Wednesday, May 12, 2004
(12:10 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Possible Thesis Topic
I emphasize the word "possible," in all senses. I have toyed with the idea of expanding on my paper Slavoj Zizek's Materialist Trinitarianism, but to do justice to the topic of Trinity-and-Subject, I feel like I'd have to do a dissertation. Maybe I'm wrong about that. In any case, here is the topic that seems "doable" within the next year: proving that Milbank gets it wrong about Derrida. I might expand it to include Zizek -- I haven't yet read his critique of Zizek, but since it's Milbank we're dealing with, I assume he's wrong. I've read a ton of Derrida, and I will soon expand my intellectual "toolbox" to include the French tongue, so I'd be in a position to gain considerable intimacy with the texts (Milbank never cites "postmodern" texts in their original language, though he does cite many other French texts in French). The only problem is that I'd have to read a lot of Milbank, but thankfully, there's not too much Milbank to read.
I've also thought of a opening sentences for possible dissertations:
- What follows is nothing short of a Copernican revolution in Spenser studies.
- Many find the writings of Jacques Lacan to be so baroque in style as to be utterly unreadable. In what follows, I will attempt to gain some degree of clarity by adapting the methodology of the authors of The Bible Code to the exigencies of reading Lacan.
- The search for a definitive proof of the existence of God is finally over.
- No doubt I'm not the only one who has wondered what differential equations might contribute to our understanding of the Trinity.
- Few bloggers have been as influential, or as elusive, as the anonymous Atrios. This dissertation represents an attempt to discern the method to his madness.
