[MD] Dissertation re/Pirisig and Postmodernity

[david]

Andre said to David and Arlo:

I thank Arlo as well for finding this piece on ZMM and Lila but wonder if both Arlo’s and dmb's enthusiasm last as they actually read the way von Dahlem treats both ZMM and Lila?

I haven’t read the hundred odd pages von Dahlem has devoted to ZMM and the MoQ in their entirety (am at page 229) but, reading what she has to say from the perspective of this "communicative foundationalist ethics” which she thinks is perhaps the latest saviour but  I sincerely wonder if she understands the MoQ or its implications as I sense that it is beyond this narrow, advocated perspective. All I read is an attack on the intellectual level (which Phaedrus represents) as developed in Pirsig’s MoQ. There appears to be a great psychological/interpersonal thing going on from the S/O perspective and there appears to be little by way of interpersonal relationship understanding from the MoQ perspective.

Am interested to hear your comments/thoughts. Perhaps I completely misunderstand.



dmb says:

You're probably right, Andre. I starting reading on page 140 and it only took about two pages to see that the author misconstrues some very basic points. For example, about the classic-romantic split she says, "What Pirsig’s narrator suggests in Zen is the categorical disjunction of these modes of understanding reality in the everyday world." That is the opposite of Pirsig's point, the misconception he's trying to overcome, the very disjunction that we do NOT find in the artful mechanic.

In that respect, apparently, she is way off the mark right from the start.


But it's still pretty cool that Pirsig's work increasingly appears in academic literature. Nothing will advance the MOQ like a good debate in that arena.