Searle vs. Derrida, cont.

[Otto]

"overgeneralized response" -- yes, as a quick answer to your
overgeneralized and superficial critique of Derrida.
My apologies, I had a hard weekend.

predictable -- well, I don't think so.

"schtoopid Amerikans," -- hell, no! Culler & Pynchon are Americans too,
aren't they?

"some irrationalist Heideggerian such as Derrida" -- I don't think this is a
valid critique.

-----------------------------
> 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.
>

Believing that there's an objective "truth" that can be defined once and for
all makes you a conservative, yes. But leftists can be conservative too.

>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.

I've criticized many leftists too for being ideologically closed. Maybe
Postmodernism is inevitably critical of the "official" left and the Marxist
ideology. See for example "Gravity's Rainbow," p. 701.

> As far as "correct"
>or post-modernist-approved  interpretations of Pynchon,  well,
>there's more than one way to skin a cat.

I agree although I love cats.

>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.

If you please could explain to me what you mean by "leftist positivist".

Only thing I'm absolutely sure about Pynchon is that he's against ideologies
(left or right) which put dissidents into camps.

Sergeant Schultz
(those damned html-posts make it hard to answer)