grgr: overcoming of metaphysics

[Dave Monroe]

I quite like the characterization of a reading community, of this reading
community, of, perhaps, an "ideal"--or, at any rate, preferrable--reading
community as liek a Rabbinic community enagegd in reading the Torah.  Not so
sure about the mystic, or, at any rate, cryptic overtones of "Kabbalist," but
I'm thinking of Rabbinic reading as described, discussed by Susan A. Handelman,
The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern
Literary Theory (which discusses Derrida, Bloom and Hartman at length) and Jose
Faur, Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic
Tradition, as, say, the convergence of a community of readers around a common
texts, not to discern its absolute, singularly "true" meaning, but, rather, to
negotiate, argue over its possible, mulitple meanings.  Not that anything goes,
there is, indeed, a text demanding responsibility to it, but there seems to be
a tolerance for, perhaps even encouragement of, readings vs. reading, to the
point that mutually exclusive readings can be admitted, and authorial
intentions are perhaps beside the point ...

Dave Meury wrote:

> > Are we on the list Pynchon-Kabbalists who study the novel
> > as our Torah?
>
> "...all right, say we are supposed to be the Kabbalist out here, say that's
> our real Destiny, to be the scholar-magicians of the Zone, with somewhere
> in it a Text, to be picked to pieces, annotated, explicated, and
> masturbated till it's all squeezed limp of its last drop ..."