Debunking deconstruction
 In this column on the series on Of Grammatology by famed French
literary theorist and philosopher Jack Derrida, we examine major
epistemological defects in Derrida’s thesis of deconstruction. we
extensively cite a paper titled Debunking Deconstruction by Denis Dutton
on major critique of Deconstruction Theory by John M. Ellis.
John M. Ellis wrote Against Deconstruction (Princeton University
Press) in the waning days of the glory of Deconstruction Theory. But,
the books on deconstruction theory were flourishing despite that it
began to decline its influence among the intellectual circles.
Denis observes, “In the 1970s we published a book review so
breathless that it required some blue penciling to tone it down. The
reviewer — an English professor — couldn’t contain himself. The book was
on literary theory and he had heard his first cuckoo in the very late
spring of deconstruction. It was all so new and exciting, such “a heady
brew,” as he put it. These days, deconstruction is treated as passe, but
this idea is disputed by John M. Ellis, whose new book, Against
Deconstruction (Princeton University Press, $21.95) has just been
published. The talk of decline notwithstanding, Ellis says, ‘books and
articles in the deconstructionist mode continue to appear at an ever
increasing rate, and Derrida continues to be cited more than any other
theorist.’ The situation reminds me of something Sam Goldwyn is supposed
to have said about a nightclub: ‘Aw, nobody goes there anymore — it’s
too crowded.’ “
Central thesis
Denis observes that Ellis commenced his thesis by disputing the
central thesis of Derrida that ‘the priority of writing over speech’.
“Ellis treats deconstruction in ways previously reserved for creation
science and the Shroud of Turin, but does it in a way that is sober,
careful, and lucid. He begins with Derrida’s claim of the priority of
writing over speech. Poor Saussure! Against the backdrop of a European
philological tradition that emphasized written language at the expense
of oral traditions, he stressed the spoken roots of language — and so in
turn was used as the foil against whom Derrida built his notion of the
priority of writing over speech, being cast in the role of the
archetypal purveyor of what Derrida calls “the ethnocentrism which,
everywhere and always, has controlled the concept of writing.”
Ellis says, “It is somewhat characteristic of deconstructive
arguments that they claim to seize on unexamined assumptions of all
kinds — ethnocentrism being one — in order to explode and transcend
them, hoping to enlarge our consciousness of the issues concerned.” But
Ellis does not think that apologia will wash in this context: “Indeed,
it is easier to see in Derrida’s position here, not a corrective to
ethnocentrism, but instead a determined reassertion of the ethnocentrism
that Saussure sought to correct and transcend….”
Denis points out that Ellis reveals confusion and ambiguities in not
only Derrida, but also specimen passages from various epigones. Although
Ellis does not advocate Derrida is wrong but that the ‘actual exposition
of the basic idea is extraordinarily poor’.
Exposition
“ Ellis’s stand is not that Derrida is altogether wrong, but that
there is far less which is novel in Derrida than anybody is willing to
admit and that “in writer after writer” on these subjects the actual
exposition of the basic ideas is “extraordinarily poor.” The second of
these features is, of course, intimately related to the first. It is one
of Ellis’s themes that deconstruction deals with philosophical issues
which have a significant history: the reference theory of meaning,
essentialism in the philosophy of language, the relation of authorial
meaning to textual meaning, correspondence vs. coherence theories of
truth, the general status of knowledge claims.
After extracting at last from his chosen texts an intelligible
account of logocentrism, Ellis concludes that “if the logocentric error
were stated in any clearer way it would be far too obviously an
unoriginal discovery.” In general, “the belief of deconstructionists
that they are attacking [in logocentrism] a superstition that still
beguiles everyone seems quite out of touch with the reality of the
twentieth-century debate in theory of language.”
The thesis under attack would by now “have to be counted as a very
naive and uninformed one” to anyone familiar with Wittgenstein,
linguists such as J.R. Firth, Sapir, Whorf, and many others: “When, in
1966, Derrida began to denounce this kind of thinking as a universal
error, he was demonstrating an extraordinary isolation from what had
been happening for many years; and the mood of gleeful iconoclasm,
revolutionary fervor, and avant-garde daring of the uniquely enlightened
displayed by followers of the deconstructionist banner contrasted
strangely with the underlying reality that none of this could by now be
considered remarkable or even unusual.”
Deconstruction theory
Denis points out that one of the interesting chapters of Against
Deconstruction is the chapter titled The Logic of Deconstruction in
which Ellis in no uncertain terms debunks perhaps what constitutes the
central mode of inquiry in deconstruction theory. “The Logic of
Deconstruction.” In it he presents the formula for a typical
deconstructionist performance. We begin by identifying our concern with
one of a small number of traditional problems of philosophy or literary
theory: Are there absolute truths? Does a literary text have a stable
meaning? Does our language simply describe a pre-existing world? The
initial focus is on a naive view of the issue, one so naive that it is
likely that no current well-known thinker holds it — for example, the
idea that literary works possess single, ascertainable meanings. In
other fields, Ellis remarks, “attempts to advance thought is normally
taken to require Focus on the highest and most advanced level of
thinking that has been achieved on a given question; we start from the
latest state of the art and try to go on from there.” Deconstructionist
thinking, on the other hand, begins by trotting out “unsophisticated,
simple notions” in order to put them “in question,” to “problematize”
them. So, referring to the example, the deconstructionist simply ignores
the inconvenient fact that the “consensus of critics for some time has
been that literary texts are inexhaustible” and that they do not have
single meanings. Serious advanced scholarship on the question outside of
deconstructive texts may also be appropriately ignored. “ |
