[ExI] [Soc]Complex Adaptive Systems - Tending Always to 50/50 split

Damien Broderick thespike at satx.rr.com
Sat Oct 11 23:52:11 UTC 2008


At 02:14 PM 10/11/2008 -0700, Jef wrote:

>Attempting to restrain my distaste for the "literary paradigm"

None of the people I cited are literary critics or theorists. Anthony 
Wilden was a professor in communication studies at Simon Fraser, and 
a polymath, an early applier of systems to social theory. Elizabeth 
A. Grosz started as a philosopher and is now a Rutgers professor of 
women's and gender studies. Julia Kristeva, mentioned in passing, is 
a philosopher, psychoanalyst and raving lunatic of gibberish.

> >            Difference is, of course, the hallmark of contemporary
> > applications of deconstruction to such fields of contest as 
> feminist and gay
> > sexual politics:
>
>How typically characteristic of most everything coming out of Literary
>Criticism!  Seems one must proudly present "the feminist" or "the
>queer" in order to establish one's bona fides.

Literary theory of the sort you're disgusted by came out of 
philosophy, not the other way around. It's not the philosophy you're 
looking for, it's true. Much of it is not the philosophy I'm looking 
for, either--but after half a century or more of philosophy burying 
its head in abstractions it was rather refreshing to find thinkers 
actually paying attention to human concerns, including the 
contestations of sexual and more classic power politics.

Damien Broderick








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