Nice post. This post from my friend Matt describes “I don’t understand” as a conversational powerplay in Italian political circles in the 70s, you might be interested:

http://democraticgunslinger.blogspot.com/2007/12/frankly-comrade.html

I know for me I get a lot of mileage out of “I don’t understand” as a power play in all kinds of contexts for all kinds of reasons.

This is barely related, but my sense with regard to a lot of folks’ complaints about elements of continental stuff is that there’s an aesthetic and expressive thing going on that the complainers aren’t in on. I don’t mean to say it’s just style, though. Think of religious speech. When a devout religious person speaks of their faith, I think they feel a sort of satisfaction. That feeling is bound up with a feeling of satisfactory explanation. When a religious person explains something by appeal to religious faith they appeal to a religious statement for support. (“why did that person die?” “It was god’s will”) This use of religious sorts of statement doesn’t provide explanation understood in one sense, because the statement doesn’t have a clear content in terms of reference to the world, but it does provide explanation in another sense – it feels satisfying, it plays the conversational and emotional function of explanation; it may have gaps and involve assumptions but none that are troubling. But only for some people.

I think a similar thing goes on some of the time with really heavy continental thought. That sounds like it’s a dismissal, and in some cases it is, but that’s not all I mean. I think there’s a level of legitimacy here – there are narrative conventions and emotional expectations to standards of speech and writing, and these standards vary. So for instance “language speaks the subject” might serve in some academic locales as an adequate statement in support of some explanation – it may have gaps and involve assumptions but none that are troubling – but doesn’t in others.

Sorry if I’m not being clear, sometimes I’m a bad writer. 🙂

cheers,
Nate