File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postco_1995/postco_Dec8.95, message 12


Date: Fri, 08 Dec 1995 19:26:11 -0600 (CST)
From: Quetzil-AT-UH.EDU (Quetzil Castaneda)
Subject: Re: non-discursive as outside-the-sentence - ness? re. Debbie


Radhika, 

not sure I follow your question, maybe wrong in thinking its directed to me. 
But, I am suggesting that i dont buy that there is this "prediscursive" or 
"outside-of-the-discursive" quality, experience, nature.  I know its an 
extreme position that many shoo shoo as ridiculous, but every time i try to 
find the outside, prior, or beyond of discursive meaning I always get caught 
into some insideous thread of an embedded discursiveness.  for me its not 
that tjhere are things that are untranslatable.  any entity that falls 
within that category, well, falls within that CATEGORY and is thus always 
already translated into discursive meaning by cultural-historical practices. 
  Sorry to be so old hat, but to reverse derrida, its not just that there is 
nothing outside the text for me, but that everything already is always 
within textual systems.  to posit an outside, a pre-, a beyond is a textual, 
discursive, rhetoric act.  One cannot just FEEL, but knows how to feel 
within a sociohistorical cultural, class, ethnic, gendered modality that one 
learns and learns how to experience the "corporeal" as if there were no 
quotes around the sensation.  everything is translatable ("good" "bad" are 
secondary issues of one's political location); nothing but translations. eh.

quetzil.

>ok ay so your talking about something at the level of affect 
>which is untranslatable into the discursive - pre discursive, 
>outside-discursive perhaps?
>
>Radhika
>
>
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