Date: Mon, 23 May 1994 11:00:21 -0500 (EST)
From: BALDWINE-AT-iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Re: interpretation and praxis
To: baudrillard-AT-world.std.com



Raul,

	(Bear with me; I'm getting used to a new communications
system)

	I don't mind pissing off some Derrideans as I go along.  I
like a lot about deconstructive philosophies, especially in terms of
showing us alternative ways of looking at things and ungrounding
authority.  But while they claim that there is no center, for
example, I think there IS a center -- albeit not one fixed in a
static position (a paradox).  I'm reminded of Carl Jung's work
with the relationship of analytic psychology to poetry in which
he says that we can never *describe* experience or meaning, but
only *circumscribe* it.  Our words will never hit on the center,
but go around it.  Some of us are better than others at reducing
the radius of our circumscription -- those of us who are poets
and artists, and I would include really good theorists.  We get
caught up in meaning or the impossibility of meaning.  Jung
asks: 

> Is "meaning" necessarily more than mere interpretation --
> an interpretation secreted into something by an intellect
> hungry for meaning?

I see us as a collection of intellects hungry for meaning, looking
for external validation for our interpretations.  

	Is this what we look for in the window/screen?  A mirroring?

I think it is "cheesy narcissism."  It's narcissistic certainly,
psychologically fundamental.  Cheesy is we're seduced.  And
nihilistic if, like Narcissus, we fall in -- we allow the
metamorphosis of ourselves into aesthetic objects.

Beth Baldwin
baldwine-AT-iris.uncg.edu