Poststructuralist language theory need not ground political commitments

Evidence

Whatever Derrida’s personal political commitments (which do not seem in any case to rise much above a fairly commonplace left liberalism), he is unable rationally to ground them because he denies himself the means either to analyse those existing social arrangements which he rejects or to justify this rejection by outlining some more desirable state of affairs. This position finds its roots in — Heidegger aside - a philosophy of language which moves from the rejection of the atomistic theories of meaning typical of seventeenth-century epistemology to the denial of any relation of discourse to reality. But this move is unnecessary. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 324

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Callinicos-Foucault debate on whether discourse-determinism strands critical politics; this is the same bind strategic essentialism tries to escape. — connects to: Contextualist political theory denies any culture-free standpoint for judgment — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 291