From: "Large.W" <stawla-AT-lib.marjon.ac.uk>
Subject: MB: LRD
Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 00:44:00 +0000



Let us look at the dialectic, or hyper-dialectic to use Merleau-Ponty's   
expression, of the writer again.  The question is whether the writer   
belong to this world (the world of events, causes, commitments) or not.   
 The writer wants to belong to this world.  He says he writes books for   
others.  But he is lying, for if he really were for others then he would   
be not be a writer.  So the writer just writes then?  Is this what makes   
him authentic.  But there is a twist.  The more the writer throws himself   
into the centre of the work, the more the work turns towards the world.   
 The work and the world are neither the same nor opposed to one another,   
rather they are interlaced.  The writer and the reader cannot be   
separated and opposed to one another rather they are all moments of what   
we might call the work.  This means that neither the writer nor the   
reader can have any precedence over one another.  What we have to avoid   
is the Hegelian temptation (which is philosophy's temptation) of thinking   
that the work, at some higher level, is the unity of the writer and the   
reader.  The movement here is one of constant opposition in which there   
can be no reconciliation.  Thus the writer can never be authentic.
stawla