[extropy-chat] Fw: Deconstruction deconstructed....

[David Lubkin]

At 09:19 PM 1/10/2004 -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote:

>I would question the authors racist motives for saying things like "you 
>get points for being French", and his homophobia of selecting homophobia 
>as a topic to make fun of

I don't see either of these. But I confess to blind spots in my competency 
at discerning subtext; you may well have spotted motives or attitudes I missed.

How would any possible slur of the French qualify as racist? Would it not 
be ethnocentric or misoxenic?

The only explicit slur is of saying that native French literary critics 
have a Zen obliqueness. He does say "you get points for being French." If a 
slur at all, it is a slur against the MLA academics, not the French.

After reading your assertion of his homophobia, I reread the relevant 
portions of his essay, substituting "Jewish" for "homosexual." I would not 
have taken offense at the so-altered text or considered it an example of 
anti-Semitism.

Of course, he could have avoided any question of motive with a blander 
alternative, such as "JFK was an alien" or "JFK was purple," but I think it 
was appropriate to use an topic that actually is contentious in current 
America.


-- David Lubkin.