what's so special about deconstruction?

[Dave Monroe]

Again, something about which I'd normally throw in
rather more than the proverbial two cents, but ... but
I do want to get whatever I've left to say about Ch.
14 out of the way over the next several hours or so,
so ... so some caveats here ...

Conversational pragmatics (always a difficulty when it
comes to deconstruction, no?) aside here, "general
ideas" seem inimical to "deconstruction."  "Uncover"
not only implies, presupposes that pesky surface/depth
binary, that Platnoic notion that "truth" is something
hidden beneath "mere" appearances, but also seems to
imply, presuppose, not only the reality of said
"foundations," but also their, I don't know,
"foundationality," something which "deconstruction"
decidedly does not "uncover" as a hidden "truth" but
instead problematizes, "deconstructs," as, perhaps,
indeed, "processes," procedures, by which such
"foundations," such "foundationality" is ascribed,
inscribed, whatever.  "Not ready-made meanings,"
indeed, but it is perhaps the ready-made meanings (hm
... interesting how Duchamp's readymades tend[ed?]
rather to deconstruct ready-made meanings ...) we've
perhaps "pragmatically" acquiesced to here that tend
to elide certain distinctions.  Although one (Derrida,
for starters) ought to be very careful in asserting
any absolute rupture from "what literary critics have
done for centuries" to "deconstruction" as well ...

Did want to mention, Otto, in re: yr lexicon o'
deconstruction the other day, that logocentrism
consists more diagrammatically of the valorization of
presence over absence, of the valorization of a
presence over a presumably, presumed to be excluded,
extraneous absence which nonetheless proves to be
supplemental in, indeed, that necessarily constitutive
way.  Not just, of course, merely or only about the
valorization of the "presence" of speech over the
presumed "absence" of writing (Plato inscribes
[Socrates' inscription of] writing as the general
condition of thought [e.g., "impressions"], of which
speech is an [always] already "absented" [at a remove]
representation, of which writing is a[n absented, at a
further remove] representation).  But you knew that
already, so ...

Oh, and, ritual protest here ... vs. such long-ago
"coined jargon" as plot, theme, character, setting,
narrative, literature, fiction, nonfiction, what have
you?  Okay, thanks for, er, "listening," and now
hopefully back to V. ...

It is perhaps 

that 



--- Otto <o.sell at telda.net> wrote:
> >
> > "The general idea of deconstruction is to uncover
> the processes and
> > foundations through which meaning/s are
> constructed in texts"
> >
> > Recently-coined jargon aside, how does this differ
> from the work that
> > literary critics have done for centuries?
> >
> 
> This is the right question, Doug:
> No, they didn't, they were just telling propaganda
> about the books, giving
> the illusion that there is a fixed meaning expressed
> in the book.
> Deconstruction is, as your snip says correctly,
> about "processes",
> "foundations" and "constructed", not ready-made
> meanings (-- that tell you
> what you *have* to believe).
> 
> Otto
> 
> 
> 


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