DERRIDA + GREEN - AOF

Green Gartside a.k.a. Scritti Politti seems to have been a follower of / was influenced by Derrida's writings. Green has even written a song about him in 1981, which in his own words is about...

...how powerful and contradictory the politics of desire are. About being torn between all things glamorous and reactionary and all things glamorous and leftist...and how in the end, your own desire dispenses with both of them...

How that reflects Derrida's thoughts is beyond AoF's scope of understanding (see explanation below), so if you think you can do a better job relating the two, please email your hypothesis. The song is available online at the Deconstructionist site mentioned below.

As for which JD books Green actually read, though unconfirmed, the following have been suggested by a few different sources...

Of Grammatology
Positions
The Truth In Painting

Derrida was of course not the only philosopher to have influenced Green's approach to music. Among numerous other books he read are the following on contemporary philosophy / cultural studies / psychoanalysis...

• ROLAND BARTHES:
  Mythologies
  S/Z
  The Pleasure Of The Text
  Image/Music/Text
  
  
• MICHEL FOUCAULT:
  Discipline and Punish
  Archeology of Knowledge
  History of Sexuality
  
  
• ROS COWARD & JOHN ELLIS:
  Language and Materialism
  
  
• GILLES DELEUZE & FÉLIX GUATTARI:
  The Anti-Oedipus
  
  
• JACQUES LACAN:
  Four Fundamental Principles of Psychoanalyis
  Ecrits
  
  
• JURGEN HABERMAS:
  Knowledge and Human Interests
  

As usual, there were and will always be purists from both sides of the divide--intellectual this time--who would accuse Green of 'insincere dabbling'--neither a 'full fledged intellectual' nor a 'full fledged pop icon'. But as several fans who have contacted AoF pointed out, it's his blend of both which made him stand out in their mind. His appropriation of these rather than the other way around--being appropriated by intellectualism or by the pop industry--makes his works, with the contradictions they contain, all the more moving for some of us.

A funny story--perhaps not entirely true--has it that once Derrida was asked if he can meet anyone he want as a birthday present who he'd pick. He asked for Green, and got him. If it were only that easy for the rest of us...

DERRIDA + GREEN + AOF

The Archeology of the Frivolous is also the only Derrida book AoF had managed to read because it's one of his smallest and least convuluted. AoF thinks it's an apt metaphor in many contexts for Scritti Politti and SP's followers. After all, all the Scritti achievements are pretty ancient by now. Plus, Green himself adovcated digging things up for re-readings and re-interpretation as a method of progressing to the next step in...?...Perhaps Scritti's low rate of production is intentional -- to force us adoring fans to re-listen to the same few songs ad infinatum? And from what little AoF could remember of what little AoF understood of the book, The Archeology of the Frivolous follows a similar train of thought.

Okay, so AoF's reading both JD and GG superficially. How much Green himself 'understands' of what he read is food for idle speculation. Just because he reads Derrida doesn't mean he's an intellectual or even that his interpretations / understanding of the texts are the same as that intended by Derrida. Ditto with Green's fans' relationship to his music and public persona.

DERRIDA - GREEN - AOF

For those brave souls, here's an excerpt from the original book. Eventually you'll be able to take a stab at taliesin's alchemical experiment mixing Scritti and Derrida among others.

For a more straightforward introduction to Derrida, try:

JD Biography

And for those who likes being a tad more pretentious, this following site's full of multilingual Derridaen mumble jumble. It also has an au file of Scritti's phase 2 song, Jacques Derrida; but the file won't work on my Power Mac. Maybe it'll work on yours:

original German site

Last but not least, for the really ambitious ones, there's not only a

JD Bibliography

of all his books to guide you to the real thing, there's a Derrida mailing list for those of you who claim to really know what JD's writing about and can quote him off the top your head or at the tip of your fingertips:

JD Mailing List