On leg-pulling and clarity and an apology...
john v. omlor (omlor@packet.net)
Thu, 10 Dec 1998 17:44:43 -0500
A fellow bananafish member, here suitably disguised as requested "with a
beard and eyeglasses," sent me a private post asking me about some of the
terms I was using and their context and telling me they were having a hard
time making sense of my previous posts and even politley wondering if I
might be pulling the list's collective leg (though sincerely insisting that
no insult was intended).
I posted to them the following reply which they have graciously allowed me
to send on to the list, thinking it might help anyone out there struggling
or angry or just bemused and laughing.
******
Hello,
No insult taken. Thank you for being so polite about your question. I
realize that to many on the list much of what I posted must seem like a
foreign language or just meaningless or abstract jargon. This may be
inevitable, I'm afraid, as we get into these questions and the work of this
writer and the Continental philosophical tradition (certainly nothing I
posted sounds any stranger than your average page of either Hegel or
Husserl or Heidegger -- the tradition with which this work is so often
concerned). It's strange though, because honestly nothing in any of the
words I sent to the list seemed at all strange or difficult to me. Perhaps
it simply has to do with what we read and what we're used to. In any case,
just as you might be suspicious about such language, I must admit I have my
own suspicions about "clarity" in the name of enlightenment and the myth of
language as transparent or what the philosophical tradition has called with
ringing certainty in the German, *Aufklarung*. If it were all that simple,
it seems to me, word would have gotten around by now.
Anyway, please take my little missives about Derrida for what they were
worth, part play and part serious, part performative and part constative as
another tradition would put it; and do not worry either way. Read
carefully and read with an open ear and that is all I would ever expect.
There is no leg pulling going on. "Making sense" is of course a
combination of history and context and a bunch of other things. For some
readers some texts make sense that seem unintelligible to others. This is
why we are never finished reading.
I hope you continue reading (and even reading Derrida if you're so
inclined) and if you have any specific questions about my posts, please
feel free to send them along.
****************
Having said that, I do apologize for the scandalously off topic nature of
my day's little musings here and for any distraction it might have caused.
It was offered in good faith and with no particular expectations. Here,
now, it beat the hell out of listening to David Schippers drone on
endlessly (perhaps as I have done, I'm afraid) to the House Judiciary
Committee.
Finally, a word from our sponsor:
"I do not use the language of everyone, the language of knowledge, in order
to bedeck myself or to establish my mastery, only in order to erase all the
traits, neutralize all the codes and you know, I believe that I could
manipulate all the codes, all the keyboards, all the genres (this disgusts
me), speak in every tone -- and this anguishes me, and at every instant the
comedy seems ready to take over every word, then I silence myself, I send
you voluble, interminable letters, which are but poor post cards, this is
my shame. We are experts in shame, thus we leave the obscene to its
chances." (Derrida, "*Envois*", 80)
Looking forward to a warm and sunny Florida Christmas and a New Year's that
will bring about major personal changes (yes, a ring has been bought...), I
remain,
--John
"What does a post want to say to you? On what condition is it possible?
Its destination traverses you, you no longer know who you are. At the very
instant when from its address it interpellates, you, uniquely you, instead
of reaching you it divides you or sets you aside, occasionally overlooks
you. And you love and you do not love, it makes of you what you wish, it
takes you, it leaves you, it gives you." (Derrida, *The Post Card*,
backpiece)