings of a postcolonial rendering of deconstruction see Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture(New York: Routledge, 1994).
20. See Denise Egea-Kuehne, "Deconstruction Revisited and Derrida's Call for Academic Responsibility/" Educational Theory 45, no. 3 (1995): 293-309.
21. Jacques Derrida, "Où Commence et Comment Finit un Corps Enseignant" in Du Droit à la Philosophic (Paris: Galilée, 1990), 119. (All translations from this text are my own). This work will be referred to as OCC with page numbers in the text for all subsequent references.
22. Some representative examples include: Cleo Cherryholmes, Power and Criticism: Poststructural Investigations in Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988
23. William F. Pinar and William M. Reynolds, eds., Understanding Curriculum as Phenomenological and Deconstructed Text (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992)
24. Donald Morton and Mas'ud Zavarzadek, eds. Theory/Pedagogy/Politics: Texts for Change (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991).
25. See Paul Jay, "Bridging the Gap: The Position of Politics in Deconstruction,"Cultural Critique, No. 22 (Fall 1992): 47-73, Gregory S. Jay, America the Scrivener: Deconstruction and the Subject of Literary History (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1990), and John D. Caputo, Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant Reference to Deconstruction Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
26. Robert C. Holub, Border Crossings: Reception Theory, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 112.
27. See Richard Rorty,"Is Derrida a Transcendetal Philosopher?," in Derrida: A Critical Reader, ed, David Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1922), 235-46
28. Many of these "institutional" or "pedagogical" texts are collected in Jacques Derrida, Du Droit a la Philosophie (Paris: Galilee, 1990). A voluminous book (663 pages in all) that is edited for a decidedly French audience. Some of the "chapters" in the compendium have been translated into English as separate texts (for example, "Mochlos: Conflict of the Faculties," The Age of Hegel,""The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of its Pupils,"), but have been acknowledged by only a handful of critics referring primarily to poststructural/postmodern transformations of literary studies and even less by the more "radical" schools of educational theory that need to address the "real effects" of power/knowledge distributions in pedagogy directly. To illustrate, a recent book states (rather baldly, I might add): "In writing about Derrida and education we are faced with the problem that he appears to have nothing directly to say about education [my emphasis]." And if this were not enough of a gross error, the authors continue, "Thus to read Derrida from the standpoint of an educator, with an educational perspective and with a view to gaining educational 'pay-offs' from one's reading, must inevitably force us beyond our immediate standpoint into foregrounding, sooner or later, the general question of how a writer is to be read, of how a writer 'speaks' to us." Both quotations were taken from Robin Usher and Richard Edwards, Postmodernism and Education (New York: Routledge, 1994), 119.
29. Jacques Derrida, "The Age of Hegel/" trans. Susan Winnet in Demarcating the Disciplines: Philosophy, Literature, Art, ed. Samuel Weber (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ). This book will be referred to as AH with page numbers in the text for all subsequent references. 1986
30. Hegel's letter to Altenstein, 16 April 1822.
31. See Shlomo Avineri, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).
32. G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H.B. Nisbet, ed. Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
33. Hegel, "Letter to Duboc," 30 July 1822.
34. See also the account of this complex situation in Avineri, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State.
35. Derrida cites extracts from Hegel's correspondence on the subjects of Bavarian lottery tickets and the matter of contributions to the General Fund for Widows, a form of institutional life insurance ior professors.
36. See Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978) and Jacques Derrida, On the Name, trans. D. Wood, J.P.Leavey Jr., and IanMcLeod, ed. ThomasDutoit (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).
37. Altenstein' Letter of 6 June 1822.
38. From the letter of G.W.F. Hegel "To the Royal Ministry of Spiritual, Academic, and Medical Affairs," 16 April 1822.
39. See David Farrell Krell, Of Memory, Reminiscence, and Writing: On the Verge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), especially Chapter Five and Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
40. In Jacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation, trans. Peggy Kamuf and Avital Ronell, ed. Christie McDonald (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), the question of autobiography and otobiography is interrelated to the problem of the proper name and the signature.
41. Michel de Certeau, in The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), sets down a theory of the writing of history that incorporates many Derridean features (such as, writing and death, difference and trace).
42. See David Ingram, Reason, History, and Politics: The Communitarian Grounds of Legitimation in the Modern Age (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995).
43. See White, The Content of the Form.
44. Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, 137.
45. Ryan, Marxism and Deconstruction, 118.
46. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 321. See also G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).
47. Cited in Jacques Derrida, "The Pit and the Pyramid: Introduction to Hegel's Semiology," trans. Alan Bass, in Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 73.
48. See Martin Heidegger, Questions Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper and Row, 1977).
49. Andrew Vincent, Theories of the State (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 125.
50. Jacques Derrida, Glas, trans. John P. Leavey Jr. and Richard Rand (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 1.
51. Derrida, The Ear of the Other, 56.
52. Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 105.
53. See Derrida, The Ear of the Other.
54. Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). This is an unusual twisting of the Derridean neologism "phallogocentric" because of the an anti-phenomenological inferences pointed to by the visual focus of the word "ocular."
55. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 19.
56. See Manfred Frank, "Is Self-Consciousness a Case of Presénce a Soi! Towards a Meta-Critique of the Recent French Critique of Metaphysics/" in ed. David Wood Derrida: A Critical deader (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992), 218-34.56.
57. In Jacques Derrida, Memoires for Paul de Man, trans. Cecilia Lindsay, Jonathan Culler, and Eduardo Cadava (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), the experience of memory, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity is probed as the defacement of autos or prosopopeia.
58. Derrida, Dissemination, 27
59. See Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Text (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1979) and Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).
60. See Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (New York: Cornell University Press, 1981) and Samuel Weber, Institutions and Interpretation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
61. See Jean Baudrillard, Simulacres et Simulation (Paris: Galilee, 1981).
62. Derrida, Dissemination, 105.
63. See Derrida, "The Pit and the Pyramid,"
64. GREPH, Qui a Peur de la Philosophie! (Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1977).
65. GREPH originally banded together in 1974. See Derrida, Du Droit à la Philosophie.
66. See GREPH, Qui a Peur de la Philosophie!
67. Personal conversation with Jacques Derrida, Paris, July, 1994. See also Jacques Derrida, "The Time of a Thesis" trans. Kathleen McLaughlin, in Philosophy in France Today, ed. Alan Montefiore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 34-50.
68. See also Derrida, Dissemination.
69. Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 329.
70. See Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences"in Writing and Difference.
71. Thomas E. Wartenberg, edv Rethinking Power (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).
72. Derrida, "Mochlos; or, The Conflict of the Faculties," 11.
73. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, 158. (the form of the quotation has been modified)
74. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
75. See Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, trans. Richard Nice (London: Sage Publications, 1977).
76. See Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
77. This is the motivating premise of Derrida's Of Grammatology.
78. Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture.
79. See Derrida, "Où Commence et Comment Finit un Corps Enseignant" for further elaboration on the role of the teaching body in the forms of reproduction that saturate and amplify the contradictions of the scene of teaching, its field. For more on the metaphysics of presence or logocentrism, see Derrida, Of Grammatology.
80. Jacques Derrida, "Living On: Border Lines," trans. James Hulbert, in Deconstruction and Criticism, eds. Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller (New York: Continuum, 1979), 93-94.
81. See Ulmer, Applied Grammatology.
82. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Bernard Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Mlinnesota Press, 1991).
83. See Derrida, "On Colleges and Philosophy."
84. Derrida, The Truth in Painting, 19-20.
85. Derrida, Writing and Difference, 308.