Re: SHOULD WE & I GIVE UP?

--- andre gunder frank writes ...
>The question here is not  whether the text or AGF was right, wrong or
>indifferent. The question is:
>
>- can't anybody READ
>and if not
>- what's the point of WRITING
>
>does anybody have any answers?

I won't pretend to have answers, any more than your would-be interlocutor
pretends to have questions, but your desperation (with which I wholly
empathise) reminded me of the opening thoughts of an equally frustrated
response written by Michel Foucault to one of his misreaders: it makes an
interesting point, which, were the current issue at hand not so urgent
(i.e., if real people's lives didn't hang in the balance), we might do well
to think on a little ..
  "There is criticism to which one responds, other criticism to which one
replies.  Wrongly perhaps.  Why not lend an equally attentive ear to
incomprehension, triviality, ignorance, or bad faith?  Why reject these as
so many incidents, regrettable for family honor?  Is one correct in
believing them inessential to the activity of criticism?  I wonder if there
is not an unfortunate defense reaction involved here: one is afraid, of
course, of acknowledging that these criticisms reach and concern the text
which they abuse; one is affraid of acknowledging that the text has, in a
certain manner, formed and nourished them; but above all else, one is
afraid of recognizing that they are nothing else, perhaps, than a certain
critical grid, a certain manner of coding and transcribing a text, a
singularly systematic transformation.  The impostures within the critical
space are like monsters within the realm of the living: nevertheless
coherent possibilities.
   But they are still waiting for their St. George.  I hope that one day
the old divisions will be abolished.  The vague moral criterion will no
longer be used which opposes the 'honest' and 'dishonest' criticism--the
'good' criticism which respects the texts of which it speaks, and the 'bad'
criticism which deforms them.  All criticism will appear as
transformations, proximate or far-reaching transformations, but which all
have their principles and their laws.  And these _petits textes_ with the
sloping brow, the crooked legs, and the veering eye, that one commonly
despises, will enter in the dance where they will execute movements neither
more nor less honorable than the others.  One will no longer seek to reply
to them nor to silence their din, but rather to find the reason for their
misshapenness, their lameness, their sightless eyes, their long ears."

    Michel Foucault, 'Monstrosities in criticism', _Diacritics_ (1971), p. 57

no, we cannot give up; only find new ways to bridge gaps, invent weapons,
new connections ...


best wishes/sincerely,
______________________________________________
Ian R. Douglas  |  Watson Institute for International Studies
Brown University, Box 1831, Providence, RI  02912  USA

tel: 401 863-2420     fax: 401 863-2192

"Perhaps we are too dedicated to commentary to know
  what lives are."  -  Michel Foucault

http://www.powerfoundation.org