Re: Restored

Daniel,

You seem to be trying to write with some order and coherence, so I'll try and
respond accordingly, although I think you still seem to harbor some
assumptions about me and my own beliefs that are both ill-founded and unsupported by
anything I have written.

You say, regarding coherence and order and readability, etc., that I "invoke
them as if  we all shared their meanings in your personal sense." But I
don't. I was careful to say that it might very well be me. I have no idea whether
we all share their meanings or not.

You say that I believe that "writing is nothing more than vehicles of
politics, power and desire." But I don't. What I have said is that all writing
carries with it rhetorics of power and desire. That's a *hell* of a lot different
from saying that writing is "nothing more than that." You are caricaturing
my position.

You then ask me a question that begins with the clause:

"If their is nothing that we can truly share in things such as order,
coherence, structure, meaning and clarity apart from politics, power, and desire..."

But since I have never argued this, I don't know why you are asking me. I
would never say anything so simplistic and stupid.

You write that "Derrida can say whatever he wants but that does not take away
the consequences."

And I don't know what this claim means. What consequences? What precisely
does he say that "does not take away from the consequences?"

Shortly thereafter, you ask why so many academics misunderstand Derrida. I
would say that one reason so many academics in English department have
difficulty with Derrida is that they are not trained in his field of expertise nor in
the field in which he is participating and they have not bothered to read the
texts about which he is writing. But this is beside the point. I think you
could probably put almost any other major philosopher's name in that question
and it would still work. So what?

Then you say: "Maybe, Derrida texts mean things he never intended?"

Do you really want to go there again? Fine. As I've said before, meaning
simply exceeds intention, for Derrida as for everyone else. He recognizes this
in his own writing. That fact, the inevitable excess of meaning beyond
intention, does not lessen in any way our responsibility to read closely and with
care and patience and attention to detail and to discuss texts using the
language we find and specifics we have in front of us. It does not excuse shallow
and ill-informed and incoherent reading and writing. (That's me saying that.)
It simply means our discussions are likely to be complicated.

And the fact that Derrida, like all of us, writes to some degree in vain is
not especially ironic, since he realizes it about his own work even as he signs
it.

You ask me why I "demand" order, coherence, structure, meaning and clarity
from my "detractors." Because without them I am unable to respond in any
significant or careful way, since without at least some degree of order, coherence,
structure, meaning and clarity their work is rendered simply unreadable.

Nothing Derrida or any other Western philosopher that I know of, Modern or
otherwise, has ever said really disagrees with this, does it?

Then you ask me, with a rhetorical flourish:

"Do you champion these things to your own hurt or even death?"

Well, fortunately, it's never come up. I suspect that by then it would be
too late to be discussing it, wouldn't it?

Again you ask me:

"So you are certain that your inability to understand something must mean
that it lacks order, coherence, structure, meaning, and clarity?" 

And again I say that it might just be me, but I have at least tried to show
specifically where I thought your grammar and your language rendered your
writing incoherent and unreadable.

And yet again you ask me why I "cling to such out moded things like order,
structure, coherence, meaning, or logic apart from politics, power and desire."

Who said they are outmoded? Not me. And certainly not Derrida. And I cling
to them just as I cling to specific responsibility and respect when citing,
because that is how I read. And I cling to them because I am trying to find
something of some sense in the stuff you write to me.

And who has said that order, structure, coherence, meaning, or logic *are*
separated from politics, power or desire, or need to be for this discussion to
take place? Certainly not me. The fact that order, structure, coherence,
meaning or logic also carry with them politics, power, and desire, does not render
them useless or irrelevant, it merely makes the exchanges between us more
complicated and merely demands that we be more careful and self-conscious when
writing (not less so).

You then ask me a bunch of stuff about existentialism. Why? I was never
arguing for any existentialist position or advancing one or even citing one.
Existentialism has never once come up in anything I have written to you. So I'm
not sure why you suddenly begin talking about it at this point.

You originally write a phrase like "in the same way evidence (that is
evidence) behaves in the same way..." and then say, when I critique it:

"Imagine that, some one who actually thinks different and in John's political
power move he appeals to universal order, coherence, structure, meaning and
clarity."

But a phrase like "in the same way evidence (that is evidence) behaves in the
same way..." is not "thinking different," Daniel. It shows no signs of
thinking at all. It's just repetition of odd phrases without even a recognizable
grammar.

You then begin a paragraph with the phrase:

"Yes a good candidate example of an evidence that.."

See, I have no idea what this clause could possibly mean...

I'm not criticizing your idea here, Daniel. I don't know what it is. What
is "a candidate example of an evidence?"

And to answer your later questions: No. I am not now nor have I ever been an
existentialist. Death, to me, is the end of life.

Then I notice that, after you have said that Zombies are important symbols in
post-modern thought, you still fail to cite a single text to support this
claim. I should have expected that.

And do you really believe that post-modern thought has "important symbols?"
You haven't read much post-modern thought on the concept of the symbol then,
since this is one of the concepts that it most consistently interrogates.

I'll take your remarks on the Goya quote to indicate that you did not know
it, or its context, and that your claim that someone who studied Derrida would
use it seemed "strange" was ill-informed. Fair enough.

By the way, the word is "incoherence."

That seems to have addressed everything in your post that prompted in me any
thought or interest.

Thanks for the attempt to explain things.

All the best,

--John

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Received on Wed Jul 16 00:33:08 2003