Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 10:31:31 +0200
From: Vadim Linetski <picador-AT-luckynet.co.il>
Subject: theories of theory/texts of theory/theory of texts


16 MAY 97
Dear Liano, my dear Friend,
i'll try to answer your questions, and start again with an apology for
paraphrasing your points :
1. you deny (or doubt) that there is any connection between your thread
and Brian's, i.e. my attempt to answer you by answering Brian. i
continue to maintain that there is a fundamental connection: in your
first message devoted to paradoxes you tried to differentiate between
paradoxe (continuity) and contradiction (discontinuity). Now Brian's
view of D/G 's theory as creative writing implied precisely the
continuity between two activities, a continuity which makes of
"creation" (your term) an act of life/existence etc. For my part - i
argue this point in _BAKHTIN'S WORDS..._ (summary in my previous
message) - i believe that it's precisely this continuity which makes of
PoMo a fulfillment of logocentric project, PARADOXICALLY, the
fulfillment of scientificity (truth claims), i.e. exactly NOT of an
"existential" attitude.
2. you try to rebuke me by way of reading D/G as existentialists (your
option in favor of theory qua existential act. (that's why i was
justified to equate your message on paradoxes and Orpheus's texts : if
theory is creative writing is existential act than you cannot deny the
continuity with other existential acts /shitting, fucking incl/:
forsooth i was NOT evaluating your contribution of which i think very
high indeed but by putting shit in commas tried to highlight the status
of your text within your own theoretical framework, and yet to pretend
to read my reading literally: 'tis strange for a theorist who at the
very outset of our discussion stressed that he is using even "coffee"
metaphorically!). But this means nothing else than a return to
psychologizing: is not your recourse to "intentions" (on which you base
your attack, forgive the "combat" idiom!) strange indeed after "the
death of an author", this inugural event of PoMo?! Well, an und für sich
SUBJECT qua concept (albeit PoMo would deny this) is not a priori
logicentric. But in order for your argument to be maintained you have to
start with re-conceptualization of this notion - rather than using it as
if it is self-evident (which always means using it in the conventional
sense).
3. and this leads us directly to the question of res.to theory. Clearly
under this term we understand quite different things. Whereas you are
concerned with investigating the mechanism of thory (re)producing
itself, i was speaking all along about (a) the politics of theory and
(b) of textual resistance. the latter i tried to outline in my response
to Brian. as for the former, i mean quite a mundane thing:  namely, the
reluctance to endow old concepts with new meaning, to invirogate the
accepted definitions (primarily those which PoMo has furnished us with.
4. given your psychologizing turn i am not at all surprised that you are
strongly opposed to my speaking about PoMo as a project - rather than
about Lyotard's version. that of D/G etc. i am interested in basic
discursive moves characteristic to all. please try to counter my
argument that at the most fundamental level the notion of "khora" in D/G
theory, for instance, differs from Kristeva's and Derrida's use of this
notion.
yours devoted friend, vadim