i'd also like to add that, imho, deconstruction is not necessarily anything special. it is what any critically thinking person does every single day when he/she attempts to complicate or question what is ostensibly a simple matter! this way of thinking critically did not necessarily begin with these dudes we're discussing here either - they just gave it a rather high-falutin' name.
This is one of the more common misunderstandings about deconstruction -that it is merely a synonym for "criticism" or "close reading" or "analysis". If that were true, deconstruction would not have come under attack from so many quarters. Conservatives, philosophers of many different stripes and persuasions, scientists like Alan Sokal, leftist political theorists convinced it promotes an apolitical relativism, et al, spent the 80s and 90s pouring out hundreds of books attacking Derrida and his followers...
i see your point. but, at the same time, i still don't think that deconstruction is only something that people like "derrida and his followers" do. that is, i don't think you have to know what it is to do it. and maybe you agree with me on this too. or maybe you don't.
No, I don't agree. I'm not trying to be contrary, but you're still confusing deconstruction with the kind of critical thinking that we all do when we try to understand what we read. Whether deconstruction is bullshit or not -I'm agnostic- it involves a good deal more (or maybe less!) than that. Derrida is very explicit on this subject.
The problem here is the word "deconstruction". It has a straightforward meaning in English, easily understood by everybody. But it has a technical meaning too, like "stress" does for engineers or "depression" for psychiatrists. And the person who gave it that meaning is Derrida. You are using the English word in its everyday sense, but that's not what Derrida meant. I've seen -and heard- several of his translators and students, including my professor at Penn, Jean-Michel Rabate, wonder if a better English word could have been found. Too late now...
Deconstruction was a fairly widespread philosophical and critical movement that, from my memory, owes it's name to Jacques Derrida (who also passed within the last few years, or maybe longer, but I remember being shocked when he passed). Anyways, other critics involved in the movement included Saussure and Burke and of course all of the works they cited.
Saussure died almost a century ago. If by Burke you mean Kenneth, he also had nothing to do with deconstruction...
How difficult is this phrase : "Jacques Derrida (who also passed.." No shit Saussure passed earlier it's obvious I wasn't talking about him.
Also, check your lineage - Kenneth Burke was a vital precursor to the deconstruction thought movement with his "logological" emphasis on a rhetoric of relations over a logic of substances.
I meant that it makes no sense to say that Saussure was "a critic involved in the movement". He was a linguist (not a critic) who died decades before Derrida, the founder of deconstruction, was born.
Similarly, to say Burke was "involved" also makes no sense. Being a "vital precursor" (which I would dispute, anyway -his thinking is very different) is obviously not the same thing as being "involved".
Just to clarrify this, Saussure was the original linguistic theorist that talked about the signifier and the sign as being different. Poststructurlaism and deconstruction in particular owe a lot fo thier formative theorising to the work of saussure.
And Dave, Derrida once described deconstruction as nothing but really close reading. It does pay attention to binary opositions in text. The tenent as I understand it, is that texts can be shown to deconstruct themselves through their references, uses, and internal interplays of binary opositions.
I used deconstruction as my main theoretical framework for my honours thesis.
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No, I don't agree. I'm not trying to be contrary, but you're still confusing deconstruction with the kind of critical thinking that we all do when we try to understand what we read. Whether deconstruction is bullshit or not -I'm agnostic- it involves a good deal more (or maybe less!) than that. Derrida is very explicit on this subject.
The problem here is the word "deconstruction". It has a straightforward meaning in English, easily understood by everybody. But it has a technical meaning too, like "stress" does for engineers or "depression" for psychiatrists. And the person who gave it that meaning is Derrida. You are using the English word in its everyday sense, but that's not what Derrida meant. I've seen -and heard- several of his translators and students, including my professor at Penn, Jean-Michel Rabate, wonder if a better English word could have been found. Too late now...
You mean Guy Debord. His tiny autobiography, PANEGYRIC, is also interesting. It's mostly about booze.
Just to clarrify this, Saussure was the original linguistic theorist that talked about the signifier and the sign as being different. Poststructurlaism and deconstruction in particular owe a lot fo thier formative theorising to the work of saussure.
And Dave, Derrida once described deconstruction as nothing but really close reading. It does pay attention to binary opositions in text. The tenent as I understand it, is that texts can be shown to deconstruct themselves through their references, uses, and internal interplays of binary opositions.
I used deconstruction as my main theoretical framework for my honours thesis.
Right, good look.