Derrida and the Meaninglessness of Meaning (deconstruction before decomposition)

Wall Street Journal ^ | October 12, 2004 | ROGER KIMBALL

[OESY]

...Derrida... was... one of the most famous intellectuals of the past 40 years. His celebrity rivaled that of Jean-Paul Sartre. As the founder, honorary CEO and chief publicist for an abstruse philosophical doctrine he called "deconstruction," Mr. Derrida was celebrated and vilified in about equal measure....

What is deconstruction? ...[D]econstruction comes with a lifetime guarantee to render discussion of any subject completely unintelligible.... the view that the meanings of words are completely arbitrary and that, at bottom, reality is unknowable.

[I]f you dress up the idea in a forbidding vocabulary, full of neologisms and recondite references to philosophy, then you may have a prescription for academic stardom.

Stock in... deconstruction has lost some sheen is simply that, like any academic fashion, deconstruction's methods and vocabulary, once so novel and forbidding, have gradually become part of the common coin of academic discourse, and thus less trendy.

...Who can forget the politician who, accused of wrongdoing, said in his defense that "it all depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is"?

...Because deconstruction operates by subversion, its evasions are at the same time an attack: an attack on the cogency of language and the moral and intellectual claims that language has codified in tradition. The subversive element inherent in the deconstructive enterprise is another reason that it has exercised such a mesmerizing spell on intellectuals.

Deconstruction promises its adherents not only an emancipation from the responsibilities of truth but also the prospect of engaging in a species of radical activism. A blow against the legitimacy of language is at the same time a blow against the legitimacy of the tradition in which language lives and has meaning. By undercutting the idea of truth, the decontructionist also undercuts the idea of value, including established social, moral, and political values....

[OESY]

Mr. Kimball, managing editor of the New Criterion, is author of "The Rape of the Masters:
How Political Correctness Sabotages Art" (Encounter Books).

Deconstructing Jacques: His tenets tend
to render discussion of any topic pointless.

[wideawake]

Oddly enough, Jacques Derrida was one of the few French academics who openly supported the US intervention in Afghanistan.

Perhaps because he grew up as a French Jew in Muslim Algeria he had a more realistic view of the situation.

Anyway, it floored me when I heard that. He returned to form in condemning the Iraq invasion, though.

[LouD]

A truly meaningless death, capping off a truly meaningless life.

[NaughtiusMaximus]

"He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."

Say "hello" to the worms Jaques. You won't be missed around here.

[Steely Tom]

Say "hello" to the worms Jaques. You won't be missed around here.

Jaques will now be deconstructed. By his peers.

(steely)

[beckett]

I'm sure Kimball is just thrilled to have so skillful an editor....NOT!

Mauling a piece this obscenely should be grounds for criminal prosecution. As I have told you before, subscription articles (articles requiring payment) have no place on FR. You are not doing anyone a service by posting them.

[OESY]

As I told you before, subscribe or avoid all articles sourced to the Wall Street Journal. Don't play dumb. You know the 300-word requirement for posting.

[Reactionary]

"[D]econstruction comes with a lifetime guarantee to render discussion of any subject completely unintelligible.... the view that the meanings of words are completely arbitrary and that, at bottom, reality is unknowable."

I suppose that means any discussion of deconstruction is unintelligible. Or not...

[FreedomSurge]

May he rot in hell for eternity. Much of the Kerry/Michael Moore BS comes directly from this man's philosophy.

He is the most important Philosopher in the US today. It is important that conservatives fight these proponents of evil at the source, in academia.

[beckett]

Kimball's piece can be read in full, and without a subscription, here:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110005745

[NutCrackerBoy]

Deconstructive themes and presuppositions have increasingly become part of the general intellectual atmosphere: absorbed to such an extent that they float almost unnoticed, part of the ambient spiritual pollution of our time. -Roger Kimball

My inclination is to find ways to engage and do battle with those presuppositions. But since Roger Kimball does that more effectively than anyone else alive, I will gladly take cues from him.