Rhetoric, Ethics, Politics

Last week I was privileged to be attending a seminar in Gent on the title mentioned above. Besides making friends with lots of thinkers and talking to Yale students and professors, I taped some colossal lectures delivered by distinguished key speakers such as J Hillis Miller, whose captivating book Theory Now and Then I had read in Iran, Hayden White, Benedict Lacapra, Carol Jacob and Attrige.
The closing lecture of the seminar, after a night of banquet, was by Miller "Who or What Decides? For Jacque Derrida." I lack words to translate the impact of the lecture on me. When I have the time in Summer, I'll put the lecture on this weblog.
I talked to some Americans about Roth and his The Plot Against America, which I found uninteresting. The reactions were mixed. But all in all liked Coetzee's Disgrace. When I talked to Dr Milani, who said his brother had lived and died here in Belgium, about my plans he said the project is titanic and beyond his official possible field. Miller liked my plan and said it's 'very interesting' but I was shy to ask him for help especially because he is too old and his right hand is numb etc.
There was an Iranin lady from Paris as a lecturer but as usual we Iranians are proud of ourselves and she was not an exception. A Mostafa younessi from Tarbiyat Modares Teheran university was expected to appear for his lecture on Farabi; he never showed up. When I talked to Dr Dehkordi from Teheran university about him, he said this man is talking on Farabi for ten years now....
One more point I noticed is the way European scholars take front against their American counterparts. I agree in part with them but seems that as Hegel says on tragedy both sides are justified. But OdG make an angry reaction to ... though I liked his idea on European system of taxation as easing conscience and American 'relief' programmes instead with haughtiness.