Supposing Truth is a Woman – What Then?

Nietzsche's analysis of the self-poisoning of ‘the will to power’ and his insistence upon overcoming its ideological outcome (the dogmatist's fake ‘Truth’) by recognizing the ‘un-truth’ of a ‘logic of contamination,’ demonstrates that he understands ‘truth’ as a paradox. What may one accordingly expect in response to the question ‘Supposing truth is a woman – what then?’, posed in the preface to Beyond Good and Evil (1966)? Supported by Derrida's Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, I argue that Nietzsche could have drawn two radically different analogies between paradoxical ‘truth’ and ‘woman.’ However, due to the very kind of ideological conditioning (patriarchal), which his ‘free thinking’ resists in principle, he explicitly draws only one, hazarding a self-betraying performative contradiction. The obvious move might be to retain the valuable critique of ideology made possible by his analysis of the ‘will to power,’ while jettisoning the self-undermining rhetoric that constructs sexual difference according to values handed down by patriarchy. However, retaining and working through the terms of sexual difference, and highlighting Nietzsche's blindness concerning women, has the advantage of calling attention to its significance. The fact that one may say in retrospect that even Nietzsche (of all thinkers!) remained blindly subject to ideological conditioning, points to its unconscious nature and raises the question of what ‘overcoming’ in relation to the will to power entails for the free thinkers he heralded

Mid-career Teachers' Motivation to Teaching and Their Growth in Their Profession

Similar to most careers, a teacher follows a career cycle: struggling in the beginning, as an expert in mid-career, and finally reaching end career. The mid-career teacher can be a school and district’s greatest asset; however, they can also fall into a mid-career slump with little room for professional growth and waning on intrinsic motivation. Through this mixed methods study, I will explore the mid-career teachers’ motivation to teaching and their growth in the profession. I will employ three research instruments to collect data: a Teacher Motivation Assessment Scale (TMAS) designed and validated earlier; a semi-structured interview protocol designed by the researcher; and a checklist to document the participants’ motivation and growth. Teacher instructional rounds designed to improve mid-career teachers’ motivation and growth were offered on one campus over a semester. Mid-career teachers participating in the teacher instructional rounds were compared before and after the rounds. The surveys showed statistically significant differences overall, but did decrease in some categories. These categories aligned with data obtained through the interview and self-checklist in terms of commitment and interest. Teachers were interviewed throughout the semester and all expressed positive attitudes in observing other teachers. Mid-career teachers also filled out a self-checklist of evidence for growth and motivation. Participants on average had more items reported on the checklist, but were lacking in areas of learning from peers and setting goals. The data showed patterns and needs in the mid-career educators that can help the educator, administrators and in the planning of professional development

A logos of difference: the Kantian roots of Derrida's deconstructive thinking

This study concerns a contemporary articulation of the age-old limit/possibility (truth/scepticism) contest in Western metaphysics. Traditional `either/or' logic advises that scepticism is a necessary consequence of the assailability of truth; hence the concerted effort in the history of philosophy to preserve the possibility of truth against any flicker of uncertainty. Here, it is argued that contemporary thinking sees the possibility of `absolute' truth lose its ground. However, a concomitant shift to a `logos of difference' averts the consequence of scepticism. Thus, the justification for this study could be articulated in terms of the imperative, if a cardinal moment in contemporary thought is to be sustained, to understand this shift in logos, work through its implications and learn to live with its effects. In this respect, an attempt is made throughout to situate and interpret Derrida's `deconstructive thinking' as exemplar. Derrida's thinking finds roots (not without signs of insurrection) in Kant's `Copernican revolution,' construed as the first shift towards the contemporary logos in question. Here, Kant refuted the postulate of an independent `world' by demonstrating that `reality' was the result of a cognitive order imposed on what `exists' by the rational subject. Knowledge, therefore, depended not on matching statements with pre-existing `things,' but on knowing the `rules' that determined how an object had to be if it was to be known at all. Kant maintained that certain, objective knowledge was possible, due to the completeness and universality of the forms of intuition and the categories of the understanding. Kant's `Copernican revolution' provided the opening for a second shift inaugurated by the so- called `linguistic turn.' Here, thinkers contested what Kant took for granted; namely that `constitutive interpretations' (cognitions/concepts) formed a `reality' independently of language. The basic premise underpinning the `linguistic turn,' therefore, is that language (signification) and `reality' are inseparable. Henceforth, the possibility of final, enduring `constitutive interpretations' whose `truth,' in principle, is discoverable, depends on whether or not the language which mediates human rationality can form a complete and universal system. This question resurrects the very limit/possibility debate (in the form of a structuralism/postmodernism stand-off) that Kant thought he had resolved in mediating between rationalist and empiricist extremes. In contemporary terms, philosophers who, bound by either/or logic, wish to avoid the sceptical trap of `anything goes' postmodernism, must assume that language (signification) can form a complete and universal system. However, in his deconstructive readings of Husserl, Saussure and `structuralism,' Derrida demonstrates the untenability of this assumption. At the same time, he shows that the sceptical `alternative' may be avoided by recognising the limitations of `either/or' logic. Again, Derrida's thinking may be traced to Kant's; this time to his analysis of the `first antinomy.' In accordance with Kant's analysis here of what is ultimately the logic of `complex systems' (Cilliers), Derrida offers a `logos of difference,' which skirts the strictures of structuralism while avoiding the trap of postmodern scepticism by accommodating both moments of limit and possibility in an indissoluble interplay

Philosophy as laughter

Contextualising my current philosophical preoccupations within the framework of my understanding of my task as a philosopher, I engage with the proposition that philosophers have a double task: firstly learning (and teaching) how to think, and relatedly, unexpectedly, learning/teaching how to laugh

Humanising research: the cares that drive researchers

This article reflects on the provenance of “research” in Heideggerian “care,” and the nature of care as a complex of “cares” (interests/passions). We become researchers because care (concern for the future) fundamentally characterises our being. While care ensures that research becomes a never-ending “hermeneutic circle,” this only compromises research results if we remain unaware of its nature and uncritical of its effects. To specify its nature I identify particular cares (interests/passions) by means of Habermas’ account of the technical, practical/ethical, and emancipatory interests motivating research. Using Lacanian psychoanalytical theory I then map the multiple conflicting notions within each area of interest in terms of three future-orientated passions: “nihilism”, “narcissism” and “altruism”. The aim of this synthesis is an adequately complex framework for reflecting on our research passion

The aporetic interweaving of relativity and relativism in Derrida’s thinking

The connection between relativity and relativism both clarifies and is clarified by Derrida’s thinking. To show this, I shall first associate each term with compatible Derridean terms. “Economy”, “structure”, “problem” and “the possible”, related to relativity, match counterparts related to relativism, namely “aneconomy”, “freeplay”, “aporia” and “the impossible”. Next, the conjunction suspended between these constellations will be addressed by asking whether a Derridean account of this connection would be unambiguously antinomial, dialectical, or diacritical. These “logics” are worked through to show that Derrida’s thinking does not “fall from the sky” but remains in critical dialogue with the philosophical tradition. Derrida, however, uncovers the workings of another “logic” that acknowledges an inescapable paradox in the conjunction between relativity and relativism, to which one could assign the nickname “quasi-transcendental”

Kvazi transcendentalna protkanost invencije i interpretacije Jacquesa Derridae

In both "Psyche: Inventions of the Other," which stresses the "paradoxical predicaments" in which the concept "invention" remains tied up, and "Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce", which focuses on the related aporetics of interpretation, Derrida’s multiple deconstructive performances uncover the aporias that beset the traditional and seemingly obvious relationship of priority between invention and interpretation that governs, for example, Kant’s analysis of the relationship between taste and genius. As I hope to show in what follows, Derrida demonstrates both that invention strictly speaking is ruined by interpretation, just as interpretation strictly speaking, is ruined by invention. One cannot demarcate a domain for the one that is not always already contaminated by the other, and this mutual contamination means that both "invention" and "interpretation" cannot become entirely true to their concepts. That is, both invention and interpretation strictu sensu are impossible. Derrida’s way of thinking, therefore, demonstrates that there is no logically coherent basis for the invention/convention distinction that is all too often used to support the traditional belief that a musicologist’s sole task is merely the second-level analytical interpretation of musical compositions already so inventively brought into being by artists. This is an attitude that neatly excludes musicology from the domain of cultural production, which, it is often supposed, absolves the discipline of the responsibility for cultural critique at the coalface, as it were. In my view, then, the importance of Derrida’s pattern of thinking for critical musicology has to do with its power to address the dangers of ideological blindness that are the result of placing musicologists and/ or artists strictly on opposite sides of the invention-convention coin

Philosophy as laughter

Contextualising my current philosophical preoccupations within the framework of my understanding of my task as a philosopher, I engage with the proposition that philosophers have a double task: firstly learning (and teaching) how to think, and relatedly, unexpectedly, learning/teaching how to laugh