what's so special about deconstruction?

[Doug Millison]

I don't believe this generalization holds as true for all literary critics
and readers prior to the emergence of "deconstruction".  Quite a few
intelligent, free spirit thinkers brought intelligence and insight to the
texts they read and studied, and they responded to those texts in ways that
can still inform and delight and inspire us -- without the apparatus or
jargon of deconstruction. I suspect you're going to have dig a bit deeper
than this off-the-cuff put-down to explain what's unique or distinctive
about the current approach to reading and talking about what's being read.
Certainly, any critical method that claims the kind of power and privilege
that deconstruction claims should be able to demonstrate what it brings to
the party that wasn't there already, and I would hope that it would have
something to say besides bad-mouthing the critics who came before.
Otherwise, as Bauerlein summed up in that article we all talked about a
couple of weeks ago, deconstruction and other contemporary literary-critical
methods represent little more than a meal ticket for scholars.


Otto:
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).