Chris Chanson writes:

Chip Morningstar wrote a great piece about literary criticism in the early 1990s called "How to Deconstruct Almost Anything" after his experience at the Second International Conference on Cyberspace in 1991.

It's at http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html...

This is an amusing personal sociology of Post-Modern criticism.

Ah, let's deconstruct that sentence! "Amusing" is a gutless word, commitment-free. That's because I have mixed feelings about the article. First, it is genuinely amusing in the sense of being humorous and interesting. But it focuses its fury on the excesses of POMOism, an easy target. And yet, Chip also genuinely struggles with it, trying to find what's of value and where it goes off the rails. His explanation of why academics have developed a remarkably hermetic vocabulary strikes me as right. And he writes:

The Pseudo Politically Correct term that I would use to describe the mind set of postmodernism is "epistemologically challenged": a constitutional inability to adopt a reasonable way to tell the good stuff from the bad stuff.

This is exactly right, but it — I hesitate to say it — needs to be deconstructed. POMO at its best challenges the comfortable notion of "reasonable." Buried in that term is an appeal to a privileged standpoint that is usually deeply conservative: facts, rationality or common sense.

Believe me, I am deeply sympathetic to Chip's reaction to POMO. His description of what it's like to swim among these fish mirrors my own experiences. But an appeal to the "reasonable" ignores what's most important about POMO analysis. POMO tells us that all understanding is interpretive, that other interpretations are possible, and that our interpretation seems right not because it is right but because it's our interpretation.

It seems like we have two choices: we fall into an indecisive relativism that says that all views are equally valid or we sprain our brains trying to see how there could be a way to tell the good stuff from the bad stuff. To say that there's a "reasonable way" to do so seems to me to miss the point because it assumes the very thing that we should be stubbing our toes trying to think through.

On the other foot (er, hand), I personally think it's a mistake to assume that we have to choose among fundamental interpretations. We don't get to fly above all interpretations, including our own, picking and choosing among them. We are our stance in the world, a stance given to us by history, culture, language and accident. So, the lesson I take from POMO is that absolutism is a mistake, that humility is warranted, and that we always have to decide among uncertain choices that are themselves delivered by the accident of history.

So, how do we decide whether the post-feminist-meta-Marx-pre-Freudian interpretation of the Book of Job is worth our time? I don't think POMO actually helps us. It's better at freeing up creative interpretations that challenge the status quo than at enabling us to choose among those interpretations. My guess is that such decisions actually come after the fact: we're inspired/energized/heartened by the critique we just read and only afterwards do we try to "justify" why that critique is worthy of belief. Belief is the last in the series. And it's the least interesting. More important: Does it excite you? Does it reveal the world in a way that matters? Does it set the hairs on your neck on edge? Does it give you a chill?

Steve Yost, creator of QuickTopic and one of the Web's Good Guys, has started blogging.

That's the question Jacob Shwirtz light-heartedly poses with his brief and witty self-test.

We're back.

We arrived Friday night, literally one minute before the sabbath deadline. Ann was there with open arms as well as hot soup and a loaf of Cheryl-Ann's best-in-the-world challah.

It's Monday and in some ways the jetlag has gotten worse. Last night, Nathan woke up at 2AM and read in bed until 3:30 when I woke up. We came downstairs, read some Hornblower, watched a little TV, and at 5:20 went to the Pig and Whistle diner in Brighton, a tradition from other jetlagged mornings. He went off to school and I went back to sleep until a 9:30 appointment.

How odd time is, transforming presence into memory and experience into stories. We will remember this trip very fondly, I'm sure. Forgetting for the moment the Lessons We Learned, it was just plain fun. For all of the sleep-deprived difficulties, it was a series of good days. And, frankly, much of the joy of the trip for me came simply from getting to be with Nathan non-stop for 12 days. I've worked at home for almost all of Nathan's life, so it's not like I never get to see him and need to get "reacquainted." He's just fun to be with: sunny, funny, deeply sympathetic, and wicked smart. Good combo. We're lucky parents.

As far as getting to see China (well, the bits we saw) through the eyes of an 11-year-old, what I saw mainly was that the similarities run neck-and-neck with the differences. Granting that we were only in cities, so much of life seems the same if only because its landscape is identical: roads, cars, buildings, bridges, sidewalks. It is only within this world of similarity that the differences appear.

Not to scant the differences. But they often cannot be read from the experience itself: you might not notice that parents are rarely seen with more than one child and you would never be able to see directly that their children work harder at school than ours do. The world can seem less foreign than it is.

But that's my job as an adult, helping Nathan to see what isn't on the surface of experience. It's also what makes adults so damn annoying.

We're back amongst the familiar now. Not everything has to be interesting any more. Although, learning how to be interested in everything — how everything is interesting — is our real work, isn't it?

We're in Guangzhou (nee Canton) for the day. It was hard on us leaving Beijing. I can't really describe why the city touches me so much. It's drab, dreary, poor, regimented, and characterized by bureaucratic, over-size architecture. Yet it's so full of life and a sense of its own future, its own becoming. New York City, Lor' bless it, is a great city but it already is what it is. Beijing isn't. Beijing is becoming. And it's doing so from a past that reaches back immeasurably and to times so radically different than its present that it took a revolution to get here.

Then there's the people. There's every reason not to trust my tourist's perceptions of them. I don't speak the language. I met a very limited swath of them. They recognize me as a Western tourist from a mile away. But I nevertheless do trust that something that I've seen in them is in fact there: elan, openness, friendliness, confidence. Sure, this type of generalization is ridiculous. And yet...

If you can dream it, then it can be
Except of course in reality
Which wouldn't be a problem except
That's where the banks and girls are kept.

Steve Himmer at OnePotMeal responds to my question for AKMA. Steve writes (forgive the long quote):

Yes, we need to recognize that using the POMO toolkit we can dismantle anything down to its core and beyond, and the beyond includes dismantling the theory itself ... But if we decide that deconstruction does offer something worth pursuing, than we have no choice (as I see it) than to determine our arbitrary starting point and deal with that shortcoming in our theory and work by acknowledging the deconstructable method by which we arrived. It's not an ideal solution, but it is a real one, one which offers an escape (albeit tenuous and temporary) from the quagmire of spiraling questions upon questions.

In effect, then, what we are saying is, 'I am choosing to start my questioning here, and these are the results of that beginning� these may not, however, be the results I would get if I started my questioning there, which is just as valid a launch-point as here. That, I think, is the value of treating all interpretations as fictive...

To which I respond: Well done! My only quibble is with the word "choose" since our starting point is not a matter of choice. I am an American, 20-21st Century, English-speaking Jewish man, and I can never escape that starting point. Even if I rebel, I do so as an American, 20-21st Century yada yada. And while it's possible to transcend and transform one's situation to some degree as Newton and Picasso did, it still occurs within the situation: Socrates' pal Alcibiades couldn't have been Newton or Picasso. So, not all starting points are equal because only one of them is mine. (And, of course, I am that starting point's more than it is mine.)

Tom has also replied to my question for AKMA. He wonders whether I'm too focused on "hermeneutics," i.e., the study of the act of interpretation:

...much of what is original in lit-crit and lit-theory in the past 25 years or so has more to do with an openness to the act of reading in a broader sense than "just" interpreting the "meaning" of a text. Genial insights into the subtle arsenals of poetics and rhetoric suggest that the encounter with a text is less than adequate to the extent it focuses exclusively on what can be said "in other words." That is, the effort of rigorous translation leaves out something essential to the experience of reading, and to the generation of audiences.

Great point. I need to think about it more. My initial reaction is to clarify what I mean by "interpretation." I don't mean in the way in which a translator interprets. Rather, I take it as "taking something one way and not another." The "taking" absolutely doesn't have to be intellectual or linguistic. That's why hermeneutics (in my understanding) applies not only to texts but also to things — I take the twig as a way to scratch my back although tomorrow I might take it as kindling. (The Deconstructors have proposed — haven't they? — that the entire world is a text; I'd lean the other way.) But Tom's comment is deeper than that and this is a hook I don't want to squirm off of.

I was going to write a review of AKMA's book, What Is Post-Modern Biblical Criticism?, but he's blogged a review of my book, so running a review of his book would look a little too hand-washy. Instead, I'll just say that this is the clearest introduction to post-modernism and deconstructionism that I've read. Yes, it happens to use biblical interpretation as its topical area, but it applies far more widely. AKMA is a clear, entertaining and generous writer, but you knew that already because you're reading his blog, aren't you?

So, allow me to expose the depths of my inability to understand post-modernism ("POMO"). Perhaps AKMA can be enticed to help pull me out of my hole...

Even as I type this, I'm chatting with Brent Ashley and Tim Aiello. Chatting in the Internet sense. They've developed a very cool chat capability you can stick right on your blog page. Open source, of course. If you're interested in trying it out or finding out how you can participate in the beta, go to Brent's site.

I was going to respond to Clay Shirky's welcome article on communities and audiences. He's one of my favorite thinker guys. But another of my favorite thinker guys, AKMA, beat me to it. And AKMA's piece is just superb.

Several people have taken exception to parts of my list of beliefs that do not make you an anti-semite. For example, Chip writes:

I do have to take some exception to the third: "thinks that Jews aren't going to heaven because they don't accept Jesus as their savior"

My reasoning is that someone who is so presumptious to think that another's particular variety of the Supreme presupposes their ultimate eternal disposition is at the core a religious elitist. What if the Supreme's definitive criteria for the successful transition into the next life is based on this one (novel concept: experience begets experience), that is, on our ability to love one another and get along?...

I'll admit that it's no fun to be regarded by someone — or by an entire denomination — as believing in an incomplete religion that dooms me to a life of eternal damnation. But "anti-Semite" is a strong word that has a political effect when uttered. The point of my piece was that we should reserve it for the real enemies of Jews. A Christian who believes I am damned may well still support my right to hold my false beliefs, support my right to equal consideration under the law, and may even personally like me. I need a way to differentiate that person from the one who thinks I'm responsible for AIDS, 9/11, world poverty and the early death of his Messiah.

From a mailing list comes a link to an article in Newsday that rips the lid off a new European war that somehow has escaped mainstream notice. It seems that the Danes are feuding with themselves about the use and abuse of commas:

The Conservatives prefer a return to the system used from the 19th century until the Second World War, when Danish was written according to German rules of punctuation, which required frequent commas, even in places where there seemed to be no natural pause. A sentence would be punctuated as follows: The man, I love, is a dentist. The post-war atmosphere brought a distaste for all things German, and in the emancipated 1960s there arose an alternative method, with no rules, in which commas were inserted to indicate pauses of breath that occur in the natural rhythm of speech.

...In the general interest of progress, the Culture Ministry recommended the New Comma as a compromise, applying some grammatical rules to the essentially physiological system that recorded breaths. But in the years since, the comma debate has only grown fiercer. Anarchistic writers and teachers reject the New Comma as enslavement, radical intellectuals embrace it as progressive; politicians are on both sides; the Literary Academy stays audibly silent; few people master the rules, and everyone is confused.

That explains why, if you read them carefully, Danish translators' resumes, such as that of Sten Hedeg�rd Nielsen, say things such as: "...and I am one of the very few who master both Danish comma systems."

Gary Unblinking Stock reminds us that the new mnftiu is out. The last panel is as close to the truth as we're ever going to hear. This is the Oedipal complex that may end the world. (And beyond the Bushes' little Greek tragedy, there's the mythic Oedipal struggle among the world's three religions. Oy veh, don't get me started!)

Here are some people who are not necessarily anti-Semites. Someone who...

... criticizes Israel

... thinks that Jews are especially smart

... thinks that Jews aren't going to heaven because they don't accept Jesus as their savior

... believes that the Jewish belief that we're the "chosen people" tends to make us smug and self-righteous

... thinks that Jews are good with money

... thinks that Jews are clannish

... is uncomfortable talking about religion with a Jew

... thinks orthodox Judaism is sexist

... thinks orthodox Jews in their black coats and funny hats are just plain weird

... thinks the Palestinians have been oppressed

... on Yom Kippur asks us how our seder was

... thinks that Paul Newman doesn't look Jewish

Some of those beliefs are wrong (IMO) and some are hurtful. So what? Jew haters are my enemies but lots of people who hold to some of those beliefs may be my strongest allies or my best friends. If we can't tell the difference, we're never going to get anywhere. Calling someone an anti-Semite (or a racist, or a sexist, etc.) poisons the well of conversation. We should — IMO — save it for our actual enemies.

David Wasser points us to an interesting article on blogs in The Forward.

Gary Lawrence Murphy sends along some coverage of a new HBO reality show...

...called "Candidate 2012." The show promises to make an anonymous person, who must be between the ages of 24 and 29, a legitimate candidate for the President of the United States in the year 2012. The joke that "if Bush Jr. can become President, anyone can" is being taken seriously by a corporate machine that knows what the public wants and intends to deliver us our first "Real World" MTV rock star President.

Jonathan Peterson says some nice things about the kids' version of Small Pieces.

And there's an interview with me at FrontWheelDrive that Tom was good enough to blog.

I'll admit it. I was cranky last night. That 23-hour plane ride seems to have soured me just a tad. That and the fact that between my vegetarianism and half-hearted Passover observance, I basically couldn't eat anything except the mints. So, please forgive my lack of graciousness. The hotel is in fact fabulous. Sumptuous. The people are courteous and seemingly friendly. (I always assume hotel staffers are in fact highly resentful of their "guests.") Yes, it's faux Western, and hearing Chopin and Mozart in the lobby still does strike me as just plain weird, but most American hotels are faux luxurious, imitating a British version of upper class life as surely as Ralph Lauren clothing does.

This morning I got to walk around Beijing for a couple of hours. I can't tell you why I feel so at home here. Now I have to head in to a rehearsal of my speech tomorrow. I've already flagged about five slides that could be culturally obnoxious - a 9/11 reference, some mocking of kenmore.com, the casual use of a ying-yang symbol, etc. The real worries are the ones that you never thought might poke 'em in the eye. And for sure none of the jokes will work.

Gotta go.

Found Paste

I'm back in the Internet cafe again. By accident, I typed ^V and found the following bit of text pasted into my text:

Nothing much in mind, a question which part of Eu you are from, and preferation in the way you wrote, and yes, a question which course you majored in PHd. I only wrote, because I had these in my mind.a