----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
I can't believe that Joanna actually believes this. "Original sourace" doesn't name anything. It is almost impossible to find a text which is not, at its core, a reference to other texts. Anyone's education (and "real education" is another empty metaphysical notion) begins with tertiary or quaternary or 10th from the mythical source text that points your way to (miscalled) "original sources," which you then read through the blurred spectacles of of others.
---- Oh give me a fucking break! Reading Plato in the original is a revelation. Reading De Sade's actual works is a revelation. Reading Marx rather than a commentary or text book is a revelation. Reading Chekhov's letters .....
Each such revelation allowed me to become aware of assumptions I didn't even know I had. Each revelation uncovered something about the world a writer comes out of and the specific gravity of his words.
In fact, when I had to give myself an education in computer science in order to do technical writing, the most useful reading I did was the orginal writing of Turing, Von Neumann, etc.
Stop the nonesense,
Joanna