[lit-ideas] Re: Erin's Course Dilemma
- From: Michael Chase <goya@xxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 18:55:36 +0100
Le 17 janv. 05, =E0 01:08, Erin Holder a =E9crit :
> I've opted to put off the decision until next week. That gives me=20
> another 7 days to sweat it out :)
> Erin
M.C. Good idea. Why do today what you can put off til tomorrow?
Now that you have lots of free time, may I suggest some =
interesting=20
reading=A0: Carlo Ginzburg's *Rapports de force. Histoire, rh=E9torique,=20=
preuve*, Paris, Gallimad 2003. This is a French translation of an=20
Italian original (Feltrinelli, 2000), but the lectures it consists of=20
were first given in English, until the title *History, rhetoric and=20
proof. The Menachem Stern Jerusalem Lectures*, University Press of New=20=
England 1999.
This is a provocative book, setting out to refute the currently =
common=20
view that there is no difference between history and narrative fiction.=20=
I found the Introduction especially interesting=A0: here Ginzburg traces=20=
an idea - that justice *just is* the right of the stronger to dominate=20=
the weaker - from its origins in Thucydides' account of the debate=20
between the Athenians and the Melians, through the similar viewpoint=20
expressed by Callicles in Plato's Gorgias. We then study the=20
enthusiastic reception of this idea by the young Classics professor=20
Friedrich Nietzsche, who used it in his attempt to deny the existence=20
of truth in the unpublished essay on Truth and lies. We then have a=20
brief detour through Luther's biblical commentaries, which pointed out=20=
the influence of rhetoric in the Bible. We then fast-forward to the=20
1960's-70's and Paul de Man who, argues Ginzburg, was anxious to pick=20
up on Nietzsche's idea of rhetoric as radically anti-referential in=20
order to hide his own past as a Nazi collaborator and anti-Semite.=20
Finally we come to Jacques Derrida, who is said to have launched=20
deconstructionism in a 1966 Baltimore conference on Nietzsche, in which=20=
he declared that the truth had been liquidated in favor of Nietzsche's=20=
adviocacy of the play of active interpretation, free from all limits.=20
Ginzburg argues interestingly that the West's infatuation with=20
Derrida's ideas, whhich still continues in North American lit-crit=20
departments, can be explained because by showing the purely rhetorical=20=
nature of the past, it allowed the West to absolve itself of its=20
crimes. Speaking of Conrad's Heart of darkness, he writes :
"In the places where Kurtz once reigned, the horror is still =
there,=20
but on a much more considerable scale. Men, women, and children are=20
dying by the hundreds of thousands (massacres, epidemics, famines),=20
surrounded by the blue helmets of the UN and watched by satellite=20
television. Under the eyes of the West, the planet is becoming once and=20=
for all a totality=A0: it is a world where cultural homogeneity and=20
diversity, subordination and resistance are inextricably entwined. To=20
understand this process, which began five centuries ago, the relativist=20=
model sketched by Nietzsche is not of much help".
Comments?
>
Michael Chase
(goya@xxxxxxxxxxx)
CNRS UPR 76
7, rue Guy Moquet
Villejuif 94801
France
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