[lbo-talk] corporate rationality

[Miles Jackson]

shag carpet bomb wrote:
> At 11:01 PM 10/11/2009, Miles Jackson wrote:
> 
> If you're going to engage a 
> writer, you engage what she actually _writes_. I don't know what you 
> intend with your list of questions, but all it seems to do is ask us not 
> to look at the arguments in the book.
> 
> Why?

One of the reasons I really admire Wittgenstein: he felt no 
compunction to "engage" with authors.  Unlike philosophers who make 
careers on doing glosses on glosses ("I'm doing my thesis on Derrida's 

   perspective on Heidegger!"), Wittgenstein focused on what he 
considered core philosophical questions and dismissed the "cult of 
academic personality".

We are not compelled to directly engage with an author's arguments; at 
times (in my view, most of the time) it is more informative to make 
sense of the socio-discursive relations that make those arguments 
possible.  I recognize this is a step back or away from the level of 
analysis you've been using, but I think it's useful here.

--One more thing: as Carrol has pointed out repeatedly, there's no way 
to read and critique everything.  Sometimes the best response to a 
text is to--leave it aside and read something more interesting.

Miles