Sep. 6

In Bernstein and DuPlessis' class on Tuesday we went around the room introducing ourselves and saying what we thought about the class topic, The Major and the Minor. In other words, we talked about the cannon and the politics behind it. I found myself writing this during class: the myth of the major. The more specialized one gets the more you realize that things are not like the norm--only difference. What use does this dialectic thinking (the major vs. the minor) really have and if we were to cast it aside would that be ignoring the reality that certain things have priority and are presented as origins? In other words, if we ignore the myth of the origin do we hide the marginalized? And if so, what do we owe the "origin"? And how can we come to terms with the fact that we can't survive without it.

These are of course not new questions. I find myself now, two days later, thinking more about this question and ever more about Derrida and Hegel. If we take Derrida's critique of Rousseau's writing and speech theory in Dissemination and apply it to this scenario, we might say that the minor always preceded the major. And if we side with Hegel we could argue that the minor (like the slave) always plays a major role. But I don't want to play this game of role reversal. What if we throw the terms out? I suppose there are two solutions to this problem: turn the major and the minor into John's Target with Four Faces and use it to hammer in a nail or refuse to recognize anything other than difference, which is to say, erase antonyms.