Dear Bryan,
I think that one of the problems with poststructuralism is that
when taken from Derrida's point of view, there can be no 'constructive'
questioning or answering. No structure? No foundation, and nothing to
build on.
It occurs to me that this discussion may benefit by paying closer
attention to Plato, because that it seems that a lot of
poststructuralists haven't. Here is a quote I think is particularly
relevent to the present discussion:
Socrates: So contending with words is a practice found not only in
lawsuits and public harangues but, it seems, wherever men speak we find
this single art, if indeed it is an art, which enables people to make
everything to be like everything else, within the limits of possible
comparison, and to expose the corresponding attempts of others who
disguise what they are doing.
Phaedrus: How so, pray?
Socrates: I think that will become clear if we put the following question
Are we misled when the difference between two things is wide, or narrow?
Phaedrus:When it is narrow.
Socrates: Well then, if you shift your ground little by little, you are
more likely to pass undetected from so-and-so to its opposite than if you
do so at one bound.
Phaedrus 261e-262a
Tom Hart
Memorial University of NFLD
Humanities/Classics
------------------
I think that one of the problems with poststructuralism is that
when taken from Derrida's point of view, there can be no 'constructive'
questioning or answering. No structure? No foundation, and nothing to
build on.
It occurs to me that this discussion may benefit by paying closer
attention to Plato, because that it seems that a lot of
poststructuralists haven't. Here is a quote I think is particularly
relevent to the present discussion:
Socrates: So contending with words is a practice found not only in
lawsuits and public harangues but, it seems, wherever men speak we find
this single art, if indeed it is an art, which enables people to make
everything to be like everything else, within the limits of possible
comparison, and to expose the corresponding attempts of others who
disguise what they are doing.
Phaedrus: How so, pray?
Socrates: I think that will become clear if we put the following question
Are we misled when the difference between two things is wide, or narrow?
Phaedrus:When it is narrow.
Socrates: Well then, if you shift your ground little by little, you are
more likely to pass undetected from so-and-so to its opposite than if you
do so at one bound.
Phaedrus 261e-262a
Tom Hart
Memorial University of NFLD
Humanities/Classics
------------------