Otto

[jolly]

(claiming) Derrida is illogical and obscure (as Jolly did) 
doesn't >make him so.
 
You simply  see my list-name and make a trivial and insulting assessment. Obviously you did not read my post which included quotes from Derrida's bizarre, mystical essay "Spectres of Marx."   I realize that I will be accused of being  a philistine or pompous or juvenile or whatever, but my point is that a critical  viewpoint depends on the choice of a  material ontology or, in opposition to materialism, an approach based ((incorrectly) on an idealist or theological perspective.  I think Derrida rejects materialism for some sort of Hegelian or Heideggerian idealism; in doing so he subverts not only the possbility of interpretations based on  economic materialism, but those following say darwinism or behaviorism. Though an idealist he is not positivist or platonist either, but I do think he views the world metaphysically, and subjectively.  Po-mo CAN give rise to cheap relativism and nihilism, even though  supporters deny that.  
 
It is debatable whether Quine's Two Dogmas refutes empiricism . Though he does sometimes seem to be a bit platonic, Quine was willing to admit the efficacious of a strict materialist and even behaviorist viewpoint; he was a pragmatist and an ontology based on scientific materialism is pragmatic, especially to a Harvard professor..   He modified the verificationist criteria: it's not to be viewed from the POV of the individual agent but extended to scholarly and scientific communities--the web of beliefs.  And there are scholars  who read Wittgenstein's PI as quite behaviorist and empirical--it surely is not idealistic nor really postmodern.   Nonetheless, any view which does not address the political, economic or biological realities  (and brutalities and injustices) referred to by Pynchon's fiction is missing the point.  SO , yeah I m no Jameson or Wittgenstein, but the lit. world (and pynchonian studies) could use a Jameson meets Wittgenstein like figure who could do integrals as
 well as econometrics .  

		
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