Matt

Do not take this as a criticism but some of your best posts are so long I do not have time to get through them and give you a proper response. Like right now, this looks great but I will have a hard time to do it justice (because I am at work). And the other week, at Long Sunday you had this real provocative post on the messiah, but I never got the time to respond. I promise to try.
alain | 08.04.05 - 11:16 am | #

I wouldn't try that defense at The Valve if I were you, Alain. Anyway it's mostly Blanchot who deserves the response here, not me.

I can imagine several legitimate criticisms for using the blogosphere this way, actually.
Matt | Homepage | 08.04.05 - 11:54 am | #

Matt

No offense to the Valve, but I like the fact you are willing to put longer pieces out there. I just have several constraints on my life: job,kids,dogs. No excuses, but I really appreciate your insights.
alain | 08.04.05 - 1:15 pm | #

Alain, thanks. There's an economy of interest at stake, I agree.
Matt | Homepage | 08.04.05 - 2:24 pm | #

matt, thanks for the (in)citations and your accompanying comments.
while wondering how to respond, wanting to respond and not knowing how, i wonder about the very first word of the post: beatitude.
why is the first word of the post? what does it mean?
hum | 08.05.05 - 5:25 pm | #

The word appears in several places, I believe, but also in "The Instant of My Death." See here:

http://www.morose.fsnet.co.uk/ re..._without_no.htm

More broadly, I am certainly drawn to the way this word almost ties or binds certain writers, a certain historical period, across oceans...
Matt | Homepage | 08.05.05 - 6:16 pm | #

And he mutters to himself, "Forgive me, dear God of the Universities, if I choose instead, today, to read this:"

http://spurious.typepad.com/spur...urious/derrida/
Matt | Homepage | 08.05.05 - 6:23 pm | #

matt, thanks for the spurious link. sent you an email per your request.
hum | 08.12.05 - 3:50 pm | #

Matt,

First, I ain't here to defend all things holbonic, but I will say that the same things that bother me about John's uber-posts bother me about yours: I feel that to respond to any one part of them won't do the rest justice...and since I'm not confronting an academic article but a blog post, I'm less inclined to comment because I simply can't invest the time to digest all you've written and cited and organize an intellectually responsible response. That said, I adore your longer posts, and I just wanted you to know that even though I don't comment on them, their substance often occupies my afternoons. (Granted, I should hate you for that, since my afternoons ought to be occupied by my dissertation, but I've been thinking about that thing for years...)
Scott Eric Kaufman | Homepage | 09.27.05 - 11:52 pm | #

Must look at the date before commenting...must look at the date before commenting...lest I look like an ass, I say, an ass. I suppose this means I've spent two afternoons pondering this post, which means that I'm either 1) a liar or 2) someone with all the makings of an alocho...

...by which I mean, damn, when I see links from my stats page, I ought to remember when I've read 'em before. (Then again, this happens in my scholarship as well: one spends all day every day reading and then finds him- or herself unable to remember where he or she read what...)
Scott Eric Kaufman | Homepage | 09.28.05 - 12:26 am | #

Scott (if you ever make your way back):

Thank you for the kind words, and sorry to distract you from dissertating. If you're interested in Blanchot, of course the most exhilerating thing to do is to read him directly. There's a fair amount online. I'm just cutting and pasting (with some mild revision) from my thesis here, and that's been online (on my web page) for over a year. It's in a hypertext format so you'll need to download the free version of storyspace, but easier to read that way if you're interested.

Of course any sort of response from you is always more than welcome.
Matt | Homepage | 09.28.05 - 11:39 pm | #