[MD] Narrative and Making Sense--Sherman Alexie

[Matt Kundert]

I've just posted a paper I wrote last year for an English class.

http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2009/08/narrative-and-making-sense.html

The only reason I mention it is because it offers a few different kinds of things relevant to Pirsig and the conversations currently going on.  They are, however, not directed at any of the conversations (having been written well before them, for one thing, but also for a class and not a Pirsig/philosophy discussion group), so if you don't feel like reading a long paper ferreting out your own connections, better off not to bother.

The paper is basically cut into thirds.  The first third attempts to rebut Frederic Jameson's criticism of a postmodernist culture.  It does so by distinguishing lame postmodernism from a holist antifoundationalism (the former is, roughly, the bugbear DMB refers to as relativism and the latter is what Steve has been unpacking out of Rorty).  It describes the basic outlines of a good holist philosophy of language, as opposed to either the Platonic/atomist one, or a lame postmodern one.

The central term moving throughout the paper is "meaning," "making sense," and floating into the second half moves to what I call the antifoundationalist's "position of redescription," for which I use Alasdair MacIntyre (a contemporary of Rorty's that agrees on most of the abstract, holist points, though not about moral philosophy).  I there describe the use of narrative to keep things coherent.

The last third of the paper is the part I think many Pirsigians might find interesting.  I there use Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heavan to unpack a Native American cultural dimension.  It's a short section, considering what I just described it doing, but I think it lays some groundwork for doing the kind of thing Pirsig wanted.  (This last section is right after Footnote 9, right around the rightnav section titled "Other Linkage".)

The main thing I wanted to say was--if you haven't read Sherman Alexie, you should, particularly that book.  He is a gifted Native American writer, and I think captures the elusive spirit of his culture.

Matt

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