Limited Inc
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Limited Inc (1988) is a book by Jacques Derrida, containing two essays and an interview.
In the first essay, "Signature Event Context," Derrida engages with J. L. Austin's theory of the illocutionary act outlined in his How To Do Things With Words. The second essay, "Limited Inc a b c...", is Derrida's response to John Searle's "Reply to Derrida: Reiterating the Differences," which criticizes Derrida's interpretation of Austin. The book concludes with a letter by Derrida, written in response to questions posed by Gerald Graff in 1988: "Afterword: Toward an Ethic of Discussion". Searle's essay is not itself included: he denied Northwestern University Press permission to reprint it. A summary is included between the two Derrida essays, and Derrida quotes the essay extensively.
Terrorist obscurantism
In 1983, Searle told to The New York Review of Books a remark on Derrida allegedly made by Michel Foucault in a private conversation with Searle himself; Derrida later decried Searle's gesture as gossip, and also condemned as violent the use of a mass circulation magazine to fight an academic debate.
According to Searle's account, Foucault called Derrida's prose style "terrorist obscurantism"; Searle's quote was:
- "Michel Foucault once characterized Derrida's prose style to me as "obscurantisme terroriste." The text is written so obscurely that you can't figure out exactly what the thesis is (hence "obscurantisme") and when one criticizes it, the author says, "Vous m'avez mal compris; vous ĂȘtes idiot (hence "terroriste")"