Wanderings

About A Border Passage, my friend writes me:

“it’s a memoir
it was very interesting how she went over
the history of the middle east
and what being ‘arab’ means

her critique of said’s orientalism was interesting

as well as her comment on the state of feminism in the
US in the 70s
…
if you ever read it,
i’d love to know what you think of it
for me, the good part came at the very end
in the beginning, i was worried she was
going to be another amy tang (joy luck club)”

I am sending this for Christmas to three people close to me. The time to take the time for something like understanding.

Ever feel like so much that passes for ‘thoughtfulness’ are just sound-bytes of gathered cultural trinkets, or that much of what passes for scholarship is a narcissistic exercise in second-hand verbiage? Well, there’s always Pataphysics. The collection of essays in Pataphysica is as good an introduction as any. Might as well give it a try, or a push.

Hermeneutics as Politics takes note of something most American academics seem (tone) deaf to: The political nature of continental philosophy. Our continuing fear of genuine political thought leaves us all the more vulnerable to appropriating the latest in critical theory like so much fashion. This book tries to address this synaptic deafness, and in so doing perhaps takes an unnecessarily strident tone of argument. But I can overlook the slightly paranoid edges to what is otherwise an excellent book. Stanley Rosen’s analysis of post-modern hermeneutics from a politico-historical perspective is nothing short of brilliant. The chapter “Platonic Reconstruction” is worth the cost of the entire book.

The Gift of Death is a rare glimpse into Derrida’s attachment to, and estrangement from religion. His discussion of Kierkegaard, while somewhat facile, provides a safe entryway for him to discuss Abraham, and how faith and the gift share a unique, and (dare I say) an-economic relation. The book builds on and presupposes many of the themes in Given Time: I. Reading it together with Stanley Rosen’s Hermeneutics as Politics is a treat.

Godric is one of my favorite books because it is a unique entry point into a consciousness and mindset that is difficult for us to understand or respect: Creaturely-ness and repentance.It’s language is a brilliant achievement in it’s own right.

Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity is perhaps best described as monumental. Whether the author’s conclusions are palatable to you or not, this book remains invaluable simply for the nearly perfectly written history of Western thought it contains. A humane, conscientious treatment of the reasons we both need and fear ethics.