Derrida and Pynchon

[p-list at sardonic201.net]

Anybody else bothered by the way we are talking about this?  As though postmodernism and behaviorism/positivism were the only options....

In fact, analytic and pragmatic has, in many senses, moved beyond (or worked through) these artificial divisions.  You might take a look at the work of Robert Brandom (Making It Explicit; Articulating Reasons; and Tales of the Mighty Dead) or the literary theorist Satya Mohanty, whose _Literary Theory and the Claims of History_ may well be the most important theory book in the past decade or three.  Of course, Richard Bernstein\'s _Beyond Objectivism and Relativism_ is another to look at.

Even the behaviorists/positivists--or at least the later ones--made some serious critiques of traditional epistemology and rationalism.  Wittgenstein, Sellars, and Quine took some heavy swings at empiricism and referentialism.  Very few analytic philosophers today hold a positivist or behaviorist position.  And quite a lot of them are also very much interested in the likes of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hegel, Derrida, etc.

Can we stop talking about this as an either/or proposition?  As Pynchonians we should know better.  And as Wittgenstein always sez, the only necessary step to reaching the answer is finding the right way to ask the question.

O.