Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[Ken Armstrong <armstron AT ohiou.edu>]

At 11:24 PM 10/9/2003 -0400, James Piat wrote:

> That Bloom  imagines he can is part of the case the deonstructionist are
> making.  Who's to say he can't?

  Can you fill this out just a bit? And since Bloom is serving too many 
purposes here, maybe in terms of Blake?


> Though God only knows for sure what either
> he or Blake is talking about.  Well maybe Bill Bennet knows  -- I forgot
> about him. He seems to be able to clarify every meaning and judge every
> disagreement with a swift and simple application of school boy logic.

  I couldn't say word one about Bennet, but what Blake says seems to me 
essential.
I can't agree with your judgement of it (which I realize may be something 
of a throwaway line?)


> Here's a Derrida quote I dug up from one of the interviews in the book
> POINTS...
>
> "Deconstruction as such is reducible to neither a method nor an analysis
> (the reduction to simple elements); it goes beyond critical decision itself.
> That is why it is not negative, even though it has often been interpreted as
> such despite all sorts of warnings.

Declarations and warnings or no, it seems to have been judged by its 
effects. It is one thing for JD to say it is not negative; it is another 
for it to turn out that way.


>  For me, it always accompanies an
> affirmative exigency, I would even say that it never proceeds without
> love..."

   I get nervous around people who proclaim that their actions are 
animated by love, and, the tacit implication is, therefore they are 
positive. This may not be what JD is doing; or it may be a case of "with 
affirmative exigencies like these, who needs oppositional strategies?"

Ken A.