NP but not NP-List re Baker on deconstruction

[Doug Millison]

Otto, I thought you and some others might be interested to see this
response to that email from PSYART that I shared with the P-list the other
day.



Date:         Mon, 18 Feb 2002 16:48:34 -0500
Reply-To: Institute for Psychological Study of the Arts
              <PSYART at LISTS.UFL.EDU>
Sender: Institute for Psychological Study of the Arts
              <PSYART at LISTS.UFL.EDU>
From: Norman Holland <nholland at UFL.EDU>
Subject:      Baker on deconstruction


Thanks, Norm, for the post on Baker's Atoms of Language, I enjoyed reading
his description of grammar structures as a grounding force for meaning. I was
troubled, however, by his use of postmodernism--a concept in which he
disclaims expert status (and rightly so, considering how badly he gets
it)--as a straw man for detailing his linguistic theory. Since this is a
quote it isn't clear what else he has to say about the postmodern or if he
makes it clear what he means by postmodernism, which is a notoriously
promiscuous concept. Worse, he calls Derrida a postmodernist and Saussure a
structuralist, the latter a bizarre anachronistic nomination. The quote has
nothing to say about what Derridean text Baker uses for his conclusions. In a
sense this doesn't matter, though I'm curious to see what Baker is reading
and whence comes statements like, "Many ("many"?) of Derrida's observations
about language are valid at the level of words." Derrida's considerable and
sizey oeuvre makes it unlikely that he's talking about all Derrida, maybe
he's looking at Of Grammatology, who knows? But it's a pity Baker hasn't read
a lot more of our maligned French thinker, because then he might have a more
nuanced appreciation for the expansiveness, intelligence, suppleness, poetic
beauty, and precision of Derrida's writings. Derrida is clearly in love with
language and sentences and words--he spends a great deal of time reading
sentences very closely, not just pondering atomic sentence particles, but the
way a text as a whole works, the way meaning is produced by words, grammar,
and culture.

The current backlash against French thought, theory, and postmodernism exists
for a reason: I tend to blame it on sloppy academics who jumped on a
bandwagon and produced second and third rate texts using Derrida, Foucault,
Lacan, postmodernism et al. But I have the same impatience for writers who
jump on the backlash bandwagon without investigating the object of study
sufficiently. Reading the Intro to the History of Sexuality is not enough to
mount a real critique against the complicated (and long-time evolving)
edifice of Foucaldian thought, any more than reading a couple articles or
books by Derrida is going to give you the perspective, or understanding, to
really get under the skin of his project. Mind you, I'm not defending Derrida
or postmodernism, per se--both are eminently available for critique, and
should be critiqued--I am just asking for the basic rigor of reading what
you're talking about. If Baker wants to use Derrida as an example, he should
read a LOT of Derrida. Otherwise, he dilutes the transmission of his
linguistic theory by trying to be trendy, and that truly is a pity.

steve:nyc