User talk:Jonwiener/Archive 1

Your contribution to the de Man article

Are you the same Jon Wiener to whom Hillis Miller addressed his open letter? Buffyg 23:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

yes BuffyG, Hillis wrote me . . . should that go into the De Man reading list?

To judge from your contributions to the article, I'd reckon it should go on yours. Given that you are part of the story and that your involvement has been received by a scholar close to these issues as polemical, perhaps you might in any case consider what disclosure would be appropriate to your contributions? To judge from the edits you've made thus far, you've not read the letter, let alone allowed any of it to be heard in trying to present balanced points of view. Buffyg 02:58, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

My contribution to the de Man article, aside from making the prose more straightforward, was to add the issue of de Man's secrecy about his past -- essential to a balanced treatment of the "controversy". As for the Hillis Miller letter to me, it was an extremely minor part of a big intellectual event -- indeed I wondered why he decided to write about me instead of de Man -- seemed like avoiding the issues of de Man's collaboration and secrecy.Jonwiener 05:02, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Given that the practise of journalism was one of the stakes of the controversies surrounding de Man, it seems fitting that Miller broadened its consideration past 1942, the more so given that this necessarily involved journalistic treatment of scholarship undertaken by someone possessed as you are of scholarly credentials. I should think it's not modesty that would lead you to insert a reference to your work, which you don't think particularly merited Miller's attention or doesn't make you a party to the discussion who may be obliged to disclose your involvement. It's exactly gestures like "the full story quickly came out" that lend themselves to telling something well less than a full story, which I am tempted to identify as journalistic conventions that should cue most readers that what is to follow will be reduced to something of a fiction. I shouldn't in any case think that the full story has come out. Miller's was right to call you out when you seem intent on repeating inanities like: "Some critics questioned whether his enthusiasm for deconstruction and its critique of truth was motivated by his deceit." For one, whence the claim that deconstruction is a "critique of 'truth'"' (for starters, Derrida in particular has frequently indicated that deconstruction is not a "critique' in any strict sense)? Second, you seem to conflate secrecy and deceit. Perhaps you might specify what was deceitful? One can, after all, keep secrets without having to practise deceit. Third, what authorises a claim that de Man's enthusiasm for deconstruction is linked to his past, whether that past is a matter of deceit, secrecy, or shame? Fourth, who are these critics? If you aren't interested in accounting for these things or at least providing references who might attempt such accounts, why offer such sloppy formulations that gives itself so easily to misunderstanding -- this serves to make matters only apparently straightforward without lending any real clarity. Certainly this is nothing like balance. As Miller argued twenty years ago, such a means of proceeding would seem particularly objectionable from one who claims to be both a scholar and a journalist. It's unfortunate that you seem to have made a badge of honour of Derrida's criticism of your work. Buffyg 01:05, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia entry on de Man is not going to resolve questions like whether deconstruction has a critique of truth claims or whether biographical explanations of intellectual choices are legitimate. We do have a responsibility to represent the different sides of this debate responsibly. Buffyg, I agree that you are right that "the full story" is unjustified, so I deleted "full." I agree also that deceit is not the same as secrecy, so I deleted "deceit." You ask who are the critics of de Man's collaborationist writings: our list of "selected secondary sources" is a good place to start. I repeat that this isn't a debate about me: many people objected to Derrida's drawing a rhetorical connection between criticism of de Man and extermination of the Jews. Many people objected to Derrida's argument that de Man "did the right thing" when he hid the truth about his past, because telling the truth "would have deprived us of a part of his work" because it "would have consumed his time and energy." (in Derrida, "Paul de Man's War," in Critical Inquiry.) A longer Wikipedia entry could go into the debate in more detail, but the "selected secondary sources" cited here do that adequately.

Your edit is a travesty if it was meant to be a substantial correction. You go from characterising de Man's concealment of his past as deceipt to remarking that, "His defenders replied that secrecy was not the same as deceit." Replied to what claim made by whom? Is it just his defenders who admit this distinction? Why do you insist that one has to be a defender of de Man to insist on this distinction and its validity here?

It is obscurantist to suggest that we are not going to settle here whether "deconstruction has a critique of truth claims or whether biographical explanations of intellectual choices are legitimate". Is there evidence that any of this is the case -- not in general, but in reference to the imputed subject matter of the article? I do not dispute that "We do have a responsibility to represent the different sides of this debate responsibly." I dispute that much of the article as you've edited it does anything like this.

By which I mean: credulity is not NPOV, the more so where one neglects verifiability and its subspecies, attribution. It would be a poor excuse to say that it is verifiable that someone made a particular claim without then following through to evaluate whether and how that claim is itself verifiable, and therein lies the fundamental problem that mires your edits: the substance of the claims you have introduced unravel under that kind of scrutiny. This results in POV injection by citing claims without any precision in attribution and predicated on verifiable untruths and fabrications: "Notable among those essays was Derrida's attempt to deconstruct de Man's anti-semitic writing to suggest an alternative interpretation that was not anti-semitic; that effort was derided by many critics, some suggesting that it showed how "Mein Kampf" could be rehabilitated with the same approach." Derrida says explicitly that de Man's remarks are antisemitic and that he found them "wounding", so why move on to present an extravagant claim (Mein Kampf rehabilitated) while neglecting to note in any detail or with any precision the evidence that lines up on either side of this claim? How is it that one hears him saying the opposite of what he wrote?

If we are to do anything other than produce opinion endlessly, we are not only obliged to note varying points of view and their attribution but to indicate where those views have inconsistencies with themselves or with the materials they claim to explicate. If Derrida can say: some things that de Man wrote (for example about "vulgar antisemitism") were implicitly antisemitic but seemed to argue against antisemitic resources used in Nazi propaganda (which is not at all to say that, although antisemitic, they are to be rehabilitated by implication because they contradict another strain or mode of antisemitism), while others are explicitly and unequivocally antisemitic, shall we say that insisting on a distinction between the two in any way endorses or diminishes the latter? What happens when we refuse this distinction?

For similar reasons, I really don't understand what you're talking about when you say that, "many people objected to Derrida's drawing a rhetorical connection between criticism of de Man and extermination of the Jews." Who are these "many people" and where do they say this? What evidence do they cite for their conclusions, and how verifiable is that evidence? You are an historian and a journalist also to be taken in good faith as serving here as an encyclopaedist. Is it proper to any of these disciplines to set aside facts that can be readily ascertained in primary source materials in order to provide something like a neutral account of those primary source materials? Where is the verifiable recourse to other materials that allow for the kind of correctives you believe your edits offer? Can you practise any of these disciplines without making judgements as to credibility and without explicitly accounting for these judgements? Would you please validate that good faith by doing so? Buffyg 03:13, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

PearsonWidrig DanceTheater

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Speedy deletion of PearsonWidrig DanceTheater

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Editing Jon Wiener with a Wikipedia user handle User:Jonwiener

There are two possibilities logically:--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:54, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

(1) You are not the UC Irvine historian Jon Wiener but you are editing the article with a userhandle that looks like you are him. If so, the real Jon Wiener might be bothered by this, since your activity here in Wikipedia makes it appear as if the real Jon Wiener was editing his own article. Professors, journalists, authors care about their reputations and integrity. Editors at The Nation and the Los Angeles Times might question the integrity and judgment of the real Jon Wiener; and you are doing a disservice to him. If you are not the UC-historian Jon Wiener, then you should please consider either change user handles or stop editing the Jon Wiener article.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:54, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

(2) You are the real Jon Wiener. If so, then as a professor, you would know how fishy it looks to people within Wikipedia as well as everywhere else to be editing your own article; it looks self-serving. It is unprofessional. It violates standards of journalistic integrity. It violates Wikipedia's rules which strongly discourage contributors from editing articles about themselves. It undermines the integrity of the Wikipedia project when this happens. It is highly difficult to be objective about yourself. I noticed that referenced information about political activism was removed by you; this should be restored. Please trust Wikipedia volunteers to do a reliable job of writing the article; if you have concerns, please put them on the talk page. I will be watching it and I will do my best to heed your concerns.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:54, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

In either event, whoever you might be, please consider it is in your own best interests to refrain from editing the article Jon Wiener.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:54, 24 May 2012 (UTC)