[WikiEN-l] NOR contradicts NPOV

[Phil Sandifer]

On Dec 28, 2008, at 8:30 PM, The Cunctator wrote:

> There is the problem that Derrida mostly wrote deliberately  
> inscrutable
> nonsense.

Getting away from Derrida, the journal Critical Inquiry, one of the  
top journals in the humanities, for quite a while published debate  
between scholars on past articles in almost every issue, and still  
does so from time to time.

I would be very surprised to find more than a handful of authors  
published in Critical Inquiry who do not meet WP:N (although, to be  
fair, one of that handful would be me, as I co-authored one  
contribution to these debates some time ago). So let's take a single  
example. I'll even use a different one from the one I just posted to  
the talk page of NOR, so as to change things up a bit.

In the Winter 1988 issue of CI, two responses to an article by Frank  
Lentricchia appeared, as well as arejoinder by Lentricchia. We have a  
stub on Lentricchia. The two critiques of his work, then, would be  
signifiant criticisms, and a NPOV article ought to discuss them. And  
as secondary sources, they can be summarized freely, even in the  
numerous technical portions that arise.

Lentricchia's response, however, would be considered a primary source,  
and thus the technical portions cannot be summarized without secondary  
sources, of which, on this particular exchange, there are few.

There are dozens of near-identical situations in the 30 years of  
publication of this one journal in one field.

This is not about Derrida. Not even a little bit.

-Phil