Date: 	Sat, 19 Apr 1997 19:22:20 -0400
From: "kenneth.mackendrick" <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: HAB: The Goodship Enlightenment


The Goodship Enlightenment

The alarm sounds... a sharp voice  rings out - "We're sinking! We're 
sinking!  The Goodship Enlightenment is going down.  All hands on 
deck, ALL HANDS ON DECK!! Prepare for immediate evacuation to the 
U-Boat Frankfurt - the crew of the Enlightenment is going down to the 
bottom - origin is the goal."

A desperate sailer, Ensign Walter Benjamin, cries out "What about 
the dead?!?"

"Forget the bodies - they are slain - bring only their memories, their 
hopes, dreams, and accusations" calls back a disonant Horkheimer.

Captain Adorno bellows out once again "Prepare to dive.  Leave the 
map, grab Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud - don't forget Goethe 
and Beckett - we can't wait for Godot, where is Kant?!?.  We may 
have lost the battle but barbarism shall not receive the final word!"

The crew, a motley bunch, climbs a board the tattered submarine, 
salvaging what they can from the wreckage of the Enlightenment....

"Helm, steer a course - full speed toward metaphysics.  We can only 
sink the whole if we go after the whole" shouts an undaunted Adorno. 
 "Engage the historical materialist engines - load negative dialectics 
in the tubes - prepare for immediate ideology critique."

The engines roar, the pressure of the ocean thunders again the hull.  
The U-Boat Frankfurt pushes fruther into the depths.  Marcuse plots 
the coarse, Horkheimer, at the helm, steers a straight and narrow 
path through the murky depths.  The journey is long and Adorno, 
relentlessly refusing to leave his post, soon collapses of exhaustion. 
 Shortly afterward darkness takes hold of the ship as the 
labour burning engines of materialism grind to a hault.

A young voice then pierces the darkness - Lieutenant Habermas 
springs into action - taking over the communicator - "Helm, steer to 
port bow - we're going the wrong way - make the linguistic turn!"  The 
crew is thrown into turmoil as a tremour sweeps through the craft.  
Horkheimer and Marcuse are tossed aside.

"Navigator..." No reponse.  " John Searle - grab the wheel - you, 
Wellmer, and Kohlberg set in the coordinates.  Engage formal 
pragmatics, load counterfactual assumptions, idealize speech, and 
reconstruct the sciences."

Habermas continues to bark commands,
"Gadadmer - Hermeneutics"
     Gadamer yells back, "Check"
"Apel - Unavoidable presuppositions of speech"
     "Check"
"Hannah Arendt - Public Sphere"
     "Check"

"Head to the surface!  We're going after an authentic validity claim - 
the target is Legitimation"

As the submarine heads to the surface the communicative engines 
crunch into a grinding halt.  "Searle - what's going on!!!"

"Sorry sir, Richard Rorty's in the engine room again.  He argues that 
he can speed up the engines with a batch of Dewey..."

"Get Rorty out of the engine room!!  If he wants to tinker put him in the 
mess hall - maybe he can make us some American pie or a nicely 
basted turkey."

The engines discusively flare again and The U-Boot Frankfurt 
prepares to surface...

Tap tap tap.... silence.  Tap tap tap.

"Gadamer - what's that noise? - check the starboard portal."

"Its Derrida sir - he's in SCUBA gear - and he's holding a signifier."

"What does it say?"

"Derrida says we don't need the U-Boat...something about 
destruction... or deconstruction..."

"What?"

"He saids the U-Boat is being traced - by an interable presence...  He 
says we won't make it to the surface...."

"You tell Derrida to get back in here.  I've had enough of this 
nonsense - put him in the brig if you have to, chain him to a text  - 
we're going to the top!"

"Engines... recalibrate for fallibility - discharge any metaphysics on 
board - engage the normative foundation of language - enhance the 
turbines. Watch for conservative ice - and avoid the postmodern 
blindspots.  Gunner - prepare for discursive engagement - load good 
reasons' - prepare for procedural argumentation."

The U-Boot, after a lenghty dive, finally surfaces....

"Up hypothetical periscope.  Let's see what's out there...

Eek!  Its worse than I thought - look at that historically effected 
horizon... and the plurality of perspectives - its staggering!  Those 
poor souls - their worldviews have all disintegrated.  Helm, take us 
directly into the turbulence.  We'll engage them directly!"

And so the U-Boat Frankfurt stormed into the fray, criticizing 
everything in its path.  Unfortunately it wasn't long before the 
navigator strayed from discourse, the engines got tangled in 
tradition,  Rorty poisoned the food, Derrida escaped from the brig, 
Adorno woke up and started a mutiny, and Habermas fell in love with 
aesthetics - painting the hull pink with yellow and blue flowers.  
Calamity didn't stop them though.  You can still hear the crew 
members screaming at one another - and the engines still stop every 
once in a while.  But its out there....  Slowly drifting just off the port 
bow.  Wave if you see them.

Das End.

peace and anarchy,
ken




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