Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup mills-tuning-list De-obfuscatory remarks (demystifying deconstruction)

I can't believe it. I got a note from someone on the list who I've
never met who seems to have remembered me as an idjit who
spends his time trying to explain critspeak PoMo stuff that Brian
disses in English (MOI?), and who has taken me to task for not
bothering to explain deconstruction ("Forget this sociolinguistic
crap", quoth he). Can you imagine some poor soul who might
actually *care* about this stuff enough to ask about some
cockamamie term like "deconstruction" that's not even been
in the recent McLarenist quiver? I've suggested that the boy
take a hot toddy and sit down with a copy of Harry Partch's
"Genesis of a Music" until things return to normal (there's
no substitute for the Great Books, after all). In the meantime,
I can imagine that there's some bearing between an attempt
to define deconstruction as a method (small "d") and Brian's
recent pronouncements on what X "means." So I'll do it quietly
and then go away to contemplate Neil Haverstick's comments
on matter and spirit.

The term is actually pretty old - it dates from the late 60s
and early 70s. The name was given by Jacques Derrida.
I suppose that if there's a "method" to it (and this
is a bit of a problem, since we're talking about a
*collection* of ISMs rather than a single orthodoxy),
it would more or less look something like this:

1. Find what seems to be a simple binary opposition
in a given text, and demonstrate that the opposition is
not merely linguistically described as an "other", but
rather as a "lesser other" or hierarchial pair. One might
try this with a pair of "others" in J. Murray Barbour as
a stretch - provided you could collapse the whole book's
polemics into ET and "those other things." [which are
always described according to the degree to which they
approach ET].

2. Do something which tries to tease out the language
which, in the guise of "mere description" or "style",
could actually be shown to be doing something else. The
usual way that deconstruction goes about doing this
involves "playing" with the language itself - using
semantic ambiguity or some other kind of linguistic
feature (an etymology which can be read two ways, for
example) to do so. Lots of folks who claim to "do"
deconstruction argue a lot about whether this part of
it is "created" or "discovered" (that is, whether or not
the problem is that one is merely teasing out something
which is already present in the language itself, but I
hope you sort of get the idea. As an example, one might
seize on some lengthy bit of McLarenist fulmination which
kept referring to "harmony," in some form, and then refer
constantly to the term in its "social" context - making
the point that McLaren's use of language in describing those
positions with which he is in disagreement [the usual
calls for the banishment of anyone he personally doesn't
happen to like] is the language of banishment and
obliteration...putting the "harm" in "harmony", as it
were...in fact, suggesting that his position has nothing
to *do* with harmony.

3. Having had one's fun with subverting and monkeying with
the original "real" meanings of things, one returns to the
more serious business of reworking the original stealth
hierarchy one started with in a way which preserves more
of a sense of difference. The first time I heard the stuff
done rather than listening to one of my colleagues oafishly
parody it, I was pretty surprised that there actually *was*
something beyond the wordplay. Simply put, I think it often
goes something like this:

"The language at work here has as a major goal the notion
of convincing you that there's a simple connection between
'words' and 'things', so that you'll accept a bunch of other
metaphysical baggage amenable to the arguer's position.
I think that's misleading - I think that the best we can
do is to remind ourselves that *any* attempt at the use
of language will do that - even *mine.* The best one does
in that case is to remind ourselves that *all* of us deal
with language as an intersubjective phenomenon -
intersubjective in the way that music is, if you will. The
best system is the one which reminds us that language tends
first and foremost to wind up referring to itself and the
score of other possible meanings as much or more than to
"things in the world."

That's really more or less all one does. While I don't care
for the technique personally, I think this is a reasonably
fair and balanced account of how it more or less works. What
I appreciate about the position and method itself is the sense
that it explicitly deals with the "imbedded" nature of language -
that is, it seeks at its best to remind us that language in a
given piece of writing as often as not isn't merely about a set
of denotative meanings. And, as you can imagine, most decon
types don't spend their time berating you for not using a
dictionary definition.

Let a hundred phrases bloom,
Gregory

_
I would go to her, lay it all out, unedited. The plot was a simple one,
paraphrasable by the most ingenuous of nets. The life we lead is our only
maybe. The tale we tell is the must that we make by living it. [Richard
Powers, "Galatea 2.2"] Gregory Taylor/Heurikon Corporation/Madison, WI

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 4 Dec 1996 00:00 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA18368; Wed, 4 Dec 1996 00:01:59 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA18411
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id PAA13240; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 15:01:56 -0800
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 15:01:56 -0800
Message-Id: <199612032300.AA08347@interlock.wdni.com>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu

De-obfuscatory remarks (demystifying deconstruction)

🔗gtaylor@heurikon.com (One Cointreau, on ice....)

🔗Gary Morrison <71670.2576@...>