File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1997/lyotard.9706, message 138


Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 00:04:42 -0700
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re-reading and re-deconstructing


Almost two decades after Lyotard was formulating some of his
ideas on Le Differend in an atmosphere redolent of 
postmodernism and contempo-deconstructionism, we find 
ourselves participating in contempo-robotocism.

Petit narrative:  A telephonic robot was both addressee and 
transmitter of this addressors message to stop delivery of
his daily newspaper and to resume delivery on certain dates.

Similarly, we subscribers to Lyotard List are both addressees and 
addressors of messages.  

We embody the spirit of previous posts about deconstruction,
part of which is duplicated in paragraphs below.

We are "wet" or "tissue" nodules, functioning along with network
servers and  other network parapharnalia to send and resend coded
language (words) over the Internet.  

Although output of this process comes from our deconstructed
"selves" and deconstructed "others", we try make "sense" of
what we are saying.

And that's probably a difference, differance? from the above-mentioned 
telephonic robot.

That telephonic creature, creation? successfully
communicated to a probably un-deconstructed human 
who stopped and later resumed tossing my paper.

In another couple of decades, subscribers to lists
will routinely send animated pictures and audio-messages.  

Just like politicians mouthing sound-bites on TV.

Sincerely,    (whatever that means in deconstructed robotese)

Hugh


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> Still, it  seems that nothing is more central to many postmodern and
> poststructuralist authors than the deconstruction of the author (which
> includes not only the author of books and articles, but the author of
> spoken words and phrases).  Remember, to deconstruct something is not to
> destroy it.  It simply means (to offer my interpretation of Derrida), to
> shatter the poetic imagery that captures us in its frame, often by
> presenting contrasting poetic imagery.
>
> When the self is deconstructed, we give imagery that shows the self less
> as a container of subjective thoughts that are expressed and carried
> through the atmosphere where they are decoded by the listener.  May I
> illustrate?
>
> The self is deconstructed in at least two ways:  First, deconstructing the
> self as author we note that the self is not a completely alienated
> identity.  It does not create its own thoughts and words out of nothing.
> It echos the words of others.  (Ever heard yourself sounding like your
> mother, for example?)  If my mind is an echo of what I have heard
> (perhaps sorted in the context in which I find myself in the moment, more
> than by my personal agency), then so is your mind.  Your mind will echo
> with my words.  It may be that you do not identify with them, but you
> will recall them.  You will carry them with you, and they may engage you.
>
> Which brings us to the second way that the self is typically
> deconstructed.  We notice that each minds not only echos with the words
> of others, but that we organize these words as belonging to ourselves or
> others.  To see this, notice how you sometimes leave an argument with a
> friend debating the issues still in your mind.  You argue with your
> friend even when your friend isn't there, creating the friend's words,
> and not "confusing" them with your own.  But you are, of course, creating
> these words, assigning them to either you are your friend, in ways that
> might be inaccurate.  You may make your friend's argument weaker than it
> really was.  You might even adopt his best point and forget that it was
> his.  The distinction of who said what will blur, too, over the years.
> You may echo with his ideas, claiming them as your own, and forget who
> your friend is.
>
> Reminders such as this serve to deconstruct the self as author for many
> postmoderns.


   

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