Humpty Dumpty the Playful Agonist

[Paul Mackin]

I suspect that I am the only p-lister extant who remembers what life was
life before Derrida.

There was not really so much difference. 

Back in the forties and fifties many of us felt the same frustration of
not being able to get outside the text as people generally do now.  We
merely hadn't made a special field of expertise out of it. Our
entrepreneurial instincts weren't so highly developed back then, is all.
We missed the boat at the dock. 

P.



On Mon, 2003-06-09 at 07:42, Terrance wrote:
> 
> 
> I'm not quite sure why deconstructive criticism tends to be so negative,
> but it does. 
> That the New Criticism stressed the indisputable autonomy of the text
> and Deconstruction stressed the very absence of the text may have
> something to do with it (the history of criticism is often described as
> pendulum swings). But whatever the reason, poststructuralists critics
> have denied rather than affirmed, and when they have  attempted to find
> meaning (probably not the word to use but...), this "meaning" hinges
> tightly on the power of denial. 
> 
> There is no text. 
> 
> On the other page, while the poet doesn't give us a poem he does give us
> an opportunity to Play and create. 
> 
> There is no answer. 
> 
> On the other cheek, we know something by knowing what it is not, what it
> differs from. 
> 
> 
> 
> The method of Deconstruction is not Analysis, but Conflict. 
> The phrase "does violence to the text" is curious one because of the
> ironic fact that the method of dismantling of systems of thought and
> concepts is violence. 
> 
> Why is that Paul N. sets  thinking against laughing? 
> 
> As I've tried to suggest to Paul N., his method is not analysis, but
> opposition.  
> When I suggested that he had recognized a problem on this List and tried
> to solve it he immediately corrected me, insisting that  he was not
> solving anything and that Analysis doesn't solve. He's quite correct.
> Analysis doesn't solve. It RE-solves or separates (something) into
> constituent parts. But deconstruction  re-solves by conflict. It's
> neo-Nietzschean and Freudian. And there is no way out. 
> 
> On the other foot, the Playfulness of deconstructionist explorations of
> texts (for example, opting for the use of one's own language versus the
> language of the text and the play metaphor upon metaphor) is quite
> liberating because of its commitment to the principle of creation--the
> critic as creator. 
> 
> How do we know that Broling is a word and Brillig is not? 
> 
> Saussure would say that we do not perceive words as words but as
> differences between words. So, we perceive NET as different from MET,
> BET, GET, JET, LET, and so on and we attach meaning to that difference.
> NET is significant only inasmuch as it is **not** MET, BET, GET, and so
> on. 
> 
> So, difference for Saussure is a purely negative concept. It means: NOT
> the same, NOT identical. More importantly, a difference generally
> implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in
> language (Saussure insists, "In language there are ONLY Differences")
> there are "only differences without positive terms." 
> 
> Saussure doesn't stop at difference, however. MET may be different from
> MUT (M?T), but it is also different from BUS, WINDOW, SEXUALITY, DIRT,
> CUP, BUILDING and every other conceivable meaningful utterance.
> Everything is different from everything else. 
> 
> But what good is a truism like, everything is different from everything
> else? What does it tell us about language? 
> 
> This is where OPPOSITION is handy, footy, cheeky even. 
> 
> When we oppose MET to MUT (M?T) rather than any other absurdly unrelated
> utterance we are undeniably guided by a perception of a difference, but
> we are also guided by a perception of a relation; MET and MUT are alike
> in a way that does not apply to MET and WINDOW. This double perception
> of likeness and difference is no longer a difference but what Suassure
> calls Opposition. MET and WINDOW are different, but MET and MUT are
> Opposed because they both belong to the same system M-?-T. 
> 
> Difference is only the first step to Value via Opposition. 
> 
> 
> Gotta run, Otto, thanks much. 
> 
> T