Writing Think Pieces for the Psychotic

My ongoing quest to find a vibe in the unintelligible

“Bring something incomprehensible into the world!”
― Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

The primary role that Jacques Derrida plays in my life is not one of enlightenment but of humiliation.

Around 2004, while still in college, I decided that my aesthetic would be that of an Algerian-born French Philosopher. Their starting lineup was astounding: Camus, Rancière, St. Augustine, Lévy, and of course - Derrida. Nearly all of them were handsome, even if in a slightly strange way that women might label as “he’s def ugly but kind of in a hot way?” Even St. Augustine caught some major tail before he decided to pack it in and take the robe; “Oh Lord make me chaste! But not yet.”

I’ll admit I didn’t totally nail the look. I went bald instead of growing out a shock of white hair, I couldn’t afford any trenchcoats other than the ones at Burlington Coat Factory, and the one I did buy made me look more like a suspect in an MS-DOS Carmen Sandiego game than it did make me glamorous and sad. I did stick the landing in some ways: I was definitely depressed, I smoked a lot of cigarettes, and I did think about things a lot (even if most of what I thought about was a woman named Tess who sat next to me in Environmental Ethics and never spoke to me once). But once again allow me to reiterate that I did smoke a lot. Any other shortcomings in the facial structure or accoutrement didn’t really matter - most of it was more of a vibe than a look.

Albert Camus, photographed here while highly fuckable

Unfortunately this vibe did not include extensive study of the works of this Algerian-French cohort. I mean sure, I read The Stranger in high school and yes I did recall something or other about St. Augustine throwing apples in my intro to Theology class. But beyond that I was satisfied to memorize a few key terms and main theses and titles for a few of their books. With a little finesse and a bit of daring-do, I could manage a conversation about any of them if I needed to.