tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1006479003534298455.post3514448755572366826..comments2023-10-12T07:59:31.827-04:00Comments on Antiquitopia: Erotics, Not HermeneuticsJared Calawayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09380681998833566514noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1006479003534298455.post-27055783850723906212009-03-26T10:51:00.000-04:002009-03-26T10:51:00.000-04:00I was hoping people would see the "conclusion/prem...I was hoping people would see the "conclusion/premise" as a joke (given what follows it). I clearly have failed! There was a certain irony in my post, since I enjoyed, perhaps had pleasure (erotics) while interpreting (hermeneutics) an essay against interpretation that itself separates hermeneutics and erotics: as such did I reproduce a separation of form and content that Sontag dislikes? Or did I dissolve it? Or did I put them somewhere in between, in dialogue with one another? The same with erotics and hermeneutics?<BR/><BR/>So of what problematic binary am I guilty?<BR/><BR/>premise/conclusion? (I will claim it with a wry smile.)<BR/><BR/>form/content? (did I somehow reconstruct the binary that Sontag sought to deconstruct...even though there are moments she can't resist it herself? or did I follow her footsteps on this one?)<BR/><BR/>hermeneutics/erotics? (this is not my binary, but Sontag's, although I reproduce it here and perhaps resist it at the same time--the only way to know is whether or not it produced a moment of pleasure for the reader, but it was definitely fun for the writer; and, as you correctly point out, Barthes resists separating pleasure from hermeneutics, but it is a difficult, fleeting pleasure and an equally fleeting hermeneutics. If it were sustained, it could not be an erotics, could it? The real issue, I think, as your and my recourse to Montaigne signals is a problem in separating mind and body--something Montaigne resists, especially in "On the Power of the Imagination"--and something, perhaps, Sontag falls into with the hermeneutics/erotics split. I had not fully thought of that, but I enjoy where this conversation is going.)<BR/><BR/>I never claimed language was pure. I have never thought my speech was pure in some way. I would not understand the meaning (uh oh, here comes hermeneutics) of such a claim. What are these convenient categories?<BR/><BR/>Thanks for your comment!Jared Calawayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09380681998833566514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1006479003534298455.post-22501669348607152062009-03-26T06:24:00.000-04:002009-03-26T06:24:00.000-04:00"This is to give a conclusion before the premise."..."This is to give a conclusion before the premise."<BR/><BR/>Jared, You don't have to deconstruct Sontag's argument in terms of logic and syllogism only, do you? And you don't! Parabolicly, you bring in the problematic binary as if in Montaigne's "On Experience." (But didn't he also write, there, "s it not an error to reckon some functions to be less worthy because they are necessities? They will never beat it out of my head anyway that the marriage of Pleasure to Necessity (with whom, according to an ancient, the gods ever conspire) is a most suitable match. What are we trying to achieve by taking limbs wrought together into so interlocked and kindly a compact and tearing them asunder in divorce? On the contrary let us tie them together by mutual duties. Let the mind awaken and quicken the heaviness of the body: let the body arrest the lightness of the mind and fix it fast."?) And, as you point out, Barthes can have pleasure in a text while analyzing it. (This is the same one who wrote the essay, "Barthes on Barthes," a deconstruction of his own deconstruction, no?). Sometimes, even Sir Philip Sydney has to use rhetoric (not poetry) when writing "In Defense of Posey." Isn't it best to leave to the likes of Aristotle to do Analytics and to separate as if necessary (or if it "should be") "what it is" so as to conclude or to presuppose "that it is what it is"? In other words, what if who we are personally makes our language not as pure and as separated into convenient categories as we can preach it must be?J. K. Gaylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07600312868663460988noreply@blogger.com