Systematicity etc

On April 13, Reinhard Duessel wrote:

>I still have problems. You say:"Surely, there's no single way of con-
>structing exclusionary or inclusionary logics, because they belong to
>a continuum of relations." Is there a continuum between exclusionary
>and inclusionary logics too? If so, how does the border between the
>inclusionary and exclusionary logics differ from the border between dif-
>ferent types of inclusionary or different types of exclusionary logic?
>No border at all, neither here nor there? Where is the basis then for
>making a distinction at all?

I thank you for your "problems," because these are issues I continue to think
through. I wonder what other people think. My best answer at present would
be, on the one hand, to re-emphasize the paradoxical qualities of certain kinds
of connections (like the example cited earlier of the deleuze-guattari either
or... or... or...), or the presence of more than one logic operating in a text
(as in my earlier post about d'Alembert), and on the other to have recourse to
analogies such as the one used earlier on this list in the course of the
holocaust discussion--that one can distinguish day and night, but not indicate
a precise point at which one becomes the other. In other words, no one border,
but rather a permeable field, a range of instantiations. My thinking about the
notion of a "continuum" owes something to Leibniz on the "labyrinth of the
continuum" and to Diderot's uses of the term "systeme" (as in the concatenation
of genres he calls his "dramatic system" in his theater criticism), wherein
entities shift values and bear complicated relations to one another.

I would be interested in hearing how others encounter and work through these
questions (perhaps some more from Marie MacLean on genealogy and
illegitimacy....?)

Have a good weekend,
julie

Julie C. Hayes
French
University of Richmond, VA
jhayes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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