From: "Chris Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
> I found this quote very interesting. To risk being crude, too many post
> modernist ideals make a crude and mistaken claim that there is no
identity,
> which extends to saying oppositional identitarian politics including
> feminism, race identity and sexual identity are all wrong and a waste of
> time. Something I have great difficulty accepting to the point of being in
> militant opposition to these received "wisdoms".
I'd agree, Chris, but argue that it goes back before postmodernism to
poststructuralism. The (strategic?) misreading of Saussure's comments on
the langue/parole distinction and the relation of the linguistic system to
'the world'' generated, it seems to me, much nonsense. Saussure's
deliberate choice to concentrate on langue rather than parole is somehow
transformed in poststructuralism into a vision whereby parole is totally
subsumed by langue, and the distinction Saussure draws between the world and
the language system is deformed into a vision of language totally separate
from the world. Put the two together, and you get the sort of witty
nonsense that Barthes provides in "The Death of the Author". (And how thin
and essentially a-historical that is emerges the moment it's put beside
Foucault's "What Is an Author?") Add to the mix Derrida's elevation of the
written over the spoken (an implicit and explicit attack on authorial
presence) and you're well within spitting distance of the postmodern
rejection of identity.
> It is interesting to see this discussion of cyberidentity since the
> Internet is claimed as an (ontological, although this will be denied)
proof
> of this so called fallacy of identity.
Except, of course, it's not. Apart from anything else, we exist beyond our
cyberidentities, which are merely part of the totality of the self.
> I don't know what to think other then to look more closely and try to
follow
> the various elisions from thinkers such as Foucault, who some who argue
this
> non-identity thing claim to follow. (Do they actually read F?) As I say, I
> don't know. . . comments welcomed.
To go back to your comments on politics in your first paragraph (and to wave
what will probably be a very red rag in front of several bulls), Sokal and
Bricmont's _Intellectual Impostures_, inter alia, condemns the French and
American intellectuals for their lack of political engagement, and links
this to the nature of poststructuralism. The not-unsung hero of
_Intellectual
Impostures_ is Noam Chomsky, and Foucault is about the only
poststructuralist or postmodern writer Chomsky has any time for.
To conclude this somewhat rambling response to your post, if everything
between _A Course in General Linguistics_ and Foucault were miraculously
expunged, the intellectual world would be a better and a more coherent
place.
Robin Hamilton
|