A simple thought

Let me say this.

I am a participant or reader on many listervs and discussion groups of all
sorts. This is the only one where people spend so much of their time wanting
to discuss things they haven't read.

The Delueze list discusses specific texts by Delueze (and other
philosophers). They cite relevant passages and argue about interpreting them
and how they fit into larger contexts. They discuss the language in the
books as they read them carefully together. The PreText list (for Rhetoric
and Composition) conducts group readings of recent publications in the field,
paying particular attention to the arguments and languages in those specific
books and, again, citing and reciting the language as they examine and
discuss it, sometimes even conducting interviews with the authors of those
works where they ask specific questions about passages and paragraphs.

The Derrida list... well, you can guess. Specific textual support is the rule
there, rather than the rare, almost nonexistent exception that it is here.

Even the Beat list, when I was on it, regularly cited lines from the poems
and discussed specific interpretations after everyone had read the texts.

Indeed, even the Jack the Ripper message boards pay closer attention to
actual texts they have all taken the time to examine, including newspaper
articles of the day and the specific language in police and coroner's reports
and argue endlessly over specific phrases in a fake diary that they have all
read.

Hell, even the Tom Waits list is made up of people who post on songs and
music they have actually heard.

This is the only list I'm a part of where some of the people seem so intent
on wanting to discuss things they have not read (and do so while admitting
that they'd prefer not to read them -- or they don't have the time or they
have better things to read and they'd prefer someone else to give them a
simple, single-sentence definition, please, so they can understand, etc.).

How strange. A list where people apparently prefer to discuss things they
haven't read and don't want to read.

Fascinating.

All the best,

--John

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Received on Sun Mar 9 19:43:41 2003