Re: Foucault & Derrida

>
> > From the perspective of the first, those who would
> > try to establish other conceptions of meaning and relationality
>not tied to
> > identity and opposition are trying to think outside discourse; from the
> > perspective of the second, those who insist that meaning must be tied to
> > such traditional structures are failing to think through all the
> > implications of the deconstruction of these structures
>
>I take up on the phrase, 'to think outside discourse.'


I'm cornfused as to how it is possible "to think outside discourse."
I think I can understand the desire to imagine/think outside
discursive structures, but isn't even this imbedded in some notion of
"discourse"?

>It was the
>traditionalists who
>attempted a metaphysics of subjectivity that analytically related concepts to
>each other such that values appeared to be connected to generalizable norms
>and maxims, without undergoing any tests by discourse.


I'm afraid I've lost you above. Isn't there always a test by
discourse, even if the test isn't immanent? Are the exceptions to
which you point below a form of test by discourse? Is "dialogue"
below the same as "discourse"? And aren't "dialogical methods" (a
form of ) "discourse", indeed a discursive strategy/structure?

>Exceptions began to
>multiply to the principles thus arrived at which were quite logical but which
>had not undergone any test of dialogue. When dialogical methods were
>employed to check the validity
>of the principles, maxims, and general norms, many were found wanting, often
>for lack of simple sensibility or reasonability, not to mention practicality.
>If there are tqwo sides to this problem, the sides are those of identity
>analysts and nonidentity
>holists who attempts to relate all perspectives of living individuals
>together, not merely subjectivistic hiercharies of metaphysical concepts, as
does the former.


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