Re: the quiet life

Walter,

I would begin by asking for a working familiarity with the primary texts.
Criticism, if it is to be useful, should be specific and part of a careful
act of reading specific works, not a vague and largely reductivist and
misinformed and misleading series of generalizations that reveal more what
isn't known about the subject matter than what is or is not worth debating.

My problem is not that John G. does not have such a working familiarity with
the texts he seeks to criticize (he very well may, although I have certainly
seen no evidence of it in anything he has ever written on this list). My
problem is that he believes he does not need even to be "knowledgeable" about
an author's work before he criticizes that author. This is simply an
irresponsible position as far as I am concerned, and suggests to me an
intellectual laziness that I have no desire to encourage.

And as far as Robbie's request for some sort of "demonstration or
explanation" concerning specific aspects of Derrida's work or specific texts
by him -- we can certainly do that all again (if you go back a couple of
years, we had a small discussion of such matters, as I recall). But I would
only participate in such a discussion if it was grounded in actual reading of
actual works, slowly and carefully, and in some sort of historical and
philosophical context, and only after the semester ends and the summer allows
me the time to do it properly. I see no value whatsoever in simply "chatting"
about such things in vague and reductivist (and therefore inevitably
misleading) ways and certainly not with anyone who feels that a working
knowledge of specific texts is not necessary prior to criticism.

Still, those who are interested in reading together and discussing specific
pages of specific books or essays in a detailed and useful way, as a means of
responsibly gathering information about the questions that surround Derrida's
work, can certainly do so; and once time permits, I would delighted to join
them.

All the best,

--John

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Received on Tue Mar 4 20:31:25 2003