what's so special about deconstruction?

[Dave Monroe]

Okay, would have filled in that "not" on yr behalf,
knew what you were getting at, and, point well taken. 
That, by the way, is the crux of Derrida's reading of
the Phaedrus, of Plato on writing, of Plato writing on
writing, of Plato representing with writing Socrates
representing with speech his thoughts representing the
eternal transcendent forms or whatever which turn out
to be, well, written (always) already ("Plato's
Pharmacy," Disseminations) ... 

Okay, then, howzabout, the problematics of that notion
that "the truth is," if not necessarily "out there,"
that the truth, that Truth, is "elsewhere,"
"transcendent," indeed?  Although that Kantian thing,
this is indeed in that Derridean lineage, involving
rather our inability to know that decidedly
nontranscendent "thing-in-and-of-itself," the Real,
which is always already mediated for us by language,
langue, writing, ecriture, whatever?  I recall Derrida
affirming his Kantian inheritance somehwere or
another.  Hm ...

But I've been thinking, speaking, writing about
Pynchon in this regard as well, about, say, my initial
disappointment with Vineland, how everything seemed,
indeed, on the surface, rather than "hidden,"
"beneath," "elsewhere," "out there" ... I can't recall
specifics (although i think you'll be able to fill
them in), but in either The Vineland Papers or that
special issue of the Oklahoma City U Law Review,
there's a paper (at least) suggesting that, well,
that's the point--the formerly covert operations of
power have surfaced, are visible everywhere, hidden in
plain sight, at best, a la E.A. Poe's "Purloined
Letter" (and see JD on that as well) ...

Or The Crying of Lot 49, again, an idea clarified for
me "elsewhere" (where?), Oedipa, that former Young
Republican, searching for the hidden, the
subterranean, the transcendent, only gradually (if at
all) coming to realize (as perhaps we should, at
least) all sorts of things going on in plain sight
around her, poverty, inequity, loneliness, otherness,
what have you ... okay, only time for one more, so ...

--- Terri <lycidas2 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Sorry, some corrections: 
> 
> Terri wrote:
> > 
> > Just being pesky and picky, but the Platonic
> notion of Truth
> > should 
> 
> NOT 
> 
> be confused with
> > something hidden Beneath appearances, mere or
> otherwise. The
> > Platonists argue that what appears to be real is
> merely
> > intimations of a transcendent reality--Noumenal.
> > Remember too, that for Plato the noumena are
> knowable by us,
> > not so for Kant.
> > 
> > For the reality that is beneath, where the surface
> reality
> > is mere manifestation of the
> > underlying true reality, also known as
> Materialists, see in
> > the Greeks--Democritus, in the Moderns, Nietzsche,
> Marx,
> > Freud,   Eastern--Lao Tzu, also, Newton,
> > Machiavelli, and Pynchon, 
> 
> But 
> 
> Einstein, Wittgenstein (who was converted by
> Tolstoy, but to
> God and NOT to his reality) Max Weber, and
> Shakespeare are
> not Materialists, but are, obviously, 
> Existentialists,
> another tricky term.


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/