Re: to Liano, re: his complaints

	Hello all!  First I want to mention to anyone interested that 
while there is quite abit of my and Vadim's negotiation about how to talk 
to eachother at the beginning of this post, there is also what may be 
more interesting stuff farther down.  Somethings on time and paradox and 
transcendents.

	 Also, I'm sorry this took so long to get out, but other work 
took precedence for a time as it is unfortunately wont to do.  It has 
been written over the course of several days at odd moments of spare time 
and may seem a bit disjointed, for which I apologize.

	Flames and questions are equally welcom!

On Tue, 24 Dec 1996, Vadim Linetski wrote:

> 17 MAY 97
> 
> > 
> >         I'm afraid I can no longer see my way clear to accept these
> > apologies.  You seem to disagree with me, and in some ways seem to
> > patronize me (Liano!-Liano!; sort of like---See the Light!---See the
> > Laight!), while stating (not even arguing) that the ideas I have presented
> > have far different
> > consequences than I believe them to, but at no time do you actually
> > attempt--as you yoourself point out--to engage my arguments directly.
> > Instead, you interpret them, and then slide out your
> > interpretations as you see them related to someone else's argument which
> > you are responding to according to your ideas.  You co-opt what I've said
> > to argue your own points without even the curtisy (sp?) of first
> > demonstrating in any way that I actually do say what you claim I
> > have said.  I'm affraid that, honestly, after four such posts I have
> > begun to be somewhat offended by this.>

> needless to say that no offense was intended! if you were, on my knees,
> i beg your pardon and promise - for i enjoy our exchange and profit
> greatly from it! - 

	As do I, let me assure you!


> from now own to comply with your request. But the
> latter as well as my compliance within the context of our discussion
> immediately retranslate themselves into  theory. Do not you feel that

	I dissagree.  In order to have a discussion we must understand 
eachother to some degree, and I find that because of your methode of 
responce (paraphrasing, generalizing, making connections without clearly 
explaining them, etc.) I am constantly having to guess at what your 
responce is.  If we move farther into "pure" theory than we already have, 
then perhaps this is of no consequence, I can respond based on what I 
think you say and you can do the same and we could continue in this way 
while each of us beleives that we are discussing something different.  
Perhaps already this has begun to happen.  But the beginning of our 
exchange was highly contextualized (John/Jay/Orpheous) and I still have 
no idea about what you think of my position on this specific issue (except 
that you dissagree with me)
because you have not responded to the specific contextualized points I 
made regarding it.  You may say that you have provided a theory from 
which the answer should be clear, but I don't see it, and I believe that 
the reason I don't see it has to do with the way you paraphrase and 
generaliize without specific reference to context--I find myself 
constantly asking "whats he responding to, whats he refering to from my 
argument".  I may well be wrong, 
perhapse I'm just being overly dense, but at the moment I don't believe so.


> your request contradicts what you have been advocating all along?! on
> the one hand, you argue for "theorizing without rules", for theeory as a
> reflection of one's "mood" (broadly conceived), on the other, call for
> strict rules of the game, for a quite traditional language in which such
> a theory should be voiced.


	No, I don't want any restriction on how theory should be vooiced, 
but I have been finding it very hard to follow what you've been saying in 
responce to my posts.  I assure you that if I had understood well what was 
happening in your responces  and how they related to my posts I wouldn't 
have felt as annoyed by them as I've recently detailed here.  You have 
made specific claims about my posts without specifying how you support 
those claims, am I constraining theory be asking you to show how it is 
that you arrive at your conclusions?  I have not asked you to adhere to 
any kind of rules of demonstration or argumentation by which some ways of 
reasoning 
(and I use this term here in so brroad a sense that perhaps it loses all 
meaning) are excluded apriori or by any other means.  But I have asked you 
to demonstrate the method of reasoning (insert previous qualifer here) by 
which you proceed, and I have asked you to explain  this for two reasons: 
first I want to see if I agree with 
your method of reasoning (this would spawn a different debate), second, I 
want to see if your arguments make sense to me.


> BTW that's a contradiction which is
> unfortunately all too widespread in the present day academy, it's
> another instance of res.to th. qua a matter of practical politics: the
> self-apointed guardians of D/G,Derridaetc. feel themselves justified to
> require "clear argumentation", the conventional manner of preasentation
> etc.

	As I hope I have explained sufficiently above, I'm not asking for 
any kind of conventional rules of argumentation, but I am asking that you 
explain how you do argue.  I don't much care if you argue in conventional 
ways or not, if anything I hope you don't argue conventionally.



> and censor critics which try to touch on too many points - whereas
> theorists under whose auspices they place themselves are evey thing else
> than lucid, are dense stylistically, do not bother to write having the
> undergraduate auditorium in mind.

	Agreed!  On the other hand, and I apologize for saying so, but 
your esays on the web that I've seen are, in my opinion, quite 
styalistically dense themselves and (again, IMHO) rely on bodies of 
literature so large as to be well beyond the reach of many (if not most) 
postgraduates--certainly not redily accessable to the undergraduate 
auditorium.



> Further you complain about my practice
> of paraphrasing your ideas - and yet argue for a mode of reading which
> is by necessity and basically aparaphrasis

	There is a difference between reading, writting and having a 
conversation.  If I'm reading a book, it may be difficult or impossible 
to ask the author for clearification or to respond to counter-arguments I 
may make to his/her text.  If we were sitting down to coffee somewher to 
have this discussion, none of these problems would arise, because when I 
made a direct point, you'd probably respond to it directly and if I felt 
you didn't respoond to it, or if I didn't 
understand your responce, I'd simply ask you for clearification at every 
point and I don't think you would end up suggesting that I'm trying to 
constrain your theorizing (but perhaps we'd have to try this some time to 
see if I'm right or not) by asking for a direct responce. In the current
situation I have done preciesly that--asked for clearification and for
speciific 
responce to specific points I've made--and have again and again recieved 
sidelines added to your responces to other people.  Imagine there are 
several of us at a coffe shop sitting and talking. . . I make the same 
requests and you don't even turn to look at me except occasionally to say: 
"see, what I just said to him answers your question too," as you turn 
back to talk with some one else.  No we're not in a coffee shop, but 
carring on a discussion with you when you're always talking to some one 
else is equally as frustrating.  Do you think you would proceed in this 
way if we were in a coffee shop?



> (in your second message you
> celebrate reading D/G as poetry, more importantly, just as your moment's
> disposition would prompt you to read it).For my part, ialso have smth to
> complain about of which later.
>   
> >  while you also seem to claim that established theories should not
> > attempt to impose themselves on new textual bodies.  I feel imposed upon.<

> Sorry! But rhetorically you deploy here the Formalist device of "making
> strange" (literalization of a metaphor), a practice which might be used
> to corner whomesoever.

	Hmmm, this is interesting.  By "literalization of a metaphore" do 
you mean describing an "existential" situation in which some aspect of the 
metaphore is interpreted as realized (what I've done above)?  If so, do you 
mean that metaphores 
should not be used as means to understand actual situations??  More 
specifically, are you saying that your theoretical stance against what 
you call "resistance to theory" (the imposition of established theory on 
new textual bodies) was ment metaphorically and should not be taken as 
actualizable?  But I recall you gave an (I beleive fictionalized) example 
of your idea  of res. to theory: "a Derridean perspective on the 
literature of Papau-New Guenean".  If the New Gueneans made the same 
analysis of the Derridean peice ("we're being imposed upon"), would 
this be 
unacceptable Formalist rhetoric intended to trap the Derridean author?  
If not, why is it acceptable in their case but not in mine?  If it is 
acceptable in neither case, what should people do when they find 
themselves in positions where they feel that this kind of imposition has 
taken place?  My own opinion on this is that on the level of THEORY you 
say, "Well, thats nice, but I'm gonna forget Derrida while I go read some 
of this new literature".  On the other hand, on the level of DISCUSSION, 
if you happen to be talking with the author for example, it makes perfect 
sense to say "don't you think its  a bit unfair [insert stronger term 
here] to impose Derrida on this new literature?  Why not understand it on 
its own terms rather than impose your own?  Would you go to China and 
insist they say 'red' instead of 'hong Ss'?  No? Then why impose your 
theoretical language on the New Guenean literature?"    

	Put another way, theory is meaningless unless it has real 
consequences.  Reading the literature while forgetting Derrida is a real 
consequence of my philoosophy.  So is having the discussion with the 
author, but the discussion iitself is meaningless as theory unless it 
spawns a real effect.  This again the reason I felt John's post about 
Orpheous to be theoretically meaningless.


	I wasn't trying to "corner" you, I was just stating how I was 
feeling about the way our discussion has been going, why I was feeling 
that way, and explaining how what I was feeling may make sense in your 
theoretical framework.  If I've made you feel cornered, I apologize, but 
I wasn't advancing a theoretical attack, I was participating in discussion.
Each can be made into the other, but neither need become the other 
necessarily.  If you insist that they are necessarily the same, then we 
re-enter the problem of always being guilty because it becomes impossible 
for me to express my feeling without cornering you formalistically 
(according to your argument), which I interpret to mean in a manner 
derived from a transcendental position. 


> > 
> > > Now
> > > i am going to address two issues which remain in suspense.
> > > 1. you are certainly right in your critique of Zeno's paradoxes. However
> > > you address them
> > 
> > an und für sich,
> > 
> >         I'm sorry, I don't understand this, is it another language?
> > Please explain.<
> 
> sorry, in German, in English they translate it as "in and for itself"
> 

	Thanks!

> > 
> > 
> > > and there's the rub! what justifies my
> > > = of the two paradoxes is their structure
> > > and discursive effect dubbed
> > > in my NABOKOV AND SWIFT... essay a self-dimunitive one.
> > 
> >         By my reading of yoour peice, you argue about the
> > self-dimmunition of A&T, but suppose the self-dimmunition of the Liar by
> > equating the two--do you demonstrate that the Liar, by itself with out
> > reference to A&T is also self-diminutive?  If so, please point out
> > where.  I must point out again that their structure is quite
> > different,
> > so If you have not demonstrated the self-dimunition of the Liar on its
> > own, you may have a problem.<
> 
> Part of the difficulty in our exchange stems from the fact that i refer
> to published texts of mine where the argument has been developed in
> full. To disentangle issues which PoMo theorists were at pains to push
> into an abyss requires a great amount of space. for techn. reasons i
> cannot recapulate my argument in full. the summaries you find obscure...
> i feel that in the referred essay the structural = of the paradoxes has
> been sufficiently spelled out. all i can do is to cut the lrelevant
> passage and post it to the list. however to do this i have first to ask
> the permission of other subscribers (it will be a bit lengthy, and what
> if another john would cry "stop shitting"?!)
	
	No problem, I understand and will try to take a longer look at 
your peice.


> > 
> > > On a purely
> > > philosophical level, your critique is quite valid (as Bergson has argued
> > > in MATTER AND MEMORY and Ch.Peirce contended in his notes A. will
> > > overtake the T. - at least as a fact), but i am interested in the use of
> > > this paradox in PoMo theory. Curiously, what i call structure and
> > > discursive effect is situated precisely in the gap /khora (another basic
> > > notion of PoMo) between your two interpretations: in effect, you try to
> > > dissociated the two paradoxes by arguing that that of A&T relies on a
> > > physical setting, that of the Cretan Liar - on psychology of sorst
> > 
> >         It should be pointed out that this "psychology of sorts" is not a
> > static thing unless the paradox is restricted to a fixed _point_ (not
> > duration) of time.  Also, I would argue that the Liar, without temporal
> > restrictions, represents a completely different waay of being, not simply
> > a change in psychology.<

> Interesting! however i fail to see how "a way of being" whatever its
> novelty might be dissociated from "temporal restrictions"? You seem to
> propound a non-restrictive temporality?An a-temporal  way of being?

	I mean a way of being that does not experience time as a simple
progression 2pm . . .3pm . . . 4pm . . .1997 . . . 1998 . . . 3457 (I hope
not!). . .etc.  I would advocate an experience of time that was at once more
mythical and more real.  Michels Serres offers the example of a late model car 
. . . "It is a disperate aggregate of scientific and technical solutions 
dating from different periods.  One can date it component by component: 
this part was invented at the turn of the century, another, ten years 
ago, and Carnot's cycle is almost two hundred years old.  Not to mention 
that the wheel dates back to neolithic times.  The ensemble is only 
contemporarry by assemblage, by its design, its finish, sometimes only by 
the slickness of the advertising surrounding it."  
	That is, what we encounter in the world is not new, but new and 
old simultaneously.  By claiming that a thing is only new simply because 
it was made just now is rediculuous--everything is made up from parts 
that are as tempporally different as they are physically different, but 
this is not only true of physical things like cars and wool sweaters, it 
is also true of ideas and debates.  When you speak against imposing 
established ideas on new textual bodies, in an important sense you are 
speaking against the static view of time that proposes the above 
progression and coouples it with the idea of being contemporary and 
modern.  You are speaking in favor of experiencing not just a new 
literature, but a new time not derived from the line we've been passing 
along.  The ideas of contemporeneity and modernity, as the advanced 
column of "progress," work to convince us that we are the best, the most 
well informed the most technically advanced, generally the most _right_ 
about everything that it has ever been possible to be, and as Serres 
points out, as long as we continue to believe this it will be a permanent 
state--a static time where we will always, day to day, hour to hour, be 
righter than it was ever possible to be before, and all this for the 
simple and rediculous reason that we are living at the present moment.
	IN short, everything we encounter every day arrives from a 
different time into the present which is itself both past and future.  I 
remember the lecherous old Italian from _Catch-22_ who when told 
he was an old man said "yes, but I live like a young one". and when told 
he was a crazy man said "yes, but I live like a sane one".  Being old and 
being insane are both equally archized by a "standard" view of BEING that 
insists that you ARE (you exist) according to accepted views.  People say
"being old is a state of mind," (a psychology of sorts), and by claiming this
try to relegate divergence from accepted temporality to an exchange of one
accepted psychology (oldness) for another (youngness).  But if you watch 
"older" people who take this idea to heart and live by it, you see that 
they do indeed _live differently_ than people who do not (compare this 
with some one who always talks about how young--or how old-- s/he is, but 
doesn't seem to do anything that would inspire anyone else to talk about 
how young (old) s/he is.  Maybe the person talking this way has changed 
their psychology in some way, but untill they change how the live it 
doesn't seem to make much difference, certainly not to their 
cardiovascular system for example) .  I have an 
uncle who has been 40 for the last 30 years, ever since he was twenty, 
and I have a grandfather who took a sojourn at being older, but decided 
he liked being 28 better than 75.  I don't mean to imply standards of 
behavior for specific ages, I'm just trying to give a general idea of 
what I mean by reference to things that (while I may not beleive them) 
have a certain existance in society and thus may help to convey my 
meaning (I am also trying to demonstrate how referencing something you 
reject and that could indeed undermine your argument if taken in that 
way need not do so).  My point is we should understand this 
co-temporality (old and new, new and already but not yet, etc.) in the 
way we experience the world.  Thus not an a-temporality, but a 
co-temporality--a non-archical temporality.  
	Has anybody read a book called "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn?  I 
haven't decided if I like the book or not yet, but it certainly presents 
some interesting ideas that the above has made me think of again.

	This probaly needs further clearification, so fire away!



> However your celebration of diversity, multifacetousness of expirience
> does not make much sense if does not take into account this human
> predicament. what you are arguing for, then, is a strange hybrid of
> quasi-Sartrean existentialism and quasi-idealism.
>   The passage to this new way of being may be
> <> concieved of as a change in psychology, but being their is not simply
> > about psychology, since time and space have also changed.

> - ... in a way that does away with their restrictiveness?

	In a way that presents different boundaries, which are also to be 
played with (see old and young above).



> 
> 
> > 
> > > (as
> > > you say we should take into consideration that a Liar could not be a
> > > prioro accused of a continuous flaw of lies). However, it is precisely
> > > the UNCANNY RETURN OF THE REFERENT
> > 
> >         Please explain what you mean.  One reason I'm so interested in
> > paradoxes is that they don't need referents--they appear to have them
> > because of the operation of contradiction.  YOu can live paradoxically
> > without refering to it and without referencing any particular objects or
> > actions as being paradoxical to eachother.<
> 
> and would not this new way of living = maximum of abstraction,
> inattention to the lived environment, to the minute details
> constituting  "here and now" your philosophy needs referetiality as
> no other does.
>  
> > > a recourse to "naturalism" which
> > > undermines the PoMo project,
> > 
> >         Please explain the connection between naturalism and "the uncanny
> > return of the referent". <
> i humbly thought that at least this would be self-evident:  naturalism =
> recourse to referentiality the latter implied by the sort of
> environmentalism (phisycal, psychic etc) you defend, what makes this
> return uncanny is the fact that PoMo is about doing away with
> referentiality altogether (D/G, Baudrillard, Derrida are in accord re:
> triumph of simulacra) thought to represent the nucleus of logocentrism.

	OK, now I understand what you're saying and can respond. 
Basically I don't at all agree with the idea that referentiality is a 
basis of logocentrism.  I believe that referencing _transcendents_ is 
such a basis, and this is what I meant above--you can live paradoxically 
without reference to transcendents (I was quite inexcusably unclear for 
which I apologize, too caught up in my own thoughts it seems).  Usually 
it is assumed that paradox would 
not occur if there where no transcendents around to insist on absolutes 
(true/false) as found in contradictions.  But you don't need a 
trascendent to create a living paradox.  This is especially true when 
moving in flows of movement--every sailor understands that in most cases 
you don't get where you want to go by going there, you get there by going 
somewhere else--you tack.  This is one instance of a more general 
phenoomenon--if you understand the universe to by more powerful than you, 
then you understand that you have to negotiate with it like the sailors 
do, and this may mean both changing your ends and changing your means for 
acheiving them.  A bit farther along these lines, you can find a very 
interesting paradox of life which relies on no transcendent--Lao Tzu's 
"act without acting".  



> Since in practice their theories require a recourse to referntiality
> (and your theory is exemplary in baring this necessity), the effect is
> uncannilly deconstructive.
> 
> > Also, please explain how it is that naturalism
> > undermines the PoMo project, since it has been my understanding that
> > Postructuralism (which you often seem to equate with postmodernism)
> > rejects naturalism.
> >
> Precisely due to this rejection. See above.

	Undestood, and hopefully my responce is clear 
enough--"naturalism" (under your definition) need not be rejected so long 
as it does not rely on transcendents. (see below)


>  
> > > and this is my theme. In other words, it
> > > is the naturalization which PoMo identifies as one of the logocentric
> > > moves which returns in its own discourse...
> > 
> >         This may well be true, but please support this claim.  In doing
> > so, pleaase be clear about the definitions of "naturalism" and
> > "naturalization" you are using.  If you mean a humanist naturalism, then
> > you may be a victim of over theorization.
>  
> all along i was trying to clarify my use of "naturalization" which is
> certainly a rather loose term. Could you perhaps suggest a better one?

	What I was getting at by suggesting that there may be an 
overtheoriization of the term "naturalism" here is this: most of the PoMo 
arguments for rejecting naturalism I've heard focus on the humanist 
naturalism of people like Rousseau who pose a transnscendent essence as a 
basis for this naturalism.  But the whole point of the reliance on such a 
transcendent is to answer the question "what makes us human" while 
avoiding the obvious but paradoxical answer: "being human" ( Note that 
contrary to the exppectations I often encounter, here a transcendent is 
used to _avoid- a paradox, rather than being implicated in creating 
one).  This answer 
is, by the way, fully compatible with D&G's idea that things are 
determined by their effects.  It was only a certain form of conciet that 
forced the transcendent essence definition of human-ness while accepting 
relatively calmly the notion that a rock is a rock because it is a rock and 
not a tree.  Note that anamism, by supposing that everything has its 
own essence, 
poses the paradoxical and not the transcendent answer to the question of 
being human.  Thus the way in which "naaturalism" is often used in PoMo 
discourse I find to be over theorized since the problems attributed to it 
have to do with a theory of transcendentals and not a theory of what is 
or isn't "natural".


> > 
> > > (In another chapter
> > > ,"BAKHTIN'S WORDS...", i further develop the notion of Cretan
> > > discursivity)
> > > 2. you are right that what i am arguing against is the view of
> > > deconstruction as a theory which requires smth to deconstruct. This is
> > > one of the most common rebukes. My aim is to conceive of deconstruction
> > > of the second degree
> > 
> >         What does "deconstruction of the second degree" mean?  It sounds
> > something like the theory of types most mathematicians seem to use to try
> > and deal with Russell's paradox or the spirals of language and
> > meta-language used to try to run away from Godel's proof.  Both of which
> > don't really work.
> 
> Nothing of the sort! Esp. since it's precisely this "mathematism" which
> decons of the first degree is all about. Again you are over-literal.
> Decon of the second degree retains the aims (urgent as they are) while
> rejecting the propounded means (that of Gödel incl)

	Can you summarize (briefly) the means and aims you have in 
mind?  If this is an unfair question, no problem, just say so.


> > 
> > > as a theory which would not need anything
> > > antedating it , would not be parasitic.
> > > However, the sine qua non is the
> > > baring of the discursive moves common to all versions of
> > > poststructuralism. I think that we are justified to speak of
> > > poststructuralISM: consider fo example one of the most radical versions
> > > of feminism: recently Braidotti has  made a special point that the
> > > reconstruction of the female subjectivity requires a consolidated
> > > (oedipal) subjectivity in order to proceed.  there obviousy ARE some
> > > fundamental discursive moves common to all, and it is this moves which
> > > matter. 
>  i wonder why you've found this clarification unclear. which explains
> why, were i as sensitive to "being heard" as you seem to be, i could
> have re-direct your complaints to their author.
>
> TO REITERATE:
> > > Thank you very much for your provocative remarks, i am looking forward
> > > to hearing more of them.<
> 
> vadim


	And On my part, I apologize If I've been overly coarse.  I have 
indeed enjoyed and benefited from our discussion and look forward to more 
of it and others.


	Your Friend,


			Liano