rc&am wrote:
> just popping my head above the books...
>
> 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.
There probably isn't much I can say about Comay that you don't already know. She's very young and still teaches in the (huge) philosophy department at the U of Toronto, I believe. So you can get in touch with her there. I would assume she takes grad students if you're not already in the PHd factory somewhere. I enjoyed the work of Susan Buck-Morss who writes in a similiar vein, especially her book on Benjamin _The Dialectics of Seeing_.
>
>
> 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.
Thanks for the references, I'll check them out next time I'm in the library.
>
>
> (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'.
Yes. I liked the remark of Chomsky's about listening to the sports call-in shows. People were phoning in with all sorts of information and sophisticated critical analysis. If only they would turn their critical faculties to things that really mattered.... I still think that call-in shows are a good way to spread information. Mr Mount Limbaugh and Michael Ray-gun can be utilized to get in some hits( informationally speaking.) You have to have savvy though.
> 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.
Logical Positivism is not the enemy. The Vienna Circle were all progressives, Neurath was a Marxist. One of the main goals of the circle in trying to purge language and our conceptual scheme of metaphysics was to purge the world of some very unprogressive things like nazi ideology and christianity. I 've always thought of AJ Ayer as an old tory fart, pacing around All Soul's College gazing wistfully into the distance. I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my bus seat when I learned he reported having an out of body experience! Poor guy. Clarity is important if you want to be precise, concise, unambigious and have your work understood outside narrow academic/intellectual circles. As the March Hare told Alice "Always say what you mean and mean what you say." I sometimes suspect that a writer has nothing to say when the work is so full of jargon. Hiding poverty of thought behind extraneous verbiage. Good way to deflect criticism too. Its like what they're saying is so profound it can't be expressed in solid, workmanlike prose.
Sam Pawlett.
>
>
> 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...'.