This Pretentious Discourse
Neal Johnson
Nietzsche once said (somewhere) that if you can't say something clearly
then you don't know what you are talking about.
Seriously, can you maintain your discussion of PoMo without the use
of strings of polysyllabic words and neologisms? Is Pomo merely another
realm of cant and jargon, a cabal of latinate grammar twisters? Is one's
erudition and significance simply based on a syllable count and the number
of clauses in one's sentences?
Yes, I have tried to read Derrida, et.al. It appears to be a lot of
nothing disguised in a very complex wrapping. So you have to work hard
to decipher what he is talking about... All that hard work convinces
you that, yes, there is something there.
Sorry folks, the emperor has no clothes and his speech is silent...
============================================================================
name: Neal Johnson "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
mail: n...@apple.COM "Love is the law, love under will."
phone: (408) 974-6246
disclaimer: Everything stated here is disclaimed by all.
============================================================================
Michael Sean Rooney
>Seriously, can you maintain your discussion of PoMo without the use
>of strings of polysyllabic words and neologisms? Is Pomo merely another
>realm of cant and jargon, a cabal of latinate grammar twisters? Is one's
>erudition and significance simply based on a syllable count and the number
>of clauses in one's sentences?
Seriously, then, Neal, let me answer your quest-ions, in order
of presentation. Yes and no. It's hard to avoid using polysyllabic
words, except in computer languages, and they do tend to come in strings,
which some of us call sentences. Neologisms aren't necessary, but
Derrida is fond of invoking terms like trace, differance, arche-writing,
hymen, tympan, (phal-)logocentrism, et al, to play on his textual
strategies. Most of these aren't neologisms, strictly (or "seriously")
speaking, but are different deployments of existing words and their
meanings. They simultaneously support, illustrate, and "name" his
various points about ontologival differences in language.
"cant and jargon"? "a cabal"? Nes. Yo. One may as well
condemn the sciences for their technical language. Neal seems here
to be engaging in little more than selective anti-intellectualism.
And lastly, no. One's "erudition and significance" are based
on many things, but definitely not fourth-rate rhetoric.
>Yes, I have tried to read Derrida, et.al. It appears to be a lot of
>nothing disguised in a very complex wrapping. So you have to work hard
>to decipher what he is talking about... All that hard work convinces
>you that, yes, there is something there.
Well, you should be commended for having tried, which is better
than most critics of deconstruction have done. But you should be
careful about what "Derrida, et.al...appear" to be. The difficulty
in reading Derrida's texts lies in their own resistance to what most
texts do. Derrida is radically criticizing the metaphysical tradition
within language within language. Part of the problem with Derrida is
a tendency in Anglo-American circles to pin philosophers or writers
down, to be able to grasp their meaning. Derrida resists and
criticizes that tendency, and his style(s) are discursive, allusive,
and playful. Despite the resistance to "meaning", Derrida's work
is not without powerful philosophical ("meaningful") insight--the
"sous rature" (under erasure) which permeates his work is not a
nihilistic gesture. To put it crudely, to ask what the "something"
is in Derrida is like posing the same question to, say, Pynchon's
GRAVITY'S RAINBOW.
>Sorry folks, the emperor has no clothes and his speech is silent...
Now, to anyone familiar with Derrida's grammatology, the
last part of this is quite amusing.
Cordially,
M.S. Rooney
"But it is all too easy to avoid the trouble of analysing such work
by giving it an admittedly impressive-sounding, but inaccurate,
label."
Neal Johnson
>
>>Yes, I have tried to read Derrida, et.al. It appears to be a lot of
>>nothing disguised in a very complex wrapping. So you have to work hard
>>to decipher what he is talking about... All that hard work convinces
>>you that, yes, there is something there.
>
> Well, you should be commended for having tried, which is better
>than most critics of deconstruction have done. But you should be
>careful about what "Derrida, et.al...appear" to be. The difficulty
>in reading Derrida's texts lies in their own resistance to what most
>texts do. Derrida is radically criticizing the metaphysical tradition
>within language within language. Part of the problem with Derrida is
>a tendency in Anglo-American circles to pin philosophers or writers
>down, to be able to grasp their meaning. Derrida resists and
>criticizes that tendency, and his style(s) are discursive, allusive,
>and playful. Despite the resistance to "meaning", Derrida's work
>is not without powerful philosophical ("meaningful") insight--the
>"sous rature" (under erasure) which permeates his work is not a
>nihilistic gesture. To put it crudely, to ask what the "something"
>is in Derrida is like posing the same question to, say, Pynchon's
>GRAVITY'S RAINBOW.
To read in order to understand is merely a tendency? To read in order
to understand is somehow wrong?
Derrida believes that you cannot be understood? So he goes out of his
way to demonstrate this by writing in such a way that he CAN't be
understood? DON'T READ THIS! DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS! GO AWAY, BOY!
YOU'RE BOTHERING ME! Seems quite silly to me... But then again, what
you are writing seems to suggest that Mr. Derrida means something,
other wise you wouldn't be here trying to explain him to me!
Gravity's Rainbow... Tried to read it a number of times... You know,
underneath all that difficulty I never had the feeling that the effort
was worth it. That there was nothing there to be found. If that is his
point than it seems to be an awful lot of work to say nothing. I have
read Finnegans Wake twice. I maybe understood 10 - 15 %. But I know
that beneath all that difficulty lies gold. It was and still is worth the
effort. Joyce choose his method to show how rich the world is in meaning,
how even the tiniest word is a cosmos to explore. Derrida, Pynchon, who
cares... Their world is sans meaning. Too bad... As T.S. Eliot once
wrote - "Hollow men..."
>
>>Sorry folks, the emperor has no clothes and his speech is silent...
Hey, watch out!! You caught my meaning...
neal
Tom Maddox
>
>Gravity's Rainbow... Tried to read it a number of times... You know,
>underneath all that difficulty I never had the feeling that the effort
>was worth it. That there was nothing there to be found. If that is his
>point than it seems to be an awful lot of work to say nothing.
If anyone teaching elementary logic is looking for a shining example
of a straw man argument, here's one. You set up a preposterous notion in order
to confute it. In so doing, you make an assumption that is not
only false but irrelevant--false, because it certainly is not the case that
the point of _GR_ is "there was nothing there to be found," irrelevant
because _GR_ cannot be reduced to a "point."
As to its difficulty, that is largely a function of the observer--
some find it difficult, others not, and the central criteria for this finding
don't appear to be education, background in literature, or anything of the
sort; some find the book easy to read (I certainly did from the first time
I picked it up almost twenty years ago) while others find it difficult.
Oh, it's difficult to *understand*, you say? Well, yes and no--yes,
if you mean it must be reducible to some set of statements that taken together
compose its "point"; no, if you mean that it's ludicrous to try to reduce
_GR_ in that manner. It is an *instructive* book, one that keeps revealing
different aspects of itself over time.
>I have
>read Finnegans Wake twice. I maybe understood 10 - 15 %. But I know
>that beneath all that difficulty lies gold. It was and still is worth the
>effort. Joyce choose his method to show how rich the world is in meaning,
>how even the tiniest word is a cosmos to explore. Derrida, Pynchon, who
>cares... Their world is sans meaning.
Having set up your straw man, you use it again. It's even more
irrelevant this time than last. First, do separate Pynchon from Derrida so
as not to appear completely idiotic; second, allow the relationship of each
to so complex an issue as meaning to have some complexity. The world of
both is rich in meaning, but in both cases meaning itself has acquired
shades and subtleties that it usually doesn't--Pynchon concerns himself with
such things as the relationship between knowledge and morality and the
uncertain nature of narrative; Derrida takes on the entire Western tradition
of meaning in a more directly philosophical mode. If you're not interested
in what they do with their questions, that's fine (I find Derrida more
trouble than he's worth most days myself), but to reject what they do because
you can't do it justice seems to me profoundly wrong-headed and dishonest.
--
Tom Maddox
tma...@milton.u.washington.edu
"But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones"
eric andrew wolfe
>> The difficulty
>>in reading Derrida's texts lies in their own resistance to what most
>>texts do. Derrida is radically criticizing the metaphysical tradition
>>within language within language. Part of the problem with Derrida is
>>a tendency in Anglo-American circles to pin philosophers or writers
>>down, to be able to grasp their meaning. Derrida resists and
>>criticizes that tendency, and his style(s) are discursive, allusive,
>>and playful. Despite the resistance to "meaning", Derrida's work
>>is not without powerful philosophical ("meaningful") insight--the
>>"sous rature" (under erasure) which permeates his work is not a
>>nihilistic gesture. To put it crudely, to ask what the "something"
>>is in Derrida is like posing the same question to, say, Pynchon's
>>GRAVITY'S RAINBOW.
>
>
>To read in order to understand is merely a tendency? To read in order
>to understand is somehow wrong?
Not at all; I think that what Michael Sean Rooney is pointing out is
that one of the things Derrida is doing is questioning whether what is
involved with "understanding" is always as simple as we tend to think
it is. For instance, Derrida questions many of the simplifications
that Speech Act philosophers have made in their theories, since they
bracket out many of the ways language can be and typically is used (as
anomalies or derivations; see "Signature Event Context" and "Limited
Inc a b c . . .," now published together in _Limited Inc_).
>Derrida believes that you cannot be understood? So he goes out of his
>way to demonstrate this by writing in such a way that he CAN't be
>understood? DON'T READ THIS! DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS! GO AWAY, BOY!
>YOU'RE BOTHERING ME! Seems quite silly to me... But then again, what
>you are writing seems to suggest that Mr. Derrida means something,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>other wise you wouldn't be here trying to explain him to me!
Exactly! Note that the phrase M. Rooney used above was "resistance
to 'meaning,'" which is not at all the same thing as saying "that you
cannot be understood." Again, to say that meaning is complicated is
not to deny the possibility of meaning.
As for his style, I do accept--to some extent--the argument that it is
part of a strategy to exemplify what his theories suggest. At the
same time, I think he also enjoys writing difficult, playful prose.
But then so did Joyce, and you LIKE him for it. Sometimes I just sit
and marvel over a Derridean sentence. I wish I could read French
better.
> >Gravity's Rainbow... Tried to read it a number of times... You know,
>underneath all that difficulty I never had the feeling that the effort
>was worth it. That there was nothing there to be found. If that is his
>point than it seems to be an awful lot of work to say nothing. I have
>read Finnegans Wake twice. I maybe understood 10 - 15 %. But I know
>that beneath all that difficulty lies gold. It was and still is worth the
>effort. Joyce choose his method to show how rich the world is in meaning,
>how even the tiniest word is a cosmos to explore. Derrida, Pynchon, who
>cares... Their world is sans meaning. Too bad... As T.S. Eliot once
>wrote - "Hollow men..."
Ironically, I would say that the intention you attribute to Joyce--"to
show how rich the world is in meaning, how even the tiniest word is a
cosmos to explore"--applies equally well to Derrida. One of his
points in the essays I cited above is that--no matter how badly you
want to--you can't stop meaning from happening. That language is
iterative--and that meaning is dependent upon context--means that
language is flexible and that meanings will proliferate with each
change in context. And Derrida's wordplay is certainly much like
Joyce's joy in messing about with language, especially in a text like
_Finnegan's Wake_.
>>
>>>Sorry folks, the emperor has no clothes and his speech is silent...
>
>Hey, watch out!! You caught my meaning...
>
>
>neal
Eric A. Wolfe
Gordon Fitch
| To all the serious practitioners of Pomosity:
|
| Nietzsche once said (somewhere) that if you can't say something clearly
| then you don't know what you are talking about.
|
| Seriously, can you maintain your discussion of PoMo without the use
| of strings of polysyllabic words and neologisms? Is Pomo merely another
| realm of cant and jargon, a cabal of latinate grammar twisters? Is one's
| erudition and significance simply based on a syllable count and the number
| of clauses in one's sentences?
|
| Yes, I have tried to read Derrida, et.al. It appears to be a lot of
| nothing disguised in a very complex wrapping. So you have to work hard
| to decipher what he is talking about... All that hard work convinces
| you that, yes, there is something there.
|
| Sorry folks, the emperor has no clothes and his speech is silent...
I think you're a hypocrite, Neal. You used a number of
polysyllabic words yourself -- and you spelled "polysyllabic"
correctly, too. There are people around here who would never
have made _that_ mistake.
What you could have said -- had you been true to your alleged
principles -- was: "Hey! You guys use a lot of long words! But
you don't really say much! I think you're just trying to fool
me! Yow!"
Instead of which, we have lah-de-dah stuff like "polysyllabic"
and "significance" and "erudition" and -- oo-wee -- "latinate
grammar."
And then at the end there's the giveaway. "It appears to be a
lot of nothing disguised in a very complex wrapping."
Okay, Neal. Very funny, bringing in Buddhism and 20th-century
physics at the last moment to save your hypocritical ass.
--
Gordon Fitch * ...!panix.com!mydog!gcf
Bx 1238 Bowling Green Station / NYC 10274
"... a master of disingenuous subtlety." -P.McGuinness
Neal Johnson
Hey, it is possible to explain this stuff simply. Thank you for the
lucid explanation. I stand corrected. Or convinced. Or whatever.
Now... "You can't stop meaning from happening." Meaning from my own
point of view is an event local to my brain. It exists only internally.
There is no meaning out there. In other words, the brain layers
interpretation on experience which is meaning. This implies that we do
not directly experience reality (that horrible word) but instead watch
the "movie of meaning" in our heads. Certain mystics, primarily of the
Eastern schools, claim that the subject-object barrier can be broken and
reality can be directly experienced without this intermediate layer. This
would be a reality sans meaning. Comments?
Neal Johnson
I learned a long time ago that you should use language appropriate to
your audience. So there... NYA NYA NYA NYA...
>
>And then at the end there's the giveaway. "It appears to be a
>lot of nothing disguised in a very complex wrapping."
>
>Okay, Neal. Very funny, bringing in Buddhism and 20th-century
>physics at the last moment to save your hypocritical ass.
OOPS! You caught me... Sorry...
>"... a master of disingenuous subtlety." -P.McGuinness
============================================================================
Christopher Wade Skinner
>Gravity's Rainbow... Tried to read it a number of times... You know,
>underneath all that difficulty I never had the feeling that the effort
>was worth it. That there was nothing there to be found. If that is his
>point than it seems to be an awful lot of work to say nothing. I have
>read Finnegans Wake twice. I maybe understood 10 - 15 %. But I know
>that beneath all that difficulty lies gold. It was and still is worth the
>effort. Joyce choose his method to show how rich the world is in meaning,
>how even the tiniest word is a cosmos to explore. Derrida, Pynchon, who
>cares... Their world is sans meaning. Too bad... As T.S. Eliot once
>wrote - "Hollow men..."
I'm curious If you've read any other Pynchon, Neal, such as Vineland
or V. Pynchon can be tough to get to grips with. In addition, you
might try reading some Nabokov, who had a profound influence on
Pynchon when he was an undergrad at Cornell. I would suggest
_Invitation to a Beheading_ and _The Real Life of Sebastian Knight_
to begin with. Go forth from there, if you like.
I'm concerned that you've been convinced by repetition that Joyce
is somehow 'valuable' to a 'well-read' individual's intellectual
development, and therefore place greater stress on him than on
other 'difficult' authors. I for one would suggest to you that
you should start with 'The Crying of Lot 49' and _V._ before
reading _GR_. In addition, you might also try _The Names_, by
Don DeLillo, which has some interesting things to say about
meaning and language, but is not as shall we say, disassociative, as
Pynchon.
I think you do both Derrida and Pynchon a disservice by not fully
understanding the _program_ of post-strucuralism. Derrida is
demonstrating the limits of language, and questioning the relevance
of text. If that seems too odd to you, or if it seems pointless,
fine, but that's what the dominant intellectual culture said
of Dada and Surrealism in its day, not to mention Cubism. In addition,
a reasonable grounding in linguistics is useful brfore approaching
Derrida or Barthes, or even Pynchon. Levi-Strauss and Saussere are
good to get some background on why we have deconstruction now, and
where some of its (admittedly dense) terminology comes from.
I tend to agree with M.C. Rooney (yo, M.C.) that you are engaging
in selective anti-intellectualism. I realize, however, that many
of us do this. I myself, do not particularly care for social
psychology, but I do not therefore condemn social psychologists
as ignoramuses. Much of deconstruction is about limits and (de)
limits (not to mention _the_ limits) of language and communication.
NOTE TO ALL RAGING POST_MODS IN CA
February 21-22, UCSB, 1992:
The Future of Deconstruction: Reading Marx's _The German Ideology_
Panalists include such luminaries as Michael Roth, Hayden White
and Martin Jay. Free, open to all, rm. 1575 in the UCSB library.
Richard Carlson, you should attend!
See you all around th' nets.
CWS
>neal
Robert Hooker
Organization: Institute for the Learning Sciences
In article <91110421...@mydog.UUCP> g...@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
writes:
> I think you're a hypocrite, Neal. You used a number of
> polysyllabic words yourself -- and you spelled "polysyllabic"
> correctly, too. There are people around here who would never
> have made _that_ mistake.
Results from Flesh Reading ease scores Neal from Apple vs. CurGor + n.
(These are real scores)
Neal's writing
Flesch Reading Ease Score 84.4 percentile (very easy)
Syllables per word 1.33
Grade Level 5
Sample CurGor + n writing, including above response
Flesh Reading Ease Score 70.9 percentile (easy)
Syllable per word 1.53
Grade Level 7
CURGOR + N has more "polysyllabic" words and is less readable then
Neal!!!!!!!!
The above results are true, Clearly only 70.1% of the people can
understand CurGor + n well enough to read it, while Neal can be read by
85%. Clearly CurGor + n is more exclusionary.
Proving once again that to get the right answer negate CurGor + n!!!!!!!
Curt Sampson
hoo...@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Robert Hooker) writes:
> Results from Flesh Reading ease scores Neal from Apple vs. CurGor + n.
> (These are real scores)
>
> Neal's writing
>
> Flesch Reading Ease Score 84.4 percentile (very easy)
> Syllables per word 1.33
> Grade Level 5
>
> Sample CurGor + n writing, including above response
>
> Flesh Reading Ease Score 70.9 percentile (easy)
> Syllable per word 1.53
> Grade Level 7
>
> CURGOR + N has more "polysyllabic" words and is less readable then
> Neal!!!!!!!!
>
> The above results are true, Clearly only 70.1% of the people can
> understand CurGor + n well enough to read it, while Neal can be read by
> 85%. Clearly CurGor + n is more exclusionary.
>
> Proving once again that to get the right answer negate CurGor + n!!!!!!!
Ah, very interesting. Let's run our little style program on Robert's
output and see what we get, shall we?
> readability grades:
> (Kincaid) 12.1 (auto) 11.4 (Coleman-Liau) 9.4 (Flesch) 13.1 (49.3)
Hmmm...it seems that with a Flesch score of 49.3, Robert is by far the
most exclusionary of us all.
Oops! But Robert used the "Flesh" test on CurGor+n. I guess that
invalidates the whole thing...
cjs
--
| "The clever and astute among the population had
Curt Sampson | already anticipated the current lunacy, and had
cu...@cynic.uucp | already taken appropriate measures, laughing
cu...@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca | cynically, like reprieved mass murderers..."
Neal Johnson
>In article <59...@apple.Apple.COM> n...@Apple.COM (Neal Johnson) writes:
>
>>Gravity's Rainbow... Tried to read it a number of times... You know,
>>underneath all that difficulty I never had the feeling that the effort
>>was worth it. That there was nothing there to be found. If that is his
>>point than it seems to be an awful lot of work to say nothing. I have
>>read Finnegans Wake twice. I maybe understood 10 - 15 %. But I know
>>that beneath all that difficulty lies gold. It was and still is worth the
>>effort. Joyce choose his method to show how rich the world is in meaning,
>>how even the tiniest word is a cosmos to explore. Derrida, Pynchon, who
>>cares... Their world is sans meaning. Too bad... As T.S. Eliot once
>>wrote - "Hollow men..."
>
>I'm curious If you've read any other Pynchon, Neal, such as Vineland
>or V. Pynchon can be tough to get to grips with. In addition, you
>might try reading some Nabokov, who had a profound influence on
>Pynchon when he was an undergrad at Cornell. I would suggest
>_Invitation to a Beheading_ and _The Real Life of Sebastian Knight_
>to begin with. Go forth from there, if you like.
I had a roommate at UCSB (!!) who was a raving Pynchon fan. I tried
to read "V" but other than the chapter about hunting alligators in
the sewers of NYC, the book failed to hold my interest. I read "Lolita"
mainly to pique my purient interests. I did enjoy that book. "Difficult"
books are not the issue - the issue lies in whether or not
difficulty = value
difficulty = profundity
etc. = etc.
Pynchon himself seems to thrive on enigma - who is he, where is he, what
is he trying to say...
>
>I'm concerned that you've been convinced by repetition that Joyce
>is somehow 'valuable' to a 'well-read' individual's intellectual
>development, and therefore place greater stress on him than on
>other 'difficult' authors. I for one would suggest to you that
>you should start with 'The Crying of Lot 49' and _V._ before
>reading _GR_. In addition, you might also try _The Names_, by
>Don DeLillo, which has some interesting things to say about
>meaning and language, but is not as shall we say, disassociative, as
>Pynchon.
"Convinced by repetition?" What is that suppossed to mean. I started
reading Joyce - FW as a sophomore in high school - and I didn't
understand it then, nor did I know it was "great" literature. It just
looked like a whole lot of fun. I have read "White Noise" by DeLillo
and found it ok but it ain't great literature. People like Pynchon and
DeLillo will not be read 50 - 100 years from now, unlike Joyce and
Nabakov, because they do not have anything universal to say, they are
enmired in their context - historical, intellectual, and textual.
By the way, would you please define "disassociative" for me...
>
>I think you do both Derrida and Pynchon a disservice by not fully
>understanding the _program_ of post-strucuralism. Derrida is
>demonstrating the limits of language, and questioning the relevance
>of text. If that seems too odd to you, or if it seems pointless,
>fine, but that's what the dominant intellectual culture said
>of Dada and Surrealism in its day, not to mention Cubism. In addition,
>a reasonable grounding in linguistics is useful brfore approaching
>Derrida or Barthes, or even Pynchon. Levi-Strauss and Saussere are
>good to get some background on why we have deconstruction now, and
>where some of its (admittedly dense) terminology comes from.
Talk about circular reasoning... "This text is irrelevant."
Dada & Surrealism were seen as pointless? THEY COULD CAUSE RIOTS! Is
that pointless or irrelevant. Can PoMo cause riots? I doubt it... It
seems to be more of an insular, academic, circle-jerk.
Oh by the way, I have read Levi-Strauss and Saussere as part of a
Structuralism class at UCSB. Structuralism seemed to be as ad hoc of
a interpretive system as de-constructivism.
As to dense terminology, I still hold that this style of writing is
based on the fallacy in equating hard to understand prose with hard
to understand concepts with profundity. This evil tendency started with
Kant, was repeated by Hegel, and was adopted as the dominant form of
"serious" philosophical writing - vide Sartre with his "Being and
Nothingness." I prefer Nietzsche with his pure, clear, Alpine air.
>
>I tend to agree with M.C. Rooney (yo, M.C.) that you are engaging
>in selective anti-intellectualism. I realize, however, that many
>of us do this. I myself, do not particularly care for social
>psychology, but I do not therefore condemn social psychologists
>as ignoramuses. Much of deconstruction is about limits and (de)
>limits (not to mention _the_ limits) of language and communication.
You believe that they have something to say. I believe that it is
a passing fad, promulgated by people untrained in philosophy -
philosophy of language, epistomology, etc. - as a philosophy. To say
that this particular intellectual is full of shit, is not to be
anti-intellectual. Instead it is merely expressing an opinion about
the contents of that intellectual's mind and writings. Anyone who
has done any serious thinking about language, meaning, intention,
semantics, etc. knows that there are limits to language and
communication. B.F.D. To throw it in someone's face by choosing a
particularly obtuse and purposefully rococo writing style, is a little
trite so say the least.
I repeat, the emperor has no clothes. Until you can demonstrate without
resorting to their word games, that he in fact is clothed, then I will
hold to my opinion. If you can't demonstrate it outside their context,
then I feel that the ontological claims they seem to make are in fact
false and are not verified by the "real world."
Edith Jeffreys
Is universiality the only measure of a great work? Doesn't
that standard tend to eliminate works by or about minorities
or women (it's hard for me to call women a minority) from
consideration as a great work?
I don't really think postmodernism is about great works
anyway. I think it is beyond great works. I think it
is nihilistic about the role of literature in the line of
time.
I'm just talking off the top of my head. I don't like
the word universiality applied to literature. It has been
used for centuries to discount the value of literature
written by people not at the top of the social scale.
--
Edie Jeffreys The fact is, no matter how closely I study it
SAS Institute, Inc. No matter how I take it apart
SAS Circle, Cary, NC No matter how i break it down
(919)677-8000 x6946 It remains consistent. -- Belew
Jason M. Roth
>that standard tend to eliminate works by or about minorities
>or women (it's hard for me to call women a minority) from
>consideration as a great work?
Not at all; no more than the ODYSSEY is universal only to wandering
Greek kings of small islands who are trying to return from a long war
fought over a woman. The whole point of universality is that it uses a
microcosm to illustrate the macrocosm. Thus, a book about a black woman
who is the victim of incest can easily be universal, if the reader is
permitted to feel ties to the woman and her suffering, and perhaps gain
a little insight into people in general.
This is the whole trouble w/ the PC movement to ban Western Civ courses.
They somehow believe that ONLY white males can identify w/ the Great
Thinkers (why I, a product of the 20th Cent. should be THAT much closer
to Plato than my sister or my black roommate, I can't imagine).
Also, I don't know that universality is an absolute standard; it's
surely important, and w/o it a book can have only a limited audience,
but sometimes a well-written amplification of an individual's feelings
can be a great work. On the other hand, perhaps well-written implies a
link is greated to the reader, and thus universality. The trouble w/
modern scholarship and art, IMHO, is overemphasis on this type of work,
to the point where only the artist can make sense of the work, and
everyone else nods dumbly.
Jason Roth
Richard Carlson
> NOTE TO ALL RAGING POST_MODS IN CA
>
>
> February 21-22, UCSB, 1992:
>
> The Future of Deconstruction: Reading Marx's _The German Ideology_
>
> Panalists include such luminaries as Michael Roth, Hayden White
> and Martin Jay. Free, open to all, rm. 1575 in the UCSB library.
>
> Richard Carlson, you should attend!
I wish I could, but unfortunately I live in Georgia. There is
another problem with that workshop. It is going to have political
types discussing a philosophical movement which itself developed,
at least in America, within the context of humanistic and
literary, as opposed to scientific, thought.
There will be interesting things going on. "Games" of various
kinds. Some "Marxists" will want to salvage Marx by turning him
into a J.S. Mill-type liberal by jettisoning the dialectic, which
they see as Hegelian, Germanic, foreign, and authoritarian. Others
will want to save Marx by emphasizing the dialectic as a
provisional means of understanding (rather than changing) society.
Do you think there will be any AI-type computer scientists there
with an interest in formalizing either Marx or deconstruction?
> I think you do both Derrida and Pynchon a disservice by not fully
> understanding the _program_ of post-strucuralism. Derrida is
> demonstrating the limits of language, and questioning the relevance
> of text. If that seems too odd to you, or if it seems pointless,
> fine, but that's what the dominant intellectual culture said
> of Dada and Surrealism in its day, not to mention Cubism. In addition,
> a reasonable grounding in linguistics is useful brfore approaching
> Derrida or Barthes, or even Pynchon. Levi-Strauss and Saussere are
> good to get some background on why we have deconstruction now, and
> where some of its (admittedly dense) terminology comes from.
I have started a thread on semiotics in the comp.ai.philosophy
newsgroup. Most of what is being said there is as relevant to
post-structuralism as to semiotics (since semiotics is part of the
structuralism which post-structuralism is said to be beyond).
I find "conceptual" or "interpretive" (rhetorical?) discourse fun
and it can keep a person occupied pleasantly enough, but pretty
soon you want to cast it all in an explicit form that can be
either empirically tested or logically refuted.
--
Richard Carlson | r...@depsych.gwinnett.com
Midtown Medical Center | gatech!emory!gwinnett!depsych!rc
Atlanta, Georgia |
(404) 881-6877 |
Gordon Fitch
| Is universiality the only measure of a great work? ...
That depends on what you mean by "great." Sometimes it simply
means "very good [in somebody's private opinion]" but in such
phrases as "the Great Books" or "a great work" it denotes
connection to political power. Since few books exert political
power on their own, greatness means attachment to, and importance
within, the value system of the dominant class. Such classes
usually make univeral claims for at least their view of things,
and within such a value system a truly "great" work must also be
"universal."
| Doesn't
| that standard tend to eliminate works by or about minorities
| or women (it's hard for me to call women a minority) from
| consideration as a great work? ... I don't like
| the word universiality applied to literature. It has been
| used for centuries to discount the value of literature
| written by people not at the top of the social scale.
At least in America, the bourgeoisie has been struggling with the
problem of incorporating more non-male, non-European elements
into both its population (at least at the lower levels of
staffing) and its collection of valued artifacts. On the other
hand, its basic structure (without which it would not exist)
remains -- must remain -- in place. Consequently, claims for
"universality" will continue to be made, even if a book written
in Kreyol by a Haitian woman somehow makes it into the canon.
--
Gordon Fitch * ...!panix.com!mydog!gcf
Bx 1238 Bowling Green Station / NYC 10274
Christopher Wade Skinner
Sorry you can't make the trip, Richard. I rather think seeing
Hayden White in the flesh would be worth it, but then, I'm
already here!
Actually, the other bit of a previous post that you quoted was
directed at someone who seemed to have no familiarity with the
topic.
Later
CWS