Date: Sun, 16 Nov 1997 19:40:13 -0500
From: Gregory {Greg} Downing <downingg-AT-is2.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Mot du Jour


At 12:50 AM 11/17/97 +0100, you (Jeorg Gruel) wrote:
>Where has that pleasant habit of the "Mot du Jour" gone recently? Is it
already deprecated by those tiresome "Mod/Pod du Jour" turlupinades octroyed
on us by that sinister trinity of boy scout derision sycophants?
>

Thank you, O Illiterate Westphalian Forestdweller (or whatever your
everchanging sigfile used to be back youknowwhere, last summer): I'm always
happy to see a word on the net that I've never seem there before. It somehow
holds out hope that there may someday be genuine intellectual discussion
occurring on the net on a regular basis rather than, ahem, intermittently --
present company excepted of course. Anyone care to define this word
turlupinade? It has two (partly confused) senses, one from a late-medieval
heresy, and one from Rabelais -- kind of like "pregnant", which also has two
separate meanings and histories that eventually became confused in people's
usage.

Only those still on PL and MPL saw Metin's inimitable unsubbing messages
this afternoon, or his note earlier in the week where he channeled the
spirit of Torquemada (or some such conceit) passing orders to John
Whalen-Bridge, who was offered a cardinalship and genuine ruby ring if only
he would take care of putting the proper suspect to the rack in order to
deteremine whether or not "he was likely to cause problems" (JW-B's words,
in an MPL discussion about a certain perhaps somewhat callow PL posters --
if people who post on PL are subscribed to MPL, then how can they be
discussed frankly when they can listen in? -- very odd...). Maybe we'll hear
something over here from Metin in the not too distant future.


>the  word "cant", which looks well suited for a November monday's mot. My 
>utterly insufficient Langenscheidt has:
>
>  1. Insincere talk implying piety; hypocrisy.
>  2. Special talk, words, used by a particular class of people: thieves' ~.
>

I'd like to comment, but can't. (add emoticon)

I'm trying to keep everyone happy and also be honest too. (I'm so selfish I
have to have it all.) I perversely enjoy impossible tasks. They stretch me
even when as always I fail at them. Anyone can do the possible. It's when
you try to do the impossible that you learn something about yourself and the
rest of the world too.

>Then what is the difference to "jargon", or "Gerede"?  could any group avoid
>falling into that trap? or is it a trap at all, and for whom? What would
>comrade Stalin think of it? Does it give us a clue to bad writing?
>

There seems to be a very specific agenda here, but presented in a general
and oblique way so that only the "initiate" discern it -- kind of the
language that straussians think a lot of political theorists write. Sorry to
mention (Leo) Strauss -- I know he's a big red flag to many on the left, but
I don't have a really unambiguous political program to offer so I'm pretty
eclectic, and I find Strauss's idea of covert political diuscussion in
philosophical genres to be not ungermane to the present state of affairs.
I'm being somewhat less covert than you here, Joerg, but not exactly blatant
myself about the details. Anyone like to push further toward explcitude?
Maybe not....

>Nietzsche, whose  jokes had often something of the embarrassing , wouldn't
spare us the very silly remark: "Kant: cant".
>

Maybe at this late date we're talk neocantian diction here.

>It's late on the old continent, I've thrown the ball, and go to sleep.
>

Hasta lumbago. I have *real* work to do for manana.

Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing-AT-nyu.edu or downingg-AT-is2.nyu.edu



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