/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3581944]

the fuck does this mean
"Cathedral' can be read to help articulate the elements of a feminist materialist rhetoric that questions the metaphysical goal of using symbols to generate the reappearance of an originary self-presence and to regard the endeavor as virtuous." "

[Anonymous No.3581961]

God that academia babble is thick as a Peruvian jungle.

Cathedral can be read to help put into words some parts of "feminist materialist" rhetoric.

This "feminist materialist" rhetoric questions a goal commonly held by philosophers: that one should use symbols to revive the "self-presence", and that doing so is a good thing!

Feminist materialists believe that trying to "revive the self-presence" using symbols is not a good thing, and Cathedral explains why that is.

That's just me parsing it.

Whoever wrote that atrocious pig shit should dunk their head in a barrel of cold water.

[the only living jedi in new yo(...) No.3581970]

“writing is not a sign of a sign, except if one says it of all signs, which would be more profoundly true”

So if you know Derrida, since writing is a process of using symbols which refer to other symbols, there's no "originary self-presence," which I think means the signified isn't right there along with the word. That's a messy situation, thus the "metaphysical goal" of trying to get that notion to hold post-deconstruction, which Derrida calls "arche-writing." To material feminists that's a wrongheaded approach because it's still approaching the big semantic webs which form part of the status quo social order from within, rather than disestablishing them first and picking up the pieces afterward. For some reason the writer thinks Cathedral enlightens that concept, which frankly I don't see at all.

It's critical theory bullshit. Godbwye if you have to actually deal with that shit in an academic context.

[Anonymous No.3581997]

[Anonymous No.3582020]

>>3581997
>insist that continental philosophy's critics don't understand it

Didn't he usually just propose that they hadn't actually read any of it?

[Anonymous No.3582043]

This isn't about the Raymond Carver story is it? Because that would be messed up