A telling (if apocryphal) Kansas appearance: An audience member stood up and recounted the scene from The Wizard of Oz in which Dorothy and her friends finally meet the wizard, who is powerful and overwhelming until Toto pulls away the curtain to reveal a very small man. "Professor Derrida, are you like that?" the audience member asked. Derrida paused before replying, "You mean like the dog?"
The agony of the rat or the slaughter of a calf remains present in thought not through pity but as the zone of exchange between man and animal in which something of one passes into the other. - Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Derrida Jokes
Graham has a few famous questions and answers of academics over at his blog, including a couple of funny Derrida ones. It made me want to tell one of my favorite stories I ever heard about Derrida (that probably never happened). I'll quote from Leland de la Durantaye:
