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Wednesday, June 07, 2006Random...Over at Wittgenstein's Bastard, I've got a post about Jeff Goldstein, intentionalism and the issue of who controls meaning. In my own humble opinion, while intentionalism is one of the saner approaches to appreciating a text or evaluating an utterance, it is problematic in the "meant well"-"my feelings were hurt" exchanges between the plain-spoken professors and the wounded politically correct. The difficulty is that it perpetuates the power-struggle over meaning and too often at the good guy's expense. I think it better to turn the postmodern thinking around and decenter the subject when the PC-crowd tries to impose meaning with the mealy-mouthed "can't we all get along and who's to say what he meant?" blather they offer in defense of Islamists and others. In other words, rather than arguing about what was meant, argue that there's no mutually shared meaning possible at all. Play the game, claim you never meant to hurt anyone and that it's obvious that the lack of shared experience precludes you from competently understanding the impact of your signifiers on an unappreciated other, blah, blah, blah. Call it ju-jitsu Orientalism - my words are unfit for your exotic consumption so leave me alone. If you want to read a longer, more jumbled, but more wholesome sounding version, check out the post at Wittgenstein's Bastard. Speaking of Orientalism, when two "others," eg the Iranians and Azerbaijanis, are at loggerheads, how should the Occident approach the matter? Maybe we're not fit to judge either of them, qua the Orientalists, but I personally think the Azerbanis are more other than the Iranians, so we should root for them. But if I stuck to this, it would have the cynical effect of making me always root for the Middle Eastern subgroup least likely to exercise its will over others and, ultimately, the West. Way to keep 'em down, and in the name of tolerance, eh? If you're more enthusiastic about these things than me, before you become a freedom fighter you can learn both Azerbaijani and Turkmen at byki.com, starting with the free programs. They don't have Farsi, but I'm too generous to assume that this means that transparent.com has chosen sides. In any case, good program for these and all their other languages. Random enough? 
posted by gbarto at 6:43 PM |
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