I want to add one thing to my last post (sorry, can't seem to shut up
about this topic)
I think that poststructuralism may go down in the annals of the history
of philosophy NOT as a break with humanism, but as the somewhat pessimistic,
certainly ironic, very cautious and in some ways conservative (not in the
Republican/Democrat sort of way) period in which the lustre of idealism
was removed from certain enlightenment or Romantic claims about the
rights or dignity of "man." But I would argue that, in the wake of the
holocaust, Western imperialism, patriarchy, etc, we do need an
ambivalence about our humanist values. The lustre had to go!
(of the French thinkers associated with poststructuralism, I think that
Derrida best expresses an ethos of ambivalence, while Deleuze does it the
worst).
Erik
Erik D. Lindberg
Dept. of English and Comparative Lit.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI 53211
email: edl@xxxxxxxxxxx
------------------
about this topic)
I think that poststructuralism may go down in the annals of the history
of philosophy NOT as a break with humanism, but as the somewhat pessimistic,
certainly ironic, very cautious and in some ways conservative (not in the
Republican/Democrat sort of way) period in which the lustre of idealism
was removed from certain enlightenment or Romantic claims about the
rights or dignity of "man." But I would argue that, in the wake of the
holocaust, Western imperialism, patriarchy, etc, we do need an
ambivalence about our humanist values. The lustre had to go!
(of the French thinkers associated with poststructuralism, I think that
Derrida best expresses an ethos of ambivalence, while Deleuze does it the
worst).
Erik
Erik D. Lindberg
Dept. of English and Comparative Lit.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI 53211
email: edl@xxxxxxxxxxx
------------------