NP Louisiana + Architecture = ?

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ghetta Life" <ghetta_outta at hotmail.com>
To: <ottosell at yahoo.de>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 3:53 PM
Subject: Re: NP Louisiana + Architecture = ?


> >From: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>
> >"(...) some academics say that postmodern theory is on the way out
> >altogether and that the heady ideas that once changed the way literature
is
> >taught and read will soon be as extinct as the dodo (...)."
> >http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0127/p11s01-legn.html
> >But the article is weak. I bet there are some academics who say that
> >Christianity and Science are mutual exclusive.
>
> I'm not sure how your statement about what "some academics" might say
> supports your contention that the article is weak.

My point is that calling unnamed specialists as witnesses is useless,
doesn't say anything at all except that the one who says it obviously has
some political axe to grind.

Kirby clearly has his fun declaring that theory outdated that had put the
emphasis on the death of metafictions like the Bible. I haven't read
Eagleton's "After Theory" (yet), but Kirby fails to tell us about Eagleton's
arguments for saying "that postmodern literary theory (which he defines as
"the contemporary movement of thought which rejects . . . the possibility of
objective knowledge" and is therefore "skeptical of truth, unity, and
progress") was relevant in its heyday, but no more."

In this I think the article is weak. I simply disagree and would therefor
like to see some more of the "evidence" Eagleton presents to support his
thesis. I still have doubts about "the possibility of objective knowledge,"
I'm still "skeptical of truth, unity, and progress," that's all.

> The major point of the
> article is that Postmodern literary theory is falling out of favor in a
big
> way in academia.  Can you refute that in a more convincing manner?  As
> evidence (amongst other things) the article points to Eagleton's (not just
> "some academic") change of heart:
>
> <<"But Eagleton has never been a tweedy, pipe-smoking purveyor of the
humane
> verities. What makes his new view so startling is that for years, he was
one
> of theory's most committed apologists. Indeed, his 1983 book "Literary
> Theory: An Introduction" has long been a standard text in university
> classrooms and will no doubt continue to be, at least until Eagleton's
> recantation of all he once held holy becomes the new orthodoxy.
>
> The idea behind "Literary Theory" was to interrogate and refute what
> Eagleton and others thought of as lazy, received notions of what is
true.>>
>
> Ghetta
> Fire the Liar
>

I have a strong impression that Kirby is mistaking postmodernism for marxism
("Farewell, Karl Marx") since he begins and ends his article with a
reference to marxism.

Otto

"Opposites are already united; they depend on each other integrally, thus,
no presence without absence, etc.
Difference and deferral is inherent in language itself; each word mobilizes
the play of language.
Deconstruction sees conflicting readings of a text as reenactments of
conflict within the text. Each reading would be an attempt to simplify the
interplay of meanings within the text.
Deconstructive readings argue that texts deconstruct themselves, but that
does not mean that the text is bad or meaningless. Rather, a thoughtful
deconstructive reading tries to show the ways that literary writing, which
is self-conscious about words and meaning, might have much to tell us about
our fragmented reality, which is always already in language itself."
http://web.utk.edu/~misty/Derrida376.html