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Re: pro suo (was Re: racists, fascists,)
douglass st.christian (stchri@MCMAIL.CIS.MCMASTER.CA)
Fri, 8 Apr 1994 10:34:16 -0400
mea culpa on the great american heartland line...it is/was/remains a kind
of short hand which implied no offense to the antipodean or any other
non-american heartland...
however, flame is too strong a word for what was, after all is said and
done, a comment on the idea that because you do not understand something
it is okay to dismiss it as invaluable,worthless and cetera
no one should read anyone unless they wish to...at the same time,
dismissing a body of work unread is, remains, can be nothing other than
lazy and dishonest....
you may well be a rennaiisance soul in an overspeciliazed universe,
Danny, for which you have my admiration..that you do not have time for
derrida is your own business...that you, on the other hand, claimed that
your automatic exclusion of all work which 'cites derrida approvingly' [a
paraphrase i admit] was a critical reading strategy strikes me as bizarre...
btw...the reference to you in the note you considered an insinuation of
blame against your good self, was restricted only to those points where i
directly referred to whatever you had said...the message as a whole was
not meant as an insinuation that you were some sort of culprit for all
the weirdnesses which this threadlike thingie has generated...
however, my original point remains...asserting it is acceptable to
dismiss a persons work as useless without reading it is tantamount to
censorship, a censorship all the more insidious for its masquerading as
scholarly judgement..whether you are guilty of this position is for you
to decide since my judges robes are still at the cleaners...
d...
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