Science, art and politics Reading about science…
Science, art and politics
Reading about science has led me to conclude that it is a form of literature that dare not speak its name. Certainly, the search for essence has moved from theology to science. However, the opposition between religion and science is false. One has merely replaced the other.
Take this new article on the evolutionary psychologist Ellen Dissanayake. Her speciality is the study of art in premodern culture. She celebrates its innocence and calls for its renewal in the modern world. Consequently, she is contemptuous of modern thinking about art. For example: �She diagnoses the Derridean notion that there is nothing outside the text as a delusion typical of�and flattering to�someone overinvested in the skill of writing.�
If this is her understanding of Derrida (and one hopes it�s a journalist�s misunderstanding) then one has to conclude she is as ignorant of literary philosophy as I am of hominid brain development. Listen to what Derrida says about such views: �Every week I receive critical commentaries and studies on deconstruction which operate on the assumption that what they call �post-structuralism� amounts to saying that there is nothing beyond language � and other stupidities of that sort.� Instead, he says that �deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness, but an openness toward the other.� That is, the other always escapes the prison house of language. The kind of literature that Derrida values is one that is open to what escapes language even if it becomes language in the end. Derrida is one of many who have revealed to us that the paradoxes of art cannot be dismissed in order to return to innocence. At least, not without risk of a dangerous atavism (e.g. the Nazi occultism inherent in New Age “philosophy”).
Science, in using language without this openness, conceals a self-absorbed ideology that is oblivious of itself, just as empiricism is merely a knowledge that repudiates itself. Derrida believes this is �symptomatic of certain political and institutional interests�. And we can see this in action right now as recent history is whitewashed in order to remove any similarity between the US and the monster it created in the Middle East.
Evolutionary psychology is a well-funded subject partly because of its military applications (development of AI for escaping and finding prey for example). So much for the search for essence. Maybe self-deceit, like religion, is �in the genes�.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Fantasy magnet
- The other of language
- Modern Philosophy Classics In Germany, you can…
- Arise and go
- Skeptic Further to my crusade against the decei…
