What's wrong with reason?
Andrew Sharaf
here make sense. Will someone explain (without contradicting himself)
the postmodern grudge against plain old English sentences?
Thanks,
Andy Sharaf
Clayton Gillespie
poetry or other aesthetic word-play, but so what? What's wrong with that?
- Clayton Gillespie
Electra Software & Consulting
cla...@delphi.com
Andy Perry
Sharaf) wrote:
I wrote a description of the class I taught this past semester in "plain
old English sentences." I thought it necessary, since the class was open
to (and partially aimed at) frosh with no theory background whatsoever.
(The class was called "Narrative Experiments in Film," by the way.)
Anyway, what I discovered (I already sort of knew it, but this drove the
point home quite forcefully) is that when I talk about the issues I care
about in "plain old English sentences," I sound like a humanist. Guess
what? I'm not a humanist. And, I think I write well enough to assert
that, based on my experience, sounding like one is unavoidable if I use an
utterly "user-friendly" discourse. So, my grudge is that avoiding jargon
misrepresents my position on the stuff I'm talking about.
That said, I'd like to ask why it is that you would expect the posters
here to make more sense to you than, say,
comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior or bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts, or
sci.econ.research. (I assume at least one of those groups is difficult
for you to understand, if not all three.)
--
Andy Perry "This life has been a test.
Brown University Had this been an actual life,
Dept of English you would have received instructions
Andrew...@Brown.edu OR on where to go and what to do."
st00...@Brownvm.bitnet -- Angela Chase
Ralph Dumain
Russell Turpin
In article <Andrew_Perry-1...@cis-ts3-slip2.cis.brown.edu>,
Andy Perry <Andrew...@Brown.edu> wrote:
> Anyway, what I discovered ... is that when I talk about the issues I
> experience, sounding like one is unavoidable if I use an utterly
> "user-friendly" discourse. So, my grudge is that avoiding jargon
> misrepresents my position on the stuff I'm talking about.
>
> That said, I'd like to ask why it is that you would expect
> the posters here to make more sense to you than, say,
> comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior or
I am not Perry's previous respondent, but perhaps he will forgive
me for interjecting a related question. What continues to puzzle
me about pomo discourse is that *after* attempting to figure out
the terminology and *after* reading some of the sources, I find
very little there to justify all the jargon, and indeed, all the
writing.
Let me amplify my puzzlement through an anology. I know a little
bit about the field of formal logic, which is full of jargon such
as "omega-consistent," "semantically complete," and "countable
model." But if a freshman student wants to know what formal
logic is about, I can explain in plain English some example
problems that it studies and the results that it has yielded.
Now, admittedly, this doesn't really give a newcomer a grasp of
what motivates the study of formal logic, because to do that, one
has to have some history. Nonetheless, it is something. The
jargon, as with all specialized jargon, was developed merely to
facilitate the study of the problems concerned.
The same can be done for Mac programming or economics research.
But what about pomo lit crit? I have yet to see this. Or at
least, when the problems are explained, I want to believe that
there is something more there, because they seem so simple that I
cannot believe the amount of theory and jargon that has been
built up around them. So, for example, were I able to sign a
post so that my signature was reproduced on your screen, yes, of
course, that reproduction on your screen *is* my signature (in
one sense), and it is not *my* signature (in another sense). And
if I then speak of my signature at the end of the post (where?
there!), well yes (of course!) the meaning of "there" depends
heavily on the context, and may be multiplied in the act of
posting.
So what am I missing?
Russell
--
"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if the universities stifle writers.
My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."
-- Flannery O'Connor
Andy Perry
<rdu...@igc.apc.org> wrote:
> And what's wrong with being a humanist, asshole?
Is there any other kind?
(Oh, there was a comma there, wasn't there?)
Russell Turpin
In article <APC&1'0'4e0a5549'8...@igc.apc.org>, Ralph Dumain
<rdu...@igc.apc.org> wrote:
>> And what's wrong with being a humanist, asshole?
In article <Andrew_Perry-1...@tonto-slip12.cis.brown.edu>,
Andy Perry <Andrew...@Brown.edu> wrote:
> Is there any other kind?
Like cowboy hats and hemorrhoids, right? Sooner or later,
every asshole has one.
Lois Shawver
(complaining that postmodern jargon does not seem very exciting,
Russell Turpin (tur...@cs.utexas.edu) asked:
: So what am I missing?
This is a little like asking what piece is missing from a puzzle
without showing us the puzzle.
What is your mindset? You have a philosophical background, apparently.
Do you find early or late Wittgenstein compelling? Who do you find having
something that you found worth reading?
..Lois
Russell Turpin
In article <3cokpa$e...@crl2.crl.com>, Lois Shawver <rath...@crl.com> wrote:
> Do you find early or late Wittgenstein compelling? ...
Well, neither. The Tractacus is far too -- er, Teutonic --
for my tastes. I never could push my way through it. There
are snippets from the colored books that I found interesting.
My philosophical background is much more from the analytic
tradition: Quine, Putnam, Kripke, etc.
> ... Who do you find having something that you found worth
> reading?
Does "Skinny Legs and All" count?
-*----
I am not sure why it should matter all that much what my
philosophic background is. Obviously, you have to know
*something* about your audience. But we are both college
educated, 20th century, Americans. Given this, can you not
give a description of representative problems that pomo crit
addresses?
Let me give an example. Suppose a freshman asks me what
problem Quine addressed in his famous essay on the dogmas
of empiricism. My explanation might go as follows:
Suppose you are studying ducks and you read in a book
that duck eggs hatch 47 days after they are layed.
You can test this claim by *observation*, i.e.,
watch a duck lay an egg and then count the days until
it hatches. This leads to a simple notion about how
ideas relate to experience: some *claims* are just a
description of actual or possible *observation*. This
notion has been very important to many people's
understanding of science. Indeed, you probably learned
it in junior high: observe, theorize, test ... or some
such nonsense.
There are problems with this notion. Suppose a student
(or colleague) observes a duckling hatch in a mere 45 days.
Has the student then disproved the claim about 47-day
incubation? Well ... the student might instead think
he missed the day when the egg was first laid, or that
he is supposed to measure hatching by full emergence as
opposed to just seeing the bill, or that this 47 days
is meant to be an average, or to only apply at certain
temperatures, or only for mallards. And the student
might then change how he observes, until the 47 day
incubation is "observed." But does *this* say something
about the claim, or does it say something about the
lengths to which students will go to get the "right"
answer? And what do such examples say about our notion
that some claims merely describe observations? How
*does* language describe observation?
Quine was much concerned with this latter issue.
Now, the student might *still* think that there is not much
meat to this issue. (And sometimes I am inclined to agree.)
Nonetheless, the problem is not all that hard to describe.
And while the description would puzzle many people, I think
it is not beyond most college-educated members of our own
culture.
Your turn.
Lois Shawver
Giving us a summary of Quine's theory of observation language and then said:
: Your turn.
Postmodernism is not, of course, the writing of a single author, and the
term has been used broadly and somewhat inconsistently. Moreover, there is
some disagreement about what it really is.
But I like to use the term to represent those thinkers who are highly
conscious of the way in which our picture of the way the world is is
highly structured by such things as the metaphors that happened to have
been absorbed in our language as well economic and cultural issues.
Somewhere in this newsgroup I have a poem I wrote called the pomo poodle.
The poem referred to the poodle anthorpomorphically as having a
postmodern awareness. Always before the poodle thought that he needed to
have a certain poodle traditional cut. Becoming postmodern, the poodle
realized this was not true and considered other cuts. All who were aware
they could choose other cuts 'were postmodern.' This would include some
who continued to want a traditional cut but also some who wanted
radically unconventional cuts. The metaphorical analogies might include
things like male female gender roles. It would also include the radical
archetecture that combines older styles with newer styles. It would
include Jacques Lacan, the psychoanalyst, deciding that the 1 hour
session should be any length at all that fit the content of the session.
On the other hand, I think it would be possible for a person to very
conventional, right wing, or left wing, and be postmodern in the sense I
am using the term.
Part of the postmodern understanding, however, is that abstract language
is limited in illuminating the way our minds work. It is critical of
logical positivism's verfication principal and the descriptive model of
language a la Russell. I agree with this criticism.
And so I, as a postmodern, often prefer to resort to more experimental
ways of talking, especially in this newsgroup. It seems to me that most
people here understand what I'm doing, if not at first, at least
eventually. The point is to try to find a way to express and develop some
of the insights that seem inherent, although difficult, in the writings of
the postmodern thinkers. I would include Wittgenstein in that group, as
would Lyotard. Others would think that was an anachronism (but what could
be more postmodern?)
These 'insights' include 'deconstructions' of well accepted ideas such as
the subject/object or author/reader deconstruction. If you're really
interested in this, and not just here to flame the obstruse or
unintelligible jargon, you'll probably get a variety of intelligible
sentences that will help you feel more at home here.
..Lois Shawver
Gordon Fitch
| Russell Turpin (tur...@cs.utexas.edu) wrote:
|
| Giving us a summary of Quine's theory of observation language and then said:
|
| : Your turn.
|
| Postmodernism is not, of course, the writing of a single author, and the
| term has been used broadly and somewhat inconsistently. Moreover, there is
-- and also whether it exists, for any practical meaning of
the word "exists."
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
Omar Haneef '96
> Cris here. :)
> So we move to a written work:
> John looked across the emerald fields and realized
> he would never see his home again. He didn't feel
> sad about that, although he felt sad about not
> feeling sad. He ought to be missing them already.
> He ought to be thinking of letters he'd write, and
> adventures he'd describe. Instead, he felt empty
> and lost here; his future was out there, over the
> ocean, marching to the beat of drums. He was
> without time, neither in the past of his home nor
> yet in the future of his dreams. As he turned to
> walk to the station, he felt the tears burn on
> his cheeks. And he'd promised himself he wouldn't
> cry. Another promise broken.
> We can talk about this little vignette in any number of ways.
> We can assess the quality of the writing, or the imagery, or
> the underlying meanings, or how it makes you feel. We can
> guess at what comes next, or what came before, or just enjoy
> what is. We can debate whether the experience you had in
> reading it is a function of the author's experience in writing
> it, or of the words themselves, or of your own past experiences,
> or whether we can even meaningfully distinguish between these
> factors. We can question whether this work is "real" in that
> it evokes a real experience, or whether it is "real" in that
> it is based on a real event, or whether -- even if its basis
> lies in the writer's imagination -- that imagination *itself*
> has constructed an alternative reality for the work. Or
> whether yours did.
> That previous paragraph was discussing *processes* ... how we
> go about reading, criticizing, discussing. And that's what
> postmodernism does: challenge our assumptions about process.
> Hope this helps.
> Cris
Cris, that was great! I really enjoyed this example immensely (its the
literature critic in me rearing itsugly head) and yes I think this is
a useful way about thinking about critical debates today (and maybe if I
knew what postmodernism meant I could judge it postmodern). I would just
like to add that postmodernism is very self-conscious of what it is doing,
process-oriented as you say, so that when a "true pomo" starts looking at
himself then he immediately starts looking at himself looking at himself and
then starts looking at himself looking at himself looking at himself etc and
then, this is where it gets really crazy, starts noticing how the way he
looks at himself repeatedly forms a pattern and then he starts looking at
the way he keeps looking at himself looking at himself.
To put it in your terms, a "tru pomo" will suddenly generate a
debate about the process of the process, that is how we decide how we should
determine the rules and then....oh here's an example:
We have the game of football and decide its not very good so we set
up a committee to decide new rules.
Then the true pomo is us decides to set up another committee to
determine how the first committee should be selected, decide new rules etc.
Then a third committee for the second etc.
Now it gets even wierder! We now start looking at how we start
setting up committees and set up a committee to start looking at our process
of committee setting up (the first self-conscious and truly pomo committee)
and we do this sort of thing forever.
One criticsim of pomo is that its just like beauracracy (and one
criticism of me is that I never learnt to spell worth nuts because I got the
kompyuter too doo itt fer me).
-Omar Haneef
Lois Shawver
[postmodernism]
...you might think of
: it as discussing your favorite sport or game
: in terms of
: what the rules *ought* to be,
: rather than merely how to best take advantage of the existing rules to
: reach the desired outcome.
or even better
what we *want* the rules to be
in this new game
Lois Shawver
: NS Brown (nsb...@zeus.IntNet.net) wrote:
: Cris, that was great! I really enjoyed this example
me, too.
..Lois
Andy Perry
(PAN...@DELPHI.COM) wrote:
> Books like Best and Kellner's Postmodern Theory are able to easily
> explain most postmodernist ideas without relying on pm jargon.
> Yes, it can be done.
I'm slightly leary, but I'll take your word for it.
Actually, there are some cool postmodern theorists/critics out there who
do good work sans jargon. Russell might check out James Calderwood's book
on Hamlet (_To Be and Not to Be_) for an example of a postmodern approach
in action. I'll be replying more to him at length once I get some more
work done.
Oh, and Ralph, why don't you go steal Oprah's paycheck before you pick on
me, okay?
jle...@utdallas.edu
> I am not Perry's previous respondent, but perhaps he will forgive
> me for interjecting a related question. What continues to puzzle
> me about pomo discourse is that *after* attempting to figure out
> the terminology and *after* reading some of the sources, I find
> very little there to justify all the jargon, and indeed, all the
> writing.
> [lines deleted] The
> jargon, as with all specialized jargon, was developed merely to
> facilitate the study of the problems concerned.
>
> The same can be done for Mac programming or economics research.
>
> But what about pomo lit crit? I have yet to see this.
> [lines deleted]
You can also say the same for subspecialities in the "hard" sciences:
the jargon employed is a set of terms whose connotations are limited
to certain meanings agreed upon by the community. This is completely
difference in literature where there is extensive interplay among words
which can and will be given "new" connotations and "meanings." Check the
OED or ask any philogist.
Another important point is that pomo lit crit is _not_ carried out under
the aegis of traditional philosophic premises. It questions the very
assumptions that we typically take for granted. Its jargon reflects this.
> So what am I missing?
Literary criticism is my secondary field, my primary could be called
post-modern philosophy, so I cannot be of much assitance (I have only
started studying Derrida during this last year.) However, I do have two
suggestions:
1). Check out Barbara Johnson's deconstruction of Melville's short
story "Billy Budd": it was orginally published as a journal article and
was later incorporated as a chapter in a book: it's partial title:
"Melville's Fist". (Some cite it an exemplar of deconstructing a text.)
2). Read _On Deconstruction_ by Jonathan Culler which attempts to 'explain'
Derrida's project to English professors who haven't studied him. It's
rather clear, although I'm not sure how it was recieved within the pomo
lit community. Nonetheless, it may give you some idea of what Derrida is
trying to accomplish.
--
============================================================================
James L Elson: |<o When you stare into the abyss too long o>|
School of Arts & Humanities |<o the abyss stares back into you. o>|
University of Texas-Dallas | --Nietzsche-- |
jle...@utdallas.edu
> Common sense, for most people, demands that one's "interpretations" fit
> the "facts" rather than the other way around.
>
Some of the time, but not all the time. But in another sense, your point
is 'correct'. What are typically considerated to be "facts" reflect the
world in which one lives. This 'world' is partially determined/constructed
by ones experiences, language, and culture. As an illustration, consider
a take-off of your sailing analogy: let's suppose that sailors are afraid to
leave sight of the coast: fear of sea-monsters or being lost or whatever.
Let's further suppose that a captain has had experiences which 'prove' that
one can leave sight of the mainland and still come home. Question: how can
he get them to follow his/her orders? For them, leaving sight of the main-
land is interepted as certain death: ships which do so are never heard from
again.
> But when, for example, an abused child considers what she believes to be
> the obvious "facts" (that she is being abused and all parents act to
> further their children's best long term interests) she draws the only
> possible conclusion: the abuse is her own fault.
This also occurs when the parents of young children get divorced (a more
preferrable example since it is not as emotionally charged as child abuse.)
> First mate:
> "To avoid the icebergs we had to go from X to Y. And from Y to Z. We
> are now at the edge of the chart. I suggest we plot back onto the map,
> to P. P is shallow and we'll be roughed up as usual but it is a sure
> thing."
> Captain:
> "No. X was 7, Y was 11, and Z is 13. P does not explain *why* this
> sequence is as it is. I have a hunch that we are facing a prime number
> sequence. That would make 17 the next opening. Chart for Q. If I am
> right we will never have to take that annoying P route again."
> Crew:
> "Uncharted waters? We're not going anywhere!"
This is somewhat caricaturist, you might say it's an ontological confusion
of theory with practice. However, this is all hypothetical, this captain
may have 'reason' to believe that the world in which he lives in organized
in such a way as to indicate that 17 would be the next opening. (This point
is unaddressed in your example.) If this is the case in this hypothetical
world, the captain might need to explain this to the first mate. On the
other hand, if its rule are traditionally military, the captain may not
feel inclined to do so; simply order it carried out.
However, I'm quibbling. I believe your point is that you do not see how
post-modern discourse relates to "real" world experience. This is an
area that needs to be addressed more thoroughly than it has been in the
past. Yet, this question is somewhat outside the domain of literary
criticism, unless one's approach is interdisciplinary.
jle...@utdallas.edu
> Books like Best and Kellner's Postmodern Theory are able to easily
> explain most postmodernist ideas without relying on pm jargon.
> Yes, it can be done.
Agreed. BTW, I haven't read this book. Which authors do they focus upon?
jle...@utdallas.edu
> The fact that nobody gave a serious response to Turpin's question is
> another magnificent display of intellectual bankruptcy.
I suggest that you might consider waiting a little longer to see if there
are additional replies. It may take a while to determine what form of an
answer is needed to adequately address the questions behind the question.
> Now, tell me, dear professors, what justifies you collecting your
> paychecks. If I snitch your next check, I'll just say: the author died.
What justifies the paycheck of any theorist? (If they get one; hisortically
some of the best have not had academic positions.)
jle...@utdallas.edu
> But what does this have to do with the themes (if I may call them
> such) that seem distinctly postmodern? For example, what does it
> have to do with the alleged epistemological implications of
> Derrida, Lyotard or even Rorty?
>
> Let me ask this question another way. Why should a philosopher
> or a historican be concerned with postmodernism.
Post-modernism does not necessarily begin with Derrida. Like Foucault,
he was influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Like Gianni Vattimo, I
consider that post-modernism can be said to have begun between 1874 and
1878, the publication date of Nietzsche's _Human, All Too Human_.
For Vattimo, modernity "is defined [as] the era of overcoming and of the
new which rapidly grows old and is immediately replaced by something
still newer, in an unstoppable movement that discourages all creativity
even as it demands creativity and defines the latter as the sole possible
form of life" (_The End of Modernity_, trans. JR Synder, 1988, p. 166.)
I completely concur with Vattimo in this instance. Post-modernism questions
the notion of "overcoming" the "errors" of the past in hopes of getting
closer to apprehending the "Truth". As you can see, this questions the
foundational premises of Western philosophy since at least Parmenides.
I'll stop at this point since I suspect that this will generate several
questions.
jle...@utdallas.edu
> Postmodernism has been described as being definable in terms of three
> central theses. (I'm getting this from a talk Seyla Ben Habib gave
> several years ago at Bryn Mawr. I believe she got the theses from someone
> else, but I don't remember who at the moment.) Here they are:
>
> 1) The Thesis of the Death of Man: [....]
> 2) The Thesis of the Death of History: [....]
> 3) The Thesis of the Death of Morality: [....]
In _Situating the Self_ (Routledge, 1992), she attributes these to a book
by Jane Flax, _Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalaysis, Feminism and
Postmodernism in the Contemporary West_.
> It is not in the least clear that they are particularly new, or can
> distinctively be related to pomo-ness. I could certainly come up with
> famous passages from Shakespeare that seem to express very similar
> sentiments (and I'm not talking about "reading against the grain" here).
> And I am NOT one of those who sees any use in the term "postmodern"
> whatsoever if it can be applied equally well to both Shakespeare and
> Barthelme.
I would go as far as saying that Benhabib entirely misses the point of
post-modernism by focusing upon these theses. But Harvard disagrees:
they offered her a job. But in all fairness, I do recall that she made
some good point in her book.
Gordon Fitch
| The fact that nobody gave a serious response to Turpin's question is another
| your next check, I'll just say: the author died.
I like the idea of intellectual bankruptcy. Suppose I were
a "great" "postmodern" "'"author"'" and declared intellectual
bankruptcy. Then, when some venemous professorial creep
dared to write "Fitch owes a great, but unacknowledged,
intellectual debt to Vico through the mediation of the early
work of Elvis Presley," I could yell, "Not me, sucker! I'm
clean! I don't owe a goddamned _footnote_! Nyaaaah-ha-har,
cough, wheeze!" while waving my Chapter 11 or whatever they
give you in his face. Cool, hey? An idea whose time has
come.
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
PAN...@news.delphi.com
>PAN...@DELPHI.COM (PAN...@news.delphi.com) wrote:
>> Books like Best and Kellner's Postmodern Theory are able to easily
>> explain most postmodernist ideas without relying on pm jargon.
>> Yes, it can be done.
>Agreed. BTW, I haven't read this book. Which authors do they focus upon?
Foucault, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Jameson, Laclau and Mouffe.
Pandit
Russell Turpin
In article <3d038e$3...@crl9.crl.com>, Lois Shawver <rath...@crl.com> wrote:
> Yes, but here in postmodernism, we can take of Nietzsche what
> we like and throw the rest back.
I don't think people waited for postmodernism to take of
thinkers what they thought was valuable, and leave the
rest behind.
jle...@utdallas.edu
> Andy Perry (Andrew...@Brown.edu) wrote:
> : More to the point, pomo in this context is pretty unenthusiastic about
> : Nietzsche. Postmodern philosophy has a pretty hard time believing that
> : there could ever be such thing as self-affirmation. Master morality, as a
> : feeling of the value inherent in the self with no reference to the other,
> : is simply illusory as far as pomo is concerned.
> : So much for the attempt to appropriate Nietzsche easily into any label or
> : project...
> : --
> Yes, but here in postmodernism, we can take of Nietzsche what we like and
> throw the rest back.
Agreed!
PAN...@news.delphi.com
>In article <3cqmi6$1...@news2.delphi.com>,
>PAN...@DELPHI.COM <PAN...@news.delphi.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>Books like Best and Kellner's Postmodern Theory are able to easily
>>explain most postmodernist ideas without relying on pm jargon.
>>Yes, it can be done.
>>
>>Pandit
>>
>Of course it can be done -- that's perfectly obvious. Variations on _The
>Compleat Idiot's Guide to Postmodernism_ have been a mainstay of academic
>publishing for years. The question is whether it can be done with even a
>modicum of intelligence. Best and Kellner are evidence to the contrary.
>Despite its rather grand title, _Postmodern Theory_ doesn't address either
>Barthes or Derrida, and the critics that it does include receive uneven
>treatment. So much for the notion that it explains most of postmodernism.
>The "explanations" that Best and Kellner provide are nothing more than
>simple-minded, neo-Marxist mudslinging. I could go into detail, but for
>now a few examples may suffice: Deleuze and Guattari "exhibit a paranoid
>phobia of signification and rationality," while Horkheimer and Adorno are
>guilty of "short-circuiting Marx" (for having the audacity to describe
>late capitalism as "stable and self-reproducing"). Foucault earns
>brownie-points for discussing "power" in so many words, but loses them
>for not equipping his criticism with "positive content" or a "normative
>grounding." Postmodernism in general is a "fad," a "frenzy," and exhibits
>a "failure of nerve" -- all because it departs from the tried-and-true
You forget to mention that before the critique of postmodernism
which you are quoting from , they carefully summarize the arguemnts
and major works of each of the authors included, without commenting much
upon them.
>principles of Marxism (as Best and Kellner understand them).
>These fits of pique are easily the best part of the book -- most of it is
>a boring slog. I agree that it's easy to digest, but that's hardly enough
>to give it merit. (It's always easier to read the Cliff Notes, after all.)
Its a hell of a lot less boring than reading the longwinded authors
they're summarizing...
>Whether or not they explain anything about post-modernism, Best and
>Kellner do manange to avoid some of its vocabulary. (They use more than
>you seem to realize, but I don't want to quibble.) Nonetheless, they're
>perfectly content to substitute their own brand of jargon. What makes
>terms like "techno-capitalism," "commodification," "praxis," "hegemony,"
>and "dialectical" more acceptable to you?
Did I ever say they were acceptable? Do I ever use them?
What about the tin ear that
>makes Best and Kellner believe that words like "multiperspectivism" and
>"subjectification" add meaning and beauty to their writing? And what
>about the jargon of everyday language? Best and Kellner constantly invoke
>terms like "normative" and "adequate" as if they're a magic formula that
>only needs to be recited in order to work its charm. I hope I don't have
>to explain why "adequately conceptualizing the present historical moment"
>is a problematic idea.
Personally, I find the constant use of the word "problematic"
somewhat problematic, but hey, pomo's have to say someting don't they?
Unfortuntately, no one ever explained it to Best
>or Kellner, and they've never been able to figure it out for themselves.
>That's why they don't have any hope of "explaining" postmodernism, except
>to readers who are clueless enough to take their work as a guide.
OK. I'll tell my clueless professors who run the Social THeory program
at the University I attend that they're clueless to use this work
as a guide. Give me a break.
>The idea of using a "comprehensible" book like _Postmodern Theory_ to
>understand postmodernism reminds me of the old joke about a guy crawling
>around a streetlamp on his hands and knees. A passer-by asks him what
>he's doing. "Looking for my keys," he says. "Where'd you lose them?" the
>passser-by asks. "At the other end of the block," the guy answers, "but
>the light's better here."
I thought the author was dead. Apparently you want to resurecct him.
Pandit
>-- Mark Weinles
>--
>-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
>Launchpad is an experimental internet BBS. The views of its users do not
>necessarily represent those of UNC-Chapel Hill, OIT, or the SysOps.
>-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Michael Sean Rooney
Russell Turpin <tur...@cs.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
[...]
>But if a freshman student wants to know what formal
>logic is about, I can explain in plain English some example
>problems that it studies and the results that it has yielded.
>The jargon, as with all specialized jargon, was developed merely to
>facilitate the study of the problems concerned.
>
>The same can be done for Mac programming or economics research.
>
>But what about pomo lit crit? I have yet to see this. Or at
>least, when the problems are explained, I want to believe that
>there is something more there, because they seem so simple that I
>cannot believe the amount of theory and jargon that has been
>built up around them. So, for example, were I able to sign a
>post so that my signature was reproduced on your screen, yes, of
>course, that reproduction on your screen *is* my signature (in
>one sense), and it is not *my* signature (in another sense). And
>if I then speak of my signature at the end of the post (where?
>there!), well yes (of course!) the meaning of "there" depends
>heavily on the context, and may be multiplied in the act of
>posting.
The problem appears to lie with the purported
explanation -- because if this pretends to explain Derrida's
remarks on the signature (in "Signature Event Context,"
"Limited Inc," and elsewhere), it is as toothless as a
cocktail-party version of Russell's paradox. Nonetheless,
even the bewildered barber can still cut; it's merely a
matter of pressing things through.
>
>So what am I missing?
Sigh. The truth is its own reward, I suppose,
so here goes:
First, I agree that there is a poor signal:noise
ratio in much of literary criticism, "pomo" or not. However,
I do not believe that this phenomenon is by any means
peculiar to literary criticism (again, "pomo" or otherwise).
Most economic theory is worthless, or, more politely,
predicated upon presuppositions which are at best highly
suspect. But, again, this is quite possibly further
instantiation of the "90% of everything is crap" rule.
The onus of proof lies on Russell to show that litcrit
or postmodernism (whatever the hell that is) is outstanding
in this regard.
Onward to the interesting stuff: Mr. Turpin says
that
>were I able to sign a post so that my signature was reproduced
>on your screen, yes, of course, that reproduction on your screen
>*is* my signature (in one sense), and it is not *my* signature
>(in another sense).
This is like, to use an analogy (since Mr. Turpin
is so fond of them, strangely, for such a champion of clarity),
saying that the Cretan is lying (in one sense), but is also
telling the truth (in another sense). There! How absurdly
simple! You wonder why Barwise & Etchemendy went through
so much jargon -- they must've just wanted to pad their resumes.
Now, to get at the full significance of Derrida's
notion of the signature, we will have to notice what such
banalities omit -- unless of course one cannot be bothered
with anything which cannot be reduced to freshman pablum
(must we recall that the "plain" in "plain English" is
a privative?). Certainly one of the most daunting aspects
of Derrida's work is precisely its resistance to simplicity,
or ready-to-hand, detachable chunks of info-knowledge: but
insofar as JD's work grapples with some fundamental problems
(e.g., the nature of reality), such complexity should not
surprise the non-reductionists amongst us.
So no simple beginning: and this is hardly as simple
as it sounds (think about it). From Mr. Turpin's hasty
remarks, one might never guess what a signature is, or
how it works. One might have the simple impression that
it is just something whose status is largely a function
of something called "meaning" which would in turn
>depend heavily on the context, and may be multiplied in the
>act of posting.
One might never guess, for example, that signatures are often
considered to mark or secure identity, or, to use a not-too
"jargony" word, presence. Why attach a signature: well, to
be quite simple, to be distinct, to say "I am here, now",
to say "this is me", look at my clever .sig, mark my singularity,
my difference from all the rest (isn't this precisely the
idea behind making signatures look different from textbook
cursive letters, or [electronically] making a new sign out
of the sameness of ASCII characters?). In legal matters,
the signature works as a mark of presence, with a date added
if necessary, etc.
Why are there signatures? To mark presence. Okay,
why is it necessary to mark presence? Because there are
counterfeits: the proper name which identifies presence is
not proper enough, anyone can type "Michael Sean Rooney" to
the bottom of a letter, marks (of presence) get repeated
(in absence). Derrida stresses that this repetition in
absentia is not, as it might seem, an accident or deviation
from the "normal" presentations of marks, rather, the repetition
is the condition of the possibility of a present. Thus the
odd-sounding formula that there is repetition at the origin
(which, of course, upsets the received notion of origin,
and repetition too).
(That signatures should figure so prominently in
a medium where perfect copies are endless is no accident.)
But wait, some will say, the signature is "just"
a signature, "yes, of course, that reproduction on your
screen *is* my signature (in one sense), and it is not *my*
signature (in another sense)." Perhaps someone will even
say that the original signature *is* the origin (carefully
delineated, somehow, as one, unique, identifiable "sense",
as opposed to some other, derivative, abnormal [but all
the same distinguishable] sense). It's "just" context,
all the complexities and multiplications are reducible at
some level to the absurdly simple. Perhaps even reducible
to the assurance of a stimulus-meaning which tells me
(whoever that is) the difference between the two senses.
Well, this would require starting where Derrida
started, with a deconstruction of the self-present, meaning-
assigning consciousness (as found in Husserl; I refer to
_Speech and Phenomena_). But to slake the burning throats
of freshmen in our audience who demand a sound-bite philosophy,
I'll venture the following.
Where is the identity of the Quinean stimulus-
meaning? It seems that before the translation of "Gavagai",
there must be some identical stimulus ("one sense," as it were).
Such an identity must be open to the possibility of repetition
(if not, it would not be an identity), and thus also an
ideality, etc., etc. How else is the deictic determined,
but by a "*that*" which must be repeatable in absence:
hardly a moment of sensory immediacy and presence at all.
That presence is never present, or, that it is an effect
of reference (rather than sense, to use Frege's distinction)
-- yes, this is so simple, I cannot believe the jargon
that has built up around it, viz., everything.
All of this is not to say that presence is a
myth, or a hoax, or something to be "dissolved", from
which we could somehow move on: Derrida is "just" showing
how things are, how things (like signatures) operate.
And this is just a poor summary, a "plain English" version.
Derrida reasons that the repeatability of the signature
complicates the signature in an a priori relation to the
countersignature (which is another way of saying "reading"),
and so of the same to the other, etc.
In short: Mr. Turpin is missing a lot.
Cordially,
M.
"Il n'est de pur mythe que l'idee d'une science pure de tout mythe."
Brian Dell
: ... post-modernism can be said to have begun between 1874 and
"While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of
itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is 'outside', what
is 'different', what is 'not itself': and this No is its creative act.
This reversal of the value-creating view - this necessary directing of
the eye outwards instead of back to oneself - pertains precisely to
ressentiment: in order to come into existence, slave morality first
requires a contrary and outer world, it requires, in the language of
physiology, an external stimulus in order to act at all - its action is
at very bottom reaction."
- The Genealogy of Morals
To the extent that postmodernism is a *reaction* to modernism, and
deconstructionist as opposed to constructionist, it seems from the above
that Nietzsche isn't very enthusiastic about pomo.
"Formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a *goal* ..."
- Twilight of the Idols
Surely one of the most modern utterances ever.
R.J. Hollingdale on Nietzsche:
"The delineation of the nihilist world is a necessary preliminary to
transcending it: but if the metaphysical is recognized as illusory and
our world is the only world, a new mode of transcendence of this world
will have to be non-metaphysical. Is a non-metaphysical transcendence
possible? Nietzsche answers with his theory of 'will to power'."
In the light of this I would call Nietzsche a post-postmodern. Pomo
has broken the old law tables and has thus realized the "necessary
preliminary" but it has yet to give birth to a *new* teleos.
Postmoderns have killed the transcendent God, and have thereby slain the
Platonic dragon, but until they revive for us the immanent God they are
mere murderers.
--
Brian Dell
"To become a thinker. - How can anyone become a thinker if he does not
spend at least a third of the day without passions, people and books?"
- F Nietzsche
Brian Dell
: Postmodernism has been described as being definable in terms of three
: central theses. (I'm getting this from a talk Seyla Ben Habib gave
: several years ago at Bryn Mawr. I believe she got the theses from
: someone else, but I don't remember who at the moment.) Here they are:
: 1) The Thesis of the Death of Man: There is no rational, sovereign subject.
There is no "Captain" to discover a "prime number sequence".
: 2) The Thesis of the Death of History: There is no such thing as progress,
: evolution (in a strong sense, implying a goal which history will reach),
: teleos, etc.
There is no India. One tack will get you just as far to nowhere in
particular as another.
: 3) The Thesis of the Death of Morality: (I think this was the last one,
: but I'm not positive. I could be misremembering) There is no objective
: moral law.
"Q" has no a priori advantage over "P", because there is no a priori.
In fact, "P" is more palatable because it doesn't make the ontological
assertion that there is something beyond the edge of the chart.
There is nothing beyond Man, spoke the postmodern.
But Man is beyond man, spoke the post-postmodern.
--
Brian Dell
" ... Hitherto, there have been a thousand goals, for there have been a
thousand peoples. Only fetters are still lacking for these thousand
necks, the one goal is still lacking.
Yet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is
there not still lacking - humanity itself?"
- F Nietzsche
NS Brown
[... I had written a sample vignette, and then an example of
the ways postmodernism might allow us to look at that vignette,
each of which was a different process for critizing literature.
Omar responds ...]
: Cris, that was great! I really enjoyed this example immensely (its the
: literature critic in me rearing itsugly head) and yes I think this is
: a useful way about thinking about critical debates today (and maybe if I
: knew what postmodernism meant I could judge it postmodern).
Thank you. In all honesty, *I* don't know whether it was truly
"postmodern." My idea of postmodernism is based on discussions
I've had with folk who describe themselves as "postmodernists,"
and tracking what I see as the underlying structure of their
arguments.
: I would just
: like to add that postmodernism is very self-conscious of what it is doing,
: process-oriented as you say, so that when a "true pomo" starts looking at
: himself then he immediately starts looking at himself looking at himself and
: then starts looking at himself looking at himself looking at himself etc and
: then, this is where it gets really crazy, starts noticing how the way he
: looks at himself repeatedly forms a pattern and then he starts looking at
: the way he keeps looking at himself looking at himself.
This is one of the *practical* dangers of postmodernism. There
is an almost endless possibility for analytic recursion: the
process of how we arrive at the process of how we arrive at the
process.... And our experiential milieu won't come to a stop
while we construct these recursions. At some point, events will
leave us behind ("the paralyisis of analysis").
On the other hand, we have some processes -- actual, symbolic and
valuative -- which are so habitual that we're not even aware of
them as processes. As *choices*. We begin to see them as inherent
in our experiential milieu. (C.f.: Holmes' quote on Natural Law,
"the law is not writ large on the cosmos.") It's as if this
progression occurs:
* We've never done it that way before.
* Let's give it a try.
* This is the way we do it.
* This is the way we've always done it.
* This is the way it is.
* This is the only way it can be.
At some point in those last two, we seem almost to acknowledge
"it" as some quality inherent in the nature of the cosmos itself.
And that's just as dangerous, if not more so, than the paralysis
of analysis.
Just ask women. Or blacks. Or Native Americans. Or anyone else
who's ever been on the short end of "that's the way it is; that's
the only way it can be."
Just an opinion, worth what you paid for it. :)
Cris
Russell Turpin
I wrote:
>> I don't think people waited for postmodernism to take of
>> thinkers what they thought was valuable, and leave the
>> rest behind.
In article <3d0mbe$e...@crl6.crl.com>, Lois Shawver <rath...@crl.com> wrote:
> True, but moderns do it under the table.
Why do you say that? It is not hard to find examples of one
writer saying of another "X's analysis of Foo is sound, but
X falls down when he discusses Bar." Indeed, one sees claims
like this all the way back to the ancient Greeks. What is
"under the table" about that?
Russell Turpin
In article <3d13pn$i...@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>,
Mark Weinles <Mark.W...@launchpad.unc.edu> wrote:
> ... Anyway, why not read Derrida? Why is that out of the
> question? ...
For some of us, having read Derrida is the reason for asking
an explanation of what is there.
Russell Turpin
In article <3d1g41$2...@panix.com>, Gordon Fitch <g...@panix.com> wrote:
> Well, for one thing, Derrida is playful. ...
So is Dave Barry.
> ... Look at the earnest mountains of awestruck, even
> terrified discussion which James Joyce's playfulness
> engendered; ....
The quality of play is quite subjective. I find reading Joyce
about as much fun as watching a game of golf, which -- I am
told -- is also a playful activity. Now I find sailing quite
fun. Dave Barry, seemingly, does not.
> ... Derrida is supposed to be a _philosopher_, for God's sake,
> not a mere novelist.
If, in some fantastic scenario, I had to choose living the next
fifty years lacking either new novels or new philosophy writings,
I would keep the novels and lose the philosophy writings without
blinking an eye. But that does not mean I think Tom Robbins is
a reasonable subsitute for Quine in a philosophy class on, say,
language. So I find it odd that when I ask about a philosopher,
his advocates respond that he has all the qualities of a good
novelist.
Lois Shawver
: Why do you say that? It is not hard to find examples of one
: writer saying of another "X's analysis of Foo is sound, but
: X falls down when he discusses Bar." Indeed, one sees claims
: like this all the way back to the ancient Greeks. What is
: "under the table" about that?
Of course. The modern orientation is to be concerned with the
characterization of the author's works, it's good points and bad points.
This concern constructs the author in the language of our
characterization of it.
A postmodern orientation uses the text to inform the reader's creativity,
to think new thoughts, without worrying if this is what the author 'really
thought'. One reads for what is good, inspiring of insight, and tosses
the rest as uninteresting to study for the analysis of its error.
One's own authorship is informed by this postmodern reading which amounts
to a kind of creative distortion and improvement of what one has read. It
amounts to saying something like, "Well, maybe Derrida did not MEAN to say
X, but this is the most insightful way I can understand this text, and if
your hermeneutics tell me he means something stupid here, I'm not very
interested. The text is my source of understanding, not Derrida's intent,
and if, by some form of magic in my brain I get wisdom from the reading
which he did not have in the writing, then that is just one of the
miracles of thought. Wittgenstein's whole later philosophy, after all,
was stimulated by the passing comment of an archetect."
I think this sort of reading is done by the most creative and
intellectually engaged modern readers, but it is done under the table.
If they do it openly, then they become postmodern.
Can you see what is both lost and gained by engaging by what I am calling
a postmodern reading of the text? And how it is important, therefore, to
differentiate these two types of readings?
..Lois Shawver
Lois Shawver
: How do pomo's reconcile their glorification of the "everday"
: ... with their intellectual elitism?
What elitism?
..Lois
Lois Shawver
: I don't think people waited for postmodernism to take of
: thinkers what they thought was valuable, and leave the
: rest behind.
True, but moderns do it under the table.
Andy Perry
> Andy Perry (Andrew...@Brown.edu) wrote:
>
> : More to the point, pomo in this context is pretty unenthusiastic about
> : Nietzsche. Postmodern philosophy has a pretty hard time believing that
> : there could ever be such thing as self-affirmation. Master morality, as a
> : feeling of the value inherent in the self with no reference to the other,
> : is simply illusory as far as pomo is concerned.
>
> : So much for the attempt to appropriate Nietzsche easily into any label or
> : project...
> : --
>
> Yes, but here in postmodernism, we can take of Nietzsche what we like and
> throw the rest back.
No doubt, but it's more of a problem for Nietzsche scholarship in
particular. Whether Nietzsche's work is coherent or fragmentary (ie,
whether in discussing his work, it is best to thematize it as coherent or
fragmentary) is a major bone of contention. Alexander Nehamas, who is
generally thought of in philosophy departments as the best interpretter of
Nietzsche in years, is concerned to argue that Nietzsche has a coherent
goal, and to read his texts as a function of that drive to coherence.
Gary Shapiro, on the other hand, directly resists Nehamas, on the ground
that Nietzsche is truly postmodern, in terms of the form of his writings,
and to unify them in the way that Nehamas does is to do violence to the
texts, as well as just plain missing the boat.
Now, it is worth pointing out that BOTH Nehamas and Shapiro are willing to
select and choose what is useful and what isn't. Nehamas is not at all
arguing that you have to accept Nietzsche's rampant misogyny as a
condition of using his perspectivist aestheticism. But he DOES think that
taking a fragment out of context can lead to ridiculous misreadings of his
work, and that this is a wrongheaded approach. Shapiro disagrees.
"Here in postmodernism," we can pick and choose what is useful of
Nietzsche to inform our thought. But we can't just say, "Nietzsche is X,"
cause that's not the way his texts work.
(Actually, I'm a big fan of Nehamas' work. I see no reason to claim for
Nietzsche a consistently postmodern stance, to somehow "save" him from
being reactionary before he could have been radical on our terms...)
And as far as the beginnings of pomo: the first stirring was Hegel's
rejection of Kant's claim that there are pure intuitions. Nietzsche owes
much to Hegel.
Mark Weinles
>Derrida's project to English professors who haven't studied him. It's
>rather clear, although I'm not sure how it was recieved within the pomo
>lit community. Nonetheless, it may give you some idea of what Derrida is
>trying to accomplish.
Then again, it may only give you some idea of what Jonathan Culler is
trying to accomplish -- nameley, to make deconstruction safe as milk and
mild as tea. Anyway, why not read Derrida? Why is that out of the
question? His writing has been available in translation (and in
paperback) for decades. Plenty of libraries and bookstores have his work.
Even an English professor could find a copy without too much effort.
What's the problem here?
Brian Dell
: ... here in postmodernism, we can take of Nietzsche what we like and
: throw the rest back.
"The worst readers. - The worst readers are those who behave like
plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and
confound the remainder, and revile the whole."
- Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 137
"Of all that is written I love only that which is written with blood.
Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.
It is not easy to understand the blood of another: I hate the reading idler.
He who knows the reader does nothing further for the reader. Another
century of readers - and spirit itself will stink.
That everyone is allowed to learn to read will in the long run ruin not
only writing but thinking, too.
Once spirit was God, then is became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants
to be learned by heart.
In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak: but for that
you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom
they are addressed should be big and tall of stature.
The air thin and pure, danger near ..."
- Thus Spake Zarathustra, "Of Reading and Writing"
Thank you, Mr. Nietzsche. Friedrich, what is your opinion of Monsieur
Derrida?
"Marks of a good writer. - Good writers have two things in common; they
prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for
knowing and over-acute readers."
- Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 138
--
Brian Dell
"... For I regard profound problems as I do a cold bath - quick in, quick
out. That one thereby fails to get down deep enough, fails to reach the
depths, is the superstition of hydrophobics, of the enemies of cold
water; they speak without experience. Oh! Great cold makes one quick! -
And by the way: does a thing really remain unintelligible and
unrecognized if it is touched, viewed, illumined simply in passing? Does
one absolutely have to sit down on it first? to have brooded on it as on
an egg?"
- F Nietzsche
PAN...@news.delphi.com
rath...@crl.com (Lois Shawver) writes:
>What elitism?
The elitism that formed the main text for Rooney's post which I was
responding to. The sort of elitism of: you're all too stupid to understand
our newest version of the "great Men of the academy", in this case Derrida.
The fact that he is unintelligable is a strength! How dare you ask him
or us to express ourselves in the language of everday men! We are
postmodernists!
That's the kind of elitism I'm concerned with...
Pandit
>..Lois
PAN...@news.delphi.com
rath...@crl.com (Lois Shawver) writes:
>PAN...@DELPHI.COM (PAN...@news.delphi.com) wrote:
>: The elitism that formed the main text for Rooney's post which I was
>: responding to. The sort of elitism of: you're all too stupid to understand
>: our newest version of the "great Men of the academy", in this case Derrida.
>: The fact that he is unintelligable is a strength! How dare you ask him
>: or us to express ourselves in the language of everday men! We are
>: postmodernists!
>: That's the kind of elitism I'm concerned with...
>Me, too, but I don't really think it's confined to postmoderns. Do you?
No, not at all. Its all over the place. It is disturbing
in postmodernism, because it seems to violate the very purporse
of pm of challenging or disturbing established "order."
>But I am very concerned with it. How can we create a culture here that
>does not promote that kind of elitism?
When you say "here" do you mean on this newsgroup, on the net,
or in a wider sense? My concerns don't stem from what people
write on the net, more from what goes on in the academy.
Pandit
>..Lois
jle...@utdallas.edu
> If there is something ironic in the elitisim of postmoderns, it is that
> this is a culture that is trying to understand the world without relying
> on the old pictures of how the world works. We could develop our
> thoughts better if we learned to enhance each other's thinking rather
> than stomp it out. "If we don't hang together, we might hang apart."
>
> The truth is, however, that we don't know how to do this. We were all
> trained, in the school of knock down the others and climb to the top of
> the heap. It isn't good enough to stop doing this, because that just
> results in the others hustling the top like an oversized littler of hungry
> puppies.
Well said. However, it might be enough to practice graciousness and be
tolerant of all but the intolerant.
> Before we can do it at all, though, we have to agree to want to do it.
> Gordon Fitch is talking about how to promote a more flame proof
> environment here, by asking people to self-censor their flames. I think
> that is reasonable, but he got flamed for suggesting it. I think the
> problem might be the metaphor 'censor.' People seemed to get distracted
> by that. It's not that people couldn't say whatever they wanted to say,
> but they might, nevertheless, learn to voice it with more civility and
> respect for the who 'seems to be' making a terrible mistake.
I believe it's in our best interest to take your's and Gordon's
suggestions to heart. There are number of newsgroups where the level of
incivility and invectiveness is so repulsive that I'm reluctant to make
the effort to sift through it all even though the subject matter is of
considerable interest to me.
jle...@utdallas.edu
[Jim Elson wrote:]
> > Read _On Deconstruction_ by Jonathan Culler which attempts to 'explain'
> >Derrida's project to English professors who haven't studied him. It's
> >rather clear, although I'm not sure how it was recieved within the pomo
> >lit community. Nonetheless, it may give you some idea of what Derrida is
> >trying to accomplish.
> Then again, it may only give you some idea of what Jonathan Culler is
> trying to accomplish -- nameley, to make deconstruction safe as milk and
> mild as tea. [...
1). One of the reasons I said this is that I wanted to know what
'practicing deconstructionists' thought of Culler's book. What Culler
says reinforces my first impressions of the highly significant merit of
Derrida's work. My own inexperience with Derrida inhibits me from
discussing what I find of overwhelming importance in his work.
> ...] Anyway, why not read Derrida? Why is that out of the
> question? His writing has been available in translation (and in
> paperback) for decades. Plenty of libraries and bookstores have his work.
> Even an English professor could find a copy without too much effort.
> What's the problem here?
2). The problem is that Derrida has an extremely rigourous intellect, and
his style is untraditional and difficult to understand. Many may wonder
"why doesn't Derrida just come out and say what he means?" The 'reasons'
he writes as he does are more opaque to some than to others. If you,
like myself, think that Derrida is an important thinker, you might
consider offering 'new-comers' an option other than "just jump in, and
sink or swim." (Not everyone has to opportunity to read Derrida and have
their questions addressed by an experienced practioner of deconstruction.)
3). There is no substitute for reading primary texts; nonetheless,
secondary, i.e., interpretative, texts have their place. We often utilize
interpretative texts of historically important thinkers in freshman
philosophy classes. Later, we expect them to peruse the primary texts and
make their own interpretations.
P.S. I would greatly appreciate further comments on Culler's book. (I'm
still working my way through _Writing and Difference_ after having read
_Of Spirit_.)
Lois Shawver
: The elitism that formed the main text for Rooney's post which I was
: responding to. The sort of elitism of: you're all too stupid to understand
: our newest version of the "great Men of the academy", in this case Derrida.
: The fact that he is unintelligable is a strength! How dare you ask him
: or us to express ourselves in the language of everday men! We are
: postmodernists!
: That's the kind of elitism I'm concerned with...
Me, too, but I don't really think it's confined to postmoderns. Do you?
But I am very concerned with it. How can we create a culture here that
does not promote that kind of elitism?
..Lois
NS Brown
A number have questioned whether my example of textual interpretation
is truly "postmodern." I'm going to confess up front that my own
answer is "probably not." Postmodernism seems to be one of those
terms that has grown meanings the way a potato grows eyes. It seems
less a precise discipline than a mode of thinking which (to me) can
be summed up as questioning what are perceived to be First Principles.
My own interest is directed largely at three related issues:
* Pragmatic Truth -- abandoning the absolute Boolean construct
of Truth, in favor of a construct which is context-dependent and
focuses on whether a given assertion is reliable for the purpose
toward which it is directed. Thus, a given assertion could be
both true *and* false (in the Pragmatic sense), depending on the
context in which it is offered and the purpose to which it is
directed.
* Experientialism -- I originally began working on this when I
was writing my thesis in theatre school. At the time it was
purely a theory of aesthetics, a "new" old approach to the creation
and appreciation of art. As I continue to tinker with it, I am
seeing extensions into the larger field of what it means to be
conscious. Rather than speaking in terms of "conflict" and
"overcoming conflict," I speak in terms of "friction" and "mani-
pulating friction." Sometimes we manipulate to overcome, but
oftentimes we manipulate for the sheer pleasure of the friction
itself.
* De-re-construction -- This focuses on the relationship between
experience and interpretation (cognitive construction). My aim is
not so much to break down dysfunctional constructions (though that
it always nice), but rather to *recognize* how much of what we
consider to be "reality" is actually our own construction based
upon our own experience. (For a good introduction to this, read
Leshan & Margeneau, _Einstein's Space & Van Gogh's Sky_.) Leshan
and Margeneau refer largely to scientific constructions, but there
are numerous social constructions which are equally targetable.
(E.g.: is Freedom a good thing, and if so, *why* is it a good
thing? It is taken as a matter of faith that it is, as if this
were writ large on the cosmos ... but *why*?)
It all gets fuzzy because all experiences are constructions; by
the time we're aware of an experience, we've constructed it as
it is. Thus, the boundary between "facts" (experiences) and
"premises" (cognitive constructs) is blurry and at times almost
impossible to distinguish. (Witness the current debate over
domestic violence; the "facts" on this issue are so heavily
charged with experiential purpose that is currently impossible
to say, with any real pragmatic accuracy, how widespread the
problem is and what we should do about it.)
So when *I* write on alt.postmodern, this is what *I'm* talking
about. It may or may not correlate to Derrida, or Foucault, or
Hegel, or whomever. If I say something dumb (and I often do),
it's *my* mistake, and not theirs.
Gordon Fitch
| : ... here in postmodernism, we can take of Nietzsche what we like and
| : throw the rest back.
de...@gpu2.srv.ualberta.ca (Brian Dell):
| "The worst readers. - The worst readers are those who behave like
| plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and
| confound the remainder, and revile the whole."
| - Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 137
"I don't like him. As I said, I'd like to see Derrida kick
his ass. Or I'd like to kick his ass myself. Go through
his pockets, take anything valuable, throw the rest in a
trash can. A classic mugging."
-- Amalgamated Divagations and Consternations, 1
I can see Nietzsche judging his _readers_, but his
_plunderers_? What doesn't kill you makes you stronger,
mein Liebchen! And if it kills you -- that will make you
stronger still, at least downwind, nicht Wahr?
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
Lois Shawver
...[elitism] seems to violate the very purporse
: of pm of challenging or disturbing established "order."
Every generation tries to 'disturb' the established order. We're all
born into the world without positions of power and we push and shove
until we have more interesting positions. Postmodernism is not
particularly suited to serve this purpose. One could push and shove with
a knowledge of statistics or logic, flaunting one's knowledge and asking
for positions of power. Might be easier.
If there is something ironic in the elitisim of postmoderns, it is that
this is a culture that is trying to understand the world without relying
on the old pictures of how the world works. We could develop our
thoughts better if we learned to enhance each other's thinking rather
than stomp it out. "If we don't hang together, we might hang apart."
The truth is, however, that we don't know how to do this. We were all
trained, in the school of knock down the others and climb to the top of
the heap. It isn't good enough to stop doing this, because that just
results in the others hustling the top like an oversized littler of hungry
puppies.
Before we can do it at all, though, we have to agree to want to do it.
Gordon Fitch is talking about how to promote a more flame proof
environment here, by asking people to self-censor their flames. I think
that is reasonable, but he got flamed for suggesting it. I think the
problem might be the metaphor 'censor.' People seemed to get distracted
by that. It's not that people couldn't say whatever they wanted to say,
but they might, nevertheless, learn to voice it with more civility and
respect for the who 'seems to be' making a terrible mistake.
: >But I am very concerned with it. How can we create a culture here that
: >does not promote that kind of elitism?
: When you say "here" do you mean on this newsgroup, on the net,
: or in a wider sense? My concerns don't stem from what people
: write on the net, more from what goes on in the academy.
My first concern is here. From there you can extrapolate?
..Lois
Russell Turpin
Russell Turpin (tur...@cs.utexas.edu) wrote:
>> ... It is not hard to find examples of one writer saying of
>> another "X's analysis of Foo is sound, but X falls down when
>> he discusses Bar." Indeed, one sees claims like this all the
>> way back to the ancient Greeks. What is "under the table"
>> about that?
In article <3d1vkq$h...@crl7.crl.com>, Lois Shawver <rath...@crl.com> wrote:
> Of course. The modern orientation is to be concerned with the
> characterization of the author's works, it's good points and
> bad points. This concern constructs the author in the language
> of our characterization of it.
Hmmm. To me, this too easily identifies the viewpoint of the
second author (who wrote about X's analysis) and the second
author's readers. The second author "constructs" the writings of
X only for herself; for her readers, she writes. These readers do
not need the second author to constantly preface her views "in my
opinion," "it seems to me," or "in the construction which I put
forth here," because they already know that what they are reading
is neither their own view nor a final construction, but only what
the second author wrote.
> A postmodern orientation uses the text to inform the reader's
> creativity, to think new thoughts, without worrying if this is
> what the author 'really thought'. One reads for what is good,
> inspiring of insight, and tosses the rest as uninteresting to
> study for the analysis of its error.
Author X proposes a thesis. It draws heavily on the writings
of Y and Z. Not always, but certainly in many discourses, the
reader want to know *why* X took what he did from Y and Z, and
why he left behind other parts of Y and Z that seem relevant.
> Can you see what is both lost and gained by engaging by what
> I am calling a postmodern reading of the text? And how it
> is important, therefore, to differentiate these two types of
> readings?
This puzzles me a little. What Shawver describes above seems
to be stylistic concerns about how one should *write* about
another author, not about how one should read. In postmodern
philosophy, has one not read until (and only to the extent
that later) one writes?
Gordon Fitch
roo...@oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney):
| Not in a simple (where play = ~serious) sense.
| Check, for example, the opening pages of "Plato's Pharmacy".
| Personally, I've always found Derrida to be a great deal
| less "playful" than frivolous technicians like Jerry Fodor.
To me, the complex sense of play is the one in which play
is thoroughly severed from seriousness. If you watch dogs
or cats play, their play mimics their serious activities,
and vice versa: hunting, fighting, amour. It is a human
artifice, I think, to establish play as something that does
not count. Maybe the exclusion of the playful is a mark of
Slavery, which would explain the disgust and fear with
which its appearance is so often greeted.
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
Michael Sean Rooney
weather permitting.
In article <3cvm3l$b...@dimebox.cs.utexas.edu>,
Russell Turpin <tur...@cs.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
[...]
>
>
[I wrote:]
>> ... Why attach a signature: well, to be quite simple, to
>> be distinct, to say "I am here, now", to say "this is me",
>> look at my clever .sig, mark my singularity, my difference
>> from all the rest ... In legal matters, the signature
>> works as a mark of presence, with a date added if
>> necessary, etc.
>
>Two aspects of this puzzle me. The first is the tense. Clearly,
>a signature does *not* indicate that the alleged signatory is
>"here, now," but rather that the alleged author was "there, then"
>when she or he did signature affix.
Yes...but as I was speaking as the "primary"
signer, I used the first person present. How is that
puzzling?
>When written signatures were
>hard to reproduce because of their distinctive nature (as Rooney
>describes), this served to authenticate that the claimed
>signatory did, indeed, approve the work. Today, they are used to
>mark approval, but they no longer serve well to authenticate,
>because technology has passed them by.
Yes...but even where the signature is but a
stamp or a .sig file, the presumption implicit in a
"being marked for approval" is that at some point,
the signatory was "there-then", i.e., present (even
if the signer is not a person but an abstract entity
like a corporation). Something identifies itself.
>The second thing that
>puzzles me is the importance placed on a signature's
>distinctiveness, beyond the (now obsolete) function of
>authentication.
Well, it seems fairly obvious, if not analytic,
that a signature be distinctive. This may be because
I don't think that authentication is an obsolete function
of signatures (as per my explanation above). Sure,
signatures can be mass-produced, inkjetted, what have
you -- but the signature still has to be identifiable.
Would you think that a letter from IBM, with a letterhead
not bearing the big blue, striped letters, in fact
marked IBM's approval?
>
>> Why are there signatures? To mark presence. Okay, why is it
>> necessary to mark presence? Because there are counterfeits: ...
>
>Again, either "presence" is a pomo term that means something
>close to "authenticity," or there is a turn here that I am not
>following.
You wanted "plain English": I mean presence in the
broad sense, something's there. In this particular sentence,
the presence of a signer, who marks his presence with a signature.
>
>> ... Derrida stresses that this repetition in absentia is not,
>> as it might seem, an accident or deviation from the "normal"
>> presentations of marks, rather, the repetition is the
>> condition of the possibility of a present. ...
>
>A present what? This sentence loses me.
A present in general. I was indicating (unnecessarily,
in hindsight) Derrida's deconstruction of time.
>
>> ... Thus the odd-sounding formula that there is repetition
>> at the origin (which, of course, upsets the received notion
>> of origin, and repetition too).
>
>Since I did not understand the simple explanation, I am not
>surprised that I cannot make heads nor tails of the odd-sounding
>result.
Okay, at the risk of bowdlerization, here's a
(violently compressed) version of one sort of repetition
at the origin, that of the sign. By most accounts, a
sign is typically a sign of something else, a stand-in,
a marker to talk about something in its absence (the
signature is a specialized sort of sign). A sign would
thus be something understood on the basis of the presence
of the thing for which it stands-in. Words and things,
reference and sense, ideality and materiality (to hurriedly
conflate a few of the distinctions which Derrida unsettles),
etc. To run with the last of these pairs, let's ask
how any particular sign maintains its identity, e.g.,
what makes "Ax" Ax? Appealing to the referent (an "ax",
or a function, whatever that would be "empirically")
would beg the question (how can we be sure about the
identity of reference when the sign we would use to refer
to it is what is in question?). As per Frege, if the
referent directly gave the sense, there would be no
distinction at all, etc. Appealing to an ideal sign
seems a quick road to a crude Platonism, at least at
the moment. Is the sign's identity material? Alas,
as Plato observed, the world of matter is no place for
identity (is an accented "ask" an "Ax"? or an "ay-eks"?
or a cursive "Ax"?: these are minor examples). So
Derrida adopts a sort of ideality as necessary to the
identity of the sign: but this ideality is only built
on differences between particular "Ax"'s, in brief,
the network of references (without referent, as above).
This is the seed of truth in "if you look for a definition
in a dictionary, all you find are more definitions".
And as this very relation of definition (what the
structuralists would call the signified) is itself an
ideality constituted through reference, the definition
of "sign" becomes an effect of signs: a reference at
the beginning. Various objections can be made to this
hasty recollection; I beg distance from Derrida's own
arguments (in _Grammatology_ and elsewhere) and lack
of time and strength as excuses for my shortcomings.
>
>> Well, this would require starting where Derrida started,
>> with a deconstruction of the self-present, meaning-assigning
>> consciousness (as found in Husserl; I refer to _Speech and
>> Phenomena_). ...
>
>Must one read Husserl in order to gain some understanding of
>Derrida? If so, I am reading out of order.
There's no "strict order" in which to read
anything, although some series are obviously more helpful
than others. Here I was simply referring to Derrida's
early treatment of an attempt to ground signification
in indication, which is a common-enough move in the
history of philosophy.
>
>> Where is the identity of the Quinean stimulus-meaning? It
>> seems that before the translation of "Gavagai", there must
>> be some identical stimulus ("one sense," as it were). ...
>
>No. Quine quite explicitly recognizes that stimuli at different
>times or places are never identical to one another. We pattern
>match, and extract features from *different* stimuli that we
>identify on the basis of those patterns.
The point would be that the "pattern match"
would have to be a repeatable ideality. *Before* we
start matching stimuli (i.e., translating), the stimulus
itself must presuppose a possible repetition, and so
also constitution in the network of reference. I was
a bit vague; sorry about that.
>I am completely lost at this point, and I doubt that is just
>because I do not know what deictic means.
Deictics mark language to a supposed outside:
e.g., "That".
Cordially,
M.
"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
Michael Sean Rooney
PAN...@DELPHI.COM <PAN...@news.delphi.com> wrote:
>
[...]
>
>The sort of elitism of: you're all too stupid to understand
>our newest version of the "great Men of the academy", in this case Derrida.
>The fact that he is unintelligable is a strength! How dare you ask him
>or us to express ourselves in the language of everday men! We are
>postmodernists!
First, I am happy to challenge you to point out
where I wrote or implied that "you're all too stupid to
understand Derrida", as well as the rest of your blather.
I might remind you that I asserted his complexity as a
strength, not his (purported) unintelligibility. Likewise,
while your discerning eye correctly detected a certain
criticism of "plain English", you must have failed to
pick up on the elitism of the everyday to which I was re-
sponding: viz., the unjustified insistence that everything
significant be reducible to the lowest common denominator
of comprehension.
Of course, if you would like to argue for the
principle that for something to be worthwhile, it must be
readily translatable into the language of, say, the New
York Post or Time magazine, let's hear it. Don't confuse
the common folk, now, they can't understand much.
Cordially,
M.
"Des qu'il est saisi par l'ecriture, le concept est cuit."
Andy Perry
> | Lois Shawver (rath...@crl.com) wrote:
> | : ... here in postmodernism, we can take of Nietzsche what we like and
> | : throw the rest back.
>
> de...@gpu2.srv.ualberta.ca (Brian Dell):
> | "The worst readers. - The worst readers are those who behave like
> | plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and
> | confound the remainder, and revile the whole."
> | - Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 137
[Gordon's Consternated Divagation deleted]
> I can see Nietzsche judging his _readers_, but his
> _plunderers_? What doesn't kill you makes you stronger,
> mein Liebchen! And if it kills you -- that will make you
> stronger still, at least downwind, nicht Wahr?
Well, I can give you a sketch of my answer to your question. Will to
power, baby! Nietzsche doesn't want to be plundered, because he wants
above all to create effects with his name on them. That's what W to P is
all about! So, the problem with plunderers is that they won't give him
enough credit, and the ripples of effects emanating from his works will
cease to be understood as HIS. You can't create yourself unless your
interpreters maintain the notion that it is you they are interpreting.
Lois Shawver
It seems to me that your concern with separatng the readers from the
commentators and original authors is distinctly modern.
In a postmodern reading, each influential comment becomes my thought.
Imagine it. I am sitting in my recliner reading the paper. I come across
a statement, "Today's men and women are less embarrassed about nudity than
people were 30 years ago." I read that statement and think to myself that
it is true as I read it. It is not a thought I had before reading the
text, but I have it now. I do not notice who wrote the statement, and,
later, when I find myself thinking it again a week from now, I forget
having read it. It feels like my thought. I may distort it a little as
it comes to mind, thinking 20 years instead of 30, but I do not know the
difference.
This seems to me to be the natural way our ideas get communicated through
reading and writing. It would be easy to imagine a language game in
which all ideas became 'mine' the moment I endorsed them.
But the scholarly language game we engage in restricts this passing of
ownership at the moment of acceptance of ideas. Instead, we impose a
very cumbersome ethic that requires us to separate the ideas of authors,
commentators, and readers. There are some advantages to having such an
ethic. But there are advantages, too, to freeing up the passing of ideas
in some contexts. I think that is what we are doing here. If something
one of us says is picked up by another and finds its way into another's
note, that note is not necessarily referenced. We are less tight about
these things here on the net.
One other thing. You say:
: In postmodern
: philosophy, has one not read until (and only to the extent
: that later) one writes?
I think this is a mistake. In modernity, writing produces something of
value (worth money), but if it were not of commercial value, one could
well imagine that the reading was much more central. Cooking is an art,
too, but we tend to think of the point of it being more a matter of
consuming the food. I like to think of the postmodern reader skipping
around text looking for what is most interesting and relevant, and taking
liberties with the linearity of the text as people typically read edited
books or even journals and magazines. The reading is a creative act.
..Lois
Lois Shawver
: First, I am happy to challenge you to point out
: where I wrote or implied that "you're all too stupid to
: understand Derrida", as well as the rest of your blather.
"Blather?" Come on, Michael. Cut it out!
..Lois
Lois Shawver
: Well, I can give you a sketch of my answer to your question. Will to
: power, baby! Nietzsche doesn't want to be plundered, because he wants
: above all to create effects with his name on them. That's what W to P is
: all about! So, the problem with plunderers is that they won't give him
: enough credit, and the ripples of effects emanating from his works will
: cease to be understood as HIS. You can't create yourself unless your
: interpreters maintain the notion that it is you they are interpreting.
Right. That's the objection. But I think Nietzsche's wrong. The
greatest compliment of all is to be absorbed into someone's mind. If, as
a courtesy people care to toss you a reference, well, that's nice, but
trivial in comparison to the profundity of someone, maybe years later,
letting your thought become her thought. The challenge is to write
thoughts that are meaningful enough to be absorbed and, in the
absorption, create an interesting and perhaps happy moment in our ever
changing world.
PAN...@news.delphi.com
>In article <3d2lsl$b...@news2.delphi.com>,
>PAN...@DELPHI.COM <PAN...@news.delphi.com> wrote:
>>
>[...]
>>
>>The sort of elitism of: you're all too stupid to understand
>>our newest version of the "great Men of the academy", in this case Derrida.
>>The fact that he is unintelligable is a strength! How dare you ask him
>>or us to express ourselves in the language of everday men! We are
>>postmodernists!
> First, I am happy to challenge you to point out
>where I wrote or implied that "you're all too stupid to
>understand Derrida", as well as the rest of your blather.
>I might remind you that I asserted his complexity as a
That's what your text signified...
>strength, not his (purported) unintelligibility. Likewise,
>while your discerning eye correctly detected a certain
>criticism of "plain English", you must have failed to
>pick up on the elitism of the everyday to which I was re-
>sponding: viz., the unjustified insistence that everything
>significant be reducible to the lowest common denominator
>of comprehension.
why is plain English the lowest common denominator?
more indications of your boring intellectual elitism...
> Of course, if you would like to argue for the
>principle that for something to be worthwhile, it must be
>readily translatable into the language of, say, the New
>York Post or Time magazine, let's hear it. Don't confuse
>the common folk, now, they can't understand much.
Hm ..strange how difficult to tell if you are being ironic
here...my suspicion is whether you are or not this is
probably what you truly believe anyway..
Pandit
Andy Perry
(Russell Turpin) wrote:
> In postmodern
> philosophy, has one not read until (and only to the extent
> that later) one writes?
It is a standard trope of postmodern theory to say something like "reading
is always already rewriting a text." There is a definite drive to break
down the distinction between the two. I "rewrite" a text when I
understand it/make it my own through reading, and when I sit down to write
about it, I then produce "my reading" of it.
The reader (of this post; heh.) is left to decide what kinds of divison of
labor and economic concerns get effaced in this kind of description of
critical activity...
John Frigo
Andrew...@Brown.edu (Andy Perry) wrote:
>
in answer to jle...@utdallas.edu
(sorry for all the deletion,
but my machine doesn't let me sent more reposting than posting)
>
> Is it really common for intro phil courses to assign secondary sources
> interpreting the philosophical canon?
can't say for philosophy,
but a post-doc polysci friend always says:
"nobody reads marx anymore, they only read the people who've read . . ."
incidentally, my friend reads more derrida than anything
(or maybe he reads those who read . . .)
maybe i can say something about phil, tho
the first phil class i had was *extremely* derrivative
we only read contemporary folks
like fred jameson, kuspit, hal foster and such
(this was a phil of art class)
the second class i had read hume, st. anshelm (sp?) and some earlier
writers
(this was a phil of religion)
come to think of it isn't all philosophy secondary to *something*?
babble
john
Omlor
For a fairly frank discussion by JD on how he feels about "playfulness"
and "puns", etc. in terms of his performance in *Glas*, see his essay
"Proverb: He, that would pun..." translated in John Leavey's *Glassary*,
U. of Nebraska, 1986.
Back into the corner for the holidays....
--John
Mark Weinles
>2). The problem is that Derrida has an extremely rigourous intellect, and
>his style is untraditional and difficult to understand. Many may wonder
>"why doesn't Derrida just come out and say what he means?" The 'reasons'
>he writes as he does are more opaque to some than to others. If you,
>like myself, think that Derrida is an important thinker, you might
>consider offering 'new-comers' an option other than "just jump in, and
>sink or swim." (Not everyone has to opportunity to read Derrida and have
>their questions addressed by an experienced practioner of deconstruction.)
Now we approach the crux of the matter. What you say about Derrida's
writing is true enough, but think about it: if you substitute a more
readily comprehensible interpretation for Derrida's text, you strip away
its most distinctive elements and assimilate its ideas to the categories
of conventional understanding. That's exactly what makes it clear to you!
In practice, matters are usually even worse, since all interpreters have
their own agenda to pursue. Culler is far from the worst, but his
objective was to make deconstruction safe for America. Consequently he
does his best to prove that, despite the rumors going around, it's only a
sheep in wolf's clothing. If you read Culler to understand Derrida (and
you believe what he says), that's basically the understanding you'll get.
>3). There is no substitute for reading primary texts;nonetheless,
>secondary, i.e., interpretative, texts have their place. We often utilize
>interpretative texts of historically important thinkers in freshman
>philosophy classes.
A dangerous business. Look what happend to Pandit: Some dumb-cluck
teacher assigned him Best and Kellner's _Postmodern Theory_, which is a
blatant hatchet-job. Pandit ignored all the obvious warning signs and
decided he was reading an objective treatment of post-modernism. (Any
half-decent interpretation would at least have disabused the reader of the
idea that there's any such beast as an "objective account.") Now he thinks
he knows what postmodernism is and why he doesn't like it. Needless to say,
he's not an isolated case.
>Later, we expect them to peruse the primary texts and make their own
>interpretations.
No, I bet you don't -- you expect them to read the primary texts and make
_your_ interpretation (or the one in the book you just assigned them, or
an interpretation just different enough to show they've been "original").
>P.S. I would greatly appreciate further comments on Culler's book. (I'm
>still working my way through _Writing and Difference_ after having read
>_Of Spirit_.)
See above for Culler (although I could go on). _Of Spirit_ is good if
you're acquainted with Heidegger. _Writing and Difference_ makes an
excellent starting point; in fact, it's the one I would recommend.
However, take a look at _Positions_. It's a collection of three long
interviews -- a very accessible path into Derrida's way of thinking. Since
you like Nietzsche, you might look at _Spurs_, a wonderful little book on
"art, style, truth, and the question of the woman." (As if that wasn't
enough, Heidegger turns up, too.) And if you insist on an introduction,
Gayatri Spivak's preface to of Grammatology really isn't bad at all.
Good luck, and let me know how it goes. I'm curious to see what you'll
think of _Writing and Difference_.
Michael Sean Rooney
Brian Dell <de...@gpu2.srv.ualberta.ca> wrote:
>
[...]
>Thank you, Mr. Nietzsche. Friedrich, what is your opinion of Monsieur
>Derrida?
>
>"Marks of a good writer. - Good writers have two things in common; they
>prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for
>knowing and over-acute readers."
>- Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 138
As much as I would agree with the original sentiment
behind this post (namely, to reject a so-called "postmodern"
reading of Nietzsche which dispenses with whatever does not
suit the reader), I have to suspect any supposed Nietzschean
who poses his master's words as answers to questions Nietzsche
did not ask. That Nietzsche preferred to be understood rather
than admired has not prevented just that, nor does it make
him easy to understand: and Nietzsche understood that quite
acutely (cf. _Ecce Homo_). Analogous considerations apply,
mutatis mutandis, to Derrida.
Cordially,
M.
"Have I been understood?"
Ned Ludd
Gordon:
> It is a human artifice, I think, to establish play as something that
> does not count. Maybe the exclusion of the playful is a mark of Slavery,
> which would explain the disgust and fear with which its appearance is so
> often greeted.
> (Your suggestion about slavery as the domination of seriousness is
> interesting but would require a more prolonged discussion.)
"I have named those who were unknowingly my workers and precursors. But
where may I look with any kind of hope for my kind of philosopher himself,
at the least for my need of new philosophers? In that direction alone
where a noble mode of thought is dominant, such as believes in slavery
and in many degrees of bondage as the precondition of every higher culture,
where a CREATIVE mode of thought dominates that does not posit the happiness
of repose, the 'Sabbath of Sabbaths' as a goal for the world, and honors
even in peace the means to new wars..."
- Note #464, F.W.N., "Will To Power"
(P.S. Wow! "...precondition of every higher culture")
NS Brown
Brian Dell wrote (a simplification of Michael Rooney's post):
: Part of the role of "signature" is to individuate; ie. construct identity.
: "Brian Dell" in and of itself is not sufficiently particular, especially
: in this sort of environment where you cannot look past the words into the
: eyes of the speaker or hear the inflection in his voice.
: Accordingly, your construction of "Brian Dell" will be based solely on
: the text before you, and that construction bears no necessary resemblance
: to the author of this text.
: For example, let's say you have two billiard balls that are
: compositionally identical. How can you nonetheless say there are "two"?
: By saying that one is at a different point in space/time than the other.
: They can only be externally differentiated; that is, by reference to
: their context.
: But it is not easy to internally encode this individuating external
: context into the text.
: And even if this was possible, where is the master encryption key which
: would necessary for a "correct" decoding? Is it encoded too?
: It is this difficulty which "kills" the author.
Or ...
Allen gets some stimulus. This stimulus may be by perception
(assumed to be "external") or cognition/imagination (assumed
to be "internal"). Because the source of the stimulus does not
affect this argument, it really doesn't matter (for purposes of
this argument) whether perception really *is* external, or whether
cognition/imagination really *is* internal. That's for another
debate. Either way, Allen gets some stimulus.
Based *in part* upon this stimulus (and in part upon his own
perceptual/cognitive filters), Allen constructs an experience.
Note that this -- the resultant experience -- is Allen's first
awareness of the stimulus. Indeed, if you asked your average
Allen, he'd say the stimulus and the experience were the same.
In fact, they're not. When I look at my desk, I don't "see"
rectangles, trapezoids and rounded corners, in wood-tone brown
and flat black. I don't "see" mere shapes and colors ... but
these *are* the raw stimuli. Instead, I see "desk" -- heavy,
a place I put stuff, where my computer sits, etc.... All of
these factors are *constructed*, they're not inherent in the
shapes and colors my eyes detect. They're *experiential*, not
sensory.
So, okay, Allen gets some stimulus and constructs an experience
based (in part) upon that stimulus. And now, for some reason,
Allen wants to tell Betty about it. So, Allen encodes *aspects*
of his experience into symbols (usually language). It's almost
as if Allen is creating a blueprint for an experience: "decode
these symbols and you'll have this experience." So language is
not transmitted experience, but a transmitted blueprint by which
the percipient can construct (one hopes) correlative experiences.
Now, Betty hears (or reads) Allen's words. Stimulus, based (in
part) upon which she constructs *her own* experience. The
experience she constructs may be closely analogous to the
experience Allen had, or it may be entirely different. Moreover,
merely because she might choose to encode aspects of her experience
in the same symbols Allen used to encode his (i.e.: they'd use the
same words), we cannot infer that they had correlative experiences!
For example, assume that Allen sees light at X frequency, and has
always heard the word "blue" when he sees that light. So he calls
it "blue light." When Betty sees light at that same frequency,
odds are that she will also call it "blue light," because she
has also heard the word "blue" when she saw that light. But their
*experience* of that light might be entirely different. Were Betty
to see through Allen's eyes, the light might be "green." Were Allen
to see through Betty's eyes, the light might be "violet." (That is,
each might see a different color, but they have both attached the
symbol "blue" to it.)
So:
Allen says "The sky sure is blue today." And Betty, looking upward,
replies "Yes, it sure is blue."
We say they agree.
But they may not.
Because the symbols (words) used are *individually* encoded and
decoded ... there is no "master code" by which to check our
experiences.
The bottom line is that while language works very well (most of
the time) as a communicative tool, it's not an absolute experiential
link. It's an encoded/decoded link. And what we hear is not what
the speaker said; it's what *we'd* have said if we'd used those
words in that tone of voice.
Thus, the author is dead.
Brian Dell
: ... if you substitute a more readily comprehensible interpretation for
: assimilate its ideas to the categories of conventional understanding.
: That's exactly what makes it clear to you!
If I wish to have you understand me via communication, we must begin with
what we have in common.
Now the problem is that if I use only concepts that you are already
familiar with, I can never lead you to a concept that you are not already
familiar with, like one that I have and you don't.
Now I should, in fact, say that I could lead you to the water but I
couldn't make you drink; that is, I could instruct you on how to build a
platform from which you can see what I see but I cannot actually make you
see.
Perhaps I say,
"To see what I see you must climb a type A ladder."
You respond,
"What is a type A ladder?"
I then say,
"Take a fixed number of type B rungs and perform a type C construction on
them. The result is a type A ladder."
Now if you know what "type B rungs" and a "type C construction" are you
can come to know what a "type A ladder" is.
Now of interest here is the extent to which a "type A ladder" is *more
than* "type B rungs" + "type C construction". The difference constitutes
understanding.
For example, perhaps I wish to communicate to you my perception of an
object that you have never seen. I instruct you on how to construct a
mental image of it. Perhaps we use a "connect-the-dots" system. When do
you "see" the image? After you've connected 90% of the dots? 80%? You
understand when you jump ahead to the conclusion of the process.
If there is no "gap" that is "jumped" then *there has been no addition to
your "understanding"; there has only been a re-ordering of your existing
"understanding"*.
The relational operations on the various parts did not produce a whole
which was greater than the parts.
There is no sufficient antecedent cause for the agent's "jump". This is
necessarily so, as understanding requires intentionality which in turn
means self-determination.
One can merely merely set up conditions so that the agent will find the
jump so small that it will seem to be a perfectly natural step. It's
like helping an infant take a few steps until she can direct her own
steps. The prerequisite for this self-direction is perception of the
*end*; for which the steps become the means.
The genius, however, is known for his leaping.
--
<A HREF="http://nyquist.ee.ualberta.ca/~dell/">
Brian Dell
</A>
Gordon Fitch
| >To me, the complex sense of play is the one in which play
| >is thoroughly severed from seriousness. If you watch dogs
| >or cats play, their play mimics their serious activities,
| >and vice versa: hunting, fighting, amour. It is a human
| >artifice, I think, to establish play as something that does
| >not count.
roo...@oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney):
| What would such a purely severed play look like?
How about the division of drama into comedy and tragedy?
The comedy would not be allowed to turn serious, nor the
tragedy comical. One could find people applying this
division to any art, but I think of drama in particular
because of its derivation from religious ceremonies and
because Aristotle, an apologist for slavery, wrote about
what should be in it and what shouldn't.
| With regards to Derrida, he would probably find animal
| play, precisely on account of its difficult-to-decide
| relationship to seriousness, exemplary of a complex sense
| of play. Again, I refer to the page and a half preceding
| the body of "Plato's Pharmacy" (in _Dissemination_).
You forget I am an ignorant fellow and live in a cultural
wasteland. It may be a good while before I get to Derrida's
article, although I must say I am intrigued by its name,
considering the meaning of _pharmakon_ (drug, poison). I
would have said the animal play was simpler because it is
part of a coherent system of behaviors that reach over into
serious matters without having to leap some boundary,
whereas those who divide the serious from the playful have
this additional structure to take care of, no matter which
side of it they are on.
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
PAN...@news.delphi.com
>In article <3d0b4m$5...@news2.delphi.com> PAN...@news.delphi.com (PAN...@DELPHI.COM) writes:
>>Mark.W...@launchpad.unc.edu (Mark Weinles) writes:
>>>Despite its rather grand title, _Postmodern Theory_ doesn't address either
>>>Barthes or Derrida, and the "explanations" that Best and Kellner provide
>>>are nothing more than simple-minded, neo-Marxist mudslinging. [Examples
>>>deleted.] So much for the notion that it explains most of postmodernism.
>>You forget to mention that before the critique of postmodernism
>>which you are quoting from , they carefully summarize the arguemnts
>>and major works of each of the authors included, without commenting much
>>upon them.
>That's simply false. The moronic attacks on Deleuze and Guattari,
>Horkheimer and Adorno, and Foucault that I quoted came, in every case,
>from what you think are the "careful summaries" that Best and Kellner
>offer "without commenting." Only the wild assault on postmodernism in
>general came from their concluding chapter. Have you actually read the
>book that you're holding up as an example?
Yes. Have you? Each chapter summarizes an author or authors, then in
the concluding section of each chapter their works are criticzed.
If you just read the first parts you will see that the authors are not
attacked.
>While we're on the subject, Best and Kellner don't address all the
>"arguments and major works of each of the authors included" -- they give
>them spotty treatment. For instance, all of Foucault's work from the '60's
>gets shoved into a corner, and they never even hint that _The Order of
>Things_, one of Foucault's most important books, contains a sharply-edged
>critique of Marxism.
Well, find a book that does a better job...
>>>Best and Kellner avoid some of the postmodern vocabulary, but they're
>>>perfectly content to substitute their own brand of jargon. What makes
>>>terms like "techno-capitalism," "commodification," "praxis," "hegemony,"
>>>and "dialectical" more acceptable to you?
>>Did I ever say they were acceptable? Do I ever use them?
>You said that Best and Kellner write in "plain English," when in fact they
>use a heavy dose of Marxist terminology. So you must think of that either
>as plain English or as an acceptable form of jargon -- you tell me.
Plain is a relative term. First read K&B, then read D&G's thousand Plateaus.
Which one is plain English?
>>OK. I'll tell my clueless professors who run the Social THeory program
>>at the University I attend that they're clueless to use this work as a
>>guide. Give me a break.
>No problem. And if you can convince your profs to stop using it, I'll
>give you an extra one to keep as a spare.
Yeah its easy to spout off criticism on the net. Why not
write personal letters to Jameson and A> Danto, they praise
the book on its jacket...
Pandit
PAN...@news.delphi.com
Look you pointy-headed elitist asshole, I've read plenty of your precious
"primary works" of postmodernsits, although YOURS personally seemed to
be strangely absent, seeing as you are just one of these know-it-all
net masturbating types. My dumb-cluck POSTMODERNIST profs, yes,
that's what they are, and they actually publish things people read as
well - liked the book and didn't assign it to me, but to another class,
I just happened to have read it and value the fact that it is written
in intelligable language.
Next time you want to flame somebody you know nothing about,
do it on e-mail. Asshole.
Pandit
>>Later, we expect them to peruse the primary texts and make their own
>>interpretations.
>No, I bet you don't -- you expect them to read the primary texts and make
>_your_ interpretation (or the one in the book you just assigned them, or
>an interpretation just different enough to show they've been "original").
>>P.S. I would greatly appreciate further comments on Culler's book. (I'm
>>still working my way through _Writing and Difference_ after having read
>>_Of Spirit_.)
>See above for Culler (although I could go on). _Of Spirit_ is good if
>you're acquainted with Heidegger. _Writing and Difference_ makes an
>excellent starting point; in fact, it's the one I would recommend.
>However, take a look at _Positions_. It's a collection of three long
>interviews -- a very accessible path into Derrida's way of thinking. Since
>you like Nietzsche, you might look at _Spurs_, a wonderful little book on
>"art, style, truth, and the question of the woman." (As if that wasn't
>enough, Heidegger turns up, too.) And if you insist on an introduction,
>Gayatri Spivak's preface to of Grammatology really isn't bad at all.
>Good luck, and let me know how it goes. I'm curious to see what you'll
>think of _Writing and Difference_.
>-- Mark Brainless
NS Brown
[Lois wrote ...]
: A postmodern orientation uses the text to inform the reader's creativity,
: to think new thoughts, without worrying if this is what the author 'really
: thought'. One reads for what is good, inspiring of insight, and tosses
: the rest as uninteresting to study for the analysis of its error.
Indeed. Moreover, it's *extremely* optimistic (metaphorically) to
suggest that we could *ever* tap into "what the author 'really
thought'" by reading his/her words.
I construct an experience. I encode it into symbols (language).
These symbols become stimuli, and based *in part* upon those
stimuli and *in large part* upon your own past/present/future
perceptual/cognitive filters ...
... you construct *your own* experience.
Your experience *may* correlate in part to my experience, but
it's *highly* unlikely (I stop just short of saying "impossible")
that it will correlate *exactly*.
So when you say "Cris said [this]," what you're really saying
is "I'd have said [this] if I'd used Cris' words in that context
and tone."
My only quibble is thus when people say: "Blatz said [thus],"
and then attribute *their own* experience to Blatz. (Implying
that [thus] is what Blatz "really meant.") We don't know what
Blatz really meant, and language being the incomplete communcator
that it is, we'll never know. Even if we call him up and ask him.
So to be honest, we ought to self-attribute our interpretations.
Michael Sean Rooney
PAN...@DELPHI.COM <PAN...@news.delphi.com> wrote:
>roo...@oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney) writes:
>
>>In article <3d2lsl$b...@news2.delphi.com>,
>>PAN...@DELPHI.COM <PAN...@news.delphi.com> wrote:
>>>
>>[...]
>>>
>>>The sort of elitism of: you're all too stupid to understand
>>>our newest version of the "great Men of the academy", in this case Derrida.
>>>The fact that he is unintelligable is a strength! How dare you ask him
>>>or us to express ourselves in the language of everday men! We are
>>>postmodernists!
>
>> First, I am happy to challenge you to point out
>>where I wrote or implied that "you're all too stupid to
>>understand Derrida", as well as the rest of your blather.
>>I might remind you that I asserted his complexity as a
>
>That's what your text signified...
In the language of the everyday: prove it.
>
>>strength, not his (purported) unintelligibility. Likewise,
>>while your discerning eye correctly detected a certain
>>criticism of "plain English", you must have failed to
>>pick up on the elitism of the everyday to which I was re-
>>sponding: viz., the unjustified insistence that everything
>>significant be reducible to the lowest common denominator
>>of comprehension.
>
>why is plain English the lowest common denominator?
Because everyone can understand it.
>more indications of your boring intellectual elitism...
Try this exercise: take a passage from Shakespeare,
select the corresponding "translation" of it from Cliff
Notes, and show us how "boring" the "elitist" original
is in contrast. Please, do excite us common peoples!
>
>> Of course, if you would like to argue for the
>>principle that for something to be worthwhile, it must be
>>readily translatable into the language of, say, the New
>>York Post or Time magazine, let's hear it. Don't confuse
>>the common folk, now, they can't understand much.
>
>Hm ..strange how difficult to tell if you are being ironic
>here...my suspicion is whether you are or not this is
>probably what you truly believe anyway..
>
Irony wasted on imbeciles remains instructive
for others. But for you, Pandit, I'll drop a hint: I'm
not the one who's being patronizing here.
Cordially,
M.
"The structure of violence is complex and its possibility --
writing -- no less so."
PR...@cunyvm.cuny.edu
>
>Gordon Fitch <g...@panix.com> wrote:
>| >To me, the complex sense of play is the one in which play
>| >is thoroughly severed from seriousness. If you watch dogs
>| >or cats play, their play mimics their serious activities,
>| >and vice versa: hunting, fighting, amour. It is a human
>| >artifice, I think, to establish play as something that does
> animal play was simpler because it is
>part of a coherent system of behaviors that reach over into
>serious matters without having to leap some boundary,
>whereas those who divide the serious from the playful have
>this additional structure to take care of, no matter which
>side of it they are on.
>--
is emphasized as well? One example might be
the "rules" concerning war: maintaining
formation while under attack, marching into artillery fire.
War is one instance which is always grave and game-like...
Actually, it becomes difficult to tell whether this extreme
situation is tragic or absurd... a comedy.
What about a comedy of errors? What does that mean?
Wouldn't simulacra have something to do about the confusion
of the two (tragedy and comedy) ?
I guess I'm just wondering about, not only about the seperation of playfulness
and serious activity, but how they are dislocated in terms of each other.
Brian Dell
: I don't like [Nietzsche]. As I said, I'd like to see Derrida kick
: his ass. Or I'd like to kick his ass myself. Go through
: his pockets, take anything valuable, throw the rest in a
: trash can. A classic mugging."
Your _ressentiment_ is showing, not to mention your sadistic aesthetic
(to coin a phrase).
But it can be done, IMO: when Marlow vanquished Kurtz in "Heart of
Darkness", Conrad conquered Nietzsche.
"The author is dead," and surely the dead should be left to lie in peace.
Never do pomos belie themselves more than when they believe that the
professedly impossible has been committed: they've been misinterpreted.
Witness, I say, the vitality of the exertion with which the dead seek to
roll the stone away when they believe they have been unjustly crucified.
--
Brian Dell
"He who sees the abyss, but with an eagle's eyes - he who _grasps_ the
abyss with an eagle's claws: _he_ possesses courage."
- "Of the Higher Man"
Brian Dell
: Derrida adopts a sort of ideality as necessary to the
: identity of the sign: but this ideality is only built
: on differences between particular "Ax"'s, in brief,
: the network of references (without referent, as above).
Let's say Z is the "difference" between X and Y so that Z = X - Y.
Is Z thereby *reducible* to X and Y?
Perhaps I say
"There is an apple and a banana in the bowl."
Now perhaps F = A + B, where F = "fruit"
A = "apple"
B = "banana"
Now one would not say,
"There is an apple, a banana, and fruit in the bowl."
That is, F cannot have as its referent a concrete "thing". F must have
as its referent A and B, and, in fact, A and B in turn are signifiers for
other signs.
But does this mean F is *nothing more than* a relational operation on A
and B?
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Ralph Dumain
Ned Ludd
> F. Nietzsche via j...@ntrs.com (Ned Ludd):
> I have named those who were unknowingly my workers and precursors. But
> where may I look with any kind of hope for my kind of philosopher himself,
> at the least for my need of new philosophers? In that direction alone
> where a noble mode of thought is dominant, such as believes in slavery
> and in many degrees of bondage as the precondition of every higher culture,
Gordon:
> He need not have looked very far. From the monotheist slaver Akhnaton,
> and probably long before, down through Plato and Aristotle to the present
> day, are scribblers aplenty praising and justifying subjugation in the
> name of some Higher Good. The scribbling is almost, indeed, a synonym
> for civilization.
Oh God, Gordon, I love it when you talk Greek.
Ned
Mark Weinles
>-*-----
>In article <3d13pn$i...@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>,
>Mark Weinles <Mark.W...@launchpad.unc.edu> wrote:
>> ... Anyway, why not read Derrida? Why is that out of the
>> question? ...
>
>For some of us, having read Derrida is the reason for asking
>an explanation of what is there.
>
>Russell
Fair enough -- but reading someone else's explanation won't help you
understand Derrida. What have you read? If you haven't looked at it yet,
_Positions_ is a good way to get a feel for Derrida's way of thinking.
After that, the other material may open up for you. (No guaranties.)
You might also want to look at de Man's essay, "Semiology and Rhetoric,"
which is chapter one of his _Allegories of Reading_. That could be of
some help. (The book also contains a brilliant reading of Nietzsche.) And
since I've mentioned de Man, I might as well add my opinion that another
essay of his, "The Resistance to Theory," is essential reading for anyone
who wants to contend with post-structuralism. You may not accept de Man's
reasoning (I have some differences with it, myself), but I think you
should certainly acquaint yourself with his arguments.
-- Mark Weinles
Mark Weinles
>PAN...@DELPHI.COM (PAN...@news.delphi.com) wrote:
>
>
>: The elitism that formed the main text for Rooney's post which I was
>: responding to. The sort of elitism of: you're all too stupid to understand
>: our newest version of the "great Men of the academy", in this case Derrida.
>: The fact that he is unintelligable is a strength! How dare you ask him
>: or us to express ourselves in the language of everday men! We are
>: postmodernists!
>
>
>Me, too, but I don't really think it's confined to postmoderns. Do you?
>But I am very concerned with it. How can we create a culture here that
>does not promote that kind of elitism?
>
>..Lois
It would be nice if either one of you would actually _respond_ to Rooney's
post, instead of offering a crude parody (Pandit), or ignoring it
completely (Lois). Is this a discussion, or just (to borrow Rooney's
term) "blathering"?
For example, do you really believe that "plain English" offers the stick
against which all other forms of speech and writing should be measured?
As Rooney asked, are you saying that Derrida should model his use of
language on _The New York Post_? If not,then what _are_ you saying?
And what is "plain English," anyway? Is it the 950-word vocabulary of
Basic English? Can we define it empirically by studying the conversations
that take place at selected lunch-counters and construction sites? For
Pandit it appears to include Marxist terminology, but it definitely leaves
out postmodern "jargon." What's the basis for a distinction like that?
I'd also like to know what was "elitist" about Rooney's post. He made
several efforts to accommodate the demand for a translation of Derrida
into "plain English" by explaining some of Derrida's thoughts about
presence and the signature. He didn't say anything remotely similar to
Pandit's caricature of his post -- he simply tried to make a difficult
subject comprehensible (exactly what many people around here have been
demanding). Whether he succeeded or whether he succeeded too well are both
open questions, but to accuse him of elitism is absurd, unless "elitist"
is a label that you apply to anything that you don't happen to understand.
Mark Weinles
>Gordon Fitch is talking about how to promote a more flame proof
>environment here, by asking people to self-censor their flames.
Well, no, that's not what he's talking about. You're projecting again.
It's you who's so concerned about flames -- Gordon usually seems amused by
them. What Gordon's concerned about is the threat of gov't. censorship.
For reasons he has yet to explain, he thinks that the best way to defeat
is to beat it to the punch.
>That is reasonable, but he got flamed for suggesting it. I think the
>problem might be the metaphor 'censor.' People seemed to get distracted
>by that.
Funny how censorship distracts people -- too bad they can't just get used
to the idea. Anyway, Gordon wasn't speaking metaphorically. And you've
got a remarkably broad definition of "flaming."
>It's not that people couldn't say whatever they wanted to say,
>but they might, nevertheless, learn to voice it with more civility and
>respect for the who 'seems to be' making a terrible mistake.
No, Gordon meant that certain things should simply be banned from the Net
(in order to keep the gov't. from banning them). He hasn't been very
specific about what's o.k., what's not, or what the criteria should be.
Nonetheless, I don't think that "civility" is high on his list of concerns
(photos of bestiality are the kind of thing that he's worried about).
But since you raise the subject, I'd say it's hardly civil to request that
everyone speak in the tone you prefer. (It _is_ just a request?)
Gordon Fitch
| Oh God, Gordon, I love it when you talk Greek.
Oh, I'll start from the top then.
Menin aeide Thea, Peleiadeo Akhileos
oulomenen, he muri' Akhaiois alge' etheken,
pollas d' iphthimous psukhas Aidi proiapsen
heroon....
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
Mark Weinles
>that later) one writes?
Vice-versa: One reads only to the extent that one has already written
(which, of course, one always already has).
Lois Shawver
: It would be nice if either one of you would actually _respond_ to Rooney's
: post, instead of offering a crude parody (Pandit), or ignoring it
: completely (Lois). Is this a discussion, or just (to borrow Rooney's
: term) "blathering"?
Although I follow just about everything a little, I must say that I don't
make a scholarly study of the threads, and I respond spontaneously to
whatever strikes me. I did post something on this topic recently,
although lord knows where in this newsgroup it is. Moreover, I don't
remember Rooney's original post and it isn't the originating post in this
thread now -- so I don't really have the background of this discussion
clearly in mind, but I can't resist your invitation to tell you what I
think. So thanks for asking.
The question, as I understand it, is how to break the code of a difficult
primary source. There is no single way, but I think it is important for
people to realize that reading a secondary source, especially one that
reads much more easily than the original, is probably giving the reader
only a provisional understanding of the original author, at best. Still,
I don't disdain that, as long as one keeps it in mind.
Personally, I use secondary sources to help me understand primary sources,
not as ends in themselves. Years ago I took a reading course in Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason. I spent 6 weeks studying this book, by myself,
in the library. I worked on it 8 hours a day 5 days a week. It was hard
going. To take a break I would walk around the library and pick up
secondary sources. I didn't take time to read the secondary sources at my
desk, I would jsut thumb through them during a break. But they sometimes
helped. I knew because suddenly Kant started making sense. That is my
model of using a secondary source to understand the primary source.
Breaking the code of a difficult author is a challenge at times though,
and my model of a good postmodern newsgroup would be one in which people
could come to discuss certain difficulties that they have in
understanding and receive thoughtful, helpful replies by others. If one
tested the adequacy of those replies by whether they helped one
understand the original, then the fact that we do not always have
people's credentials here would not be very important.
Let me add this: I think Derrida's ideas could be put in clearer English and
that they will not survive the decade unless they are. Will they be the
same ideas? Of course, they won't be the same ones, exactly, but living
ideas evolve and the next moment in the dialectic of these ideas needs to
be a more accessible interpretation. Too many people are deciding,
without understanding, that there is nothing there.
Over.
..Lois Shawver
Lois Shawver
You're probably right that I projected my own agenda onto Gordon, but
I'll let Gordon respond for himself, if he wishes.
: But since you raise the subject, I'd say it's hardly civil to request that
: everyone speak in the tone you prefer. (It _is_ just a request?)
I don't see myself as requesting people not flame so much as sharing my
vision of a postmodern newsgroup.
I imagine it as having a culture in which students and professionals alike
can join in a conversation. If people say mistaken things, we understand
that we are all born absolutely ignorant, and we are all limited in what
we have read and mastered. If we see people thinking they understand to be
mistaken we either let it be, or respond in a way that is respectful.
The purpose is not just to create civility in the world but to
experiment with the deconstruction of individuality, as I understand it,
so that we can blend our minds more effectively. Doesn't Habermas speak
of this in his recent writing? Certainly the psychologist Kenneth Gergen
has.
..Lois
Gordon Fitch
| where may I look with any kind of hope for my kind of philosopher himself,
| at the least for my need of new philosophers? In that direction alone
| where a noble mode of thought is dominant, such as believes in slavery
| and in many degrees of bondage as the precondition of every higher culture,
He need not have looked very far. From the monotheist
slaver Akhnaton, and probably long before, down through
Plato and Aristotle to the present day, are scribblers
aplenty praising and justifying subjugation in the name of
some Higher Good. The scribbling is almost, indeed, a
synonym for civilization.
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
Ned Ludd
Ned wrote:
> Oh God, Gordon, I love it when you talk Greek.
> Oh, I'll start from the top then.
> Menin aeide Thea, Peleiadeo Akhileos oulomenen, he muri' Akhaiois alge'
> etheken, pollas d' iphthimous psukhas Aidi proiapsen heroon....
Ooooo... I'm still all atingle!
Ned
P.S. On the subject of us all being "slaves" and in "many degrees of
bondage" (as a "precondition" of our "higher culture"), and your
comment:
"It is a human artifice, I think, to establish play as something
that does not count. Maybe the exclusion of the playful is a mark
of Slavery, which would explain the disgust and fear with which
its appearance is so often greeted."
I seem to remember a noted scribbler of two centuries ago (Mr. Pope),
who was asked to pen a few appropriate words for a royal dog collar,
and came up with:
"I am His Majesty's dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?"
Gordon Fitch
| that does not count. Maybe the exclusion of the playful is a mark
| of Slavery, which would explain the disgust and fear with which
| its appearance is so often greeted."
j...@ntrs.com (Ned Ludd):
| I seem to remember a noted scribbler of two centuries ago (Mr. Pope),
| who was asked to pen a few appropriate words for a royal dog collar,
| and came up with:
|
| "I am His Majesty's dog at Kew;
| Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?"
Woof! Woof!
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
Michael Sean Rooney
Brian Dell <de...@gpu2.srv.ualberta.ca> wrote:
>
>Let's say Z is the "difference" between X and Y so that Z = X - Y.
>
>Is Z thereby *reducible* to X and Y?
No.
>Perhaps I say
>"There is an apple and a banana in the bowl."
>
>Now perhaps F = A + B, where F = "fruit"
> A = "apple"
> B = "banana"
>
>Now one would not say,
>"There is an apple, a banana, and fruit in the bowl."
>
>That is, F cannot have as its referent a concrete "thing". F must have
>as its referent A and B, and, in fact, A and B in turn are signifiers for
>other signs.
>
>But does this mean F is *nothing more than* a relational operation on A
>and B?
No, as you seem to know. In both examples, the
non-conceptual difference between one sign and another
is only producible as an identity, that is, through yet
another sign, through more syntactical relations. As
such, signs Z and F are always taking on different relations.
This is basically what Derrida thematizes as the graft,
or the _plus d'_ (more of/than).
Cordially,
M.
"What can look at itself is not one; and the law of the addition
of the origin to its representation, of the thing to its image,
is that one plus one makes at least three."
Gordon Fitch
| > "I am His Majesty's dog at Kew;
| > Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?"
| Gordon:
| > Woof! Woof!
| Oh, did I wake up the dog again?
Actually, this was a Wittgensteinian answer. Witt, as I
am sure you will recall, said that if a lion were able to
speak, we still wouldn't understand him. (At least, this is
what they have him saying in the movie). So when we ask the
dog -- or rather, Dog -- a question, he answers "Woof, woof"
and we cannot decode it. Yet, in another sense, Dog has
given us all the answer we could ask for, that of Dog's
true identity: He is that Other who, in saying "Woof, woof",
remains at once present and yet unattainable; who speaks
incomprehensibly yet fully; who names himself and yet
remains forever anonymous. Look into his eyes as long as
you like: he is closer than your hand and more remote than
the Pharaohs of Egypt.
He is Dog, and may wear a collar, but collar or not, he can
slip the leash.
"If dogs run free, why can't we?" -- Bob Dylan
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
Gordon Fitch
| Yeah. People these days look on this flower as if it were a dream.
| The federal govt. put put a big slab of grant money into analyzing
| the question, "Why do dogs bark?" They came up with several answers.
| It was all bullsh*t. I could have saved them all that money: When
| all you can do is bark, you bark!
I would like to see a government study of why dogs bark.
It certainly seems like a better thing than most of what
the government does. Can you give me any more information
on this study?
Actually, dogs can do a great many things besides bark, not
least of which is not-bark. Remember the Hound of the
Baskervilles.
| > He is Dog, and may wear a collar, but collar or not, he can slip the leash.
|
| But can we slip his leash?
|
| > "If dogs run free, why can't we?" -- Bob Dylan
|
| Because we own the dog.
A wise answer.
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
Ned Ludd
> all you can do is bark, you bark!
> I would like to see a government study of why dogs bark. It certainly
> seems like a better thing than most of what the government does. Can
> you give me any more information on this study?
I'm almost certain it was in the "Atlantic" about 2 years ago,
and it's title was "Why Do Dogs Bark?". The government study was
referenced in this article.
> Actually, dogs can do a great many things besides bark, not
> least of which is not-bark. Remember the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Was he the one who failed to bark?
The question is, did he ever laugh? While dogs are exceptionally
playful, I've never seen one with a sense of humor (ie. one who
enjoyed irony, surprise or another's awkward predicament.) I've
yet to meet a sardonic dog.
Ned
Gordon Fitch
| > least of which is not-bark. Remember the Hound of the Baskervilles.
j...@ntrs.com (Ned Ludd):
| Was he the one who failed to bark?
That's the one. I think. It's been a long time....
| The question is, did he ever laugh? While dogs are exceptionally
| playful, I've never seen one with a sense of humor (ie. one who
| enjoyed irony, surprise or another's awkward predicament.) I've
| yet to meet a sardonic dog.
I have heard dog stories which imply that at least some
dogs are capable of dual simultaneous views of the world,
which would enable them to consciously practice deception,
as well as irony. However, since dogs don't speak our
language and we don't understand theirs (if any) or read
their minds, we don't really know; some deceptions could be
instinctive or learned behaviors in a single worldview.
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
Ned Ludd
| playful, I've never seen one with a sense of humor (ie. one who
| enjoyed irony, surprise or another's awkward predicament.) I've
| yet to meet a sardonic dog.
> I have heard dog stories which imply that at least some
> dogs are capable of dual simultaneous views of the world,
> which would enable them to consciously practice deception,
> as well as irony.
Yeah, guilt. I think guilt is universal. Even jellyfish
probably feel guilt. Maybe even rocks feel it. But it's
nothing to laugh at.
> However, since dogs don't speak our language and we don't
> understand theirs (if any)...
Oh who's fooling who, Gordon? Of course we understand their
language. And they understand our fundamental emotions very
well. Just like small children know their parents' emotions
long before they learn how to talk.
> ...or read their minds, we don't really know; some deceptions could
> be instinctive or learned behaviors in a single worldview.
"Every word [and action] carries each one's unique scent."
Clayton Gillespie
> Yeah, guilt. I think guilt is universal. Even jellyfish
> probably feel guilt. Maybe even rocks feel it. But it's
> nothing to laugh at.
predicate their ethics on shame rather than guilt. In that case, getting
caught is what counts not the truth of the act.
- Clayton Gillespie
Electra Software & Consulting
cla...@delphi.com
Lois Shawver
: Oh who's fooling who, Gordon? Of course we understand their [dogs]
: language. And they understand our fundamental emotions very
: well. Just like small children know their parents' emotions
: long before they learn how to talk.
Well, do the dogs give us a text that is independent of the author? Or are
we trying to understand the dogs intent?
Gordon Fitch
| | The question is, did he ever laugh? While dogs are exceptionally
| | playful, I've never seen one with a sense of humor (ie. one who
| | enjoyed irony, surprise or another's awkward predicament.) I've
| | yet to meet a sardonic dog.
| > I have heard dog stories which imply that at least some
| > dogs are capable of dual simultaneous views of the world,
| > which would enable them to consciously practice deception,
| > as well as irony.
j...@ntrs.com (Ned Ludd):
| Yeah, guilt. I think guilt is universal. Even jellyfish
| probably feel guilt. Maybe even rocks feel it. But it's
| nothing to laugh at.
| > However, since dogs don't speak our language and we don't
| > understand theirs (if any)...
| Oh who's fooling who, Gordon? Of course we understand their
| language. And they understand our fundamental emotions very
| well. Just like small children know their parents' emotions
| long before they learn how to talk.
I really don't know about any of this. I suppose small
children can be assumed to pick up their parents' emotions,
and in fact I've seen an 4-month-old infant demonstrate some
passive vocabulary and an ability to decode syntax, but I
would never assume I always knew what animals were trying to
express. The more closely I observe them, the more mysteri-
ous they seem. Most of the material I've read about the
consciousness and expression of animals seems either too
anthropomorphic or too much into the dumb-machine model.
Which, I guess, goes along with what Wittgenstein said
about the talking lion.
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
Mark Weinles
>Mark Weinles (Mark.W...@launchpad.unc.edu) wrote:
>
>: It would be nice if either one of you would actually _respond_ to Rooney's
>: post, instead of offering a crude parody (Pandit), or ignoring it
>: completely (Lois). Is this a discussion, or just (to borrow Rooney's
>: term) "blathering"?
>
>Although I follow just about everything a little, I must say that I don't
>make a scholarly study of the threads, and I respond spontaneously to
>post [snip] -- so I don't really have the background of this discussion
>think. So thanks for asking.
Far be it from me to inhibit your spontaneity, but I wonder if you're
not spontaneously side-stepping the issues. You agreed with the
conclusion that Rooney was being elitist when, as it turns out, you
didn't even remember what he had written. So what's your excuse for
ignoring the issues I raised in my post -- the one you're supposedly
responding to? I re-stated one or two of Rooney's points about the
relationship between deconstruction and "plain English" and added a few
of my own, but somehow all that seems to have gone by the wayside. I
think you just want to see your words on-screen. And that's fine --
enjoy them. I won't interfere.
[much, much snipping]
>I think Derrida's ideas could be put in clearer English and that
>they will not survive the decade unless they are. [snip] The next
>moment in the dialectic of these ideas needs to be a more accessible
>interpretation.
Great -- after you and Gordon finish cleaning up the Net, you can
bowdlerize Derrida. Oh, you said "clearer," not "cleaner"! My mistake.
But isn't it basically the same thing? You're talking about putting
a text into more acceptable language. Wait, you said "accessible,"
not "acceptable"! Sorry, my mistake again. But isn't it basically the
same thing?
And what do you mean by "next"? At this point in the history of post-
structuralism, all that's left is the Classic Comics edition.
-- Mark
NS Brown
[Regarding his dog comments, Gordon Fitch wrote:]
: Actually, this was a Wittgensteinian answer. Witt, as I
: am sure you will recall, said that if a lion were able to
: speak, we still wouldn't understand him. (At least, this is
: what they have him saying in the movie). So when we ask the
: dog -- or rather, Dog -- a question, he answers "Woof, woof"
: and we cannot decode it. Yet, in another sense, Dog has
: given us all the answer we could ask for, that of Dog's
: true identity: He is that Other who, in saying "Woof, woof",
: remains at once present and yet unattainable; who speaks
: incomprehensibly yet fully; who names himself and yet
: remains forever anonymous. Look into his eyes as long as
: you like: he is closer than your hand and more remote than
: the Pharaohs of Egypt.
All of which presumes that a given Human constructs
him/herself as being different from Dog. That is a choice.
When I'm interacting with a dog, I have at least two choices:
(a) Construct myself as Human and the dog as Dog, preserve
the difference, and basically demand that the dog act Human
in order for us to get along. Then I toss in a few theoretical
fences (anthropomorphism, etc.) for the dog to leap over, note
that he doesn't, and pronounce him "unknowable."
(b) Construct both myself and the dog as Common (recognizing
common consciousness, or whatever commonness you want to pick)
and interact as experiential equals. I may still assert "pack
leader" status -- you can see this behavior *among* dogs, so
it falls within the Common construct -- but when I'm looking
into those doggie eyes I'm not asking "what would he be thinking
if he were Human," but "what aspect of Common are we sharing?"
The "unknowability" of animals stems not from their inability
to be Human, but from our own inability to experience the Common
in ourselves.
: He is Dog, and may wear a collar, but collar or not, he can
: slip the leash.
If he does, run *with* him, not *after* him ....
Just an opinion, worth what you paid for it. :)
Cris
Mark Weinles
that postmodernism can be summarized in "plain English," and attempting
to defend their book against my charges that it's biased, simplistic,
and incomplete.]
In article <3d87l8$n...@news2.delphi.com>
PAN...@news.delphi.com
(PAN...@DELPHI.COM) writes:
>Each chapter summarizes an author or authors, then in the concluding
>section of each chapter their works are criticzed. If you just read
>the first parts you will see that the authors are not attacked.
You're getting warmer, but you still don't have it right. The attack on
Adorno and Horkheimer that I quoted comes directly from the _first_
section of the chapter on critical theory, not from the concluding one.
The other two attacks that I mentioned come from the last part of their
respective chapters, but naturally Best and Kellner design their
"summaries" to support their conclusions. That shouldn't come as such a
big surprise.
[In response to Pandit's claim that Best and Kellner easily summarize
most of postmodernism in plain English, I pointed out that they ignore
a great deal of the subject and do a bad job on what they pay attention
to. Pandit replies...]
>Well, find a book that does a better job...
Now, what would I want to do that for? You seem to have forgotten what
we're arguing about. _You_ think that this job is both easy (so why all
the problems?) and worth doing. I say it's neither one. You offered
_Postmodern Theory_ as proof that you were right. But since your proof
isn't proving what it's supposed to, maybe it's time to re-examine your
premises.
>>You said that Best and Kellner write in "plain English,"
>>when in fact they use a heavy dose of Marxist terminology.
>> So you must think of that either as plain English or as an
>> acceptable form of jargon -- you tell me.
>Plain is a relative term. First read K&B, then read D&G's thousand
> Plateaus. Which one is plain English?
So the answer is that you find Marxist terminology acceptable, while
you reject Deleuze and Guattari's more creative use of language. You
haven't established anything except your own habits of taste.
>Its easy to spout off criticism on the net. Why not write personal
>letters to Jameson and A Danto, they praise the book on its jacket...
Easy for you, maybe -- for me, anything that involves either emacs or
vi belongs in the "difficult" category. If it makes you feel any
better, I spout off criticism wherever I go. But what's your point
about the celebrity endorsements? Jameson also gave a blurb to D&G's
_Anti-Oedipus_ ("brilliant, "unequalled," etc.). Does that change your
mind about them? Do you think that it should?
-- Mark Weinles
Ned Ludd
Ned wrote:
> Yeah, guilt. I think guilt is universal. Even jellyfish probably feel
> guilt. Maybe even rocks feel it. But it's nothing to laugh at.
> I think this is a cultural artifact not a universal. Some cultures
> predicate their ethics on shame rather than guilt. In that case, getting
> caught is what counts not the truth of the act.
Like the difference between Kingons and Ferrenghi. But I have
seen dogs feel guilty. And refuse to look at evidence of their
guilt.
Lois:
> Well, do the dogs give us a text that is independent of the author? Or
> are we trying to understand the dogs intent?
Where there is a text, there is an author. And of course we try to
understand their intent - man(kind)'s best friend. Nowadays we even
try to understand the intent of the car, the TV, the washing machine.
Gordon:
> I really don't know about any of this. I suppose small
> children can be assumed to pick up their parents' emotions,
> and in fact I've seen an 4-month-old infant demonstrate some
> passive vocabulary and an ability to decode syntax, but I
> would never assume I always knew what animals were trying to
> express.
Certainly not more than what we think we know about
what humans are trying to express.
> The more closely I observe them, the more mysteri-
> ous they seem. Most of the material I've read about the
> consciousness and expression of animals seems either too
> anthropomorphic or too much into the dumb-machine model.
> Which, I guess, goes along with what Wittgenstein said
> about the talking lion.
Hey, don't knock machines. You may be reporting to one soon.
Ned
P.S. NS Brown wrote:
> (b) Construct both myself and the dog as Common (recognizing
> common consciousness, or whatever commonness you want to pick)
> and interact as experiential equals.
> The "unknowability" of animals stems not from their inability
> to be Human, but from our own inability to experience the Common
> in ourselves.
>
> ...run *with* him, not *after* him ....
PTC
: >I think Derrida's ideas could be put in clearer English and that
: >they will not survive the decade unless they are. [snip] The next
: >moment in the dialectic of these ideas needs to be a more accessible
: >interpretation.
: Great -- after you and Gordon finish cleaning up the Net, you can
: bowdlerize Derrida. Oh, you said "clearer," not "cleaner"! My mistake.
: But isn't it basically the same thing? You're talking about putting
: a text into more acceptable language. Wait, you said "accessible,"
: not "acceptable"! Sorry, my mistake again. But isn't it basically the
: same thing?
No, it's not. A translation means a change to ideas in any case. Simply
because you read the first translation does not mean that this is the
_best_ translation possible.
What would be required would be a translation which picks up the nuances
of French language used by Derrida and made them clear to an
english-speaking audience. Why should we be forced to guess what he says
from oblique text, when we could _read_.
Yes, each translation of a text carries with it the baggage of the
translator. That's where the critical appraisal of a translator's skills
and ideologies comes into play.. We may make allowances for these as the
situation requires.
-- _--_|\ -- Peter Caffin <ptca...@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>: ----------------
/ \ An example of the leftie postgraduate student rabble at
X_.--._/ The University of Western Australia, situated in a pict-
------- v -- uresque precinct overlooking the Swan River (blah blah) --
Michael J. LeBlanc
Clayton Gillespie <cla...@delphi.com> wrote:
>Ned Ludd <j...@ntrs.com> writes:
>
>> Yeah, guilt. I think guilt is universal. Even jellyfish
>> probably feel guilt. Maybe even rocks feel it. But it's
>> nothing to laugh at.
>
>I think this is a cultural artifact not a universal. Some cultures
>predicate their ethics on shame rather than guilt. In that case, getting
>caught is what counts not the truth of the act.
...this would go a long way in explaining the difference between dogs & cats...
>- Clayton Gillespie
:Michael (who prefers cats)
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael LeBlanc / "That which does not kill me makes me linger"
m...@netcom.com /
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Weinles
to understand what another person is saying. The genius makes a wider than
average leap; therefore the average person needs assistance, in the form of
secondary works, to cross the gap.]
I think that the best word would be not leaps, but bounds. Language pretends
to bound over its own limits in order to achieve referentiality, but in that
very motion it inscribes a new set of bounds.
-- Mark