[PEN-L:2375] Re: Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc.

[Dennis R Redmond <dredmond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, James Michael Craven wrote:

> I wonder how many working class women or women on Reservations could
> relate to or understand the rhetoric in the example of Butler's
> writings given in the Doublespeak award? I suspect few if any.

So what? Are all those scientists who use mathematical tools
noone else understands just wasting their time? Are people who read
foreign languages we can't read indulging in nonsense? If Butler
claimed to speak for the people on the Rez, then you could slam her for
yakking away. But she's not. Writers don't just write to be understood;
they write for the future readers who may someday understand what they
were trying to say. Adorno said somewhere that the only thoughts worth
thinking are those which do not fully understand themselves, i.e. do
something new and unexpected, which hasn't yet fully emerged into its
content, and is therefore open to history and dialectics.

-- Dennis