Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 11:56:08 +0200
From: Vadim Linetski <picador-AT-luckynet.co.il>
Subject: Re: time (slipping through my fingers) vol 2.


17 MAY 97
Dear Liano,

> I.e. it remains a PROGRAM, a de jure declaration whereas on atheoretical
> > level (WINE VS. BOTTLES) the fundamental concepts have not undergone
> > re/destructuration.
> 
>         You have forgotten the most important part of your analogy
> --The Drinker.  Anything you care to write down can be interpreted as a
> program, and most likely will be by some one some where, but its only a
> program if people do infact interpret it as such--interms of your
> analogy this would be equivalent to some form of fetishized drinking
> ritual or out right collectorism.  But there is  no reason anything
> anyone writes needs to be taken as a program<
... and yet you are far more sympathetic with Guillaume's line of
reasoning (who writes:< you act like this: BWO-nomadism...< - a program
, is it not?)than with mine...

<--the writer doesn't make
> anything s/he writes a program however much s/he may or may not want to,<

it's a global claim - the kind i make myself and you rebuke me for
making...

> it becomes a program _only when the reader(s) accept it as programming_
> and act accordingly. <

beautiful! i after this you pretend not to understand the vital urgency
to examine the basic discursive moves which i argue for under the name
of decon of the second degree?! we should examine exactly the mechanism
which prompts the reader to read in this way or another, the mechanism
which is the mechanism of textual functioning. only after the baring of
the latter , only having understood how the appropriation takes place,we
can hope to resist anything whatsoever.
<
When you read something you have to make a choice:
> enshrine it
> (collectorism so to speak), fetishize it, or take a swig and  water the
> plannts with the rest . . . dump some in the soup, wash some down the
> drain . . . feed the cat, stick a candel in the top and read something
> else tonight.  Do whatever you like with it--this is entierly up to you,
> and if you decide its a program and follow it that is also your choice.<
 good, why then reproach me for "perverting" your argument by
paraphrasing it, answering you indirectly? i was only acting according
to your best wishes - in total unawareness.


> And you can also of course, as you seem to do Vadim, decide it is a
> program and argue against it, but in this case arguing against what
> has been written is useless because it did not attain the quality you
> wish to expose (programmism) before you brought this quality to the text
> yourself by reading it this way.<

only if we agree with this relativism which, again, is a program. you
see, our disc would end in a deadlock so long as we deploy against each
other this sort of discursivity which i dub Cretan. Cretanism is exactly
this wordplay which can be used to corner any argument: it might be
easily shown that every statement is self-contradictory, and you don't
like contradictions and yet deploy them. since this logic (which = decon
as practiced by Derrida)seems to be a part of our predicament as
speaking beings, why not bracket it? 

<  Didn't you say you didn't like the
> idea of established theories imposing themselves on new textual bodies?<

you don't pay attention to the distinction i draw between textual bodies
(lit.) and theory.

> Well, when you come to a text you haven't read before it is (to you) a
> new textual body and your ideas form your personal established theory, I
> humbly suggest that you may wish to watch for your own impositions.  By
> saying it _is_ a program, you are infusing it with an intent--the
> intent to program.  It should be noted that you say (above): "I do not
> question the intentions which prompted them to write AO & ThPl," thus you
> do not question their intentions, but instead--by insisting that they
> have laid out a program-<

were they not the first to see in AO a program? At least the opening
paragrph of AO suggests this reading.

<-you ascribe to them a result which, by the
> argument I have just made, is in fact not theirs, but yours.  You read
> their writting as a program, and thus to you it is a program.  I read
> their writting as a late night conversation, or message from a far-off
> place, or a poem, or whatever may feel appropriet at the time, but never as
> a program,<

... and are quite happy to never ponder the problem of what justifies
your reading?

< because I reserve the right to guide myself by whatever lights
> I may find beautiful.  (no I am not suggesting beauty as some standard by
> which to choose paths, I'm only using it as a weak metaphore for
> something which has no standard and thus no category and thus no name by
> which to refer to it convieniently)
> 
> > Take such a basic notion as desire. As i've tried to
> > show in "THE PROMISE OF EXPRESSION..."
> > (http://www.pd.org/topos/perforations/perf11/unspkable_chld.html)
> > Lacanian desire functions in exactly the same way as D/G one which
> > should have disruptedd the former.
> 
>         As an illustration of what I was arguing above: Lacanian (or any
> other) desire does not itself function,<

in point of fact, PoMo theorists are still convinced that it does
function. if it does not, and by your argument the same applies to D/G
desire, then we have the explanation why patriarchy continues to
flourish despite the decons AO-pal attacts. Don't you see, my dear
friend, that this type of attitude makes "revolution" textual and
otherwise forever  impossible?

< rather, people use it as they see
> fit to use it<

you think, then, that one can use "Thatcherism" as a leftist program? i
know, this is a distortion of your thought, you mention "fit to use it",
which means that, after all, a text has some objective properties which
determine the possibilities of its use, delimit the boundaries.

> 
> > It's far from being
> > clear what schiz.anal. is: a description of how "IT"/ID functions or a
> > prescription how it should? Obviously this question begs evry system,
> > and the history of science is a history of its avoidance.
> 
>         It is even more obvious (to me at least) that this is not at all
> a question of what schiz.ana. _is_, but one of what different people try
> to do with it.
> 
> > You prefer to
> > treat D/G work as "poetry", and in so doing avoid again the problem
> > which should be addressedat long last.
> 
>         Only if you continue to assume that how you read smething is more
> importan than what you do with it.<

but as you've acknowledged there are "textual" /objective restrictions
which determine the use, ergo:  in order not to put the cart before the
horsse we have to start with the former, which by the same token, are
more important
> 
> > Your option, forgive my saying
> > so! is an instance of PoMo basic strategy which as its practitioners
> > assure us, is a potent weapon against truth/objectivity claims peculiar
> > of the Western tradition. Allegedly, it suffices to "fictionalize" a
> > given discourse which gives itself as a scientific one in order to
> > deconstruct/subvert it (e.g.Derrida's POSTCARD). Since this strategy is
> > psych.an.informed it is only fair to dub it a trabsferential mode of
> > interpretation which - structurally! Liano, Liano! - is a neat
> > counterpart of the Cretan paradox(es).
> 
> Two comments
> 
>         1) you seem to equate fictionalization with peotry here.  I don't
> see how this paragraph makes sense otherwise.  I will have to strongly
> dissagree with you here.

your reasons, please.

> 
>         2) If I understand the idea of "transferential mode of
> interpretation" correctly (I may well not as it seems to come from
> psych.an, an area that I am none too familiar with), I must still
> disagree with your interpretation of the paradox(es) in question.  It
> seems to me that a transferential mode of interpretation must involve two
> separate frames of reference between which a transfer takes place via
> interpretation.  I'm guessing that you see a paradox arising whenever
> (and this may well be in every case) these two frames of reference are
> incompatile.  If this is the case then once again you have a
> contradiction (see my previous posts) and not a paradox, and further you
> have a contradiction that is not particularly structurally similar to
> either the Liar or Achilles and the Tortoise because the Liar does not
> involve a frame of reference at all and A&T only invovels a single frame
> of reference.<

No, by transferential mode of interpretation i meant Creatan PARADOXES
(and not contradictions): in my view transference rhetorically has the
structure of Cretan paradoxes. i am still unconvinced that what i call
paradox is only a contradiction. but what is important is that the
PoMo's deficiencies as discussed in _BAKHTIN LAID BARE..._ stem from the
fact that the discussed theorists USE Cretan paradoxes as PARADOXES in
your sense of the term, and, as you say, it's USE that matters...

> 
> > As i argue in "BAKHTIN'S WORDS
> > 'THERE IS NO ALIBI FOR BEING': WHY FREUD WAS NOT A CREATIVE WRITER?" (a
> > chapter of my BARED BAKHTIN) this strategy answers the most strict
> > requirements of scientificity which logocentric science was never able
> > to attain. On the other hand - Liano! Liano! -
> 
>         Gee, am I supposed to guess how this relates to any of my posts?<

if you'd bother to skim through the mentioned piece of mine you'll see
that the only way to maintain the scientific aims of logocentrism
without CONTRADICTION (in your sense) is to adopt the kind of reading
you advocate, and this kind of reading  has the structure of PARADOX (in
you sense) shown to = transference.

That's all for the moment.
thank you for your patience.
vadim, your faithful friend