>From: Kelley <kwalker2 at gte.net>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com, lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: Fish weighs in
>Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 23:34:43 -0400
>
>At 03:37 PM 10/15/01 -0400, Mina Kumar wrote:
>It seemed bizarre
>>>that events so serious would be linked causally with a rarefied form
>>>of academic talk.
>>
>>
>>What a bizarre understanding of the purpose of philosophy.
>
>i sent this to a friend, who really like the essay, even though he's not a
>fan of stanley fish. we were talking about it further and i realized that
>i'd forgotten to point out that there seems to be a misunderstanding here.
>
>Fish said that he thought it odd that anyone would think an event would be
>_causally__linked_ to postmodernist relativism--that S11 was something that
>could put an end to a "rarefied form of academic talk" or, my spin, even
>signal the end of a "rarefied form of academic talk".
damn, y'all, this one-liner is my most controversial post!
anyway, why is it so bizarre to think that a serious event could undermine the credibility of a philosophy? far from being bizarre, it makes perfect sense to say, hey, here is a serious event, does it do any damage to the theor(ies) we are using to understand the world, or do our theor(ies) hold up in their ability to offer satisfying (to us!) explanations of these events. I mean, then he goes on to do this very thing, to say, hey postmodernism holds up pretty well as method of inquiry into 9/11.
now, you can say that the reporter was being motivated towards a certain response when he asked, but you know, isn't that what people to call out theorists?
and why is he on one hand calling postmodernism a "rarified kind of academic talk" i.e. something removed from the public sphere, and then saying, oh, no, actually, it's got something very useful to say to the general public about how to think about these things.
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