Ethical Diversions

[Monte Davis]

DM: "But the shrillness with which even any mention of the
Holocaust vis a vis Gravity's Rainbow (or V., or ...)
is met here..."

What makes you think it has anything to do with Orban's comments on the
Holocaust? If I were inclined to be shrill rather than bored by the passage
you quoted, it would be because it embodies the worst vices of academic
critical writing over the last few decades: the arch wordplay and
oh-so-significant antinomies, the portentous-because-cloudy phrases such as
"unguaranteed possibilities," the mandatory jargon (liminality,
performative, trace).

I learned a lot from several of the early lights of pomo/decon, but the
falling-off in their epigones reminds me of what happened to Freudian
thought after Freud -- only worse.