From: Samuel Lawrence Binkley <sbinkley-AT-pipeline.com> Date: Thu, 18 Jan 1996 13:21:40 -0500 Subject: ETHICS AND POST STRUCT. I'm dropping into this discussion without having followed its (long?) development, so forgive me if I make redundant points etc. But I would like to respond to the last post: On Thu, Jan 18, 1996 9:05:37 AM at Erik D Lindberg wrote: >I think that poststructuralism may go down in the annals of the history >of philosophy NOT as a break with humanism, but as the somewhat pessimistic, >certainly ironic, very cautious and in some ways conservative (not in the >Republican/Democrat sort of way) period in which the lustre of idealism >was removed from certain enlightenment or Romantic claims about the >rights or dignity of "man." Erik: This sounds very much like those readings of post-structuralism which permit poststructualists only enough anti-foundationalism for them to fall flat on their faces. That is to say: if post structuralists are to be considered for how they will ulitimately be written in the History of Philosophy (I add the caps which I think belong in your post), then certainly they will appear as only a marginal disruptive moment in an otherwise linear development. If post structuralists are forced to choose between "pessimism" vs "optimism", where their real focus is on closure vs uncertainty, (or what ever you like), then, yes, pessimism more accurately describes the post strucuralist. But if post structuralism teaches us anything, it is both the inevitability of being forced into the kind of periodization you attempt here, and the inevitability of such attempts meeting with inadequacy. There is no such thing as a post structuralist paradigm/rupture etc. These are the terms of the History of Philosophy: once one adopts this terminology one is already in the game of this narrative: once post structuralism has been reduced to paradigmatic signifigance, it's character is dissipated. To ask the question: how will post structuraism be written in the History of Philosophy is to give post structuralists just enough rope to hang themselves. which inevitably they will do. The point is to disrupt the reductionist monopoly the History of Philosophy exerts over the production of texts, discourses and ideas. sam ------------------
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