(10:36 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

I think I'm paranoid

I have free time right now, genuine free time when reading is not immediately hanging over my head. I don't want to exaggerate the seriousness of my situation, since my classload and workload are likely smaller than that of at least two contributors to this board, but just let me say that not having to read Derrida up to the very second class starts is a welcome change of pace, something I'd like to continue if possible.

This semester has not allowed me as much time to sleep as I'd like. In fact, this is the first time in my life when I've been consistently hovering around six hours of sleep, as opposed to eight or nine. I believe that this relative lack of sleep, combined with my tendency not to eat as much as I should on class days, is making me paranoid. I can't stand it if someone is walking close behind me on the street. I worry that no one in my classes likes me, although their standoffishness is probably related to their sleep and food deprivation. Above all, I live in constant fear of being pulled over, even though my paranoia has caused me to hover around 4.5 miles over the limit. I literally hear sirens, and my heart sinks every time, and it's not actually happening in the real world. I'm also not sure what to make of my Kafkaesque ordeal of getting tickets for violating tolls on a road I've never travelled (I just transfered my plates to Illinois from Michigan; they apparently don't "retire" plate numbers for a certain period, so there's someone else driving around with my same number, blowing tolls left and right). I call the place, and they say the case has been dismissed, but today I got a notice that they've scheduled a hearing for me. I'm thinking of asking Dr. Grumish's lawyer to help me out on this. Before long, I'll be another Joseph K. -- my punishment for reading The Trial too young.

A note on Derrida's style:

Derrida constantly inverts the normal order of listing the text, then giving commentary. For three paragraphs, he'll be quoting every couple sentences, leaving you wondering what exactly is going on, and then the motherlode: a lengthy block quote, "emphasis added" where appropriate. This confuses many readers who don't bother to read the text being cited, but I've found that when I have read the text in question within the last couple days, a normally very frustrating stylistic tic becomes a highly effective technique. He picks out certain points to emphasize from the text, usually not necessarily the parts that "the average reader" would pick, and by the time he drops in the block quote, the reader is actually actively re-reading the text along the lines Derrida suggests. "Easy," familiar texts like Fear and Trembling or even the Gospel of Matthew become something new and strange. Would this effect be possible if he announced, "Alright, I'm going to indicate ways we might reread text x," rather than just diving into quotes, seemingly out of nowhere? If he dropped in the block quote before indicating what he wanted to emphasize? I know that we're supposed to have read the stuff beforehand, but what is the significance of (on the page, at least) putting the commentary before the text itself?

Stylistic questions are obviously tied up with what a philosopher is actually doing, in addition to certain propositions advanced in the text (to be postmodern about it: "just advancing propositions" is itself a style! Am I not clever?). Potential paper topic that no one had better steal from me: the role of rhetorical questions in the work of Slavoj Zizek.

Another stylistic note:

On the dialog listserv, which is not shut down (and which I have singlehandedly revived), a prominent conservative said that those who seek to prevent future violence against homosexuals had better watch closely to make sure that they don't use violent rhetoric, because I guess violent rhetoric is somehow analogous to, you know, actually perpetrating physical violence on someone. Someone needs to write a book of rhetorical analysis of the contemporary conservative movement, because these people just never cease to amaze me.

I constantly hear arguments that can be summarized as "it's all the same." A classmate of mine once said that basically every society has "capitalism," if by capitalism we mean "an economy," and therefore that a critique of "capitalism" is misguided because every future order will have "capitalism" (i.e., an economy). It's all the same. Also, some people are unsure about critiquing ideology, out of the fear that they will simply create another ideology. Well, no, that's not quite it. I am confident that all my readers who are in an academic setting, no matter whether it's at Olivet or at Berkeley, hear at least one "it's all the same"-style argument every day. Is this what we've come to? Is there some sickness in the American mind that shies away from serious analysis?

"But by critiquing people who don't want to analyze stuff, aren't you... um... doing the same thing?"

Okay, but here's an example: for class this week, we read God of the Oppressed by James Cone, in which he claims that the black experience is the only proper locus for theology and that whites are necessarily blind to the liberatory core of the gospel, due to their privileged position. And of course someone pointed out how it's "just as bad" for him to say it that way as it was for whites to implicitly claim that only their experience was a proper locus for theology -- but it's not the same. Yes, race and power differentiation are both involved, but it's not the same. You don't have to agree with his argument, and you might even be able to argue that it's "just as bad" -- but it's not "just as bad" because it's "the same."

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