Post-struc
I very much enjoyed the combined celebration/lament put forth by the authors concerning the proliferation of Bakhtin's and Derrida's ideas. Pearce is ultimately "optimistic" (232) to the possibility of continued fascination with Bakhtin, despite those scholars who strongly feel modern interpretation detracts from his necessary historicism; and Thomson, while seeming to deride the alleged misuse of the core idea/s of deconstruction ("a byword for fashionable obscurity", "a pretentious alternative to 'analysis'", 298) is quick to confirm that Derrida is, well - difficult. I have some personal experience with the difficulty, or perhaps overreaching eagerness, of the act of attempting to translate Derrida into English: the amount of times I have had to argue that "Il n'y a pas d'hors-texte" does *not* translate into "There is nothing outside the text" (well, not without a lot of necessary context) boggles the mind. Derrida is a terrific writer and I firmly believe it is impossible to do him justice.
I find the authors' joint discussion on the appropriation of ideas interesting, where "appropriation" is almost an endictment or at least a word of caution against applying certain theories to certain texts; and I wonder if Bakhtinian dialogicity doesn't operate in the same way as does Derridian deconstruction, that is, 'always already' in each and every utterance. Having done quite a lot of work involving both Bakhtin and Derrida in the past, it's great to see some secondary sources offer criticism of both their respective critics AND followers! I am fully in accord with those English-speaking scholars who deem Derrida pretentious; however, this is mostly a translation problem (same goes for Barthes, Baudrillard and - my favourite - Batailles) and I strongly urge those who can to approach them in the original French. Especially with Derrida, where the mere fascination for what he is exploring that shines through in every text is invigorating.
But enough about the French already :D I suppose I'd like to discuss Thomson's argument (I take it that it is his own?) that deconstruction "cannot be a method", as being a method would necessarily (?) entail "subordinating its objects, regardless of their variety and singularity, to some kind of mechanical operation" (299). Is that what "method" - and specifically literary theory and methodology - does, I wonder? I am probably biased in being "raised" in a highly deconstructionist (and intertextualist) academic environment where theory was seen as a way of celebrating differences and pointing out that in texts which might be unique to those texts, while still being linguistically and ideologically connected to other texts, or to textuality at large - so I guess I would tend to disagree on this point, or at least be curious about the expression of the idea that theory is necessarily limiting and delimiting, or that this should be thought of as a negative. What do you guys think?
I find the authors' joint discussion on the appropriation of ideas interesting, where "appropriation" is almost an endictment or at least a word of caution against applying certain theories to certain texts; and I wonder if Bakhtinian dialogicity doesn't operate in the same way as does Derridian deconstruction, that is, 'always already' in each and every utterance. Having done quite a lot of work involving both Bakhtin and Derrida in the past, it's great to see some secondary sources offer criticism of both their respective critics AND followers! I am fully in accord with those English-speaking scholars who deem Derrida pretentious; however, this is mostly a translation problem (same goes for Barthes, Baudrillard and - my favourite - Batailles) and I strongly urge those who can to approach them in the original French. Especially with Derrida, where the mere fascination for what he is exploring that shines through in every text is invigorating.
But enough about the French already :D I suppose I'd like to discuss Thomson's argument (I take it that it is his own?) that deconstruction "cannot be a method", as being a method would necessarily (?) entail "subordinating its objects, regardless of their variety and singularity, to some kind of mechanical operation" (299). Is that what "method" - and specifically literary theory and methodology - does, I wonder? I am probably biased in being "raised" in a highly deconstructionist (and intertextualist) academic environment where theory was seen as a way of celebrating differences and pointing out that in texts which might be unique to those texts, while still being linguistically and ideologically connected to other texts, or to textuality at large - so I guess I would tend to disagree on this point, or at least be curious about the expression of the idea that theory is necessarily limiting and delimiting, or that this should be thought of as a negative. What do you guys think?