000ooo000ooo 4/14

I definitely feel that I have a better grasp of Derrida after discussing his ideas in class today. However, I still have to question some of his thoughts and their practicality in the real world. It is mostly his idea of "playing" with a text that confuses me. In many cases this idea makes sense, there are a lot of BS texts out there that it would be fun to mess around with. Especially the rhetoric of politicians and other talking heads on TV that occupy the "moral guidance" role that Bordieu discusses. Jon Stewart plays with the words of these people every night and it is very funny and, surprisingly, very enlightening. You can actually learn a lot by watching his show, it just shouldn't be trusted as a primary news source because it's not news, its commentary and comedy. However, if we approach texts with the belief that they should be messed around with, at what point do we begin to take things seriously and make progress?
There are a lot of problems in the world that need to be addressed. In order to address these problems, people are going to have to throw out reasoning and rhetoric and fight for the rights of others. There will always be some opposition and if we all follow Derrida's advice, every text will just be messed around with. I think this could lead to a severe shortage of action. We need to identify problems and act on them. Yes, some discussion of texts is necessary and some texts are not deserving of anything more than playing around with, but where is the distinction drawn? and who has the right to draw it?
Perhaps what Derrida is getting at is a total upheaval of our current consciousness and ideology. He suggests this in his revised ideal of the critic as someone who doesn't "critique" the text, but plays with it. Our minds work in a way where we see everything as right and wrong instead of exploring the options and meanings of a situation. By marking everything as right or wrong we create divisions within ourselves that make communication and action difficult. Derrida is another theorist whose ideas I would like to see put in action to make a real difference in the world, instead of just throwing out ambiguous suggestions that are difficult to connect to the real world.