Camp Deconstructed

Sontag's concept of illness as a metaphor was—for me—more powerful than any of her other ideas. As for Derrida, the less said the better. (Deconstruction of a life?) If this is (fair & balanced) cerebration, so be it.

[LA Times]
Sontag vs. Derrida: A Deconstruction Derby
Compiled by Michael Soller

The death of Susan Sontag on Dec. 29 unleashed the greatest volume of intellectual and pseudo-intellectual eulogizing since … well, since the death of Jacques Derrida on Oct. 8. So which celebrity thinker fared best in 2004's excessively polysyllabic Obituary Bowl?

Born

• Sontag: New York, Jan. 16, 1933
• Derrida: El Biar, Algeria, July 15, 1930


Obituary word count (approximate)

• 48,820
• 60,980


Number of letter writers who hated one or more obit

• a handful
• 4,254 (at www .humanities.uci.edu /remembering_jd/)


You should feel dumb because …

• [Sontag was] "the most intelligent woman in America" (New York Daily News)
• [Derrida was] "the smartest man in the world" (Raphael Simon, The Times)


And because …

• Sontag was 33 when she published her first famous essay collection, "Against Interpretation"
• Derrida was 37 when he published his first three major philosophical tomes, including the essay collection "Writing and Difference"


How much a signed copy of above books cost on EBay last week:

• $160 (first edition)
• $8.99 (translation)


Signature concept

• camp
• deconstruction


In a nutshell

• Camp "is the love of the exaggerated, the 'off,' of things-being-what-they-are-not." (Sontag, "Notes on 'Camp' ")
• "The guiding insight of deconstruction is that every structure … that organizes our experience is constituted and maintained through acts of exclusion. In the process of creating something, something else inevitably gets left out." (Mark Taylor, New York Times)


How about in doggerel?

• "Susan Sontag — quicksilver darting between past and future to shed light on the otherwise dark present — and your conscience that traveled almost at the speed of light" (John Berger, the Observer)
• "You wanna knowda creeda Derrida?/Dere ain't no reader./(Dere ain't no wrider Eider.) (Adrian Salter, letter to the Spectator)


It was the hair, apparently

• Sontag was a "strong-featured beauty with a trademark streak of white shot through her unruly black hair (New York Daily News)
• Derrida was a "snowy-haired French intellectual" (Associated Press)


The president says he's bummed out

• No
• Yes (Jacques Chirac)


Had to share obituary pages with …

• Jerry Orbach, actor
• Christopher Reeve, activist/actor


Probably wishes hadn't said

• "The white race is the cancer of human history."
• "The least bad definition of deconstruction is a certain experience of the impossible."


Contrarian comment about Sept. 11

• "Whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards."
• "The brevity of the appellation (Sept. 11, 9/11) … points out the unqualifiable by recognizing that we do not recognize or even cognize that we do not yet know how to qualify, that we do not know what we are talking about."


Star turn

• as herself in Woody Allen's "Zelig" (1983)
• as himself in documentary "Derrida" (2002)


Gets name on …

• a street in Sarajevo, where she staged a production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" in 1993
• Scritti Politti song "Jacques Derrida" (which goes, in part: "I'm in love with Jacques Derrida/Read a page and know what I need to/Take apart my baby's heart")


Will be remembered …

• for "a lifetime of devotion to the eros of difficulty." (The Times' Steve Wasserman in the San Francisco Chronicle)
• "as a profound thinker who made a lasting contribution to intellectual discourse." (London Guardian)


Should be forgotten because …

• "if ever a single person was living proof that intelligence is a meaningless quality without modest common sense, it was Susan Sontag." (Kevin Myers, London Sunday Telegraph)
• "Derrida's overall legacy has been a disaster." (Roy Harris, letter to the Times of London Higher Education Supplement)

Michael Soller is a writer who lives in New York.

Copyright © 2005 Los Angeles Times