“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Monday, August 16, 2010

Survival 3

There is a deeper problem with taking the trace in Derrida as a literal account of survival. Let's follow Hagglund and take it literally, and trace the trace as it were. Is there an origin point? If so, at least this origin is unaffected by the problematic of survival. Hagglund produces a prime mover--hardly radical OR atheist.

Then let's assume no origin point, traces all the way down and back forever. Then the trace is infinite, coextensive with say a Spinozan God. Radical, but not atheist.

So let's say neither is the case. Not a very strong position.

This kind of "atheism" is simply nihilism's refusal to admit that it's a form of BELIEF.

2 comments:

Clark Goble said...

I've not read Hagglund so I can't speak to how he takes Derrida. But I think the unlimited semiois does entail that infinite regress. At least in On Grammatology. There is no origin. Rather there is an ongoing never started sign-system with forces pushing signs in a particular direction. So a way to say this is that there isn't a origin but rather an infinite number of non-origins.

Exactly how this entails the Spinozist God though isn't clear to me.

martelmd said...

I think I argee, Tim. To posit the trace as some sort of arche or orgin seems to defeat the purpose of realism and its striving for an absolutely immanent ontology. As Deleuze would warn: it would reintroduce transcendence and ruin the whole thing! Perhaps something inherent in the "trace" lends itself to such a collapse?