Okay, David, here are a couple of starter readings--if you follow the track of footnotes and
references, you will no doubt be able to construct a fuller bibliography (or if you want more, feel
free to ask me off-list).
Take a deep breath and read through Derrida's *Limited Inc* (Northwestern UP, 1988), "Differance"
(in *Speech and Phenomena*, Northwestern UP, 1973), "White Mythology" (in *Margins of
Philosophy*, Univ. Chicago, 1982) and "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences" (in *Writing and Difference*, Univ. Chicago Press, 1978); Foucault, "What is an Author?"
(*Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice*, Cornell Univ. Press, 1977); and Jeff Stout, "What is
the Meaning of a Text?" (*New Literary History* 14 (1982) 1-12) and "The Relativity of
Interpretation" (*The Monist* 69 (1986) 103-118).
Once again: I don't dispute the likelihood that plenty of smart people actually believe that "meanings
are encoded in texts," but I do wish that partisans of that position not ignore smart people who
disagree with them.
Please, back to Greek--
Grace and peace,
A K M Adam
f49adam@ptsmail.ptsem.edu
Princeton Theological Seminary
"A theory of truth is one theory too many"