Scepticism, Dogmatism, & _White Noise_ (was Re: 'Identity Politics')

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Sep 17 20:21:58 PDT 1999



>Charles, that use of "correct" also has an image problem: it sounds
>too much like some Stalinist thug passing judgment on ideas, the same
>way Uncle Joe passed judgment on people. You know, the "for some
>people, four walls are three too many" kind of thinking. A little
>more skepticism, a little more modesty, a little more of the
>Driscollian figuring "what questions to ask my answers," please.
>
>Doug

One ought to avoid (a) being dogmatically sceptic (e.g. in a neo-Kantian postmodern fashion) and (b) using 'scepticism' in service of dogmatism (e.g. doubting the fact of evolution). One may even say dogmatism and scepticism, especially at their extreme ends, form a unity of opposites.

Scepticism may be sometimes correct, but only situationally so. Leftists should not hold scepticism as an article of faith.

BTW, have you read Don DeLillo's _White Noise_? The novel implies that extreme scepticism is in fact anchored by and in turn gives support to extreme credulousness (and that both are nurtured by our media-saturated lives). Then, since the novel has no alternative framework to offer, it ends up dismissing its own scepticism about scepticism. It's a futile irony about the futility of irony, which in the end merges into the white noise of mass culture & commodity fetishism that it appears to criticize.

Yoshie



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