From: "Stuart Elden" <stuart.elden-AT-clara.co.uk>
Subject: RE: Genealogies of Difference
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 23:08:08 -0000


Nathan and Yves

I don't really have time to engage with your discussion, but I just wanted
to say I thought it was extremely interesting, and that I look forward to
reading the book.

The relationship between genealogy and ontology is one that interests me a
lot, and I like the suggestion that

>But the way my interests in this
project developed it took me into reading the likes of Aristotle and Duns
Scotus and I didn't want for that reason for it to be thought of as a
historical project.  But I also think that in the context of a fairly
standard
(but I think often completely fallacious) complaint that "postmodernists"
rejects modernism and its past without having adequate knowledge or
appreciation of it (note, this complaint issues from the same mouths that
also
complain that these damned postmodernists historicize everything), there is
a
need to show that an ontology of difference implies a reapproach and
reengagement with philosophies of the past, and that there is a way of
reading
them rigorously that is not for that reason "historical".  Even Derrida, in
Positions, explains his deconstruction of philosophy in terms of a
"structured
genealogy of philosophy's concepts" that has been dismissed by the history
of
philosophy.(p. 6 of the English translation).

Lots of good ideas in there!

Best wishes

Stuart