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More on dekenningarization

Descola writes about analogism (p. 329):

"À l'instar de ce que [les chaines de correspondance] unissent, les relations sont donc très variées, quoique plusieurs d'entre elles puissent s'appliquer aux mêmes existants. [...] termes et relations sont interdépendant, mais à l'échelle plus vaste d'un monde chatoyant dont on recense sans trêve tous les reflets dans l'espoir vain et magnifique de le rendre parfaitement signifiant"

The analogist scheme is really about different terms (and relations) rendered similar by a process where each inhabitant of a thoroughly analogist cosmology enjoys "une grande liberté herméneutique" (329). To resist identity through disclosing analogies, this is the deconstruction movement I diagnosed in the previous post. It is grounded on a sort of an Anaxagorean world where things are different (hair cannot come from flesh, flesh cannot come from hair) and the hermeneutic freedom they enjoy enable them to perceive them together in different ways that never manage to enjoy the complete significance they seek with a vain (and magnificent) hope. This can be coupled with the idea that interpretation and construction processes are both perceptual events - nothing is anything if it is not perceived to be so. This is a Whiteheadean idea: instead of assuming a metaphysics of substances and inherent qualities, suppose a metaphysics of subjects and their perceptions.

All these ideas converge and ground the deconstruction stance. It works, though, in an Anaxagorean world. In an Anaximanderian world, by contrast, separation is achieved while identity is given. Deconstruction - or rather what I was thinking as dekenningarization in the previous post - is a move towards Anaxagoras.

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