http://www.marksussman.org/2009/06/25/simon-critchley-on-heidegger/ "On errands of life, these letters speed to death." Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:03:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 http://www.marksussman.org/2009/06/25/simon-critchley-on-heidegger/comment-page-1/#comment-989 mark sussman Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:03:41 +0000 http://www.marksussman.org/?p=231#comment-989 It's funny to hear you mention "untranslatability" at the end, because now that I think about it, Robbe-Grillet (at least to my mind) seems like one of the most translatable writers (if there is such a thing) while you're definitely not alone in calling Heidegger untranslatable. The fact that Critchley is writing for a general audience (see his comments section, which is full of people who are angry at words for being hard) obviously accounts for his measured, careful style in those definitional paragraphs (though his writing is almost always clean and lucid) but Heidegger's ideas are so difficult to get at that one feels, as in R-G's La jalousie, that the very clarity of the explicator's writing is hiding some deeper mystery. This "obscuring clarity" (or at least the feeling that the clarity is obscuring something) also reminds me of Critchley's Necronautical comrade, Tom McCarthy and his novel Remainder. The "remainder" in that novel, the uncontrolled elements of life that resist orchestration and command, serves as an irritant to the narrator, whose obsession with control, rehearsal, recreation, and mimesis lead him to wage war on the remainder. In some sense McCarthy's nouveau romanesque style is a statement about the limits of style and representation, the degree to which language that communicates effectively also obscures a whole host of other things. I always wonder that people find difficult writing so frustrating and lucid writing so comforting, when the latter is so much more effectively deceitful. It’s funny to hear you mention “untranslatability” at the end, because now that I think about it, Robbe-Grillet (at least to my mind) seems like one of the most translatable writers (if there is such a thing) while you’re definitely not alone in calling Heidegger untranslatable. The fact that Critchley is writing for a general audience (see his comments section, which is full of people who are angry at words for being hard) obviously accounts for his measured, careful style in those definitional paragraphs (though his writing is almost always clean and lucid) but Heidegger’s ideas are so difficult to get at that one feels, as in R-G’s La jalousie, that the very clarity of the explicator’s writing is hiding some deeper mystery. This “obscuring clarity” (or at least the feeling that the clarity is obscuring something) also reminds me of Critchley’s Necronautical comrade, Tom McCarthy and his novel Remainder. The “remainder” in that novel, the uncontrolled elements of life that resist orchestration and command, serves as an irritant to the narrator, whose obsession with control, rehearsal, recreation, and mimesis lead him to wage war on the remainder. In some sense McCarthy’s nouveau romanesque style is a statement about the limits of style and representation, the degree to which language that communicates effectively also obscures a whole host of other things. I always wonder that people find difficult writing so frustrating and lucid writing so comforting, when the latter is so much more effectively deceitful.

]]> http://www.marksussman.org/2009/06/25/simon-critchley-on-heidegger/comment-page-1/#comment-988 Charlie Bertsch Sun, 28 Jun 2009 09:22:58 +0000 http://www.marksussman.org/?p=231#comment-988 Nice post. I especially like the bit about it reading like a Robbe-Grillet novel. I wish you'd had a chance to sit in on that France-Germany class back in 2003. The session where we discussed Heidegger was one of my better rantish moments. Critchley does a good job of capturing the odd mix of folksy simple nouns and extreme abstraction at the conceptual level that makes Martin a tough read. But no translation can ever do justice to the German as language while also trying to convey the philosophical message. I'm usually annoyed by claims that something can't be translated, but it applies here. Hell, it even applies to Hegel, to an extent. Nice post. I especially like the bit about it reading like a Robbe-Grillet novel. I wish you’d had a chance to sit in on that France-Germany class back in 2003. The session where we discussed Heidegger was one of my better rantish moments. Critchley does a good job of capturing the odd mix of folksy simple nouns and extreme abstraction at the conceptual level that makes Martin a tough read. But no translation can ever do justice to the German as language while also trying to convey the philosophical message. I’m usually annoyed by claims that something can’t be translated, but it applies here. Hell, it even applies to Hegel, to an extent.

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