more lit theory (very OT--reply to CMC)

[Ebony]

No: HPFGUIDX 7488

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Caius Marcius" <coriolan at w...> 
wrote:

> I could go on at inordinate length on this topic, but hopefully you 
 get my drift. 

Thanks, CMC--I *knew* you'd find the holes for me!  I hate 
psychoanalysis... and will forward your insightful post to a couple 
of my colleagues and mentors who are proofing the paper.

Just one final thing: I do have a major problem with 
> Lacan (and Derrida, too) who you mention with admiration...

I don't admire Lacan--for reasons previously stated.  I don't worship 
Derrida either, but you cannot deny that his work is important to 
much postmodern literary criticism, especially ethnic and 
postcolonial studies.  I do appreciate his extension of Saussure--
Derrida was essential to Gates while he was constructing a paradigm 
for African American literary criticism, the signifying chain--which 
is the essence of "black slang" or African-American Vernacular 
English.  It also has important implications for understanding the 
African-American novel.

I had little patience with Saussure until reading Derrida.  This is 
because in AAVE, the correlation between signifier and signified is 
not as neat as in some other dialects.  Many of the structuralists 
wrote their theories while looking at the world through a very narrow 
lens.

Most modernists think Derrida is a very bad wizard.  I'm no 
modernist.  :)

>Lacan is a highly subjective interpreter of Freud's 
> legacy, and many Freudians, and friends of Freud – myself 
included  -  would strenuously reject his interpretations.   Lacan, 
typically of the French intelligentsia of his day, is overly enamored 
of the discredited Marxist ideologies, whose Utopian fantasies Freud 
found completely alien to the austere and stoic spirit of 
psychoanalysis... Nevertheless, Lacan devoted considerable energy to 
papering over their differences, failing to do justice to either 
thinker in the end.

I didn't know this.  Thanks.

--Ebony