From: piers-AT-kuc01.kuniv.edu.kw Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 22:41:52 -0300 Subject: re: "reactionary French dandy" Somewhere someone said that to let a violence pass without comment is only to affirm it, on the principle that silence can be taken as consent. Derrida may have written some crap, lots of crap may be Derridean in inspiration--but that's no reason not to be grateful for the good bits. Way back in 1967, Julian's "dandy" wrote a snappy critique of Levi-Strauss which included a bit on "anthropological war" or the discipline of anthropology's habit of effacing a culture's self-inscriptions through its practices of classification, difference and the system of naming. He coined the phrase "violence of the letter"--an eye-pleasing, figure- hugging rhetoric perhaps, but one that that discipline and others are still trying to think their ways through. If you've half a mind, Julian, and possibly you have, you might check the work of Fabian, Thomas, and Gupta on this. (No lit-critters, there.) I'm also quite grateful for D's work on "the woman as veil" in Nietzsche and western metaphysics (Spurs, 1978). Not quite to every one's taste, I fancy. Very distracting, showily drawing the eye away from more muscular preoccupations. Still, don't be fooled. Remember what Wilde said about appearances. Moues, while looking for my beauty spot, Piersm / --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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