Re: not playing so nice

If employing faculties of reason means that "speech and thought habits lend themselves to ethnocentrism," this would suggest that someone is only acquainted with the contexts of their own speech and thought habits, and not others? or, if they are acquainted with others, they are not capable of working within that other context. And then, you’re also saying that such differences in context matter a lot?

Well, I guess people could be that petty and provincial, or differences in environment could lead to differences in reasoning techniques that are irreconcilable. Probably, that's a debate for psychologists, but then...

How does Derrida escape "presence?" How does anyone, even someone who acknowledges it exists, presumably unlike the provincialist who thinks his beliefs are not based on a history/environment unique to himself? The inescapability of "presence," if it's true, would be quite an indictment of the way people think -- inevitably, though.

Should we just be content with it?

What I got from a cursory reading of <i>On Grammatology</i> (and I will head to the library tomorrow to see if I can grab it again, for a more thorough read), was that choice I cited, with language and thought. I feel like language can express the speaker's thoughts, something objective/true about what that speaker's perspective, which launched me into stuff about Truth that you didn't think was relevant.

Derrida doesn't say anything clear to me, personally. Certainly, he makes important claims that you're inferring, but Jim, you seem to express some of them with a clarity that doesn't appear anywhere in the text on which you're commenting. So how much of that is Derrida, and how much is what you infer, reading it?

This post has a lot of questions, because I don't want to argue against something you're not saying. So clarify. Please.

luke
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Received on Mon Aug 11 22:59:34 2003