The Impotence of Pseudo-Antagonism: A Derridean Response to Žižek’s Charge of Practical Irrelevance

The Teacher as Silenced Superhero

“…Familiarly referred to as the linguistic turn, with increased skepticism of the human capacity for non-referential reason and autonomy, what has dissolved is faith in how a subject can come to ontological or epistemological knowledge. Hurst (2008) explains it this way: "What happens to metaphysical thinking when the realization dawns that a final cure for the madness of doubting… is not yet found" (p. 113). And more fundamentally, what are we left with when even the capacity by which truth might be found cannot survive "the incursion of language into thinking" (p. 113).…”

“…This being the human condition, the first instance of agency is becoming conscious of one's condition. This is no simple task for if, as Hurst (2008) notes, "[T]here can be no presence or consciousness outside of language which serves as a privileged or ultimate point of reference for the sign 'I'" (p. 121), then the question becomes under what conditions might it be possible to recognize one's condition and struggle against it. In addressing the thorny problem of agency, the disciplines have varied in their approaches as to how the self is constituted from its subjectivity as a subject.…”