I’m not sure if you’d call it a pride issue, or what, but I really wanted to do Derrida for this paper. I wanted to be able to say that I used Derrida for my paper and I thought there was a connection between Dionysius and Derrida. There is actually a connection and Derrida did a lot of work with, and addressed, the idea of negative theology, specifically in a panel discussion with Jean-Luc Marion. I sat in the library for a couple hours one night and attempted to read through Derrida’s “How to Avoid Speaking: Negations” – and was completely lost, but wanted to prove to myself that I could learn Derrida and deconstruction and his view on negative theology in just a few short weeks and feel comfortable enough with Derrida to write a paper on him. It didn’t help that when I was hanging out with Dr. Hankey and asked him a question about whether I should try reading Derrida’s essay “Difference” as well, he responded with, “Have you even tried to read Derrida yet? Because he’s hard…I mean, hard. I mean, really, really hard.” [this was coming from one of the preeminent Thomas Aquinas scholars in the world]
So, I’m now in a post-Derridean phase and it feels pretty good. The part that doesn’t feel so good is the fact that I’m in a pre-______ phase, which means: I don’t know what I’m trying this 20pg paper on. Apophatic/negative theology of Dionysius & -______. So I feel a little lame about dropping Derrida, but at the same time, it feels so good.
I’m sitting on a train right now heading up to Providence, Rhode Island (I didn’t know it was the smallest state) to spend Thanksgiving with my aunt & uncle. It should be a nice few days, a good sabbatical break. I am learning Hebrew (whoever knew adjectives, prepositions, pronouns & demonstratives could be so hard!) on the train ride and working on some other papers.
A few other little updates:
- My uncle just called me to check on my status and posed as an IRS agent. Damn him. I fell for it for like…a split nanosecond.
- I know there have been some inquiries, some people wondering about my current “status” because I haven’t been as “transparent” lately on the blog. No worries. I am not single.
- Our junior flag football team, the Sneaky Patahs, snuck into the playoffs with our defeat against Wicked Hardcore (a middler team). So, we’ll be in the playoffs next Saturday and hopefully we can pull out at least one win there. I ran the Pomo play a couple times, and got some yardage, got the extra points on a touchdown, and had a dramatic juggling act almost-catch on the last play of the game, but ended up dropping it in the endzone. Luckily, we were already ahead…or I know I’d be having nightmares about that missed catch for years to come (yah Rhoda, feel free to comment)