Searle vs. Derrida, cont.

[jolly]

Otto: "The massive denunciation of Derrida only explains why Pynchon is so 
largely misunderstood. Of course the Americans don't like French philosophers
critical of imperialistic U.S.-politics which still believes in a clean 
cut between "good vs evil".

 
A predictable, overgeneralized response: it is we "schtoopid Amerikans,"  who, like Sergeant Schultz,   "know nuttink" about dialectics or metaphysics, and by denouncing some irrationalist Heideggerian such as Derrida we somehow now take part in the guilt of the US imperialist regime. In this superficial, but all-too-common Lit. Crit view, those skeptics and somewhat logically-oriented persons who would dare challenge the po-mo's claim to truth (to anti-truth?) are now to be classified as, well, hick conservatives or crass philistines.  
 
Perhaps you recall that Searle himself was, at least initially, a supporter ot the Free Speech movement and opposed McCarthy.  Many leftists have criticized Derrida and post-modernism as well.  As far as "correct" or post-modernist-approved  interpretations of Pynchon,  well, there's more than one way to skin a cat.    I hope that I am not the only one on this list who reads Pynchon as sort of a leftist positivist: I suspect TP would much  rather have hung with, say, Bertrand Russell, than Derrida or Foucault. 
 
 

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