(No part of this re/inter/view discussion may be published elsewhere without written permission from victor j. vitanza and the individual posters.) --Full Copyright notice is at the end of each file.
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The PreText Conversations held a Re/In/View with Victor Vitanza, beginning September, 1997. The Guest Moderator is/was Steven Mailloux, UC-Irvine. File 6. |
vb, et al... We have talked much about laughter here. Let's not forget (!) Kundera's book of laughter and forgetting and the other works in which he calls upon laughter, both angelic and devilish. However, let's all know that there is a forthcoming book on Laughter by Diane Davis entitled _Breaking Up [at] Totality: A Rhetoric of Laughter_ from SIUP. The book is in press and I guess will appear in '98 or have a copyright notice of '99. I was fortunate enough to see this book get written. I cannot recommend it enough. It touches upon and examines many of our concerns in the present conversation. vv
Lee Writes in response to Nick: [...] Language is never precise -- there's tons of room for misunderstandings and miscommunication -- but most of the time we are heard and understood, and I think we should focus on these positive aspects of language, as opposed to the endless skepticism that seems to be part and parcel of post-structuralism. Such skepticism reaches absurd proportions at times and flies in the face of common-sense examples that surround us.Lee, We do focus almost exclusively already on the 'positive aspects of language' though we focus via negation. And it is unbelieveably Xpensive in the long run. The major, dominant concern for centuries--as the story gets told in The History--is the attempt to focus on logos as capable of communication. We have done this over and over again and will continue to do so. But it's the so called minor concern, as told in The History, in endnotes mainly, if at all, that must become, in another sense, a minoritarian discourse. If we talk about focusing via 'common-sense examples that surround us' we will only see and not blink or wink. In seeing we will be blind to ... it's that way with the white truth of common sense ... the other suffering that lives all around us. But damn this really gets complicated because to see the suffering makes us want to correct it and thereby, not knowing how to give without expecting returns ... this is the gifting problematic ... then we only compound the problem. Scepticism does not necessarily lead to nonaction. The word 'scepticism' is one of those system words from traditional philosophy; it does no good for us but blind us to blinking at what desires to be blinked at. Opening up the difficulties of logos and not being naive with it (e.g., as Isocrates apparently was) can lead us to thinking about action in less destructive ways. [.......] The pointless here is that Why call us back to the status quo? We, in the Symbolic, are always already there? When we get down to it, there are really very few people in the academy who are concerned with the outlandish or the absurd. They happen to be the loudest right now, but they are in a minority. And yet, it wants to be said, that the silent ones or the ones with power are the Absurd!!!! The impetous of the Absurd. Everyone who writes an unpublished academic novel rails against this absurdity. Please forgive me for my tirade, my raving. There is always more to come. And anyway, If we ask Is *it* Happening?, I would have to nyanza, Yes, es gibt. It is Happening ... and that comes from no and without any profit. Speaking at cross-purposes may still be the most non/productive nonmethod of parainvention. cross purposefully yours, vexed
I think what's useful, for me at least, in post-theories (post-modern, post-structuralist) is best represented by the tensions evidenced by Lee's follow up to my post and by Victor's follow up to that. It's very easy to forget that meanings are based on imperfectly reached consensi. It's very easy to let these agreements become stagnant and taken for granted. It's very easy to let what once was metaphorical, poetical, and tentative become literal (and in some cases very dangerous). Post-theories pull us away from that ease, that complacency, what Victor called the status quo. And good theorists--I think Victor's one--do it with real verve and intellectual jouissance. In part they know it is a game, but like many games, a necessary one to play. Carpe Homo Ludens! Games and carnivals and twists and labyrinths and inspired madness may appear anarchic, but they're really a form of salvation. The question is do they save the things they would rather see end? I think Lee reacted to theorists who have run amuck, their locutions and play taken to the point where they run out of steam and their premises begin to turn in on themselves, becoming too self-referential, too self-reverential, and not at all interesting, losing as they do the kind self-skepticism needed to keep them honest. When that happens the critique they offer is as dogmatic and supposed as the facts in religion Arnold warned against. Meanwhile, we still see students coming into our classes who don't like reading literature because they've had it drummed into them that the only 'correct' way to read is for 'the deeper meaning', of which there is only one, one that can be derived only one way, by the perfect reader posited by New Criticism, but often presented to students as THE TEACHER (who happens to have read the work in question twenty times in the last ten years and has read scads of critics' interpretations, but forgets that there was a time they didn't know the doctrine). So there is a tension, but at least it's there and we can be pulled both ways at once and we are forced to find a balance just so we can stand long enough to speak, if only for a while. Nick Carbone
Ah Victor, read your Hebrew Bible -- prophets *were* phools, chased all over the desert for being such pains the ass. Hell, some of them even ran away when first 'called'. Did you ever run away, Victor? Midrash, yes yes yes yes yes. Halakhic, haggadic midrashim. Forget his claims to the contrary (made after Foucault nailed him in an article for reintroducing the metaphysical - oooo, bad boy, bad!), Derrida is a lovely rabbi. Saint Foucault, Rabban Jacques, his Seer Deleuze -- all good midrash experts. The Jewish mystics of the middle ages began to look at the very letters, the very materiality of the Tanakh. "Why does the Tanakh begin with a Bet, and not an Aleph?" Musings on the mysteries of scribbles, of ink spots. I always wondered - what would a cyberspace four-dimensional virtual text look like and how would it effect what we do with language? Hypertext is dull dull dull. Reader-manipulated interactivity my ass. Let's take advantage of VR and turn texts into manipulable building blocks, architextural visions of amazing complexity guided not by words (puke puke puke) but by sight-sound harmonics and (mis)structures. We would feel the fissures, crack the facades. All these wonderful complexities and vibrancies Victor/ia keeps writing/dancing about would surround us in untold/unexpected ways. Could the Pagus/Shekinah be there? We would see all the little openings, all the fractal spaces of excluded muddles deepening into our multi-dimensional/interdimension words and sentences. Sintax would be something Else. Something like Chartres cathedral. (Can you hear the echoes? see the kaleidoscopic jewels of text-windows? Dark Ages, HAH! Those catholics knew how to make an impact!) Ah, Victor, amerikkkans can be so dull and pragmatic. The French, they do know how to take our boring little analytics and make fantastic tastey treats, don't they. Sometimes, though, they seem a bit rich. Need my potatoes, bland potatoes every once in a while. I am inclined, Nick, to think that the strongest part of our theory is its unconscious religion. I am inclinded, I should say, to look at that aspect as something more interesting, more absurd, and hence typically ignored. Libidinal materialism. Cool. Jewish oedipus. Cool. Kafka. Cool. Please, let's keep crosstalking. I am so bored with being understood. I am so bored with communication. All the right phrases, all the right structures, all the right data, all the right facts, all the right methods. boring. boring. deadly boring. deadly. dull. Crosstalk as salvation - I don't know. I'm not really interested in saving anyone (though, of course, I am interested). The only theorists I have seen run amok are hacks, disciples, schools. I don't want to save them. I want to tear them down. I want to drown them out. "blah blah blah blah"-- all the right anti-phrases, all the right anti-structures, all the right anti-data, all the right anti-facts, all the right anti-methods. puke puke puke puke puke. Where *is* Diane? -Void the Boy
>Midrash, yes yes yes yes yes. Halakhic, haggadic midrashim. Forget his His Royal Voidness, I'd rather not forget what Derrida says. If he says he's not a rabbi, he's not a rabbi, as he states in this 1986 interview on German radio. The German transcript of this interview is found in Florian Rötzer's book _Französische Philosophen im Gespräch_, Munich 1986, pp. 67-87, here: 74 (Klaus Boer Verlag, ISBN 3-924963-21-5). I found the translation two years ago at: http://www.lake.de/sonst/homepages/s2442/reb.html#eng "at any rate, unfortunately or fortunately, as you like it, I am not mystical and there is nothing mystical in my work. In fact my work is a deconstruction of values which found mysticism, i.e. of presence, view, of the absence of a marque, of the unspeakable. If I say I am no mystic, particularly not a Jewish one as Habermas claims at one point, then I say that not to protect myself, but simply to state a fact. Not just that personally I am not mystical, but that I doubt whether anything I write has the least trace of mysticism. Insofar there are many misunderstandings not only between Habermas and me, but also between many German readers and me, as far as I can see. In part this is because German philosophers do not read my texts directly, but refer instead to secondary, often American interpretations. For instance if Habermas speaks of my Judaistic mysticism he uses a book by Susan Handelman which in my view is certainly interesting, but very problematic regarding the claim that I be a lost son of Judaism. At any rate one never reads immediately. I know very well that one always reads from within certain schemes and mediations, so I do not demand that one read me -- as i before my texts you could put yourselves into some kind of intuitive ecstasy -- but I demand that one be careful with the mediations, more critical regarding the translations and the detours through contexts that very often are quite far away from mine." Seems quite distant and remote from his thinking during "Limited Inc a b c . . .", doesn't it? -- Lee
> No problem. I would never view your intellectual gymnastics as tirades, simply double back-flip Vitanzisms off the diving board of rhetoric. Contrary to appearances, I'm not trying to call us back to the status quo. This isn't about returning to a Platonic/Aristotelian conception of rhetoric; it's about seeking a mediation between the semiotic and the semantic, between play and meaning in language, though in the end, I'll favor the semantic. I emphatically agree with you that there are very few people in the academy who are concerned with the outlandish or the absurd, and by damn, we need far more absurdists lurking around, because modern life is often absurd, paradoxical, and inane. But I question those absurdists masquerading as *serious* academics, who take the playful and the absurd and raise them to pedestals of Platonic contemplation, as if there's some great sacrosanct Elysian mystery to be found within the Festival of Fools. It's like teaching a course in Avant Garde 101 and not cracking a smile all semester. As Nick so aptly put it, the absurd skeptics "run out of steam and their premises begin to turn in on themselves." They, in effect, become the new stale dogma and status quo. I'm not discounting the importance of absurdity and skepticism in intellectual life. They serve an immense purpose, as classical scholar B. A. G. Fuller notes in vol. 2 of _History of Greek Philosophy_. Indulge me, if you will, as a I quote at length from my master's thesis on Bakhtin: "Fuller states that all of philosophy is much like the stock market in that it experiences polarized swings between periods of 'intellectual hope and enthusiasm and constructive activity, on the one hand, and intervals of mental depression, loss of confidence in the power of reason to deal with the problems of existence, and even out and out intellectual panic, on the other' (1). Now, Victor, I'm sure you'll take issue with Fuller's "his/tory" of philosophy as being unduly biased toward the sophists (and I'll grant you that much), but I think he makes an important point about the mood swings of philosophy. Though I haven't read your book (yet), in some of your other work, you see modern rhetoric as moving into a Third Sophistic. But I'm not so sure about that. If such an enterprise depends upon alliance with French poststructural thought, then I think there are going to be problems, because some of their accounts of language dwell almost exclusively on semiotic skepticism and often run counter to common-sense experiences of language. I'm not trying to return us to a status quo of logos as might. I'd prefer to walk a fine line between belief and skepticism, between hope and fear, between the positive and the negative, which is why I've found Bakhtin's work so appealing in the past. I just don't see a lot of balance in the poststructural stuff I've read. It seems obsessed with peering into the abyss and doesn't jibe with how language often operates in the world. -- Lee
Voidboy, Just a quick note. This weekend or next there is/will be a conference on Postmodernism and Religion. The headline for the conference is non other than Derrida himself. The other keynotes are those who are all invovled in negative theology and theorizing whether deconstruction is negative theology: Mark Taylor, Charles Winquist, Thomas Altizer, Edith Wyschogrod, Charles (?) Tracy, and Jean-Luc Marion. While I will save this for a longer post, I do want to state that part of my difficulty in thinking through Victor's statements on negation is that I bring to my reading some of this literature on negative theology, such as Taylor's *Nots* which Diane Davis suggested to me in a post once. My difficulty has been in trying to reconcile/understand the two together and separate. todd P.S. The conference is at Villaneva.
Lee, Victor, Voidboy, Nick, Lee--I am not sure what to think of Derrida's emphatic denial, if anything, in the German interview. In other places, Derrida also denies that deconstruction is negative theology, in particular the essays "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials" and "Of an Apocalyptic Tone." In both of these essays he *denies* his work as negative theology, but he then goes onto admit nonetheless his interest in NT: "I have nothing to say in addition or afresh. I found these texts lucid and rigorous; and in any case, I believe I have no objection to make to them, not even against some reservations or other regarding what I could say very insufficiently and am quite convinced of the need for a rigorous and differentiated reading of everything advanced under this title (negative theology). My fascination at least testifies to this, right through my incompetence: in effect I believe that what is called "negative theology" (a rich and very diverse corpus) [Victor, I think here of the living/dying "corpse" you wrote in your post to me] does not let itself be easily assembled under the general category "onto-theology-to-be-deconstructed." (Derrida quoted in Taylor's *Nots*, 34). From what I have read of Taylor and J-L Marion *God Without Being*, negative theology posits itself as the alternative of Onto theology by picking up Heidegger's statment that "if I were to write a theology, it would be without being," a statement in which I attribute Heidegger talking about the fact that theology has become philosophy in its consideration of being. To a certain degree, I see some similarities and some differences between Taylor's "negative theology" and Victor, your "denegation." In many ways, the "rotting corpse" that Victor you alluded to in your post to me via another Taylor text is the death of onto-theology of which Taylor, Altizer, Marion, etc. . . describe and from which they want to see new possibilites in theology. Indeed, both Altizer (Gospel of Christian Atheism) and Taylor have interpreted Nietzsche's madman "who drank up the sea? who killed God" as an important point within this tradition and as a point where it goes through a radical transformation. However, I have to wonder if the sacrifice here is a way of reclaiming a tradition or if it is really a way of transforming it. In other words, I think there is a danger with *Negative Theology* in that it wants to locate and even possibly sublimate Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot, Bataille, and Nietzsche into a theological tradition. In fact, in *Desiring Theology*, Charles Winquish even theorizes theology as "a minor literature." In the end, I think this literature, which I too dearly love, is a dialectical attempt to reclaim theology. If, in fact, we take Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot, Bataille, and Nietzsche seriously, would we even have theology or the possibility of a theology? Most contemporary theologians I see would probably say "yes" since they see the post-structuralist tradition critical of "onto-theology"--not the theology they do. Yet, I am not so sure. Rather, I think they are merely reinscribing Theology back into a productive discourse. Victor, on the other hand, I see you as really trying to transform a tradition, i.e. the History of Rhetoric or at least the master narrative therein. I don't necessarily see you as trying to reclaim a tradition or preserving rhetoric, though I might be wrong and would be interested in your in put here. From the rotting corpses of Heidegger, Jaeger, Schiappa, Jarrat, we find new life, but is that life a new rhetoric or is it something wholy new? The other big difference I see between Taylor's negative theology and Victor's denegation is that Taylor or at least this tradition begins with 0 whereas Victor begins with 1. I think there is a big difference here that must be explored. Taylor, in other words, is trying to think through the *Not*. He is trying to understand God by thinking God to the limit in order to realize that there is still more, that is, trying to think the unthought. This ultimately seems to fall into Victor's critique of Kant. Victor, on the other hand, I see (you) as not necessarily thinking the unthought but thinking and vomiting what has been cast aside (not as a way to reclaim, but as a way to transform). And, folks, at this point, I am coming undone. I have stuttered long enough, and am not really sure that I understand myself at this point. todd
Lee, thanks for the quote from Derrida (German radion) and from your thesis. The balance that your are looking for is the 'balance' of the "inbetween" that we keep referring to. We have mentioned it several times. It is the dis-central atopos that I, for one, keep alluding to ... as pagus. I refer to it as middle voice, etc. As the numerous hermaphrodites in NSHR (Favorinus, Marx, etc.) I have givven so many atopoi of inbetween that I feel now that I am ready to re/tire be fore re/trying. If you were to blink at what the inbetween will have been, you would throw away bacteen. And would embrace the germs around you and us. Embrace the germs. The story of the passion according to St.Andrews ... would have us embrace the germs, and all the creatures of the night! The slimey sea snakes, etc. Instead, we 'specie' things off from each other. What we need is a scandal, a perverted unthinker who would unthink fixed golden chains, fixed periodic tables, fixed harcourt hodges chart of errors. fixed portfolios!! the counter scandal of our profession! Return to the inbetween, your uncanny home. So...to return to the top of this poste... at times there are references to leaping into the abyss, yes. Empedocles! But ... given the throw of the di(c)e, there is a constant allusion to Emped-ocles returning. S.he will have returned, just as the good nuns used to tell us in cata-schism that all returns. Just as the bad boy nietzsche says in his anti-christ that the no-pauline christ will have returned. What gets repressed, suppressed, politically oppressed ... returns. Hope does leap out of Aetna. So what you hope for as not caring for in terms of particular kinds of writers/thinkers, I understand. But I would not partition them off from the rest of the players. Given where I am, I must accept them all as giving. I cannot partition them off! It is crucial that this statement be understood. If not, then Nought! It would be better for me in that event to send White messages of empty postes. White Terror of Truth. Okay, then, as in Parmenides ... you go to the right ... oh you to the left ... uh, you to the right, dear. And you, well, we will allow you to go to the right, too. Diaeresis. Die. But I would prefer to send the White Terror of such postes With the Red terror of singularities. What allows us to say that we like one group of critics and not another? What is that mechanism? We like Americans, but not French. We like Jews but not Germans. We like exaggerated Jewish Oedipuses but not Greek Oedipuses. For a split second, I can entertain these splits, but when a second is passed, I must move over to the third. And be restfully unrestful t.here. Nothing has been understood as the inbetween. But that's to be xpected. The inbetween does not need an audience (as Euripides would have one, beautiful and understandable). ...does not need a catholik chorus. ... does not need an author who would step to the stage and explain everything prior to the SEEing. The Holy SEE. My son, the Roman, just walked into my studyless, and said that he just shot with his laser gun a roach. He's been watching too much parmendidean tv, i guess. gotta go do what i undo, v
Date: Sun, 21 Sep 1997 12:01:40 -0500 (CDT) On Sun, 21 Sep 1997, Michael T. Harper wrote:
> While I will save this for a longer post, I do want to state that part of my I do mention Taylor's k*Nots* in passing. When it comes to negative theology, which is virtually all theology, I rely more on Spinoza, Heidegger, KBurke, and Derrida for negative theology. A negatie Oedipus (gods) ... a negatie God (the one and only)! Let us spare these negaties. Notice that it takes a "v" to spell Negati*e! I am against (which for me generally means, *contra to* yet *along side*) negative theology. I don't toss it out or partition it off and away. I standless with it. I am against it. I would prefer for our ethical unreasons, for our being 'irresponsible,' to accept the YES within and all around, but mostly inbetween, Nature. We are so uncomfortable in the facelessness of Nature that we would but Negate it! I would of course denegate the curse that we have put on Nature (Physis). some more later with some more, venture
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