Hey.
-1- I wonder if it wouldn't be more productive if you, William, began by referring to some of the numerous posts that have already initiated some explanation of Butler. If you responded more specifically to things folks wrote (many of them with page references), we wouldn't hafta start this all over again. Instead, we'd have a better idea when you left the building, eh?
-2- It might also help matters if we stopped using the word pomo for a week. It is empty and overflowing all at once, sorta like class, identity, nationalism--meaning that it says too little and implies too much, too inconsistently. Poststructuralism seems to be what we're getting at thru this reading--specifically, some extensions of the rich structural arguments we grew up on.
-3- Never, ever end a sentence with a preposition.
-4- Rakesh and then Doug offered a quote recently from Marx about how currency works. It is a perfect example, imho, of this idea of citation. Where is that quote from, anyway, and why can't i find it now? (either/any of you, help!!!)
On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, William S. Lear wrote:
> Alright. I know you think she has something new, or otherwise useful,
> to say, so how about stepping through a few pages of her book and
> going over it with a fine-tooth comb. Unlock her secrets for us.
> I'm willing to listen if no one else is...
[snip]
> As to the Noamster, Chomsky has always been insistent that he has no
> faith in reason to free us --- he's said this repeatedly. He does say
hat *when* truth and reason are operating freely, the world tends to
> keep you honest, you tend to get things like broad progress in the
> scientific community *despite* personalities and money-grubbing, and
> that progress in understanding is hard, perhaps impossible in many
> cases, to undo.
-5- I'll suggest that poststructuralism is addressing some different questions than Chomsky asks. Among them, "What makes some claims matter more than others?" This is the question that Chomsky brackets when he makes the point you summarized above. But that is a question way outside the book--it might be more productive to work from inside the book first, rather than start with my or your generalizations about what these "new tools" are or ain't.
stay in touch, raphael