Snappycrossdresser

[Otto]

> At 06:39 AM 10/17/2004 +0200, Otto wrote:
> >I'm not writing an essay for PN, this is just a mailing list and the
>  >current discussion emerged upon some really (unprovoked)
> >nasty remarks of pomo-haters on the death of Jacques Derrida.
>
> I didn't mean to attack you specifically.  I apologize if I did.

No apology necessary; you didn't attack me personally, Owen.

> I was
> pointing out an epistemologically inconsistent claim that many
> poststructuralists make: that their denial of epistemically reliable
> knowledge is itself put forth as epistemically reliable.
> So one of two
> things must be true: 1) the insistence on epistemological unreliability
> could very well itself be wrong,

Of course it could, to claim otherwise would be nonsense. But nobody's
been able up to now to show some really reliable epistemology.

> or 2) the poststructuralist rejection of
> epistemic reliability itself somehow transcends the logocentric construct,
> somehow avoids its very own critique.  The former seems more amenable to
> poststructuralist criticism, but if it is indeed right the force of the
> argument is lost.
>
> >You're welcomed, no offense taken.
> >The theory has been presented here for years now (with lots of examples
> > and references, not only by me) but all we get are the same questions
> > over and over again, and no other theory.
>
> I am happy to discuss alternatives to poststructuralism.  I also don't
> want to overrun a Pynchon list with posts on Brandom and Davidson, etc.
> Would it be better to discuss this off-list, or is it all right to open up
> the discussion to the list?
>

I'd be glad to read it here. Offlist wouldn't be good, I simply lack the
time.

> >Reading and interpreting novels requires further reading. I have
> > encountered
> >an unwillingness to take the effort of working through some theoretical
> >stuff *before* deciding that postmodernism is just hocuspocus. If someone
> >can refute Jonathan Culler's reading of Derrida he/she should do so. But
> >just the claim that Derrida is illogical and obscure (as Jolly did)
> >doesn't make him so.
>
> Of course.  The great majority of those who dismiss
> postmodernism/poststructuralism have read little if any of it.  But
> perhaps
> refutation is the wrong way to think about this.  Although I think you
> could refute certain aspects of poststructuralism, I think a rejection of
> poststructuralism in toto is naive.  I think there are better, more
> coherent philosophical and literary perspectives than
> poststructuralism.  Thinking something is better doesn't necessitate a
> refutation--simply evidence that the other theory more successfully
> accounts for the world and the text.
>

I'd really like to read more of that, especially about the literary
perspectives. For example I had much fun reading this:

"By the beginning of October, when Chip sent his finished script to Eden
Procuro, he'd sold his feminists, his formalists, his structuralists, his
post-structuralists, his Freudians, and his queers."
(J. Franzen, "The Corrections," p. 97-98)

> >I guess because all so-called reliable epistemologies of the past have
> >turned out to be logocentric constructs and, on the basis of
> > deconstruction in the end can be proven to be more or less nuts.
>
> All of them?  I am worried by this totalizing view.

Just tell me which is not? Which religion or ideology holds water in the
end, isn't based upon logocentric assumptions that can be deconstructed?

> Be careful that
> poststructuralism doesn't become Doctrine or dogma.

If there is a poststructuralist dogma than it's the dogma that there should
be no dogmas because every dogma is based upon logocentric assumptions.
Of course Critical Theory cannot escape the traps of language itself.

>I believe there are
> certain contemporary epistemologies that defy such a characterization:
> reliablism, coherentism, causal theories of knowledge, etc.  In fact, some
> of these have a great deal in common with deconstruction.  Analytic
> philosophy also went through an epistemological crisis mid 20th
> century.  Wilfrid Sellars's _Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind_,
> W.V.O.
> Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," and Wittgenstein's _Philosophical
> Investigations_ more or less did away with traditional empiricist
> epistemologies in the same way Derrida did (though Derrida was a good 10
> years later).  Sellars, perhaps most powerfully, refused the innocent
> relation between sense experience and knowledge.  Language always gets in
> the way of pure experience: "all awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts,
> etc., in short, all awareness of abstract entities--indeed, all awareness
> even of particulars--is a linguistic affair" (Sellars, EPM p. 63).  But
> whereas poststructuralists took their attack on epistemology as
> definitive,
> many pragmatists and analytic philosophers refined and rethought their
> theories of knowledge.
>

"a linguistic affair"-- yes, that's what it is. No Derrida without Saussure.

Neither the term post-modern nor the term post-structuralism should be
considered dogmatic. But as transitional "movements" they're important to
deliver the tools to re-evaluate every position.

I'm far from asserting that pomo is everything, insofar I'm no disciple of
postmodernism because the whole notion of disciples is a critical thing.
But in order to interpret cultural artefacts the literary aspects of
poststructuralism have been very valuable.

> >I disagree that they refused to provide arguments. Those masses of books
> >haven't been written for nothing. To me it seems more a failure of study.
>
> Fair enough.  I'm not a poststructuralist and haven't read as deeply in
> the
> field as I'm sure many of you have.  I will refrain from listing my
> qualifications (or my GRE scores...), but will say that I have read deeply
> enough to have a good grasp of a wide variety of poststructural thought,
> from Derrida to Althusser to Michael Warner.  I also encourage some study
> on your behalf before you conclude that all epistemologies have turned out
> to be logicentric constructs.  (And if you've ever been around an American
> English department with young faculty scrambling for tenure, you might
> have
> a different perspective on all that mass of books, which indeed were
> written for a distinct professional or political purpose....)
>
> best,
> O.
>

Over here the English departments aren't as bad as the economists in
throwing out bad papers. Of course this is no excuse for writing a bad book,
but if nobody reads it anyway and it helps you to make a living, so what...
(nobody ever read my book about the Belgians in the Congo and their
post-colonial literature)

>From my everyday job that has nothing to do with literature at all (although
it provides the time for reading books) I can say that regarding much of the
world outside as mere text helps a lot. A customer or the boss telling
bullshit, a mean cop, a fine -- all text.

Otto