A few quick and almost random additions to an important conversation:
Much of what Derrida has said, starting at least with the "Afterword"
to Limited Inc, suggests that his own agenda has all along been an
ethical one.
To the extent that poststructuralism, or postmodernism anyway, is
concerned with alterity, it has always been concerned with how we
relate to the other and to others. Even if poststructuralism is
sometimes less than explicit on what follows critique, Emmanuel
Levinas provides a clear connection between the critique of
metaphysics and totality on the one hand, and the priority of ethics
and otherness on the other.
This raises a question for me: if poststructuralist ethics starts
with the experience of otherness, what do we say to Foucault's
increased interest in self? Granted that self is constructed, still
is Foucault's concern with self a residual liberalism, or a survival of
the death of 'man', or is there a better way to understand it?
Rick Duerden
English, BYU
------------------
Much of what Derrida has said, starting at least with the "Afterword"
to Limited Inc, suggests that his own agenda has all along been an
ethical one.
To the extent that poststructuralism, or postmodernism anyway, is
concerned with alterity, it has always been concerned with how we
relate to the other and to others. Even if poststructuralism is
sometimes less than explicit on what follows critique, Emmanuel
Levinas provides a clear connection between the critique of
metaphysics and totality on the one hand, and the priority of ethics
and otherness on the other.
This raises a question for me: if poststructuralist ethics starts
with the experience of otherness, what do we say to Foucault's
increased interest in self? Granted that self is constructed, still
is Foucault's concern with self a residual liberalism, or a survival of
the death of 'man', or is there a better way to understand it?
Rick Duerden
English, BYU
------------------