babies in the bathwater

Here's what I don't get, John -- Why does everything have to be so damn personal? First Jardine, then Ashcroft, and now the personal and irrelevant details about Derrida (which you'll notice, appeal to absolutes or at least standards that you're assuming exist for your audience: family values, kindness). Now you can't make a convincing argument without practically accusing the dissent of sociopathy; if caring about literature, and trying to make sense of it in conjunction with how people live and should live, makes me a sociopathic dork, then I'm proud to be one.

Look, if you want, I could stop talking about a vision of Omlor's world and start talking about Omlor himself, by trying to psychoanalyze your every post (similar to what I'm doing here and here only, though less kindly). But I won't do that, because you also say things that are valuable to discussion, and I want to discuss those things instead of hurl accusations at you like "in favor of informed discussion" or "out of ignorance." Those would be fair, if the target weren't knowledgeable of Derrida and his ideas; instead, you apply these accusations to mean that you don't agree with someone else's own take on deconstructionism, even after he has been exposed extensively to this technique of literary criticism.

You argue that these discussions are just an amusement for you, and I don't get that either. Where else is one to talk about stuff like this? Yeah, I'll just pop in for lunch at the dining hall, and be like, "catch the game last night? and by the way, I thought Jacques Derrida was way off about the inescapability of presence." So there's a lot of meaningless discussion in the human experience, but the reason isn't that people find discussing the game any more meaningful than discussing presence. It's simply too terrifying to contemplate literature sometimes, what it means for us, what it means for our value systems. It's terrifying to say something that means anything at all, and so D'Souza has my eternal admiration (even though I don't agree) and Derrida does not. But you want to retreat in the face of the terrifying possibility of reality, on a list that's designed for that very purpose? This, from the guy who roars about a more realistic world for all of us.

Why are you here, if you don't think it's all terribly important?
I know I'd be terrified, if I had to rely on standards that are constantly evolving.

luke
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Received on Wed Aug 13 08:30:06 2003