Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 10:58:10 -0700
From: alan.smith-AT-m.cc.utah.edu (Alan K. Smith)
Subject: Re: paralogy


If I may respond briefly to the interesting posts on paralogy by Lois,
Wayne, et al., it seems tom e that if one wants to locate paralogy in an
example (an author, a work, and a genre) then we could perhaps consider
Montaigne's Essais. Their heteroclite and rather contingent texture
reflects Montaigne's stated purpose of creating a virtual conversation out
of the artefact of writing. Indeed, their manifest contradictions and
paradoxes convey something like a local and provisional re-invention of the
rules/regimes that govern his discourse/differends. However - and I have
many reservations about the wooly nature of paralogy  - this raises two
difficult questions. On the one hand, the Essais are a testament of
Montaigne's habits of reading. Despite their putatively oral style, they
engage the problems of other texts and of re-writing on a number of levels.
So, while they might appear to be paralogical, they would seem to nudge
paralogy towards other issues and contexts not covered by a dialogic
scenario. Secondly, the very strategies that make the Essais multifarious
and paralogical can be assimilated into a particular socio-cultural agenda,
namely, the rhetorical-aesthetic program of Counter-Reformation baroque.
This may, in a baroque and even perverse way, come back to reinforce their
post-modern affinities (cf Benjamin, Buci-Glucksmann, etc).
Let me apologize for the hasty and quite provisional nature of these comments
- Alan K. Smith