Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 16:24:49 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Rooney <rooney-AT-tiger.cc.oxy.edu>
Subject: RE: dialectic (can non-philosophers read?)




On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, michelle phil lewis king wrote:

> >> Rather than a poly-centred substance, writing simply becomes
> >> fetishized as the expression of a single authentic voice (letting
> >> Deleuze, Nietszche speak for themselves, listening to Hegel as the 
> >> only authority on Hegel.)
> >
> >Reading Hegel seems to me the best route to
> >understanding Hegel.  This does not amount to
> >"fetishizing" the Voice of the Author.  Let 
> >me put it this way: would you rather someone
> >read your posts to understand (or appreciate)
> >you, or read my posts about you? 
> >
> You are not getting my point. Reading a writer specifically as one voice 
> is to fixate and priviledge that voice above what they have written. 

I'm not getting your point because you're
repeatedly erecting straw men.  I have never
suggested "reading a writer specifically
[as opposed to what? generally?] as one
voice".  Moreover, since it's *reading* that
we're discussing, whatever I could supposedly
"fixate" on would have to be "what they have
written".  As you are so fond of pointing out,
all these authors are dead -- so I can't
use their voice in any way.

Nothing I have said in here endorses or implies
that Hegel, Deleuze, Bataille, or Derrida, etc.
speak in "one voice".  I am of course aware
that an author's works do not necessarily form
a cohesive unity and can be marked with many
diverse patterns and lines of thought.  I
have pointed out that what little Deleuze has
written about Bataille is fairly unfriendly.
This does not mean that they have nothing in
common, as I have agreed that they share a
general interest in the "extra-textual".  But
since there are no other sorts of remarks, and
as an interest in the "extra-textual" is quite
general (including decidedly non-Bataillean
figures like Searle and Grice), it seems rather
dubious to say that Deleuze's approach to writing
is like that Bataille's.  None of this reasoning
requires or implies reading Deleuze as "one
voice".  Please stop chasing shadows of your
own casting.
  

> Hegel subordinates his writing to his voice. So we don't have a lot of 
> choice in his regard. To read him is to hear him. Writing has to submit 
> to his voice. He evidently would not accept a writing which was not 
> directly phonetic. I gather (good word) that much of his thought comes 
> to us through his students slavishly copying down his words at his 
> lectures. (Contrast this with Deleuze who welcomed his 'students' 
> inattention.) Much of Saussure's thought evidently comes down to us 
> though the notes made by his students. It is utterly necessary to get as 
> close to 'His Master's Voice' as we possibly can in order to understand 
> what he actually said. But whether this understanding can help us think, 
> write, speak and act creatively is another question. Is understanding 
> or creation better?

I see you've added false dilemma to your 
schtick.  At this rate, I could teach a
whole logic class around just your posts.

 
> >> The writer Nietzsche's 'ignorance' of Hegel is vital because it
> >> places his scratchings beyond,below,ect the State signifier 
> >> 'Philosophy'.
> It is vital in the same way as a glitch or mistake in Francis Bacon's 
> painting practice enabled him to take unknown figural turnings that 
> indicate a beyond to painting without leaving its experience.

That's wonderful for Nietzsche (if it's the
case).  But it doesn't license us to pronounce
judgment on Hegel's thought without having
read his work fairly.  That's like saying that 
Bacon's serendipitous mistake allows us to 
ignore the fundamentals of painting.


> >> Writing, thinking becomes another kind of operation. Sovereign 
> because it is
> >> not subjected to spoken discourse, to reciprocity. To stupid q+a 
> sessions.
> >
> >It doesn't seem very sovereign -- it's following
> >Derrida's heavy philosophical machinery.
> >
> I don't think Nietzsche followed Derrida's machinery as you choose to 
> call it. I simply can't imagine him submitting to a q+a session. (Though 
> there is a nice photo of him being whipped by Lou Salome.)

I don't think Nietzsche thematizes writing
vis-a-vis speech in anything approaching the
way Derrida does.  He certainly had no great
love for Socrates, but he didn't have any
great esteem for "writing" as a "sovereign"
process.  That's all Bataille/Derrida.


> >I agree with your general point of comparison
> >(as I said before): both Derrida and d+g point
> >to an extra-textual field working through 
> >language.  But I disagree about your specific
> >renderings of this (very general) similarity:
> >that d+g's notion of writing owes much to Derrida's
> >archi-ecriture; or that either notion enables
> >us to ignore Hegel in writing about him, much less
> >to go "beyond philosophy".
> >
> I haven't done that much rendering beyond quoting you passages from a.o 
> where D+g clearly work with Derrida's notion of a general writing (not 
> at that point even formalised as an arche-ecriture). Of course it is 
> general.. 

But what about your specific claims that "blimey,
that's what Deleuze is doing but without the
guilt [re: Bataille]" or that Deleuze's reading
of Hegel is "beyond" philosophy, a "scandal" as
Bataille's works are?


> There is an abscence of solid ground in this script, just shifting 
> movement. This structureless operation (not a notion as such) is a 
> production/product which would be foreclosed by Absolute Knowledge. Its 
> animation Sentenced.

Sigh.  You need to move "beyond" second-hand,
biased, sloppy readings of Hegel.  Then you
might become aware of the emphasis Hegel places
on the free, ungrounded, anti-structural nature
of the Begriff. 


> >> I'd say the danger of your line of crude pragmatism is that
> >> it has a 'Passion for abolition." and a fixation on Clarity 
> >> and Power. [...] You've become a 'new knight' with a mission 
> >> terrorising with one line 'mots d'ordre' and too hastily drawn
> >> conclusions. You think you have understood everything. Micheal 
> >> the self appointed judge, dispenser of justice. Your fixation 
> >> on power is manifest in your love of the closed
> >> system of the 'q+a' session and your futile desire to 'dismiss' 
> >> others from what you'd implicitly like to be a closed list, 
> >> an artificial debating chamber. [...] The only power you have is 
> >> the force of your words and this is no power at all. 
> >
> >Like, duh.  If I were your power-drunk bogeyman, 
> >I wouldn't waste my time replying to your clumsy
> >assumption of the psychiatrist's chair.  I leave 
> >the completion of this example of modus tollens
> >as an exercise for the reader.
> >
> I was not attempting a psychology of a Micheal simply reading your 
> actions as manifested in this exchange through d+g's description of a 
> 'dangerous character'.From what I 'know' of you the mask seems to fit.
> Like. If you act like a bogeyman you'll be perceived as one.

And if I had unlimited patience, I would
point out that your "reading" is atrocious
and false.  Let it suffice to say, again,
that imaginative assertions do not a just
reading make.


Cordially,

M.