Deconstructing Deconstructionism

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 28 November 2001 | By Robert Locke

[shrinkermd]

Nietsche said about the same thing. "There is no realiy, just a number of realities."

[Gimlet]

Too much polemical gobbledegook.

[fourdeuce82d]

Too much polemical gobbledegook.

In the article, or in deconstructionism?- I thought the article was spot on, except I think deconstructionism is passe now...

[Fantasywriter]

Thank you for posting this article. I have a friend who writes books on modern philosophy and its impact on the Christian faith. I am planning to email him this article later on today.

[EggsAckley]

Sheeesh! I had to write several papers about the deconstruction of music in graduate school.
Also a couple on hermeneutics. Such gobbledy-gook. And the funny thing was that,
even though I had no idea what the heck I was writing about, I got "A's" on all of them.

Giant waste of time.

[logos]

Good and necessary post, shrinkermd.

bb, you'll like this one. :)

[monkey]

(the bald Frenchman who died of AIDS)

I saw that. Ionesco, wasn't it?

Action Precedes Thought.

Societies have always done the same things. They acquire food, build shelter, invent weapons, and develop a social structure to raise children. Afterwards, they make up reasons why they do it.

[Ben Ficklin]

Bump

[walden]

Great article. I spent a semester in graduate school in English at a supposedly excellent university, after getting an undergraduate degree in accounting and several years in the business world (mid-eighties). In fact, I attended a guest lecture by the great Jacques Derrida. After a while, I couldn't focus on the speaker-- I was too busy looking around and studying the faces of my fellow attendees, trying to figure out what they were thinking. I felt like the little kid at the parade-- the only one willing to yell out the truth that the emperor was wearing NO CLOTHES. Only one student other than myself was willing to notice that, and we just sat there and giggled to each other like grade-schoolers. :)

[Snuffington]

One of the ironies of Deconstructionism is that while it is obsessed with the idea of social constructs, it knows very little about actual construction of anything.

How very true!

One of the casual tests I always apply to determine whether I'm dealing with an intellectually serious person is whether they are attempting to build a workable... well, a workable anything. Far too often people claiming to be intellectual (Deconstructionists are only the latest) only aim at tearing down the work of others.

It takes more maturity, wisdom and virtue to be able to construct something than it does to tear it down. The most brilliant and whithering criticism in the end produces nothing. A society with this as its' highest goal becomes becomes a wasteland.

That's not to say there is no role or purpose to criticism. But it should be a means to some greater end. Not an end in itself.

[Aurelius]

BUMP

[Irene Adler]

"I think deconstructionism is passe now..."

Well, thank goodness for small favors. Or....is it being replaced by something possibly even WORSE (though what could be worse, I can't imagine).

[Irene Adler]

Thank you for posting this article. I strongly commend the author for being willing to slog through a huge amount of academic sludge to tease out whatever meaning deconstruction actually has. I have watched more and more of this nihilistic, evil tripe creep into humanities courses on campus.

It is depressing how many people are truly impressed with total pernicious nonsens and how many people will sign onto it and repeat it endlessly if they are rewarded for doing so. The clintonistas just LOVE this stuff. It's so easy to use it to obscure what they really intend to do (line their own pockets and increase their power at everybody else's expense).

[John H K]

Odd that he totally left out their calling everything a "text" as their standard verbal tic...it's even more of a warning flag than weird plurals like "homosexualities."

[Aurelius]

Whatever one may think of Michel Foucault's personal eccentricities, he was a brilliant scholar and thinker and his works cannot be dismissed as being devoid of valuable and original insights (in my opinion, that is). He sometimes shows the obstruseness that the writer speaks of. For example, "Archeology of knowledge" is hopeless, but "Civilization and madness" and "Discipline and punish" are quite readable and worth reading.

One of his principle themes, which might be summarized "Truth is what those in power say it is", may, as the writer says, appear as a truism to some, but it is something that deserves to be taken much more seriously than it is. Ask youself, for example, why do you believe that Timothy McVeigh was responsible for the OKC bombing? Do you know the crucial pieces of evidence* which resulted in the determination of his guilt, or do you just take the word of the government and the media. We need a lot less such uncritical acceptance and a lot more skepticism in such matters.

*It is my claim that what was presented at the trial falls far short of providing "proof beyond a reasonable doubt".

[ouroboros]

bump

[LSJohn]

How Platonic.

I theeenk I 'gree wit da arthur, butt two meny dam big wirds.

[LSJohn]

We need a lot less such uncritical acceptance and a lot more skepticism in such matters.

What're you, a communist . . . a traitor . . . a rag-head lover . . . worse yet, a liberdopian?

You should trust FBI, CIA, NSA, ATF, DEA, IRS, EPA, the media and GW 100% -- they're only there to help you.

[Nick Danger]

Deconstructing my car at the Detroit airport

Good for a laugh

[monkey]

We need a lot less such uncritical acceptance and a lot more skepticism in such matters.

But why do you uncritically accept that these are the matters you should be interested in?