Wed Jan 22 11:23:48 1997

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Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 08:18:08 -0800
From: Kenneth Litwak 
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Subject: Re: Post-modern textual criticism
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I'm afraid that I'd have to disagree with Bart on his appraisal of 
what *some* writers are saying (if that's not an oxymoron from a 
post-modcernist, especially deconstructinist perspective  -- by 
Derrida's own assertions, he can't say what he means and we can't 
understand it anyway).  I've read Fish and company, along with Barthes, 
Kristeva and others.  I wouldn't claim to be an expert (again, can a 
post-modernist persepctive allow for such a notion as being anexpert at 
what a post-modenist is saying??) but it's fairly clear to me that 
Derrida, Kristeva, and others (no claim that all say this) explicitly 
dismiss the author and have no interest in an author.  All that is left 
is everyone reading what is right in their own eyes, with NO reading 
being privileged.

    Under those terms, textual criticism seems impossible to me.  If we 
have no author, indeed, not even a subject-text (though Kristeva at 
least says there is a subject), how can it be asked "what would Paul 
likely have written here?"  There's no longer an author.  The text has 
been liberated from any such constraining notion as an author or an 
intent.  So we can never do anything but count MSS.  As Larry pointd out 
quite adeqautely, there are no more copyist errors.  When one scribe (I 
forget which MS) in Luke 3 apparently went across the columns instead of 
down, making for a very interestng geneaology, that's not an error.  
It's another, equally valid reading.  I see no way under this construct 
to even defend the idea of doing textual criticism.  How can you 
possibly attempt to get to an autograph, if you can not ask about intent 
or context to help determine what is or is not a "good" reading?  Just 
so you don't wonder, I just spent the last semester working through some 
of these authors and have spent the January break reading Thiselton's 
New Horizons in Hermeneutics.  He seems to show, at a much more erudite 
level than I can, that my appraisals are not far from the mark.

Ken Litwak

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