In Gabriel’s blog, Going Along, I just read a comment from the Ochlophobist on Derrida in response to the Jan 9th posting (which I had read when it came out) of Thoughts on Lillas Stillborn God

Excellent review. Though Lilla clearly is a twit when he is on his game he can be breathtaking. I remember a long essay in the NYRB a decade or so ago in which he dealt, in my opinion, the devastating blow to Derrida. I do not think that I have ever read a dismissal of a thinker’s work that was so functionally comprehensive, so persuasive, and so exacting in its intellectual damnation. It caused me to cringe for weeks at the thought that I had once taken Derrida seriously. It is remarkable that the man can be so competent on the one hand and so adolescent in other argumentations. Perhaps in this case he was after a topic that might get him greater book sales than his previous works. He’s at that age where a man wants a yacht, etc.

I’m still with Derrida because I feel he has been marginalized here. The thing about marginalization is that it dismisses the contributions of the other. If Derrida is an other and not “us”, I don’t want to condemn him, Derrida, and since I don’t believe in total depravity, I still think he has something to offer, which as I said is liberation and energy. To a borderline hypoglycemic stifled struggler with motivation, this is important to me. I don’t take Derrida’s words as gospel truth or even as comprehensible by me, but I really respond to his universal acceptances, which come across as love to me, which offers peace in a much too dialectical world. There’s too much winners loosers/ worthy unworthy mentality prevelant in our social atmosphere.

Still, I think I’ll try to look up that NYRB review by Lilla because I certainly don’t dismiss our esteemed Gabriel, the Ochlophobist, or Lilla if they respect him, Lilla, or parts of him.