what's so special about deconstruction?

[Terrance]

Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> Okay, would have filled in that "not" on yr behalf,
> knew what you were getting at, and, point well taken.

Yes, thanks, I know you would have gotten that, it was the
other stuff I needed to correct. 


> 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) ...

Excellent! 

 
Derrida's relentless tracing of "writing" to an impersonal
substrate (this term has a philosophical/geological history
of interest), which btw, like Freud's "death instinct"
operates in silence. 


> 
> 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?  

What you see is what you get (wizzy wig). This is the
existential (exist) reality. 
What you see,  or better still, what you perceive by sense
or encounter is only apparently real. This,  if it is only
an intimation of some transcendent reality is "Platonic."
But, we may also say, that the apparent or what we encounter
or perceive, is not reality, not because there is, as in
Plato, a transcendent reality, 
but because what we encounter or perceive involves a
contribution from ourselves as well as from the object.  

(this problem is present in P's very early story, is it
Denis Flange who refuses to tell a sea story? also, is it 
Denis that has this thing about the Moon and the sea and the
earth and all that stuff he tells a shrink? well I don't
have the book and so I can't remember and of course there is
Pynchon's sophomoric understanding of science here, not so
important really, because, and this is why the "excluded
middle" essay, for but one example, is kinda missing the
point, much like, and we get this straight from the horses
mouth, all those scientific readings of entropy and
relativity). 

In any event, unlike the Platonists, for the "material"
reality, what is real is the object as it is in itself apart
from its effect on us.  So we say that there are primary
qualities, those qualities that are of the object and also
secondary qualities, which are nothing in the object itself
but the power to produce effects in us by their primary
qualities. So, when we talk of the existential reality, it
is of this effect on us that we speak, but when we talk
about that which has the power to produce such effect or
about the world as it appears in the manifestation of this
underlying reality we are talking about not Einstein
(existential), not Plato's transcendent,  but Newton's
absolute space and time or what Duns Scotus called
"entitative" or what I would call a 
substrative reality.     

If this is not clear, let me know. Freud is a good example
or Marx if you prefer and I will provide textual examples of
any and all of these.  


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 ...

Dave, you are so inter textual. Love it! 
;-)
 
Remember that Kant has something called the "supersensible."
So, although nature as an object of sense can be known
theoretically,  no knowledge of the supersensible is
possible. What Kant does is to take Aristotle's reality
(actually Kant is almost a pure Aristotelian)  and bring in
Plato's transcendent and then make it super. This is the
unknowable, that as you say, seems to be like Derrida, but
is not. 
 


> 
> 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) ...

Yes, I know exactly what you are talking about. In VL,
Pynchon SEEMS to bring the 
political subtext, the forces un-seen, the grand conspiracy,
the paranoid uncertainty, 
to the surface of the political struggles of the Left, both
internal and external. And I like MalignD's complaint about
this, that the art of fiction is smothered under the
political. However, I think that, father forgive me,  the
"religious" aspects of the novel are deep under the surface,
Vineland the Good, but that, as you indicate below (all
"play" intended), it is to the surface that we must,
according to Pynchon, "Pay Attention To" else we fail to
provide and care for the children.   



> 
> 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.
> 
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