This extract from Xavier de la Porte’s The Imposter: BHL in Wonderland reproduces a conference opening given by Derrida in which he drew attention to the new generation of philosophers who were being put forward as a consequence of the ‘techno-politics of telecommunications’. From loc 1809 of their book:
There lies, in the techno-politics of telecommunications, a challenge that cannot be dodged, a challenge that is also philosophical, and very new in some of its forms, its operations, its evaluation, its market and its technology … No one today, neither the more wide-awake philosophers nor people who are even minimally aware and trained in discernment in those domains (publishing, press, television), would ever point to the vitality or rigour of philosophy with reference to much, or to most, one might say, of what has lately been exhibited on the most prominent platform; to what noisily calls itself philosophy in all sorts of studios where, since a relatively recent and clearly determined date, the loudest speakers have had the loudspeakers handed to them without wondering (even in the best of cases) why columns and channels were being turned over to them to talk thus and to say exactly that.
What nosily calls itself philosophy in our present situation? Why has attention been awarded to these people who are saying what they are saying at this particular moment? The questions which Derrida asked in 1979 seems more urgent than ever in our present circumstances.
Mark Carrigan 