A couple of posts ago, I characterized Paul de Man on the basis of imprecisely-remembered accounts, which I then put forward inaccurately. I above all ought to take pains not to make so heedless a gesture. I garbled details, and thereby made allegations I can’t back up. I’m sorry to Tom and to any to whom the memory of de Man is dear.
I was pointing toward a deep hurt, for which I held de Man responsible. The wound persists, whether it was de Man’s sword or another’s that caused it; indeed, the discursive point I was trying to make may paradoxically be strengthened by uncertainty over exactly who should pick up the tab for accountability. It’s that persistent ambiguity that inhabits whatever accusation we might make against de Man, or Mel Gibson — an ambiguity that does not let anyone off the hook (as trivializing dismissals of Derrida’s response to the de Man controversy would have it), but that indwells, besets, inhabits every account of human culpability — to which I meant to point. Another day, I might point to something in the New Testament about our efforts to ascertain by our own deliberative, spiritual strength and purity just what’s true and final, but today I’ll try to decide whether I was hoist by my own petard, or I inadvertently demonstrated the suggestion I was sketching.
None of this, of course, lets me off the hooks that connect me to Tom or to anybody else, for writing quickly, for expressing myself imprecisely; but it permits me an occasion to apologize, for which I give thanks: for the opportunity and for the learning it always brings.
Posted by AKMA at March 9, 2004 03:05 PM | TrackBack