Derrida, and Is Emory Bortz on the bus?

[Otto]

>>
>> "All I can see seems to be some irrational hatred
>> (which I don't understand) of Jacques Derrida."
>>

>You didn't read, or simply overlooked my points
> about Heidegger's and Derrida's idealism--which
> is a big deal, ideologically speaking.  Read some
> sections of "Of Grammatology" as well as CS
> Peirce's semiotic theory  and tell me if Derrida
> correctly covers  Peirce's ideas at the end of Chap. 3.
> --{Hint: he doesn't).    It is not hatred, nor is it
> irrational: it is more like a strong distaste for the
> exceedingly verbose or jesuistical, and for someone
>would dismiss the tradition of western science and
>philosophy with a cheesy neo-logism: "logocentric."
>

Oh, I did read that but it confuses me:

"it means a great deal whether you are arguing about universals  from a
perspective that immaterial universals or essences exist apart from matter,
or rather assuming that these universals are brain functions."

Do I get this right that you believe that there are universals that are not
merely brain functions? Some spirit hovering above us like Roland
Feldspath in Chap. 26 maybe?

Logocentrism -- yes, that's what it is:

"Logocentrism is the term he uses to describe all forms of thought which
base themselves on some external point of reference, such as the notion of
truth. Western philosophy, with Plato as an exemplary first instance, has
generally acted on the presupposition that language is subserviant to some
idea, intention or referent that lies outside it. This idea is at odds with
Saussurean principle that it is language which is primary, and that far from
preceding language, meaning is an effect produced by language. However, the
conceptual oppositions which structure Western philosophical thought, such
as sensible v. intelligible, form v. content all imply that ideas, and
indeed content of any kind, exist independently of the medium in which they
are formulated: the word 'medium' itself conveys the secondary status that
language is given in these conceptual oppositions, always defined as a
vehicle or an instrument of something separate from it which governs it from
without. The privileged terms in all the oppositions which underpin Western
philosophical thought are the idea, the content, and the subserviant terms
are the medium, the form, the vehicle. Language has always been regarded as
belonging among these secondary categories.
For anyone who is not involved with philosophy and who has read and
understood Saussure, the charge of logocentrism may not seem pertinent. But
Derrida's subtle analyses show that logocentrism tends to manifest itself in
extremely indirect ways. Notable examples occur in instances of what Derrida
calls 'phonocentrism', and even Saussure was unable to avoid moments of
phonocentricity. Phonocentricism consists in a privileging of speech over
writing. This preference for speech tends to be based on a logocentric
assumption that speech directly expresses a meaning or intention that its
speaker 'has in mind'.
(...)
Derrida counters the temptations of phonocentrist thought by describing
language in general as a kind of writing, as an 'archi-ecriture'. The
reversal of the conventional speech/writing hierarchy which is implied in
the term 'archi-ecriture' makes it impossible to see any use of language,
written or spoken, as being determined by presence, intention or
representation."
(...)
A deconstructive reading tries to bring out the logic of the text's language
as opposed to the logic of its author's claims. It will tease out the text's
implied presuppositions and point out the (inevitable) contradictions in
them.
(...)
A deconstructive reading of this kind, then, will take the metaphysical,
logocentric oppositions at work in a text, reverse them, and then question
them in such a way as to 'neutralize' them. As none of us can ever get
outside logocentrism (its power over our habits of thought and over our
language is so pervasive), the most that one can do is work against them
from within in this sort of way."
(Ann Jefferson: "Modern Literary Theory," London 1982, p. 113-119)

>
> Es toot mir Leid.  I have strayed a bit too much from
> the Pynchonian I guess

No, I think this important for understanding our man.

>--however I will stick to my
> guns and  assert Pynchon's enterprise is not post-modernist,
> at least in its Derridean sense.

Is there any postmodernism in a non-Derridean sense possible?

>Remember in COL 49,when
> Oedipa questions Emory Bortz and the beer swilling grad.
> students regarding Wharfinger's the Courier's Tragedy?
> "Pick some words. Them we can talk about."  There are
> many things going on, but I think it is intended mainly
> as a not-so-nice satire of academic belle-lettrism and "textualism".....
>

I think Pynchon's enterprise has a lot to do with all those promises of
Enlightenment that haven't been fulfilled, but contrary to that, that
analysis and logic have been used to build the rocket and the death camps.

I haven't read COL 49 for a while but what I remember most is the ending;
the revelation that doesn't take place.

Otto