Scottie quotes a journalist:
<< [Deconstruction] creat[es] a moment of 'aporia' (or paradox) - as any
genuinely unpretentious journalist will tell you.... >>
I was quite surprised to see that particular Greek word applied to
deconstruction, and further surprised by the explanation by the
Greek-derived English in the parentheses. I suppose, on considering it,
that the meaning might in many contexts be similar, but I never would have
used one to explain the other.
Poros is a passage, or a way through, and negated with the alpha-privative
becomes aporos, from which is derived aporia, most plainly 'impassability.'
The word was introduced to philosophia by none other than Socrates (or Plato
on his behalf), in whose usage it is usually and, I believe, most accurately
translated as something like 'perplexity.' Socrates the ever-ignorant
gadfly teases and questions his interlocutors into seeing that what they
believe to be true is manifestly false, or at least that they are ignorant
of its truth or falsehood. The state they are then in -- and which they
hate to be in, for which they call him a stingfish and a wizard -- is one of
aporia, perplexity. It is in this state of perplexed ignorance, of being
sure of nothing, that Socrates suggests learning can finally and genuinely
happen.
The word -- whether the journalist knew its history or not -- seems to put a
different tenor on the whole issue.
-robbie
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Received on Sat Mar 8 17:07:10 2003
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