Logocentrism

[Muchasmasgracias at cs.com]

In a message dated 6/18/00 3:00:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time, jbor at bigpond.com 
writes:

<< This is the sort of binary opposition -- the logocentric privileging of one
 item over another using some illusory center or external reference point as
 a yardstick -- which deconstruction (and Pynchon) seeks to dismantle.
  >>

Whoah, heh-heh, maybe it was a lapse in table manners.  Still, even if this 
is Derrida's program (is it? or just the watered-down Uncle Sam version, how 
could we tell?), Pynchon has the added dimension of wanting to entertain us 
and not presenting himself as an authority.  Do they even work in the same 
medium?  

What's with rejecting a comparison as "binary" so abruptly?  I made 
distinctions between fiction and nonfiction with Pynchon and Derrida.  One is 
a performer who gets up on stage and does an act.  The other is making 
assertions and persuading.  (One is selling something and the other selling 
himself?)

This is all, I guess, the politics of language, someone is on the floor 
making a motion to banish distinctions like artist/critic, poet/philosopher, 
or yes even rhetorician/dialectician.  But I don't know which way to vote!

One thing's for sure though, if enough conversations end with somebody citing 
a rule like "no binary oppositions", then it will become a rule of language 
eventually.