Sam Pawlett wrote:
> Angela: I agree with you on the issue of Rorty's liberalism. I think he is
> well intentioned enough but like most liberals, is sadly, misguided. I know
> the work of Rebecca Comay. She gave a talk here on W.Benjamin a few years ago
> that was completely unintelligible(to me at least). Nice to see she is
> starting to sound lucid.
hi there sam,
i thought comay's comment on rorty's liberalism was pretty excellent: the problem being not so much that he is a liberal, but he is a liberal who strives for the dissolution of the contradictions of liberalism and hence its progressive/critical moments. even progressive liberals could be counted as allies on certain occasions, but rorty ... well ... i'm back to thinking he's sinister...
tell me more about comay. i know very little aside from the few essays of hers i've been able to scrounge.
her stuff is difficult, but i enjoy her difficult writing. i reckon she's my fave theorist at the moment... so a plug for her work below.
(which brings me to the issue of clarity} but i reckon the issue is not between 'academicism' and 'simple writing'. to this day i can't make head or tails of the sports news, because i've never been trained in it and i just really don't care that much to try anyway. that on the issue of whether or not one may find particular discourses accessible and meaningful, for the basic reason that they presuppose a prior understanding of 'jargon'. the second issue is that in the anglophone world, the commonplace form of reasoning is logical positivism, and the mode of writing, exposition, and argument reflects this. (this i reckon is also why many in the 'west' have trouble translating derrida, marx etc. as anything more than versions of a debate within positivism. the third issue i would note is that difficult writing - or what is regarded as such - can either be laziness, pretension, or (what i think comay is pretty good at) a kind of flash (at) breaking the bounds of encrusted sense - makes me think of brecht, benjamin and adorno - which also makes me think that it is closely (and for comay quite consciously) linked to a judaic reading tradition.
the extract i cited from comay in a prior post was "Interrupting the Conversation: Notes on Rorty" Telos 69 (1986)
other essays are:
"Gifts Without Presents: Economics of 'Experience' in Bataille and Heidegger" Yale French Studies 78 (1990)
"Redeeming Revenge: Nietzsche, Benjamin, Heidegger, and the Politics of Memory" in Koelb (ed) Nietzsche as Postmodernist: Essays Pro and Contra Albany: SUNY (1990)
"Geopolitics of Translation: Deconstruction in America" Stanford French Review 15 (1991)
"Framing Redemption: Aura, Origin, TEchnology in Benjamin and Heidegger" in Dallery et al (eds.) Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought Albany: SUNY (1992)
"Mourning Work and Play" Research in Phenomenology 23 (1993)
"Benjamin's Endgame" in Benjamin and Osborne (eds.) Walter Benjamin's Philosophy: Destruction and Experience New York: Routledge (1994)
"Facies Hippocratica" in Peperzak (ed) Ethics as First Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature and Religion New York: Routledge (1996)
i'd particularly suggest 'geopolitics...' for those interested in the adventures of deconstruction in the US - very funny.
enjoy,
angela
ps. is anyone feeling prone to a bout of millenarian fever or pessimism? have a peek at the essay 'benjamin's endgame...'.