Leggo my Pomo

[still lookin 4 the face i had b4 the world was made]

On Sat, 24 May 1997, Joe Varo wrote:
> On Fri, 23 May 1997, still lookin 4 the face i had b4 the world was made wrote:
> > But I have two caveats:  1) if you are going to pick up the
> > monkey wrench, be willing to truly and thoroughly use it on your _own_
> > constructions, and 2) it would be a good idea to think about what you're
> > going to do after you've taken apart your object of analysis and are
> > sitting around in a world (or at least, region) of fragments.
> 
> Actually, I think that Derrida himself said (I think in the book of
> interviews, _Positions_) that eventually even deconstruction itself would
> require being deconstructed.
> 
> I think that Derrida always stresses the "play" of language, the back and
> forth play of the binary oppositions, the central and marginal.
> 
> IMHO, deconstruction has been bastardized in America where is seems that
> deconstructive critics show how the marginal is actually central and stop
> there, essentially just setting up a binary opposition more to their
> liking.  I don't think that this is what Derrida has in mind.

You are probably right about D. (he is nimble enough not to be caught in
such a simple trap).  I think you are completely right about what American
decon'ists have done with it--cleared out the old assumptions in order to
set up their new assumptions.

> As for caveat #2, you just have to learn to live with uncertainty.

I think there are a whole range of other possible responses to this
situation than "just learning to live with uncertainty."  For example,
recognizing the unprovability of certain axiomatic principles while at the
same time deciding that said principles, or what they point to, are worth
living for or by or in reference to. 

It's no news flash that words and ideas are limited and fallible.  But
perhaps there are things which words and ideas refer to which are not
invalidated by the deconstruction of said words and ideas.  Was it the
Buddha who said, "The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon"?

Max

M a x i m u s  D a v i d  C l a r k e | There's a blaze of light in every
         http://www.afn.org/~traveler | word/It doesn't matter which you
                "Surrealist-At-Large" | heard/The holy or the broken
                     traveler at afn.org | Hallelujah... --Leonard Cohen