Against Deconstruction

In this week’s column, we examine further the critique of the Deconstruction Theory by John M. Ellis. We concluded previous week’s column by citing John M. Ellis’s observation. Ellis points out; “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” to put them “in question,” to “problematise” 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. ”

Denis Dutton in his paper ‘Debunking Deconstruction’ points out that the next stage of the deconstructionist’s argument is setting a binary opposition in the ‘naïve belief’ that ‘readers create the meaning of the text’. Denis observes; “The next stage involves supplying “a polar opposite to be set beside the naive beliefs with which the argument began” — that readers create the meanings of texts, that words do not refer to things but only to other words, that all readings are misreadings, or whatever. Sometimes from this point on the writer maintains a neutrality between the naive position and its opposite, but usually there is a strong tilt toward the opposite, which tends to be identified with freedom, play, liberation, and generally having a good time, as opposed to the original naive position, which is portrayed as constraining, restrictive, (literally) authoritarian, suggesting nuns slapping rulers across knuckles, and so forth.

Charm

The result is not without a certain charm: “By keeping attention fixed on the initial simple view that is to be displaced and making the denunciation of that view a central aspect of the whole performance (rather than merely a starting point that is to be left behind and forgotten), deconstruction creates a sense of the excitement of intellectual progress beyond the commonplace, of the drama of intellectual confrontation, and of the exhilaration of provocativeness.”

Denis observes that the Deconstruction Theory has fundamental epistemological defects and that Ellis’s ‘caricature’ has not yet given a ‘serious and sustained’ answer. “Is this fair to deconstruction? Obviously not, if the description is taken to cover every deconstructionist performance; this is merely deconstruction at its worst.

Nor does Ellis try anywhere in this book to find any socially redeeming features in Derrida’s writing. (Surely there must be some; for example, Derrida’s critique of the metaphysics of presence.) But why be fair? Deconstruction is very often at its worst, and even when it is better than Ellis’s caricature, it is still afflicted by many of the problems he describes. In truth, his book does give an accurate picture of the central difficulties of deconstruction, understood as style, as method, or as theory.

At the beginning of the book, Ellis remarks that the usual deconstructionist formula for handling criticism is to claim that the critic hasn’t read enough, isn’t really sophisticated, hasn’t rehearsed the initiate’s “knowledge of the full range of deconstructive writings...” I expect Against Deconstruction will face the same evasions. But such a response will not do deconstruction any further credit. Ellis deserves a serious, sustained answer. ”

Deconstruction Theory has its hay days in Europe and international academic circles. Denis points out that the glory of deconstruction as an analytical tool is waning although it has still been used in academic circles. Denis observes; “Deconstruction has had a fair run over the past couple of decades. It has been making extravagant claims which if correct — or at least useful — would have the most important bearing on how we understand history, meaning, being, politic, race, gender, international relations, and so forth. But still its influence continues to be seen primarily in university literature departments.

Though philosophers often feel obligated to nod in its direction, not many seem to have found it greatly enlightening, few historians pay much attention, and beyond the odd pocket of interest elsewhere (some, but hardly all, feminists) its impact falls off strikingly: politicians don’t care, gender and race relations move on as they would have without it, and the scientists just scratch their heads. Deconstruction remains an intense preoccupation only for a group of academics who write books, and go on writing books about those books. What an extremely patient person may someday do is produce a general account of deconstruction which is able to explain why it arose when it did and why it was found so appealing by its academic promoters. ”

Cheap tool?

Denis is of the view that awe with which the theory of Deconstruction is held is rather ‘silly’: “ First, it has long seemed to me that there is in academic circles, especially among humanists, an odd sort of prestige that attaches to philosophy. Perhaps it is some sense that even if philosophers don’t have the final answers, at least they are raising the important issues. Perhaps it is the impressive technical rigor which characterises some philosophy.

Or maybe it is the capacity of philosophy to ask the most amusingly awkward questions about such diverse enterprises as politics, religion, and silence. As a philosopher, I find this awe pretty silly, but there it is: I hold piano virtuosos in reverential awe and my pianist friends tell me that’s silly too. Second, it must be admitted that there are intelligent scholars in other fields who, whatever their considerable abilities, have little aptitude for philosophy. No crime in that: talents for mathematics, languages, music, poetry, literary criticism, and other fields are not evenly spread across the academy, and why should it be different with philosophy? Anyway, talent aside, there are only so many hours in the day to permit gaining expertise beyond one’s chosen scholarly specialty. ”