My drops of sweat, before the cooling front called for by Anne:
(1) (ad Saengerum) Presumably, if all poetry (and by extension all
discourse) is political, then the one thing we don't have to do is to try to
talk about it politically. For we will be doing that, allegedly, no matter
what.
(2) the problem with Judith Butler (a problem not unique to her) is not that
she is political, but that she is faux-empirical. Sociology, social
psychology, and political economy are rich but stony fields; let those who
want to go, by all means, and till them!
(3) (ad Willetem) The putative distinction between the objective (or the
"empirically verifiable") and the hermeneutic is obviously fragile, and
probably paralogistic. More to the point, it is exactly what empowers
deconstruction and other forms of postmodern scepticism. The late great
Donald Davidson made this point extremely well. The way to defeat scepticism
is not to say "without this distinction (between objective and hermeneutic)
we are lost." Rather, the way to defeat it is to say "to hell with this
distinction." For then all are compelled to (try to) explain, without hiding
behind antinomies, why what they are saying matters. That, in my book, leads
us back to aboutness.
JD Fleming
James Dougal Fleming
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
778-782-4713
cell: 604-290-1637
Nicht deines, einer Welt.
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