An old college classmate of mine forwarded me this letter, in which some mutual alums discuss Derrida's comments on the great American pasttime.
I have sent this email to my friends who know who Barry Bonds and Jacques Derrida are. In a perfect world all of my friends would know who both of these indviduals are, but alas the world, like my pony picks and my german translating ability are imperfect. If some of you to whom, I have sent this do in fact not know who B.B. and J.D. are-I could explain- but then again, maybe I couldn't. Anyway . . .
Brandon Owings went to see the Derrida movie at its nyc premiere at the Film Forum last week. Derrida himself was at the screening , and after the film there was a question and answer period, during which, according to Brandon, the following transpired:
interestingly, out of the blue and somewhat startlingly to the audience, derrida did make the comment that even if a batter has 46 home runs, 31 doubles and a .370 average in the regular season, even if he is without question the most dominant hitter in the game, and the logic of the rules insists that even with the bases empty it is a better idea to put him on first and take your chances with the next three batters - even so, it is an injustice - to the fans, to the players, to the game - to attempt to circumscribe the illimitable risk of pitching to barry bonds. for to presume to fix the outcome in advance in such a manner, to still the drama of the lived experience of a postseason game with intentional walks is injustice. and not merely one injustice among others, but injustice itself. for this logic of the "inside" of the game - literally figured by the form of the dugout, the trench, the foxhole, a place of partial concealment, of secrecy, of planning and decision making, the proper place of the manager and of calculation on the edges of the playing field, the "head" that is literally stuck in the ground - is nothing other than an attempt to still the free play, the jouissance that is treated, for reasons that we will see in a moment, as "external" to the "proper" game, opposed to the game "in itself", in its pure form. such play - taking pleasure in the game, taking comfort in the rituals of the stadium, calling in to talk radio to rattle off useless stats and blabber incoherent theories, bidding for memorabilia on ebay - must be external to a game based on rules that can be stated as if they were axioms which existed outside of any context or contract, as if they were outside time and beyond the possibility of movement. this stillness, the pure game as a practice arising from absolutely clear laws, the game that is freely, transparently and without economy (other than beer ads etc.) available to any viewer in the metro area with access to the local team's cable channel, the uncompromised game that gives of itself without reserve, whether in the form of salary caps or lackadaisical, unfocused play, this fantasy of a "pure" game is put in mortal danger by its own self-_expression. this game that would aspire to pure formality and strict adherence to formal rules is ultimately doomed to collapse or corruption by the very unambiguous limits of the orthodoxy for which it is loved by the fans. for the fans themselves - the literally, physically, architecturally marginalized viewing subject in the ballpark, which is the khora of baseball - the supposedly external observers, who like the tragic chorus reaffirm the pure abstract formalism of the game by existing just outside of it, this usually disparate and inchoate mass of humanity who fill the event with meaning by witnessing it, the others whose presence completes the scene - will be moved to a surprising, yet necessary and organic unity, drawn together toward the magnet of the pleasure being perceptibly leeched by the limitation of the free play of the game, even though this limitation of free play is strictly permitted by the very formal laws that give the game its abstract beauty, and commanded by the very rituals and purposes which define the structure that supports its rarefied milieu and quiet lyricism. these outsiders must - not in spite of their love of the formal game, but because of it - eventually coalesce to form a single body whose very existence threatens to disrupt the rules of baseball, a body that speaks at that moment with a voice which verges on singularity, which upends the formalism that is the very object of the love that draws them in from the margins to active and sustained rhyming catcalls. the intentional walk, though it follows a necessary, even inevitable trajectory, is seen as an obvious aberration to the fan of baseball, a poisoned fruit that undermines the rigor and balance of a game that is the manna and birthright of anyone who would ever live in and through the idea of america. through the experience of the fans, the clarity of the rules of baseball, the literalness and formalism that is the foundation of their power, is revealed to disrupt itself for non-fortuitous reasons, and furthermore to have always already have begun to do so through the necessary subjugation of the singular and autonomous form of the rules to that which is radically exterior to it and yet inseparable from it: the free play of the game.
i'm paraphrasing a bit, but that was the gist of what he said. though when pressed by kirby dick, one of the filmmakers, also present, derrida admitted that of course there was no way in hell he'd give bonds a chance to swing at a real pitch in a tight game. he said that this would be "pure idiocy...of idiocy i know no better definition"; then he called bud selig a sniveling, panty-wearing asshole, which frankly surprised me.
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