>Ref. the question I asked of your "and therefore" (see below): in this
>context it is not a self-slight to apologize in advance for the likelihood
>that one will not speak accurately, acceptably. Rather it is the gesture
>we must all make every time we speak, before speaking, or we should be
>guilty of a kind of hybris. In a sense it is the proudest gesture we can
>make if we allow as how we're human, if we both rejoice in and agree to the
>limitations of our humanity.
hey joanna! not that i'm not completely capable of this but think about this: when someone does so and does so with great flourish it feels kind of passive in so far as they appear to be engaging in self-deprecation and yet! it is, even as you put it above, aggressive in its assumption that the one you're interlocuting with is the one with the even more devastating character flaw than human fallibility: an egoism that denies this infallibility and that inevitably results in hubris and their own downfall.'
not that rob's doing this consciously or whatever. but i can certainly see how it would be irritating. my gram irritates the hell out me when she does it to me! and my mother's hub irritates the hell out of her when he goes on about being too dumb to figure out how to do the laundry properly and then argues with her about her claims about how to do laundry properly!
i guess laundry and derrida aren't the same though, huh?
kelley