To write responsibly and seriously is to offer meaning to the recipient.
The readers may find no meaning,more meaning or different meaning
from the intended meaning.The transaction between writer and reader
may be imperfect,but it's what we have got.What we've got is just that.
Or,rather,this.
People who enter the study of zen do so with a question.They ask,
'What is zen ?'. One answer is that zen is intensive meditation
done in a specific way,called zazen.A part of an answer.
To assist trainees,teachers sometimes provide them with a special question
upon which to focus their meditation,called a koan.
An example of a koan that is quite well known in the West is 'What is the
sound of one hand clapping ?'.
At intervals the trainee will offer the teacher an answer to the koan.
The teacher will only accept the answer when he or she is certain that
the trainee has achieved the appropriate understanding.To discover the
correct answer is difficult.The trainee's answers may be repeatedly rejected.
This is a demanding,rigorous and effective teaching method which has been
developed and refined over many centuries.
So far,so good.None of the above is controversial or new.What follows is
probably both.
I submit that what Prof. Derrida has done is,in effect,to 'industrialise' the
koan,to scale it up from the level of an individual teacher / trainee,to the level
of a whole soceity or culture.The koan is amplified and magnified for mass
consumption.It is addressed to everyone.
Europe and America ask 'What is deconstruction ?',and Derrida gives them
his koan to answer.
Here it is :
"What deconstruction is not ? everything of course !
What is deconstruction ? nothing of course ! "
('Letter to a Japanese friend'J.D.)
As I see it,Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont,(and Richard Dawkins,who has
written in support of their position) are simply unable to address Derrida's
'industrial strength koan'.Because they can only respond to hard crude logic,
they dismiss the koan as nonsense,and will never be able to come up with the answer.
The poets have as much right to a hold on truth as have the scientists.
But do they do any better ?
On the other hand,we have the folks against whom Sokal et al directed their
attack.They may claim to have the answer,but it seems evident to me that it
is a spurious,unsatisfactory,feeble answer.It does not match up to the formidable
nature of Derrida's koan.
So,who has the answer ? Anybody ?
Does it matter ? I believe that it does matter.It may sound grandiose,absurd,
(echoes of 'farfetched' ring in my ears.....uhoh! has that Jesse escaped from his
cage again ? throw him a lump of meat someone,fetch the tranquiliser darts... )
but I suspect that the answer to this koan,and the 'segment of soceity' which
discovers the answer and 'runs with it',may decide the nature of our future and
oncoming civilisation...
It will be most interesting to see if I am right.
Chris.
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