From JHForest at cs.com Tue Oct 7 07:51:16 2003 From: JHForest at cs.com (JHForest at cs.com) Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 07:51:16 EDT Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Message-ID: <6d.1a5dce57.2cb402b4@cs.com> A friend passed in California this along to me. Jim * * * Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Dr. Donald DeMarco St. Jerome's University Universities, despite their professed dedication to the classics, are as likely to be influenced by passing fads as the barometer is by changes in the atmospheric pressure. One of the more pernicious fads that has influenced higher education over the past few decades is deconstruction. The underlying assumption of deconstruction is that linguistic expressions are so inherently ambiguous that they can be analyzed and discussed endlessly without anyone ever being able to decide what it is that they mean. Undecidability, then, becomes the essential character of any literary text, not meaning. The current deconstruction fad owes much to the thought of Jacques Derrida (1939- ), whose essay "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1966) and his book Of Grammatology (1967) provide its theoretical framework. In these works, Derrida attempts to show that any text (a philosophical treatise, a poem, a polemic, or even an exercise in deconstructive criticism) can be interpreted in ways that are fundamentally at variance with, contradictory to, and subversive of what may be viewed as a stable and coherent meaning. His famous maxim, "Il n'y a rien hors du texte" ("There is nothing but the text") indicates that a text has no point of reference beyond itself. There is only, so to speak, "wall-to-wall textuality". To deconstruct is to debunk, unmask, demystify, strip the text of any reference to the transcendent. It does not elucidate. There does not exist any "real world" to be elucidated. It, too, is merely a text. The great enemy of deconstruction is something they call "logocentrism," particularly the "logos" or "reason" celebrated in the Gospel according to St. John. Deconstructionists are not children of the "light". To anyone who sees language as an opening to a world of real values, deconstruction is simply a path to nihilism. In this regard, the late novelist Walker Percy has said that the whole deconstructive enterprise is nothing more than an attempt to get rid of God by first disposing of grammar. Nonetheless, part of the allure for the deconstructionist is that it presents escape from the "closure of knowledge". The open-ended indefiniteness of textuality--"placing [everything] in the abyss" (mettre en ab?me) -- offers the intoxicating image of the abyss as freedom, of never hitting bottom. As a consequence of their eager acceptance of undecidability and their fondness for putting words under erasure (sous rature), deconstructionists do not experience despair, but allegedly emancipate themselves from the tyranny of all authority while crediting themselves with unbound creativity. It is nihilism, so to speak, with a happy ending. "Reduced to its simplest terms and taken to its logical conclusion," writes David Thibodaux in The Cloning of the American Mind," deconstruction is basically the notion that language is a hopelessly imperfect vehicle for the expression of ideas, and because words have no inherent meaning, "meaning" - all meaning is relative." Deconstruction is virtually synonymous with the post-structuralism of the postmodern world. It claims that the major structures by which we organize our thought are neither natural nor inevitable, but artificial constructions. It promises, therefore, to rouse us out of complacency and na?vet? so that we see nothing more than what the text can justify. Perhaps the earliest known deconstructionist is the ancient sophist, Gorgias of Leontini (died 375 BC), a contemporary of Socrates. Being more concerned with rhetoric than reality, more enamored by words than wisdom, he wrote a treatise entitled Of Nature or the Non-Existent in which he used the power of the word to deconstruct the world. He reasoned as follows: since non-existence is non-existence, non-existence is. Therefore, non-existence is and its opposite, existence is not. Gorgias went on to assert that even if anything did exist, we could not know it, and in the unlikely event that we could know something, we could not communicate it. Many critics of deconstruction have labeled it as an intellectual fad, an academic cult, a philosophy of the absurd, or more imaginatively, as in the words of critic David Leyman, "the sguiggle of fancy French mustard on the hot dog of banal observation". Screenwriter Mark Horowitz expresses his disdain for deconstruction by saying of his French contemporaries, "We sent them Jerry Lewis, so they retaliated by sending us deconstruction and Jacques Derrida." Walter Jackson Bate, Harvard's most prestigious literary critic, sees deconstruction as representing "a nihilistic view of literature, of human communication, and of life itself." Rene Wellek, author of a six-volume work on the History of Modern Criticism, makes the comment that "Recent varieties of skepticism lead literally not only to the 'deconstruction' but to the destruction of all literary criticism and scholarship." Walker Percy may have produced the most trenchant criticism of deconstruction. He views the typical deconstructionist as a academic who claims that texts have no referents, yet leaves a message on his wife's telephone answering machine requesting pepperoni pizza. The message is a text and the pizza is a referent. The true deconstructionist (if there could be one), however, since he loves to erase words, would have his pizza message deconstructed by the telephone answering machine's self-erasing tape. He would have successfully deconstructed his text. But he should not be surprised when his pepperoni pizza fails to materialize. Allan Bloom states in The Closing of the American Mind, a book that remained on the New York Times best-seller list for over 30 weeks, sold 900,000 hardcover copies in its first year in print, and was named the New York Times Book Review's "Notable Book of the Year," that deconstruction "is the last predictable stage in the suppression of reason and the denial of the possibility of truth in the name of philosophy." "This fad will pass," he goes on to predict, "as it has already in Paris." The continuing success of Bloom's book and the reforms that it continues to inspire offer hope. The response to The Closing of the American Mind by deconstructionists themselves exposes their own duplicity. Bloom himself found it somewhat amusing, though most revealing, that deconstructionists, apostles of undecidability that they proclaim to be, needed little time in deciding that The Closing of the American Mind is "sexist," "racist," "elitist," and so on. "The violence and passion of the reaction" to his book, in Bloom's words, made it even more evident that deconstruction is more of a cult than it is a legitimate form of criticism. In his review of Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities, Andrew J. Angyal, who is a professor of English at Eton College in North Carolina, also sees hope. He finds that the excesses of deconstruction have caused it to lose its credibility and believes that "a strengthening of public education and a healthy skepticism about intellectual fads and trends within the profession will help to restore sanity and balance to the humanities and help them to regain a sense of their traditional mission and purpose within the liberal arts education." Deconstruction will achieve its final objective in deconstructing its own future. * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From piat1 at bellsouth.net Tue Oct 7 10:38:59 2003 From: piat1 at bellsouth.net (James Piat) Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 10:38:59 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? References: <6d.1a5dce57.2cb402b4@cs.com> Message-ID: <007f01c38ce0$bea122a0$210110ac@D68RS511> Dear Jim Forest, Thanks for another delightful post! Personally, I think the essay is a bit harsh on deconstruction. I don't think the deconstruction movement denies all possibility of communication or meaning -- just the idea that there is a fixed meaning that inheres to events apart from our interpretation of them. That a pizza is a pizza is a tower... But perhaps I am not rightly dividing the text! In any case -- thanks. Jim Piat A friend passed in California this along to me. Jim * * * Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Dr. Donald DeMarco St. Jerome's University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Robert_Pauley at oxy.com Tue Oct 7 18:13:09 2003 From: Robert_Pauley at oxy.com (Robert_Pauley at oxy.com) Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 15:13:09 -0700 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Message-ID: <1E4B441CB5CF9D408D318BC697F086F5014B4904@olawexc7.naoxy.com> Thanks sending for this along. I it enjoyed. -----Original Message----- From: percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:percy-l-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of JHForest at cs.com Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 4:51 AM To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? A friend passed in California this along to me. Jim * * * Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Dr. Donald DeMarco St. Jerome's University Universities, despite their professed dedication to the classics, are as likely to be influenced by passing fads as the barometer is by changes in the atmospheric pressure. One of the more pernicious fads that has influenced higher education over the past few decades is deconstruction. The underlying assumption of deconstruction is that linguistic expressions are so inherently ambiguous that they can be analyzed and discussed endlessly without anyone ever being able to decide what it is that they mean. Undecidability, then, becomes the essential character of any literary text, not meaning. The current deconstruction fad owes much to the thought of Jacques Derrida (1939- ), whose essay "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1966) and his book Of Grammatology (1967) provide its theoretical framework. In these works, Derrida attempts to show that any text (a philosophical treatise, a poem, a polemic, or even an exercise in deconstructive criticism) can be interpreted in ways that are fundamentally at variance with, contradictory to, and subversive of what may be viewed as a stable and coherent meaning. His famous maxim, "Il n'y a rien hors du texte" ("There is nothing but the text") indicates that a text has no point of reference beyond itself. There is only, so to speak, "wall-to-wall textuality". To deconstruct is to debunk, unmask, demystify, strip the text of any reference to the transcendent. It does not elucidate. There does not exist any "real world" to be elucidated. It, too, is merely a text. The great enemy of deconstruction is something they call "logocentrism," particularly the "logos" or "reason" celebrated in the Gospel according to St. John. Deconstructionists are not children of the "light". To anyone who sees language as an opening to a world of real values, deconstruction is simply a path to nihilism. In this regard, the late novelist Walker Percy has said that the whole deconstructive enterprise is nothing more than an attempt to get rid of God by first disposing of grammar. Nonetheless, part of the allure for the deconstructionist is that it presents escape from the "closure of knowledge". The open-ended indefiniteness of textuality--"placing [everything] in the abyss" (mettre en ab?me) -- offers the intoxicating image of the abyss as freedom, of never hitting bottom. As a consequence of their eager acceptance of undecidability and their fondness for putting words under erasure (sous rature), deconstructionists do not experience despair, but allegedly emancipate themselves from the tyranny of all authority while crediting themselves with unbound creativity. It is nihilism, so to speak, with a happy ending. "Reduced to its simplest terms and taken to its logical conclusion," writes David Thibodaux in The Cloning of the American Mind," deconstruction is basically the notion that language is a hopelessly imperfect vehicle for the expression of ideas, and because words have no inherent meaning, "meaning" - all meaning is relative." Deconstruction is virtually synonymous with the post-structuralism of the postmodern world. It claims that the major structures by which we organize our thought are neither natural nor inevitable, but artificial constructions. It promises, therefore, to rouse us out of complacency and na?vet? so that we see nothing more than what the text can justify. Perhaps the earliest known deconstructionist is the ancient sophist, Gorgias of Leontini (died 375 BC), a contemporary of Socrates. Being more concerned with rhetoric than reality, more enamored by words than wisdom, he wrote a treatise entitled Of Nature or the Non-Existent in which he used the power of the word to deconstruct the world. He reasoned as follows: since non-existence is non-existence, non-existence is. Therefore, non-existence is and its opposite, existence is not. Gorgias went on to assert that even if anything did exist, we could not know it, and in the unlikely event that we could know something, we could not communicate it. Many critics of deconstruction have labeled it as an intellectual fad, an academic cult, a philosophy of the absurd, or more imaginatively, as in the words of critic David Leyman, "the sguiggle of fancy French mustard on the hot dog of banal observation". Screenwriter Mark Horowitz expresses his disdain for deconstruction by saying of his French contemporaries, "We sent them Jerry Lewis, so they retaliated by sending us deconstruction and Jacques Derrida." Walter Jackson Bate, Harvard's most prestigious literary critic, sees deconstruction as representing "a nihilistic view of literature, of human communication, and of life itself." Rene Wellek, author of a six-volume work on the History of Modern Criticism, makes the comment that "Recent varieties of skepticism lead literally not only to the 'deconstruction' but to the destruction of all literary criticism and scholarship." Walker Percy may have produced the most trenchant criticism of deconstruction. He views the typical deconstructionist as a academic who claims that texts have no referents, yet leaves a message on his wife's telephone answering machine requesting pepperoni pizza. The message is a text and the pizza is a referent. The true deconstructionist (if there could be one), however, since he loves to erase words, would have his pizza message deconstructed by the telephone answering machine's self-erasing tape. He would have successfully deconstructed his text. But he should not be surprised when his pepperoni pizza fails to materialize. Allan Bloom states in The Closing of the American Mind, a book that remained on the New York Times best-seller list for over 30 weeks, sold 900,000 hardcover copies in its first year in print, and was named the New York Times Book Review's "Notable Book of the Year," that deconstruction "is the last predictable stage in the suppression of reason and the denial of the possibility of truth in the name of philosophy." "This fad will pass," he goes on to predict, "as it has already in Paris." The continuing success of Bloom's book and the reforms that it continues to inspire offer hope. The response to The Closing of the American Mind by deconstructionists themselves exposes their own duplicity. Bloom himself found it somewhat amusing, though most revealing, that deconstructionists, apostles of undecidability that they proclaim to be, needed little time in deciding that The Closing of the American Mind is "sexist," "racist," "elitist," and so on. "The violence and passion of the reaction" to his book, in Bloom's words, made it even more evident that deconstruction is more of a cult than it is a legitimate form of criticism. In his review of Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities, Andrew J. Angyal, who is a professor of English at Eton College in North Carolina, also sees hope. He finds that the excesses of deconstruction have caused it to lose its credibility and believes that "a strengthening of public education and a healthy skepticism about intellectual fads and trends within the profession will help to restore sanity and balance to the humanities and help them to regain a sense of their traditional mission and purpose within the liberal arts education." Deconstruction will achieve its final objective in deconstructing its own future. * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From armstron at ohiou.edu Tue Oct 7 16:43:19 2003 From: armstron at ohiou.edu (Ken Armstrong) Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 16:43:19 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? In-Reply-To: <007f01c38ce0$bea122a0$210110ac@D68RS511> References: <6d.1a5dce57.2cb402b4@cs.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.2.20031007162422.025a9eb0@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> At 10:38 AM 10/7/2003 -0400, Jim Piat wrote: Thanks for another delightful post! Personally, I think the essay is a bit harsh on deconstruction. I don't think the deconstruction movement denies all possibility of communication or meaning -- just the idea that there is a fixed meaning that inheres to events apart from our interpretation of them. Jim, Deconstruction tries to take a partial insight and stretch it into the whole truth. The humorous thing about it is not where it will finish, but where will it start? It must appeal to what it supposedly undermines in order to get the first word out. It is too much a tool for an ideology and too little a tool for thought. As for harshness, things happen in a context. I think that is what Percy recognized in his denunciatory remarks about deconstruction. Ken A. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From PARLINS at culver.org Tue Oct 7 20:54:04 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 19:54:04 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07059331@exchangeserver.culver.org> It's also wonderfully ironic that deconstructionists like Derrida work like mad to write books in order tell the world that text has no meaning. The only honest deconstructionist is a mute deconstructionist. -----Original Message----- From: Ken Armstrong [mailto:armstron at ohiou.edu] Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 3:43 PM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: Re: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? At 10:38 AM 10/7/2003 -0400, Jim Piat wrote: Thanks for another delightful post! Personally, I think the essay is a bit harsh on deconstruction. I don't think the deconstruction movement denies all possibility of communication or meaning -- just the idea that there is a fixed meaning that inheres to events apart from our interpretation of them. Jim, Deconstruction tries to take a partial insight and stretch it into the whole truth. The humorous thing about it is not where it will finish, but where will it start? It must appeal to what it supposedly undermines in order to get the first word out. It is too much a tool for an ideology and too little a tool for thought. As for harshness, things happen in a context. I think that is what Percy recognized in his denunciatory remarks about deconstruction. Ken A. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From piat1 at bellsouth.net Tue Oct 7 22:56:25 2003 From: piat1 at bellsouth.net (James Piat) Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 22:56:25 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? References: <6d.1a5dce57.2cb402b4@cs.com> <5.2.0.9.2.20031007162422.025a9eb0@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> Message-ID: <002601c38d47$c33523e0$210110ac@D68RS511> Dear Ken, Thanks for your comments. I think you make a good point. However, it seems to me one could as well argue that the naive realists take a partial truth (that the ability to communicate depends in part upon a shared or common interpretation of events) and generalize it into an absurdity -- i.e. what is self evidently the "real" meaning of events for oneself is also self evidently the meaning of events for everyone. Such egocentrism reminds me of the joke that professor Bloom appears to have mistaken his own bowel sounds for the rumblings of the universe. Best as always, Jim Piat Jim, Deconstruction tries to take a partial insight and stretch it into the whole truth. The humorous thing about it is not where it will finish, but where will it start? It must appeal to what it supposedly undermines in order to get the first word out. It is too much a tool for an ideology and too little a tool for thought. As for harshness, things happen in a context. I think that is what Percy recognized in his denunciatory remarks about deconstruction. Ken A. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From PARLINS at culver.org Wed Oct 8 09:42:11 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 08:42:11 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07059333@exchangeserver.culver.org> Interesting point Jim, but then according to your position isn't every utterance egocentric, even your posting? I really don't think so. Yes, misunderstandings sometimes happen for a variety of reasons. But, it is mostly true that the vast majority of the time we use language with a common understanding. We do share common interpretations. And, we know this because most of the time we communicate quite naturally and without thinking. For example, nearly all of our daily discourse goes something like this: Customer: May I please have a cup of coffee? Server: Regular or Decaf? Customer: Regular, no cream. Not like this: Customer: May I please have a cup of coffee Server: I was in Africa last year, thank you. Customer: Orange. I mean....c'mon....in your posting here aren't you assuming, quite naturally, that WE will UNDERSTAND you? Steve PS: It's worth noting also that 99% of my students just don't get it, the very concept of deconstruction, when I try to tell them that some people argue that words have no reference points outside of the text. Why don't they get it? Because it's not a part of their real world experience. It's like asking them to meditate on the idea of "one hand clapping". They don't get it. They go about their daily lives using language quite naturally as if everyone else shares, more or less, the same real world reference points. And, they do this naturally, without monitoring themselves, and without any anxiety that they will not be able to communicate. -----Original Message----- From: James Piat [mailto:piat1 at bellsouth.net] Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 9:56 PM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: Re: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Dear Ken, Thanks for your comments. I think you make a good point. However, it seems to me one could as well argue that the naive realists take a partial truth (that the ability to communicate depends in part upon a shared or common interpretation of events) and generalize it into an absurdity -- i.e. what is self evidently the "real" meaning of events for oneself is also self evidently the meaning of events for everyone. Such egocentrism reminds me of the joke that professor Bloom appears to have mistaken his own bowel sounds for the rumblings of the universe. Best as always, Jim Piat Jim, Deconstruction tries to take a partial insight and stretch it into the whole truth. The humorous thing about it is not where it will finish, but where will it start? It must appeal to what it supposedly undermines in order to get the first word out. It is too much a tool for an ideology and too little a tool for thought. As for harshness, things happen in a context. I think that is what Percy recognized in his denunciatory remarks about deconstruction. Ken A. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JHForest at cs.com Wed Oct 8 10:10:15 2003 From: JHForest at cs.com (JHForest at cs.com) Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 10:10:15 EDT Subject: [percy-l] After Theory Message-ID: <1e.1a181bcd.2cb574c7@cs.com> In this extract from Terry Eagleton's book "After Theory," there are threads of connection here with the piece posted here two days ago, "Does Deconstruction Have a Future?" Jim * * * 18 September 2003 / The Guardian (UK) http://books.guardian.co.uk >> The problem with cultural theory is not wilfully impenetrable language, argues Terry Eagleton, but a shamefaced reticence about truth and morality << This is an edited extract from "After Theory" by Terry Eagleton, published by Allen Lane (UK) on September 25 at ?18.99 After Theory by Terry Eagleton The golden age of cultural theory is long past. The pioneering works of Jacques Lacan, Claude Levi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault are several decades behind us. But there can be no going back to an age when it was enough to pronounce Keats delectable or Milton a doughty spirit. If "theory" means a reasonably systematic reflection on our guiding assumptions, it remains as indispensable as ever. Structuralism, Marxism, post-structuralism and the like are no longer the sexy topics they were. What is sexy instead is sex. On the wilder shores of academia an interest in French philosophy has given way to a fascination with French kissing. In some circles, the politics of masturbation exert far more fascination than the politics of the Middle East. Nothing could be more understandable. There are advantages in being able to write your PhD thesis without stirring from in front of the TV set. In the old days, rock music was a distraction from your studies; now it may well be what you are studying. Intellectual matters are no longer an ivory-tower affair, but belong to the world of media and shopping malls, bedrooms and brothels. Not many of the standard objections to cultural theory hold water. Some of it has been intolerably jargon-ridden; but the impulse behind it is attractively democratic. Anyway, some forms of specialised language are desirable rather than distasteful. No lay person opens a botany textbook and shuts it with an irascible bang if they do not understand it straight away. Yet a lot of people who are not surprised to find botany hard are mildly outraged not to be able to understand an account of a sculpture or a novel. If cultural theory can sometimes be an obstacle to real understanding, so can other forms of art criticism. It does not believe Jeffrey Archer is as good as Jane Austen; it simply inquires what we mean when we make such claims. But a far more devastating criticism of theory can be launched. Cultural theory as we have it promises to grapple with some fundamental problems, but on the whole fails to deliver. It has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil, reticent about death and suffering, dogmatic about essences, universals and foundations, and superficial about truth, objectivity and disinterestedness. This, on any estimate, is rather a large slice of human existence to fall down on. It is also rather an awkward moment in history to find oneself with little or nothing to say about such fundamental questions. No idea is more unpopular with contemporary cultural theory than that of absolute truth. The phrase smacks of dogmatism, authoritarianism, a belief in the timeless and universal. In fact, some postmodernists claim not to believe in truth at all. In less sophisticated postmodern circles, holding a position with conviction is seen as unpleasantly authoritarian, whereas to be fuzzy, sceptical and ambiguous is somehow democratic. Why does this matter? It matters, for one thing, because it belongs to our dignity as moderately rational creatures to know the truth. And that includes knowing the truth about truth. But it also matters because a ludicrous bugbear has been made of the word "absolute" in this context; and because if the relativist is right, then truth is emptied of much of its value. As Bernard Williams points out, relativism is really a way of explaining away conflict. If you maintain that democracy means everyone being allowed to vote, while I maintain it means that only those people may vote who have passed a set of fiendishly complicated intelligence tests, there will always be a liberal on hand to claim that we are both right from our different points of view. To hold on to the truth in such cases is to insist that if someone is right, then someone else must be wrong. If absolute truth is out of favour these days, so is the idea of objectivity. Impartiality, it is suggested, is a bogus proposition, suggestive of an autocratic god's-eye view. Yet objectivity can mean a selfless openness to the needs of others, one which lies very close to love. Disinterestedness, a notion almost universally scorned by the cultural left nowadays, grew up in the 18th century as the opposite not of interests, but of self-interest. It was a weapon to wield against the Hobbesians and possessive individualists. Disinterestedness means not viewing the world from some sublime Olympian height, but a kind of compassion or fellow-feeling. It means trying to feel your way imaginatively into the experience of another, sharing their delight and sorrow without thinking of oneself. George Eliot is one of the great 19th-century inheritors of this ethical lineage. Objectivity does not mean judging from nowhere. On the contrary, you can only know how the situation is if you are in a position to know. Only by standing at a certain angle to reality can it be illuminated for you. The wretched of the earth, for example, are likely to appreciate more of the truth of human history than their masters - not because they are innately more perceptive, but because they can glean from their own everyday experience that history for the vast majority of men and women has largely been a matter of despotic power and fruitless toil. Another subject about which cultural theorists have found little to say is morality, which for a long time was regarded as something of an embarrassment. It seemed preachy, priggish and heavy-handed. But while it is true that appeals to morality, like appeals to psychology, have often been a way of avoiding political argument, in the light of classical moral thought this is deeply ironic. For Aristotle, ethics and politics are intimately related. Ethics is about excelling at being human, and nobody can do this in isolation. Moreover, nobody can do it unless the political institutions that allow you to do it are available. This kind of moral thinking was inherited by Karl Marx. Marx was a classical moralist who did not seem aware that he was. Like a lot of radicals since his time, he thought on the whole that morality was just ideology. This is because he made the mistake of confusing morality with moralism. Moralism believes that there is a set of questions known as moral questions that are quite distinct from social or political ones. It does not see that "moral" means exploring the texture and quality of human behaviour as richly and sensitively as you can, and that you cannot do this by abstracting men and women from their social surroundings. This is morality as, say, the novelist Henry James understood it, as opposed to those who believe you can reduce it to rules, prohibitions and obligations. Aristotle thought there was a particular way of living that allowed us, so to speak, to be at our best for the kind of creatures we are. This was life conducted according to the virtues. The Judaeo-Christian tradition considers that it is the life of charity or love. What this means, roughly speaking, is that we become the occasion for each other's self-realisation. It is only through being the means of your self-fulfilment that I can attain my own, and vice versa. There is little about such reciprocity in Aristotle himself. The political form of this ethic is known as socialism, for which, as Marx comments, the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. It is, as it were, politicised love, or reciprocity all round. The opposite of self-sufficiency is dependency. Like some other key terms, this hovers somewhere between the material and the moral. It is a material fact that we are dependent on others for our material survival, given the helpless state in which we are born. Yet this material dependency cannot really be divorced from such moral capacities as care, selflessness, vigilance and protectiveness, since what we are dependent on is exactly such capacities in those who look after us. Nor, according to Freud, can it be divorced from the dawning of moral feeling in the dependent one, in the form of gratitude. To this extent, the moral and material are sides of the same coin. This idea of a materialist morality is illustrated by Shakespeare's King Lear. Lear begins the play by exemplifying the megalomania of absolute sovereignty, which imagines that it is omnipotent partly because it has no body. In casting off so cruelly the fruits of his body, his daughter Cordelia, he discloses the fantasy of disembodiment which lies at the heart of the most grossly material of powers. Lear believes at this point he is everything; but since an identity that is everything has nothing to measure itself against, it is merely a void. In the course of the drama, Lear will learn it is preferable to be a modestly determinate "something" than a vacuously global "all". This is not because others tell him so, being for the most part too craven or too crafty to respond to his tormented question, "Who is it that can tell me who I am?" It is because he is forced up against the brute recalcitrance of nature, which terrorises him into finally embracing his own finitude. And this includes his creaturely compassion for others. It therefore redeems him from delusion, if not from destruction. The play opens with a celebrated bandying of nothings: Lear: ...what can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak. Cordelia: Nothing, my lord. Lear: Nothing! Cordelia: Nothing. Lear: Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again. Only when this paranoid monarch accepts that he stinks of mortality will he be en route to redemption. It is then that his lying courtiers will be discredited: "To say "ay" and "no" to everything that I said! "Ay" and "no" too was not good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found 'em, there I smelt 'em out. Go to, they are not men of their words. They told me I was everything; 'tis a lie - I am not ague-proof." The storm has thrown Lear's creatureliness into exposure, deflating his hubristic fantasies. He has discovered his flesh for the first time, and along with it his frailty and finitude. Gloucester will do the same when he is blinded, forced to "smell his way to Dover". He must learn, as he says, to "see feelingly" - to allow his reason to move within the constraints of the sensitive, suffering body. Lear's new-found sensuous materialism takes the form of a political solidarity with the poor: Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you >From seasons such as these? O' I have ta'en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens more just. If our sympathy for others were not so sensuously depleted, we would be moved by their deprivation to share with them the very goods that prevent us from feeling their wretchedness: So distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough. The renewal of the body and a radical redistribution of wealth are closely linked in King Lear. Postmodernism is obsessed by the body and terrified of biology. The body is a wildly popular topic in US cultural studies - but this is the plastic, remouldable, socially constructed body, not the piece of matter that sickens and dies. The creature who emerges from postmodern thought is centreless, hedonistic, self-inventing, ceaselessly adaptive. He sounds more like a Los Angeles media executive than an Indonesian fisherman. Postmodernists oppose universality, and well they might: nothing is more parochial than the kind of human being they admire. Postmodernism rejects the idea of there being firm foundations to social life. "Nothing we do," writes Ludwig Wittgenstein, "can be defended absolutely and finally," a statement that may be taken as a keynote of much modern thought. In a brutally fundamentalist era, this sense of the provisional nature of all our ideas - one central to post-structuralism and postmodernism - is deeply salutary. Whatever the blind spots and prejudices of these theories, they pale in comparison with the lethal self-righteousness of the fundamentalist. And they can of course be valuable antidotes to it. The problem is that the bracing scepticism of such postmodern thought is hard to distinguish from its aversion to engaging with fundamentalism at the kind of deep moral or metaphysical level where it needs to be confronted. Indeed, this might serve as a summary of the dilemma in which cultural theory is now caught. Postmodernism has an allergy to depth, as indeed did the later Wittgenstein. We can never be "after theory", in the sense that there can be no reflective human life without it. We can simply run out of particular styles of thinking, as our situation changes. With the launch of a new global narrative of capitalism, along with the so-called war on terror, it may well be that the style of thinking known as postmodernism is now approaching an end. It was, after all, the theory that assured us that "grand narratives" - the over-arching stories we had relied upon to explain the world until postmodernism offered us an alternative - were a thing of the past. This, however, presents cultural theory with a fresh challenge. If it is to engage with an ambitious global history, it must have answerable resources of its own, equal in depth and scope to the situation it confronts. It cannot afford simply to keep recounting the same narratives of class, race and gender, indispensable as these topics are. It needs to chance its arm, break out of a rather stifling orthodoxy and explore new topics, not least those of which it has so far been unreasonably shy. * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From piat1 at bellsouth.net Wed Oct 8 11:31:27 2003 From: piat1 at bellsouth.net (James Piat) Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 11:31:27 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? References: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07059333@exchangeserver.culver.org> Message-ID: <002b01c38db1$3d6cbc90$210110ac@D68RS511> Dear Steve, Now your talking a language I can understand. Yes, I'm as egocentric as the next. That we are all in some ways alike and in other not is what makes communication possible and absolute agreement as to the meaning of words or the events to which they refer.... improbable. I suspect the reason your students can not grasp the meaning of the deconstructionists is that they like their instructor are trapped in the Western text and apparently can not appreciate the distinction between meaning and reality. Beware the man of one text -- "for now we see through a glass darkly". I think much of the over reaction (misunderstanding, nervous tittering, denunciation, etc) of Christians to Derrida is rooted in the distinction between the Jewish and Christian conceptions of God. In one tradition to speak the name of God is a blasphemy (emphasizing the distinction between text and reality) whereas in the other there is an emphasis upon a concrete, literal incarnation of God. Thus the latter text (though considered mistaken by some) is more readily grasped and has a thousand times more adherents than the former. I'm not saying one is right and the other wrong of course -- just that Derrida is, er, not for everyone. Tea? Hell, Steve -- I'm just kidding --seriously. As I assume you are in part as well. Actually, really, really, I think there is some truth and falsehood in all positions including and most certainly my own. But I can't be certain -LOL. For me the center does not hold. Cheers, Jim Piat ----- Original Message ----- From: Parlin, Steven To: 'Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion' Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 9:42 AM Subject: RE: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Interesting point Jim, but then according to your position isn't every utterance egocentric, even your posting? I really don't think so. Yes, misunderstandings sometimes happen for a variety of reasons. But, it is mostly true that the vast majority of the time we use language with a common understanding. We do share common interpretations. And, we know this because most of the time we communicate quite naturally and without thinking. For example, nearly all of our daily discourse goes something like this: Customer: May I please have a cup of coffee? Server: Regular or Decaf? Customer: Regular, no cream. Not like this: Customer: May I please have a cup of coffee Server: I was in Africa last year, thank you. Customer: Orange. I mean....c'mon....in your posting here aren't you assuming, quite naturally, that WE will UNDERSTAND you? Steve PS: It's worth noting also that 99% of my students just don't get it, the very concept of deconstruction, when I try to tell them that some people argue that words have no reference points outside of the text. Why don't they get it? Because it's not a part of their real world experience. It's like asking them to meditate on the idea of "one hand clapping". They don't get it. They go about their daily lives using language quite naturally as if everyone else shares, more or less, the same real world reference points. And, they do this naturally, without monitoring themselves, and without any anxiety that they will not be able to communicate. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From piat1 at bellsouth.net Wed Oct 8 11:50:56 2003 From: piat1 at bellsouth.net (James Piat) Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 11:50:56 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] After Theory References: <1e.1a181bcd.2cb574c7@cs.com> Message-ID: <003e01c38db3$f68c0620$210110ac@D68RS511> Dear Jim, I read most of Eagleton's book on Literary Criticism (or theory -- can't remember now) and am an admirer of his work, but I think that here he stretches a bit to miss Derrida point which of course he also argues for at the same time. On the one hand he himself argues for the view that God is everywhere in general and nowhere in particular or exclusively and on the other hand still ambivalently wants to kill the humble post modern messenger. Like us all he wants to somehow have his cake and eat it too -- to both share God and have God all to himself. Or so it seems to me. Thanks for another interesting post. Cheers, Jim Piat From: JHForest at cs.com In this extract from Terry Eagleton's book "After Theory," there are threads of connection here with the piece posted here two days ago, "Does Deconstruction Have a Future?" Jim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JHForest at cs.com Wed Oct 8 13:29:16 2003 From: JHForest at cs.com (JHForest at cs.com) Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 13:29:16 EDT Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Message-ID: <1e3.11322bfa.2cb5a36c@cs.com> In a message dated 10/8/2003 3:46:20 PM W. Europe Daylight Time, PARLINS at culver.org writes: > Interesting point Jim, but then according to your position isn't every > utterance egocentric, even your posting? I didn't post a position, only two essays that I thought others on the list would find worth reading. My own point of view is similar to yours. Jim * * * Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands Jim's e-mail: Nancy's e-mail: tel: (+31-72) 511-2545 / fax: (+31-72) 515-4180 Orthodox Peace Fellowship web site: http://www.incommunion.org Jim & Nancy Forest web site: http://www.incommunion.org/home.htm * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From piat1 at bellsouth.net Wed Oct 8 13:45:27 2003 From: piat1 at bellsouth.net (James Piat) Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 13:45:27 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? References: <1e3.11322bfa.2cb5a36c@cs.com> Message-ID: <00b901c38dc3$f57858f0$210110ac@D68RS511> And so on and so forth ... We will never (oops) get to the bottom of this. I rest my case. Jim ----- Original Message ----- From: JHForest at cs.com To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Cc: PARLINS at culver.org Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 1:29 PM Subject: Re: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? In a message dated 10/8/2003 3:46:20 PM W. Europe Daylight Time, PARLINS at culver.org writes: Interesting point Jim, but then according to your position isn't every utterance egocentric, even your posting? I didn't post a position, only two essays that I thought others on the list would find worth reading. My own point of view is similar to yours. Jim * * * Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands Jim's e-mail: Nancy's e-mail: tel: (+31-72) 511-2545 / fax: (+31-72) 515-4180 Orthodox Peace Fellowship web site: http://www.incommunion.org Jim & Nancy Forest web site: http://www.incommunion.org/home.htm * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From PARLINS at culver.org Wed Oct 8 13:55:15 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 12:55:15 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07059338@exchangeserver.culver.org> Jim Piat, Nice try...but I won't let your case rest, not just yet. This is too much fun. This linguistic mishap is not due to the lack of real world referents (Piat and Forest), but to homonymous confusion with the first name, Jim. There is no ambiguity with Piat and Forest. Steve -----Original Message----- From: James Piat [mailto:piat1 at bellsouth.net] Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 12:45 PM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: Re: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? And so on and so forth ... We will never (oops) get to the bottom of this. I rest my case. Jim ----- Original Message ----- From: JHForest at cs.com To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Cc: PARLINS at culver.org Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 1:29 PM Subject: Re: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? In a message dated 10/8/2003 3:46:20 PM W. Europe Daylight Time, PARLINS at culver.org writes: Interesting point Jim, but then according to your position isn't every utterance egocentric, even your posting? I didn't post a position, only two essays that I thought others on the list would find worth reading. My own point of view is similar to yours. Jim * * * Jim & Nancy Forest Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands Jim's e-mail: Nancy's e-mail: tel: (+31-72) 511-2545 / fax: (+31-72) 515-4180 Orthodox Peace Fellowship web site: http://www.incommunion.org Jim & Nancy Forest web site: http://www.incommunion.org/home.htm * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From armstron at ohiou.edu Wed Oct 8 15:59:51 2003 From: armstron at ohiou.edu (Ken Armstrong) Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 15:59:51 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? No, but it sure has a present... In-Reply-To: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07059338@exchangeserver.cu lver.org> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.2.20031008155139.01bbb080@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> At 12:55 PM 10/8/2003 -0500, Steve Parlin wrote: > >This linguistic mishap is not due to the lack of real world referents >(Piat and Forest), but to homonymous confusion with the first name, Jim. I for one am against the confusion of all this homonymousitality. Just for the record. Ken A. From PARLINS at culver.org Wed Oct 8 20:26:07 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 19:26:07 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? No, but it sure has a present... Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07059340@exchangeserver.culver.org> What's wrong with a little homonymousitalaciousness? -----Original Message----- From: Ken Armstrong [mailto:armstron at ohiou.edu] Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 3:00 PM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: RE: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? No, but it sure has a present... At 12:55 PM 10/8/2003 -0500, Steve Parlin wrote: > >This linguistic mishap is not due to the lack of real world referents >(Piat and Forest), but to homonymous confusion with the first name, Jim. I for one am against the confusion of all this homonymousitality. Just for the record. Ken A. -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy From dtughan at dal.ca Thu Oct 9 13:54:23 2003 From: dtughan at dal.ca (Dave Tughan) Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 14:54:23 -0300 Subject: [percy-l] "Feminine Characters" Book info Message-ID: <20031009175423.84AE424024@www.fastmail.fm> I am and English Undergrad, and would realy like to do some research on Percy and his treatment of women characters. Nice that there's a book out, but I can't find a copy locally. Has anyone on the list read it, and if so, would you recommend it? The book is: Walker Percy's Feminine Characters WHITSTON PRESS Lewis A. Lawson and Elzbieta Oleksy, Editors and I found the reference to it on "The Walker Percy Project" . Thanks for your help. Dave. From armstron at ohiou.edu Thu Oct 9 14:34:18 2003 From: armstron at ohiou.edu (Ken Armstrong) Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 14:34:18 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? In-Reply-To: <002601c38d47$c33523e0$210110ac@D68RS511> References: <6d.1a5dce57.2cb402b4@cs.com> <5.2.0.9.2.20031007162422.025a9eb0@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.2.20031009142146.01cf0b30@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> At 10:56 PM 10/7/2003 -0400, Jim Piat wrote: >Dear Ken, > >Thanks for your comments. I think you make a good point. However, it >seems to me one could as well argue that the naive realists take a partial >truth (that the ability to communicate depends in part upon a shared or >common interpretation of events) and generalize it into an absurdity -- >i.e. what is self evidently the "real" meaning of events for oneself is >also self evidently the meaning of events for everyone. OK by me to make the argument against naive realists, I don't know who they are ( Bloom?) and how they get into this mix. But let's do call out anyone who tries to subdue the whole truth to a partial truth. Only let's not excuse the deconstructionists because the naive realists are doing it, too (and, of course, vice versa). >Such egocentrism reminds me of the joke that professor Bloom appears to >have mistaken his own bowel sounds for the rumblings of the universe. On the other hand, if Blake could see the universe in a grain of sand, why shouldn't Bloom hear it.... Cheers, Ken A. From PARLINS at culver.org Thu Oct 9 20:58:08 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 19:58:08 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE0705934D@exchangeserver.culver.org> "On the other hand, if Blake could see the universe in a grain of sand, why shouldn't Bloom hear it...." Bravo Ken! -----Original Message----- From: Ken Armstrong [mailto:armstron at ohiou.edu] Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 1:34 PM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: Re: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? At 10:56 PM 10/7/2003 -0400, Jim Piat wrote: >Dear Ken, > >Thanks for your comments. I think you make a good point. However, it >seems to me one could as well argue that the naive realists take a partial >truth (that the ability to communicate depends in part upon a shared or >common interpretation of events) and generalize it into an absurdity -- >i.e. what is self evidently the "real" meaning of events for oneself is >also self evidently the meaning of events for everyone. OK by me to make the argument against naive realists, I don't know who they are ( Bloom?) and how they get into this mix. But let's do call out anyone who tries to subdue the whole truth to a partial truth. Only let's not excuse the deconstructionists because the naive realists are doing it, too (and, of course, vice versa). >Such egocentrism reminds me of the joke that professor Bloom appears to >have mistaken his own bowel sounds for the rumblings of the universe. On the other hand, if Blake could see the universe in a grain of sand, why shouldn't Bloom hear it.... Cheers, Ken A. -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy From piat1 at bellsouth.net Thu Oct 9 23:24:42 2003 From: piat1 at bellsouth.net (James Piat) Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 23:24:42 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? References: <6d.1a5dce57.2cb402b4@cs.com><5.2.0.9.2.20031007162422.025a9eb0@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> <5.2.0.9.2.20031009142146.01cf0b30@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> Message-ID: <003701c38ede$0bc660a0$210110ac@D68RS511> Ken Armstrong wrote: > OK by me to make the argument against naive realists, I don't know who > they are ( Bloom?) and how they get into this mix. But let's do call out > anyone who tries to subdue the whole truth to a partial truth. Only let's > not excuse the deconstructionists because the naive realists are doing it, > too (and, of course, vice versa). The deferance is that Derrida does not endorse the position you ascribe to him. He is not denying the possibility of meaning or communication -- he is challenging the view that a text or communication has an absolute meaning tied in some certain way to a reality it is presumed to denote. And beyond that I think he is reminding us that the search for truth and a moral path is guided not by certainty but by self doubt. > > >Such egocentrism reminds me of the joke that professor Bloom appears to > >have mistaken his own bowel sounds for the rumblings of the universe. > > On the other hand, if Blake could see the universe in a grain of sand, > why shouldn't Bloom hear it.... That Bloom imagines he can is part of the case the deonstructionist are making. Who's to say he can't? Though God only knows for sure what either he or Blake is talking about. Well maybe Bill Bennet knows -- I forgot about him. He seems to be able to clarify every meaning and judge every disagreement with a swift and simple application of school boy logic. Here's a Derrida quote I dug up from one of the interviews in the book POINTS... "Deconstruction as such is reducible to neither a method nor an analysis (the reduction to simple elements); it goes beyond critical decision itself. That is why it is not negative, even though it has often been interpreted as such despite all sorts of warnings. For me, it always accompanies an affirmative exigency, I would even say that it never proceeds without love..." Cheers, Jim Piat From armstron at ohiou.edu Tue Oct 14 14:55:32 2003 From: armstron at ohiou.edu (Ken Armstrong) Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 14:55:32 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? In-Reply-To: <003701c38ede$0bc660a0$210110ac@D68RS511> References: <6d.1a5dce57.2cb402b4@cs.com> <5.2.0.9.2.20031007162422.025a9eb0@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> <5.2.0.9.2.20031009142146.01cf0b30@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.2.20031014143851.00ba44e0@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> At 11:24 PM 10/9/2003 -0400, James Piat wrote: >That Bloom imagines he can is part of the case the deonstructionist are >making. Who's to say he can't? Can you fill this out just a bit? And since Bloom is serving too many purposes here, maybe in terms of Blake? >Though God only knows for sure what either >he or Blake is talking about. Well maybe Bill Bennet knows -- I forgot >about him. He seems to be able to clarify every meaning and judge every >disagreement with a swift and simple application of school boy logic. I couldn't say word one about Bennet, but what Blake says seems to me essential. I can't agree with your judgement of it (which I realize may be something of a throwaway line?) >Here's a Derrida quote I dug up from one of the interviews in the book >POINTS... > >"Deconstruction as such is reducible to neither a method nor an analysis >(the reduction to simple elements); it goes beyond critical decision itself. >That is why it is not negative, even though it has often been interpreted as >such despite all sorts of warnings. Declarations and warnings or no, it seems to have been judged by its effects. It is one thing for JD to say it is not negative; it is another for it to turn out that way. > For me, it always accompanies an >affirmative exigency, I would even say that it never proceeds without >love..." I get nervous around people who proclaim that their actions are animated by love, and, the tacit implication is, therefore they are positive. This may not be what JD is doing; or it may be a case of "with affirmative exigencies like these, who needs oppositional strategies?" Ken A. From piat1 at bellsouth.net Wed Oct 15 00:05:55 2003 From: piat1 at bellsouth.net (James Piat) Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 00:05:55 -0400 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? References: <6d.1a5dce57.2cb402b4@cs.com><5.2.0.9.2.20031007162422.025a9eb0@oak.cats.ohiou.edu><5.2.0.9.2.20031009142146.01cf0b30@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> <5.2.0.9.2.20031014143851.00ba44e0@oak.cats.ohiou.edu> Message-ID: <00c301c392d1$a1bb9070$210110ac@D68RS511> Dear Ken, It seems that once again I've gotten in over my head in this discussion. For me Blake's comment about perceiving the universe in a grain of sand in part makes the point, emphasized by deconstructionists and others, that all texts, even the least of texts, are far richer in meaning and interpretations than we sometimes suppose. But that's just my interpretation. I'm curious how you read it. Each time I read it I get something new from it. You wrote: >> I get nervous around people who proclaim that their actions are > animated by love, and, the tacit implication is, therefore they are > positive. > This may not be what JD is doing; or it may be a case of "with > affirmative exigencies like these, who needs oppositional strategies?" Interesting comment, is there is only one real meaning and answer to the questions you raise -- just waiting for someone to provide the definitive interpretation and explanation? Or might it be that meaning is a process of unfolding with some paradoxical aspects that defy absolute resolution? As for my comments about Bloom and Bennet -- just jokes. My apologies if I have gone too far. I know both are highly regarded scholars. I hope to keep quiet for a while and let others get in a word. Thanks for your comments. Jim Piat From PARLINS at culver.org Wed Oct 15 10:24:35 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 09:24:35 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07059383@exchangeserver.culver.org> Jumping in here once more... Deconstructionists refute their very own claims the VERY MOMENT they try to articulate them. According to their claims, they CAN'T use text to get their meaning across. Yet, that's what they do...they use text. Go figure. There's no way around this. Steve -----Original Message----- From: James Piat [mailto:piat1 at bellsouth.net] Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 11:06 PM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: Re: [percy-l] Does Deconstruction Have a Future? Dear Ken, It seems that once again I've gotten in over my head in this discussion. For me Blake's comment about perceiving the universe in a grain of sand in part makes the point, emphasized by deconstructionists and others, that all texts, even the least of texts, are far richer in meaning and interpretations than we sometimes suppose. But that's just my interpretation. I'm curious how you read it. Each time I read it I get something new from it. You wrote: >> I get nervous around people who proclaim that their actions are > animated by love, and, the tacit implication is, therefore they are > positive. > This may not be what JD is doing; or it may be a case of "with > affirmative exigencies like these, who needs oppositional strategies?" Interesting comment, is there is only one real meaning and answer to the questions you raise -- just waiting for someone to provide the definitive interpretation and explanation? Or might it be that meaning is a process of unfolding with some paradoxical aspects that defy absolute resolution? As for my comments about Bloom and Bennet -- just jokes. My apologies if I have gone too far. I know both are highly regarded scholars. I hope to keep quiet for a while and let others get in a word. Thanks for your comments. Jim Piat -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy From Nikkibar at aol.com Fri Oct 24 18:21:27 2003 From: Nikkibar at aol.com (Nikkibar at aol.com) Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 18:21:27 EDT Subject: [percy-l] "Feminine Characters" Book info Message-ID: <174.21b933c2.2ccaffe7@aol.com> Dear Dave, Responding to your inquiry about studies of the eternal fiminine in the work of Walker, I'm sure you will find anything by Lawson and Olesky to be probative and excellent. There is also a full length work by Linda Hobson on the subject that you might wish to explore. Linda is married to Fred Hobson, a Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but I do not have their address. There was also an excellent hour length paper on the subject delivered by Sheila Bosworth Leman at one of the earliest of the Percy seminars here in Covington some years ago. Bunt, Walker's widow advises that Sheila can be reached at her home in New Orleans at 504+891-2430. Should you get a copy of that paper, I would appreciate your sharing a copy with me at 200 North Columbia St. , Covington, La 70433. We might well consider placing a copy on the website archive with Sheila's permission of course. I hope you will find these suggestions helpful. Sorry to be tardy in getting back to you, but I have been somewhat hampered as a result of recent serious back surgery. Nikki Barranger -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From chadd at wonkworld.com Sun Oct 19 23:53:37 2003 From: chadd at wonkworld.com (Chad DePue) Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 20:53:37 -0700 Subject: [percy-l] Better than Well Message-ID: What would Percy have said about people who willfully cut off limbs in order to make themselves "whole" again - people with fully functioning arms and legs? Carl Elliot is interviewed in the Atlantic Monthly about his new book "Better than Well". He mentions a love for Percy, The Moviegoer, and Love In the Ruins. Percy fans may find something intriguing about this author and this interview... http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2003-08-05.htm From rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com Tue Oct 28 01:45:56 2003 From: rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com (RHONDA MCDONNELL) Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 23:45:56 -0700 Subject: [percy-l] Better than Well References: Message-ID: Given his stance on God, the body as the image of God, etc., he probably would have advocated good old triadic communication with someone willing to listen and participate in making meaning as opposed to hacking oneself to bits. Thanks for the link, Chad. Good stuff. ----- Original Message ----- From: Chad DePue To: 'Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion' Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 8:53 PM Subject: [percy-l] Better than Well What would Percy have said about people who willfully cut off limbs in order to make themselves "whole" again - people with fully functioning arms and legs? Carl Elliot is interviewed in the Atlantic Monthly about his new book "Better than Well". He mentions a love for Percy, The Moviegoer, and Love In the Ruins. Percy fans may find something intriguing about this author and this interview... http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2003-08-05.htm -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Nikkibar at aol.com Tue Oct 28 11:29:45 2003 From: Nikkibar at aol.com (Nikkibar at aol.com) Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 11:29:45 EST Subject: [percy-l] Fwd: Message-ID: <15c.260552c7.2ccff379@aol.com> Dear Dave who was interested in studies on Percy's feminine characters. Here courtesy of Mr. Marcus at Loyola is the info on the Linda Hobson holdings which you might find informative. Nikki Barranger -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Loyola University Monroe and Music Libraries Subject: no subject Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 18:13:12 -0600 Size: 2724 URL: From PARLINS at culver.org Thu Oct 30 20:47:23 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 20:47:23 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Better than Well Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE0705941D@exchangeserver.culver.org> Interesting Link, Chad...err...maybe I should say unsettling. Thanks Steve Parlin -----Original Message----- From: RHONDA MCDONNELL [mailto:rhonda_mcdonnell at msn.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 1:46 AM To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion Subject: Re: [percy-l] Better than Well Given his stance on God, the body as the image of God, etc., he probably would have advocated good old triadic communication with someone willing to listen and participate in making meaning as opposed to hacking oneself to bits. Thanks for the link, Chad. Good stuff. ----- Original Message ----- From: Chad DePue To: 'Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion' Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 8:53 PM Subject: [percy-l] Better than Well What would Percy have said about people who willfully cut off limbs in order to make themselves "whole" again - people with fully functioning arms and legs? Carl Elliot is interviewed in the Atlantic Monthly about his new book "Better than Well". He mentions a love for Percy, The Moviegoer, and Love In the Ruins. Percy fans may find something intriguing about this author and this interview... http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2003-08-05.htm -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: