John wrote:
> On the history of the discussion: a member of the list said that
> Foucault's claims about truth were self-erasing. The logic exercise that
> resulted was an attempt to dispute the claim that F was involved in a
> performative contradiction. I see nothing wrong or irrelevant about the
> criticism of F or the attempt to respond to it.
This is getting away from Foucault, but let's imagine that someone does
say: there is no truth. On me, this sentence has a certain effect.
It is like a grain of sand falling into an oyster's shell. Some of the
effect has to do precisely with the fact that the sentence is on the edge
of self-erasure; it is a provocation that almost consumes itself. But not
completely, because there it is: the grain of sand in my shell.
The "truth" of the sentence, I would say, lies precisely in this effect.
Perhaps it is simply an example of a certain kind of transgression. In
any case, it seems to me that neither an attack on this sentence on logical
grounds nor its defence by constructing a logic hierarchy can establish
a connection with how the sentence _functions_ -- if and when it does
function. Because it is both true that the sentence is in some sense
"illegitimate", and that this "illegitimacy" does not prevent it from
_speaking_. But the latter is not because the sentence functions in
some 2-nd order logic realm, but rather because its "true" function is not
in the realm of logic.
-m
> On the history of the discussion: a member of the list said that
> Foucault's claims about truth were self-erasing. The logic exercise that
> resulted was an attempt to dispute the claim that F was involved in a
> performative contradiction. I see nothing wrong or irrelevant about the
> criticism of F or the attempt to respond to it.
This is getting away from Foucault, but let's imagine that someone does
say: there is no truth. On me, this sentence has a certain effect.
It is like a grain of sand falling into an oyster's shell. Some of the
effect has to do precisely with the fact that the sentence is on the edge
of self-erasure; it is a provocation that almost consumes itself. But not
completely, because there it is: the grain of sand in my shell.
The "truth" of the sentence, I would say, lies precisely in this effect.
Perhaps it is simply an example of a certain kind of transgression. In
any case, it seems to me that neither an attack on this sentence on logical
grounds nor its defence by constructing a logic hierarchy can establish
a connection with how the sentence _functions_ -- if and when it does
function. Because it is both true that the sentence is in some sense
"illegitimate", and that this "illegitimacy" does not prevent it from
_speaking_. But the latter is not because the sentence functions in
some 2-nd order logic realm, but rather because its "true" function is not
in the realm of logic.
-m