Talk:Deconstruction

Intro

The first two sentences are terrible. They tell us little and are poorly constructed. I won't risk doing it myself, only to have it redacted in 20 seconds. Someone who's allowed to contribute, please do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.27.121.68 (talk) 17:54, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree. This is a poor introduction and doesn't really explain anything, in addition to sounding overtly esoteric. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.131.216.35 (talk) 22:20, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I like to think I'm a reasonably intelligent person, but I can't make head nor tail of the introduction. I can't imagine anything being summed up so badly in two sentences. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.27.85.248 (talk) 20:29, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I found this from a quick Googling. I can't say it's the clearest prose I've read, but it gives me a much better idea than this article:

"A term tied very closely to postmodernism, deconstructionism is a challenge to the attempt to establish any ultimate or secure meaning in a text. Basing itself in language analysis, it seeks to "deconstruct" the ideological biases (gender, racial, economic, political, cultural) and traditional assumptions that infect all histories, as well as philosophical and religious "truths." Deconstructionism is based on the premise that much of human history, in trying to understand, and then define, reality has led to various forms of domination - of nature, of people of color, of the poor, of homosexuals, etc. Like postmodernism, deconstructionism finds concrete experience more valid than abstract ideas and, therefore, refutes any attempts to produce a history, or a truth. In other words, the multiplicities and contingencies of human experience necessarily bring knowledge down to the local and specific level, and challenge the tendency to centralize power through the claims of an ultimate truth which must be accepted or obeyed by all." --http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/decon-body.html

Is this a reasonable intro? I'm not going to edit the page myself because I'm in no position to say whether it's accurate. 66.44.24.184 (talk) 22:17, 4 July 2011 (UTC) - Brian

Untitled

Methods of deconstruction:

Though Derrida insists that there is no true method of deconstruction since the concept defies definition, there have nevertheless been numerous attempts to deconstruct texts. In Glas (1974) Derrida attempts to destabilize his own text by writing about the philosopher Hegel in the left column and the writer Jean Genet in the right. In doing so, he attempts to bring into doubt the questions of authorship and linguistic stability.

Deconstruction has also been applied to architecture, in particular the works of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi.

I've reinserted the section "Structuralism and Poststructuralism" as "Deconstruction is not Poststructuralism". Once again this section works with primary material and clears up common misconceptions. It is therefore valuable to the article. Seferin (talk) 17:46, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Definition

"It is difficult to define formally "Deconstruction" within Western philosophy."? Why not "It is difficult to formally define 'Deconstruction'"? Why within western philosophy? Does it become easy with reference to Lao Tzu? TheAnonymousHamster (talk) 04:48, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

While we're at it.... What is the sentence "Most criticism of deconstruction is difficult to read and summarise.", which reads as a dig at critics of deconstruction, doing in the Definition section at all? TheAnonymousHamster (talk) 21:14, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

It's difficult to define "deconstruction" for the same reason that it's difficult to define "art". (That doesn't mean deconstruction is art, but perhaps it is an art). We generally recognize art when we see it, but we don't have a general algorithm which will produce it. (We have algorithms that can produce artifacts recognizeable as art, but not ones that capture all and any art, or that decide art from non-art). Deconstruction basically means to find some interpretation for some piece of text, other than what the actually says. If it has various qualities like being sublimely clever, funny, or somehow enligthening or stimulating, then the intellectuals will point at it and call it a fine work of deconstruction. The nice thing is that if you have a talent for interpreting some text in wacky ways, you don't have to study anything about deconstruction to do it, or justify what you are doing in any way. Which is the essence of true liberal arts: avoiding anything that smells like what employed people do. And so, the only small problem with that deconstructionist interpretation is that the text doesn't really say that.--70.79.96.174 (talk) 04:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

"Deconstruction basically means to find some interpretation for some piece of text, other than what the actually says." That is the clearest definition of this topic that I have ever seen. If the whole article was replaced by that sentence, it would lead to greater understanding for the average wikipedia user. Jimhsu77479 (talk) 22:53, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

yeah!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.60.125.88 (talk) 13:55, 9 September 2010 (UTC) 

The current definition "Deconstruction is a term that French philosopher Jacques Derrida introduced..." does not say what the term means. What happened to the Wikipedia definition shown by Google: "Deconstruction is an approach, introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, which rigorously pursues the meaning of a text to the point of undoing the oppositions on which it is apparently founded, and to the point of showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable or ..."? That one at least gave a meaning to the word. PlutarcoNaranjo (talk) 19:03, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with PlutarcoNaranjo on that point. It occurs to me that in the opening definition, we might attain that clarity for the uninitiated reader by enumerating three or four ways to "define" deconstruction. A difficulty in doing this, however, would be an overlap with the section on Derrida's negative descriptions. This revision I'm suggesting would likely lead to a fuller reorganization of the article, perhaps by bringing those negative descriptions up closer to the top of the article. Perhaps one entry in that enumeration would be to discuss the view that, as Derrida has said, deconstruction is not a method, but more akin to a process that occurs inherently through the dissemination of the text(s) that determine culture. I see this view of deconstruction as inherent process intimated or implied under the negative descriptions section, but the writer(s) do not make it explicit enough. It comes closest to emerging in the section on Differance. Again, a proper revision with clearer definitions will likely lead to reorganization, so that Differance is discussed after the definitions, including a briefer presentation of the negative descriptions. I think this inherent process is important, and some attempt at clear admission of this process will aid the uninitiated audience in understanding why deconstruction is not a method. To put it another way, "Deconstruction happens, or texts deconstruct themselves, with the verb used as an intransitive rather than transitive. (Sorry... I'll need to search for references to back this up). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.37.201.28 (talk) 16:56, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Very poor article

This article is piecemeal, poorly written and frequently wrong, lacking structure, clarity, and coherence. It needs to be abandoned and restarted. This, of course, is not possible unless a consensus forms in favour of deleting almost all the material currently included in the article. Until that consensus forms it is not possible to begin to create a worthwhile encyclopedia entry on this topic. Mtevfrog (talk) 22:45, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the article is quite poor in its current form (though you don't qualify your assertion that it is "frequently wrong") but I think this reflects the genuine difficulty of communicating the subject matter. I do not believe that it should be abandoned and restarted. Shabby as the page currently is I think it is unnecessarily destructive to arbitrarily delete it when what we should be trying to do is increase the amount of good information on the page and editing out the poor material as it is replaced. Seferin (talk) 11:22, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

This article definitely needs some work, I've read the first third of the article and still have no idea what exactly Deconstruction is. The opening paragraph is incredibly confusing. Maybe you guys should take a look at the Hyperrealism article, I think it does a good job explaining and defining, for what can initially be an esoteric subject. Vechs (talk) 10:29, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I read the first couple paragraphs and have no clue what Destruction is. I am college educated. 24.16.12.136 (talk) 04:59, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I respect that you are all intelligent people experiencing difficulty with the subject matter but this can also be said of other technical subjects also (for random example: matrix theory) and in these cases of real difficulty a wikipedia article could never be expected to simply give you understanding of the topic. This is not necessarily the fault of the best article nor your best efforts to understand. Seferin (talk) 13:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why some of you find that this article is confusing or difficult to read. After reading the first couple of sentences, I completely knew what it was talking about and what deconstructivism was. In fact, I was coming to this topic page to comment on how great I thought the clarity of the introductory paragraph was. I have been familiar with the concept of deconstructivism for quite some time, I just didn't know there was a word for it. I think it might just be a difficult subject matter for those unfamiliar with it - just like I would be completely lost if I went to the wikipedia article on Ignition Timing. I don't think this article is in need of a re-write or even a cleanup for that matter, as I don't think the introductory paragraph can be put into simpler terms than what it is already in. --97.112.121.215 (talk) 13:02, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the problem is that deconstructionist analysis of texts has nothing to do with science, and should be viewed as something on par with creationist analysis of the origins of life, or astrological analysis of the future events. It uses a great lot of made-up words to obscure the embarrassing truth, that it has nothing to say. Obviously, deconstructivists won't ever admit that, and will vandalize any proper description of it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.190.70.129 (talk) 08:38, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Can one delete the comments of people like User:81.190.70.129, who have simply come here to be unpleasant? Che Gannarelli (talk) 14:01, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Guys, I just found out about this article and either I'm a freak of nature or you guys are trying to create some colossal pun. It's a fairly simple idea. The first paragraph pretty much puts it in terms anyone could understand if they cared to. Keep the article simple. Quote frequently, and CITE! Stop creating subjective comments like "he was a mentor and foil"--that's literary criticism of a historical event. It doesn't apply to an objective medium, and only seeks to further destroy the validity of the article. Just state something generic like "his opinions were supported/contradicted by the works of..." This article is about the idea that you can take any written/word item and use it as a time-capsule for humanity. You look at the basic assumptions present in the writer's mind when he wrote something: i.e. the funny use of imagery to describe technology in Fahrenheit 451 used probably because the writer didn't have better technology to insert, or was strongly influenced by surrounding forces (personal experience of profundidty, cultural norm, other writers pissing him off). Except these highlighted "forefathers" use grander ideas, like "Philosophy" and "Socialism" to try to bring themselves and perhaps others to a point of transcendence and understanding. Deconstruction is something that can only be done "in reading" if you're one of those people who does crossword puzzles all the time. It's a word study, and authors hate it. It debases the whole point of writing as an art. Call it the anti-author. Authors seek to build art out of assumptions and fads, the Deconstructionist seeks to bring everything back to the drawing board. This article demonstrates nicely the point that Wikipedia is not the world's greatest source of knowledge. It's just a site where people post what they want to. And usually the phallus wins. Stop groveling already. The later parts of the article really start to pull everything together. It is unfortunate that citation is badly needed. Please, someone from Yale try to find these guys and bring more examples to the table. The stumbling block is where strict philosophical, sociological, or scientific dogma is challenged for what it is: flawed ideas asserted by flawed human beings. Don't worry. The threads of existence aren't going to pull apart on you. E. Feldt

This article is written in, obscure, often impenetrable prose. It therefor conforms with all current international guidelines emanating from The Guild of Postmodernist Artists and Writers. Prunesqualer (talk) 11:58, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. This article definately needs a re-write. In it's current form, it is completely incomprehensable. Wikipedia's purpose is to educate. Anyone reading this article who isn't a complete master of the subject will have absolutely no idea what the hell this article is taking about. Can we please make it so that someone who hasn't written papers on this subject will actually know what we're talking about. —Preceding unsigned comment added by The JMO Man (talk • contribs) 21:00, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

xkcd

http://xkcd.com/451/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.138.16.77 (talk) 04:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

The edit storm cometh... --Shay Guy (talk) 04:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

..and the ban hammer ensure Its xkcd, not Xkcd. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.185.66 (talk • contribs)

No no edit storm, despite that this aricle still has a "need improvement" tag, first thing that happens (after 10 edits) is a semi protection. Not good for the article, but is userly helps those who kill out the vandals. :07:45, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that the added publicity won't hurt this article -- in fact, nearly any edit to it will have no choice but to improve it. For example, the entire "Logocentrism" section could be replaced by "PENIS PENIS PENIS LOL" and it would greatly improve the overall clarity.

To be more serious: "Describe this universe" doesn't seem to apply to this article so far. Everything is written from within the world of literary criticism. The "Criticism" section doesn't even mention Alan Sokal. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 05:06, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Pages referenced by xkcd in the past have often been locked or protected. I noticed this one still is not. While the comic seems to call for improving the page I am worried whether all of the reader base will see it that way f4hy (talk) 06:35, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

"...I am worried weather all of the reader base..." lrn2english please.

The comic doesn't call for improving the page. The comic points at deconstructionists and laughs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.190.70.129 (talk) 08:44, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm an English studies grad student, and I find that strip rather true :) 80.121.49.79 (talk) 08:53, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

^Lies!!!--98.199.206.122 (talk) 18:08, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

The alt-text of the comic claims that the Wikipedia article is hard on deconstruction. (The alt-text is displayed in the properties of the image) --Cheeseball701 (talk) 23:22, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Not really. The alt-text is, "If you think this is too hard on literary criticism, read the Wikipedia article on deconstruction." It means that if you read the article, first of all, you won't understand it, and if you do, you'll realize how accurate the comic is. 164.111.199.1 (talk) 18:41, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Ironic that the external link to The Onion in this article has remained untouched. I thought the Wiki Community frowned on free publicity (they certainly seem to whenever xkcd is involved). Randall, you're right on the money about this one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SentoDude (talk • contribs) 01:48, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I was pointed this way from xkcd. I was hoping to edit and improve. Having read the article in its entirety twice I am now more confused than before. Might I suggest it be deleted in its entirety and rewritten from scratch? It can't end up more confusing than it is now.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.173.110.216 (talk) 18:35, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I can't fathom why an article of such poor quality would be locked. Thank you xkcd for pointing here, boo @ wikipedia for locking the article.--Thedagit (talk) 23:43, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

The xkcd cartoon was a comment about this actual article. This is noteworthy of inclusion, provided it is clear the comment refers to the current veriosn of the article (which will hopefully be improved one day). Timb66 (talk) 00:03, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, Timb66, I've undone your edit. XKCD's comic - while brilliant - is not relevant in an article about deconstruction. If there was an article about the wikipedia article on deconstruction, then the xkcd link would absolutely be appropriate. But XKCD is not relevant to deconstruction itself. - Snookerfran (talk) 00:09, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

But hey, we could put it in an "In Popular Culture" section! (sarcasm off) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Turiski (talk • contribs) 20:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully xkcd's publicity will bring peoples attention that "deconstruction" is nothing but a joke by Derrida in order to see just how many people would pretend they understand it.

Picture

The animated picture in the article lead is very distracting, and makes it hard to read the text surrounding it - I'd suggest a non-animated one would be better. --Ozhiker (talk) 13:57, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

The caption of the opening picture seems to this naive reader to be some sort of parody. Perhaps it was added by a jokester? In any case, the reference to "topologically homeomorphic" is ridiculous to anyone who knows anything about mathematics. This leads me to fear that the references to Buddhism might be equally laughable, but that I do not know enough about Buddhism to notice. DWorley (talk) 14:19, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

How clueless are you? You'd have to be pretty stupid not to realize the picture was a joke. "Perhaps it was added by a jokester?" Do you really need a "perhaps"? If its not obvious to you you're a moron. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.80.165.218 (talk) 15:26, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

The insults are quite helpful, of course. DWorley brings up a valid point: does this text (recently added by a new user with a throwaway-looking name) belong in the article?

Heidegger wrote extensively on the temporal and liguistic components of existence, aspects of Socratic philosophy that were not adequately incorporated in contemporary western philosophies, and a reinterpretation of Nietzschean existentialism through an eastern (particularly Buddhist) lens.

Or is it nonsense? Is there anyone who can tell? Are there other parts of this article that are equally nonsensical? What about the completely unreferenced paragraphs under "Terminology"? rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 16:13, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

That paragraph looks legitimate - it agrees with Heidegger, anyway. God knows about the rest of the article. - Snookerfran (talk) 17:12, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I haven't read enough of Heidigger to tell for certain, but it fits with what I've heard from the philosophers I know -- the Buddhist connection has been made before, but I don't know how explicit or intentional it is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.191.118.228 (talk) 19:52, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Is this a bad time to point out that if no one can tell if specific parts of the article are nonsense, xkcd's point is rather more than proven?71.81.78.66 (talk) 08:59, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

It's never a bad time for Captain Obvious! xkcd wasn't the first to make that observation, by the way. Anyway, what we have here is a challenge: usually it's best for articles to be written by experts in the field, but experts in this particular field tend to write things that are indistinguishable from nonsense. Given that constraint, can we write a factual and clear article about this subject that seems to evade clarity and facts? rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 15:28, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

It's like you guys don't even read the talk page which you are editing. The pic is clearly a reference to today's xkcd comic, which is discussed just above this topic.146.243.4.157 (talk) 17:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

WTF

You know the edit making the page all black and nonsensical? I can't find it. Anyone know what happened and how? rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 16:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to assume it was an unprotected template. It's fixed now. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 16:21, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia and the Zodiac Killer for details. —Sbp (talk) 16:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

first Paragraph / Overview

First para is overly complex and hard to understand for a(n intelligent) layperson.

Deconstruction is a term in contemporary philosophy, literary criticism, and the social sciences, denoting a process by which the texts and languages of Western philosophy (in particular) appear to shift and complicate in meaning when read in light of the assumptions and absences they reveal within themselves.

Deconstruction isn't the process by which texts appear to shift (and complicate, wtf that means) in meaning. It's the process of analysing texts in light of the various cultural assumptions the reader brings to the task. It's also the process of discovering the various hidden cultural assumptions the author brings via the analysis of texts and language. Feel free to flesh this out if I'm missing nuances and details.

Jacques Derrida coined the term in the 1960s,[1] and proved more forthcoming with negative, rather than positive, analyses of the school.

I can't even begin to know what this means. I assume the writer means that Derrida stated what Deconstructionism isn't more often than saying what Deconstructionism is. If this is what you meant, perhaps use some examples of what Derrida wrote. And leave out the "proved more forthcoming". It isn't even interesting prose.

--Lizard1959 (talk) 10:03, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I nominate you for rewriting the article. Your definition is incredibly more clear than anything the actual article hoped to convey.

71.184.254.208 (talk) 18:31, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I've been studying the indroduction for a little while, and this is the best interpretation I can make of it: "Deconstruction shows that any text has multiple possible interpretations. These interpretations are incompatible but necessarily related to each other in in complex ways. A casual reading of the text can only go so far." So basically, the indroduction completely fails. It really seems to me like the kind of thing you'd find on uncyclopedia. The indroduction needs to be rewritten in plain english. The same could probably be said for most of the article. Bob A (talk) 09:06, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Deconstructionism and Husserl

o I'm not sure how far y'all have gotten in re-writing/editing this article, but might I suggest that the section on the Husserl connection be left to the side until some semblance of coherence can be brought to the primary source material? Husserl's corpus is vast (45,000 pages!) and minutely detailed; it is highly complex and obscenely difficult to read, so that it is very challenging even to make statements about the internal relationship of his work to itself, to say nothing of relating Husserl to other philosophers. (Students of philosophy who have read Husserl's treatise on phenomenal time consciousness might, I think, empathize with my concerns on this point.) For my part, I vote that Derrida's house be set in order before building a bridge to Husserl's rather daunting intellectual fortress. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.191.118.228 (talk) 20:06, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate that the section on Husserl might appear somewhat unrelated to deconstruction if you are yourself unfamiliar with deconstruction but Derrida's philosophical development was inextricably linked to his study of Husserl and this shaped the development of deconstruction. It is impossible to adequately explain the topic without giving that exposition in relation to Derrida's engagement with Husserl. This isn't just a personal opinion of mine, its the opinion of the respected Oxford critic of Derrida Christina Howells in the opening section of her philosophically rigorous book Derrida, Deconstruction from Phenomenology to Ethics. I am therefore going to reinstate this section. Seferin (talk) 13:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

A starting point

I've tried to clarify the relevance of the section on Husserl and to briefly summarise the substance of his deconstruction of Husserl in Speech and Phenomena. I made this a new subsection so that it will be easier to move down the page to an examples of deconstruction section if need be. I've also asked for help editing on the Heidegger talk page so maybe we can find someone who can detail the role of Heidegger in the development of deconstruction. What are your thoughts on all this mtevfrog, rspeer, and snookerman? Seferin (talk) 14:11, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Nice work so far, Seferin. A few practical suggestions: 1. The "first class" quote in the introduction doesn't belong - not NPOV. 2. "Secondary definitions" does not belong in the early reception section. The current "Derrida's negative descriptions of deconstruction" section should be renamed "Definition difficulty" (as I believe it used to be?) and both the primary and secondary views on definition belong there. 3. "Continuing developments" could be a useful section but so far nothing in it is about continuing developments. (The most recent text listed is twelve years old.) I'm not sure what the purpose of that section is supposed to be, but if there is one then it should have a relevant title. 4. In general there are too many overly long sentences, but copy-editing's not vital till the content is all mostly there. - snookerfran ^(talk) 19:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice Snookerfan, keep it coming! BTW it's funny to be reminded that twelve years old is not considered current by most standards when the phrase "modern philosophy" typically refers to anything after Descartes in the last four hundred years...in an area like philosophy where people earnestly study texts from two thousand years ago anything from the last fifty years is decidedly cutting edge and something that happened a mere twelve years ago is very current in the sense that it would be ridiculous to say that it hasn't actually happened yet...even though for a lot of people that's true :0) Seferin (talk) 20:10, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I've just removed large parts of the article, so that we have something possibly more coherent to work on. The parts I removed include:

• Paragraphs apparently written from within the deconstructivist perspective, and incomprehensible to anyone outside it
• Definitions that were not backed by sources
• Discussions of other concepts besides the subject of the article, such as the other things that popular media use "deconstruction" to mean (let Wiktionary do that)
• Things that seemed to be going off on tangents
• Anything I wasn't patient enough to figure out

I also used User:Lizard1959's description to begin the article, as it was clearer than what was there before.

Some of the text can certainly be put back, but it will probably take an expert -- an expert with a good sense of perspective -- to sort out what really belongs in the article. However, my hope is that the shorter article is somewhat of an improvement.

rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 21:02, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a real improvement, a good starting point. The biggest omission is that there is no mention of what deconstruction actually involves: the idea of binary oppositions (undecidables), presence-absence, differance, etc. There ought to be a section mentioning each of these things in turn (in a coherent way) near the top of the article. I'm not an expert, so I'm a little wary of doing this myself. Snookerfran (talk) 21:28, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey, if you have some knowledge of what deconstruction actually involves, maybe you can get us started there and you don't need to be so wary. I know I basically left that out, mostly because I have no idea what deconstruction actually involves. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 04:23, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've gone ahead and put in a big chunk about the theory. It's far from ideal, but hopefully it'll do until someone more expert comes along. - Snookerfran (talk) 13:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I would like to suggest further simplifying the first sentence. Most of the words have no value. "Deconstruction is a term used in contemporary literary criticism, philosophy, and the social sciences, referring to a process of..." --> "Deconstruction is the process of...". --23:12, 19 July 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.117.137.139 (talk)

I agree with simplifying the first sentence too. I think the best layout would be this:

[Opening paragraph]

Jacques Derrida coined the term "deconstruction" in the 1960s,[1] but later refused to define it, saying, “All sentences of the type ‘deconstruction is X’ or ‘deconstruction is not X’ a priori miss the point, which is to say that they are at least false.’ This owes to the implicit ‘undecidability’ in deconstruction. [2]

[Contents, with number 1 being 'Ideas central to deconstruction' or similar]

Then we need the actual description of deconstruction. I've drafted an example that I'm putting below in the hope someone who knows what they're on about can use as a template and put on the page.

Central to deconstruction is the idea of binary opposition and a text’s ‘undecidability’. Every term has a binary opposite, for example, something can be either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but not both. However, Derrida argues that because the two opposites are inextricably bound, a text can mean the opposite of what it apparently attempts to. [ref]

An example is the sentence ‘Socrates was a good person’. In reading this text the reader cannot help but question in what way Socrates was good, and why this needed stating. ‘Badness’ as well as ‘goodness’ is brought to mind, and in this sense, the text becomes ‘undecidable’.

The notion of ‘absence’ also comes into play when reading a text. [ref] Through deconstruction, the reader can attempt to read what a text does not say, for example, texts in a white, male-dominated society may not make mention of minorities. Deconstruction can therefore have political applications, although it does not have to. One of the things that Derrida feels history has slighted is writing itself: he says that western philosophy has always favoured speech over writing. [ref]

A further idea of ‘absence’ applies writing itself. Letters can function without the presence of either the writer or the intended reader. Where speech requires the presence of both speaker and listener, writing requires absence and delay and therefore ambiguity. Written words are “abandonable to their essential drifting”. [ref]

Derrida’s deconstruction is an attempt to shake the foundations of philosophy. He draws on and expands the opposing metaphysical philosophies of phenomenology and structuralism. [ref]

(Stuff about Saussure and the signifier and the signified)

(Stuff about difference)

(Whatever else the hell deconstruction’s about)

- Snookerfran (talk) 23:30, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I've added a new section on the methods of deconstruction and reordered the page a bit. At the moment the method section is extremely basic, and I'm not sure that the House of Leaves reference belongs there. Probably better to go into more detail about architecture and visual art contemporary of Derrida, which I personally know nothing about. - Snookerfran (talk) 12:20, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Rspeer and Snookerfan. I appreciate your enthusiasm but you admit yourselves that you know very little about the subject matter and I respectfully suggest that you reconsider the value of your recent re-organisation of the article. Some of the sections you have removed might appear to be tangents but, respectfully, if you don't understand the material then you are not really in a position to evaluate their relevance. Please work with the editors and material already involved in the page rather than trying to year zero it. Seferin (talk) 13:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Seferin. It's not so much that the removed material was tangential, but that it was incomprehensible. As I've stated and you've noted, I am not a deconstruction expert, but I do have a broad academic grounding in similar literary/philosophical ideas/techniques and the previous version of the article helped me Not At All. By all means we can (should?) add back almost all of the removed material, but we should conform to Wikipedia's standards in doing so. That is: a general introduction understandable to the layman, followed by more accurate, verifiable details with citations to established sources, all laid out in as concise and clear (jargon-free) a manner as is possible. Accuracy is absolutely important. Comprehensibility is indispensable. - snookerfran ^(talk) 00:50, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey Snookerfan. I appreciate that Wikipedia is aimed at the general population and not a masterclass. I am personally very committed to the challenge of making Derrida's ideas communicable to a wider audience - that's one of the reasons I'm involved in developing this article - but it just isn't the case that this is a trivial task. If we make mistakes simplifying the material then there will always be people coming along and telling us we've got it so wrong so its better to stick to the primary material and the facts. Just because deconstruction is associated with the arts and humanities doesn't mean that it is easier to understand than other technical topics from harder disciplines. We can't expect to be able to understand matrix theory (for example) just by reading the wikipedia article...that would require an understanding of the background concepts that matrix theory rests on like linear algebra and some practical familiarity with operations in the area. Derrida states in the "Letter to a Japanese Friend" (the best introductory text to deconstruction by Derrida as it's short and direct at only four pages) that he was translating Heidegger's term destruktion and you can see that the wiki explanation of this term is itself just three quotations from Heidegger...they obviously give the reader a clue but you can't force the uncomprehending reader to understand...if the reader is uncomprehending then the best you can do is give them a few facts about the origin of the term, some related concepts, and indicate the relevant area of the terms operation. Personally I'm not sure deconstruction makes sense without some understanding of how Derrida problematises Husserl's phenomenological reduction and Husserl's understanding of structuralism (as an inescapable aspect of philosophy not as an intellectual fashion). These are to deconstruction what linear algebra is to matrix theory. I'm not indicating these problems in order to discourage participation but merely to indicate the actual difficulties involved. Respected philosophers like Searle and Habermas have been honestly confused by Derrida's work and this just indicates that expertise in one area of philosophy is not necessarily transferable to another. Reynolds and Roffe in their introductory text Understanding Derrida argue that Derrida's work is an invitation to philosophise because there is no alternative to thinking your own way through the complexity of Derrida's writing. The challenge is very interesting though and that makes it worthwhile. Seferin (talk) 11:34, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

"Reynolds and Roffe in their introductory text Understanding Derrida argue that Derrida's work is an invitation to philosophise because there is no alternative to thinking your own way through the complexity of Derrida's writing." Good. That's the sort of thing that needs putting in the article, near the top, with citations to the page numbers, so that the amateur has a general idea of Derrida's deconstruction. Just because Derrida deliberately wrote badly does not mean this article should. A couple of examples: the contents box needs tidying. 1.2 should not read "Derrida's Deconstruction of Husserl's Phenomenology in Speech and Phenomena" - just call it "Speech and Phenomena". Then, in that subsection, state that Speech and Phenomena was Derrida's first book length deconstruction, published in 1967. In it, he etc. 3 should not read "Deconstruction is what happens when language is understood as writing" but simply "Language as writing". (It probably shouldn't be a section at all, it should be part of the theory section. The history section should be about people and ideas before Derrida, and not about Derrida at all; it should simply state that Derrida questioned stuff. Then, in the theory section, the article goes into the detail that's floating in the history section. The history section needs to be about history and the theory section about the theory.) - snookerfran ^(talk) 15:11, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Why the attack, Seferin? Both of us are working on improving the article. By no means am I insisting that the parts I took out need to stay out, but perhaps by taking them out I've encouraged people like you to put them back with more clarity.

No, I don't know much about Derrida, but I know a bad Wikipedia article when I see one (especially when the article is getting wide publicity from places such as xkcd and Language Log for being so bad). If there were a good article here, it would be able to take someone like me, who starts from basically no knowledge of the topic, and give me some idea of what it's about. I strive to do the same when I work on articles within my own area of expertise. Please do work on that, just don't do it with some sort of grudge against me, because I'm working toward the same goal as you: turning this article into a good one.

Now, with that aim, I feel obligated to point out that the second section you added, about Husserl, is the very model of the "obscurantism" that is often referred to as surrounding deconstruction. That paragraph conveys nothing to a non-expert, so for the sake of the quality of the article it needs to be removed or rewritten. You might be the person who can rewrite it! You also seem to have inadvertently ended the History section, which was supposed to contain the "Precursors" subsection, by interposing the Husserl section there. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 21:30, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 21:23, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey Rspeer! I'm so sorry for any offense I have caused you and for over reacting when I saw the extent of the clean up. Obviously I'm not trying to claim ownership over the article but I have been working on it for over a year - slowly trying to increase the amount of sound material on the page - and I got a bit alarmed when I saw all that work had apparently apparently just disappeared. I am glad for the burst of momentum that has taken place recently in spite of the high traffic problems from the xkcd incident and, as you say, your critical eye has allowed me to see a lot of the material more critically myself. I'll try to clarify the relevance of the section on Husserl as per your advice and trim what isn't absolutely relevant. I've also been thinking of restoring the section on "Late Deconstruction" even though the old version that you removed was rather poor because there is a marked shift in how Derrida engages in deconstruction in the 90's (instead of a critical engagement with other philosophers there was a tendency to consider the strict impossibility of pure philosophical terms) and some treatment should be given of this in the final article. Seferin (talk) 22:13, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Picture of 'Glas' - fair use?

In the House of Leaves article there's a picture of Derrida's 'Glas' which would be very useful in the methods section on this page. I assumed we could use it and then it occurred to me that we probably couldn't. Can we? - Snookerfran (talk) 12:36, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Since it's copyrighted with no special license, we can only use it under fair use to illustrate anything the subject of the image itself... and then only if there's no free alternative. -- SCZenz (talk) 18:03, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Unclear paragraph

The paragraph that begins with "Derrida’s deconstruction is an attempt to shake the foundations of philosophy" is unclear to me. In the introduction we are told that "Derrida himself denied deconstruction that is a method or school of philosophy" [sic], but now we are told that it "draws on and expands the opposing metaphysical philosophies of phenomenology and structuralism," and then Derrida's thoughts on consciousness.

This is all very contradictory, and at the very least I think this paragraph should make it more clear how deconstruction is related to metaphysics and consciousness. I thought it was just a technique or process used to analyze texts; certainly not a philosophy of consciousness.

Also, in the intro, the phrase "center for media literacy" should be capitalized. I can't make these changes because the article is semi-protected, so I hope someone will help out :)

--76.195.6.113 (talk) 19:59, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

• Never mind, it's not actually semiprotected. I'll fix the grammar, but I'm not qualified to make the clarifications that I need. --76.195.6.113 (talk) 20:12, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Article Quality

This article needs to be seriously and thoroughly edited/re-written. It currently undermines itself by contradicting the very agenda it claims to support.--Mr. Unsigned-User —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.114.19.5 (talk) 17:49, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

The article doesn't support any agenda; its aims are to be factual and coherent. If you can help it attain this, please do! - Snookerfran (talk) 23:57, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I think what 98.114 means is that the rather opaque and obfuscatory writing style of the article reflects some common criticisms of deconstruction. I have to agree; after reading the article, my understanding of deconstruction is not much better than before. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 06:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

This article remains extremely poor, and clearly written by editors without the knowledge or skills to convey the ideas correctly. Unfortunately, as I have previously pointed out, this situation is unlikely to be rectified unless there is a consensus about the best way to proceed. The first sentence is uncontroversial and OK. The current second sentence simply resorts to quoting a dictionary definition which is itself rather vague. Inclusion of this quotation in the second sentence of the article is tantamount to an admission of defeat. It is not impossible to define deconstruction within the context and requirements of encyclopedic writing, but comprehension of the topic of the article is of course a prerequisite to being able to do so. I have previously added the following as a second sentence for the article: "Deconstruction refers to an approach which rigorously pursues the meaning of a text to the point of undoing the oppositions on which it is apparently founded, and to the point of showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable or, indeed, impossible." Unfortunately, this sentence has been excised by editor Jefffire, who apparently believes this sentence to be "clear nonsense." I myself note that there is a substantial overlap with the dictionary definition which has now been added in its stead, but in my humble opinion the sentence as I have formulated it is clearer and more precise, as well as not being simply a quote lifted from a dictionary. Re-inclusion of the sentence which I have composed, and removal of the dictionary definition, will benefit the article. In addition, the entire "Theory" section is quite poor, and should be removed and replaced. As mentioned, no improvement of this situation is likely unless editors who are currently contributing rethink their role. Some editors would be well-advised to cut back their involvement to a minimum, and there is no point engaging in debate with these editors. In the current circumstances it is nearly impossible to contribute positively to the article. Mtevfrog (talk) 10:21, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Mtevfrog - Perhaps it would be useful if you specified the editors that you recommend should step back from the article? Seferin (talk) 13:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The proposed second sentence -- 42 words long and laden with qualifiers -- exemplifies the "opaque and obfuscatory" writing that I referred to earlier. When my students write like that, I point them to this study. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:57, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Mtevfrog. I tried to persuade Jefffire to revert your definition (see his talk page) as it was much better than the stuff in the theory section (which I wrote from scratch and am waiting for people to improve upon). I agree on both levels: the definition is poor (though the OED's one is better than the medialit one Jefffire used originally) and the theory section needs serious improvement. But I disagree that it should be replaced: an article about deconstruction needs a section that explains the need for and the methods of and thought behind deconstruction. It does not have to have a single word penned by me. It just needs to be helpful and informative. - snookerfran ^(talk) 01:06, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

What I am saying is that all editors who do not feel confident that they have a grasp of the meaning of "deconstruction" should step back from any significant role in drafting substantive content for the article. That is, those who are not confident of their understanding of the subject should recognise that their potential to write worthwhile sentences and paragraphs is very limited, even if they consult primary and secondary literature on the topic. This is not to oppose the Wikipedian principle that anybody can edit, but to invite editors to question themselves about their own ability to do so. But in addition to this, even those who do feel confident they understand deconstruction should, I believe, ask themselves whether they truly believe that confidence is justified: this topic tends to attract editors who are simply dismissive of Derrida and deconstruction, and it is therefore easy for editors who are sympathetic to the subject to convince themselves that they are the ones who comprehend the subject, when in fact that comprehension may be rather deficient. Good faith and good will does not necessarily result in a good article. Both of these suggestions I am making, however, require self-reflection on the part of editors, which I have noticed cannot always be counted on at Wikipedia. At present, however, I do not feel it is possible to contribute effectively to this article. In the meantime, given the very poor state of the article, in my opinion the best option is to cut back the article to a minimum. Mtevfrog (talk) 00:28, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Mtevfrog, can you please be specific about what is wrong with the article? You request that non-experts take a step back, but we have all already done so. Rspeer has made no edits recently, and I have only made or proposed superficial edits to the layout to aid cohesion. (I am not in the slightest bit sympathetic to the subject; I am sympathetic to Wikipedia and people who want to know more about it.) You clearly have a thorough grounding in deconstruction, but like you say, most of us don't: we don't even know what the 'bare minimum' you propose actually is. If you list your problems with the article, then other experts (obviously not me) can work to fix them. - snookerfran ^(talk) 01:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Mtevfrog, I think the advice of people who don't fully understand the material has been very valuable here because they have helped to illustrate points of confusion in the article. I think the that the structure of the article has improved considerably in the last week and a sketch of the key areas of informational content has been produced. This is good progress. More expertise would, of course, always be lovely - but hard work is going into improving this article. Its not really helpful to just dismiss all that effort by reiterating your position from two months ago from before the current form of the article took shape. It's important not to just give up and wait for someone that will be recognised as the messiah to come and sort out the wikipedia page on deconstruction. I think the possibility of an effective summary is starting to emerge that will be based around the challenge deconstruction makes to intentional meaning evident in both the Speech and Phenomena and the Of Grammatology material along with some comments about its operation in literary and philosophical texts (ie. Writing and Difference) and the more Kantian deconstruction of transcendental themes in the late deconstruction. Seferin (talk) 11:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I am not attempting to disparage other editors, merely to point out certain truths about the situation. I believe I have indicated some specific problems, while also pointing out my belief that there is no benefit in getting into debates about this at the moment. As an example, however, every word of the following (from the "Theory" section) is terrible, and should be excised immediately on the grounds of being wrong, meaningless, and poor writing:

"Every term has a binary opposite, for example, something can be either “good” or “bad” but not both. Derrida undermines this, arguing that because the two opposites are inextricably bound, a text can mean the opposite of what it apparently attempts to.[11]

An example is the sentence “Socrates was a good person.” In reading this text the reader cannot help but question in what way Socrates was good, and why this needed stating. “Badness” as well as “goodness” is brought to mind, and in this sense, the text becomes “undecidable.”

The notion of "absence" also comes into play when reading a text. Through deconstruction, the reader can attempt to read what a text does not say, for example, texts written by a dominant group may not make mention of minorities. Deconstruction can therefore have political applications, although it does not have to. One of the things that Derrida feels history has slighted is writing itself: he says that western philosophy has always favoured speech over writing.[12]"

Mtevfrog (talk) 12:45, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

So go ahead, take it out. But the article still needs a theory section, with words that aren't wrong, meaningless, poorly written, offensive to the All Things Good, etc., etc. - snookerfran ^(talk) 13:09, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey Snookerfan I've rewritten the theory section. I hope you don't mind. Hopefully it's a bit better now but it needs copy editing. What do you think snookerfan and mtevfrog? Seferin (talk) 18:42, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Nice one. :) It does need simplifying a little, because the first bit needs to basically summarize things for the total amateur. (Then it can get more expert as it goes into more detail.) The first quote, for example, is rather cumbersome, and I don't think it would be very helpful to non-experts. (I've read it twice and am still nonplussed.) But it's definitely great to get some stuff down there written by someone who knows what they're on about. I hope Mtevfrog is likewise placated. - snookerfran ^(talk) 20:29, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying about the opening quote but the problem is that I built the theory section around an exposition of what is said in the quote. The quote is therefore the textual support for most of what follows. I don't think putting the quotation in a footnote to the whole paragraph will not do because people will just red ink the individual statements in the theory section as unsupported material. Note also that its damn hard to find Derrida speaking explicitly about deconstruction as he does in that quotation (normally he just uses the term and the term is determined through its role in such usage) and it is therefore a kind of precious flower :0) ...I'm not really sure how to explain it for the total amateur but maybe the material in the second paragraph could be used first (whatcha think?) as it is a bit more general and talks about what a deconstruction means etc. Seferin (talk) 10:53, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Would it not be possible to simply paraphrase the quote, or only quote a phrase or two? Or to start the section a bit more generally still? For example, start out by stating that Derrida attempts to shake philosophical foundations, etc. You're right that it doesn't need to be fully comprehended by an amateur - it's too complex - but there are ways of making the sentences less difficult to read. The present quote isn't even grammatical: when we ellipse the qualifiers in the first part we end up with "To 'deconstruct' philosophy would be to think the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts". That's not even a sentence. :) - snookerfran ^(talk) 12:21, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I've rearranged the two paragraphs in the theory section to try and make it a softer introduction to the topic for non-technical readers. I 100% agree that the sentences need to be less difficult to read but I need to come back to this section later with fresh eyes in order to see exactly where the redundancies can be omitted and sentences shortened. You seem to have a keener eye for copy editing than me so why don't you give it a go? I know that its contrary to academic standards but maybe we could just remove the ellipses from the quotation and indicate that the quotation is edited in the footnote? "To 'deconstruct' philosophy would be to think the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts" could perhaps be paraphrased as "To deconstruct philosophy is to think carefully within philosophy about philosophical concepts in terms of their structure and genesis." The next part of the quotation is harder to paraphrase. Maybe: "To deconstruct philosophy is to think carefully within philosophy about philosophical concepts in terms of their structure and genesis. Hence deconstruction tries to understand the implications of this history of philosophy as if we could reflect upon it from the outside. Especially the implications of the history of philosophy that have been least obvious because they have controlled the operation of all philosophical thought. Deconstruction operates both faithfully within philosophy and violently tries to escape it to some degree in order to understand it better. Deconstruction does this in order to challenge the basic controlling operation of all philosophical thought: the meaning of being as presence." Such paraphrasing makes me nervous because I worry that it might lose some level of meaning I'm not fully aware of. In Derrida's defense - the quotation is from an interview and he was presumably improvising his explanation to some degree...and its translated from the original French (not by me!). Seferin (talk) 14:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm starting to think that the precursors section could actually be more complicated than the theory section to the amateur as its development continues. Perhaps it should be moved down after the theory section so that people get to the key goods first? I know that this would deviate from an approximately chronological article structure but I can't see an alternative if the precursors section is to be done properly - readers will be like "The limit of Hegelian sublation what?" and that wont do :0). Oh, Kant's aporia, critique of pure reason, and a-priori conditions of possibility should be mentioned in the precursors too. Seferin (talk) 15:43, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the delayed reply. Re: the quote, I don't think we can remove the ellipses, even with a footnoted explanation. I'm not sure about putting precursors below theory, either - purely because the good or featured Wiki articles I've seen all use the chronological order, and these are great role models. (If there are good or featured articles that order things differently, then sure.) But I don't think it matters that the history section (or any section) becomes terribly complex if that's unavoidable. The important thing is that each section starts out as simply as possible and builds up to that complexity, so that people can stop reading when they've had enough. In the history case this is simple and it's already in effect. The section starts with an easy-to-read list and then goes on into more detail.

Finally, I'd be willing to have a go at copy-editing, but since I'm neither experienced in WP copy-editing nor well-versed in deconstruction, I'd do more harm than good. However, there's a list of copy-editors at peer review and articles needing a copy-edit, so we could maybe pull in someone from there. - snookerfran ^(talk) 14:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Good point - I agree that its probably best to stick to the chronological order. If readers want to skip a section then that's what the links in the contents box are for. I'm trying to finish a paper and then I'm away for a bit so I'm not going to be able to do much else for a few weeks. It's a good idea for you to see if we can get help copy editing the page. Take care in the mean time. Seferin (talk) 15:34, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

No, don't stick to chronological order. If you do that, then making any sense out of the article will probably require reading it out of order. For someone to grasp "how deconstruction got this way", they first have to know what "this way" is. The article should progress in the order that best promotes understanding. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 05:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

nerd note

I want to point out, as a geek (and someone who doesn't understand literary criticism a bit) what I think about this article.

Article about deconstruction should, at least in the first few paragraphs, describe, what deconstruction is for those who does not know it. It shouldn't be a paper about deconstruction or discussion about it. BUT - the first three paragraphs, which should include the most important basis of the described thing, is written what desconstruction is not (i don't care what it's NOT!) and describing it all in some strange words I don't understand.

Just give a quick note at the beginning of the article to say, what deconstruction is - if someone can say it. If it's something that cannot be described as such, I don't know if it deserves an article :P --89.24.72.230 (talk) 14:06, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I once heard a philosophy grad student discuss, for an hour, whether meanings existed. At the end of it, someone raised their hand and asked him what he meant by "exists." Before he could answer, someone added that they weren't sure what he meant by "meaning." He answered with a quote from Quine (I think, or it might have been Hume, I've forgotten)... something like: "our argument is not circular. Rather, its approximate form is that of a closed curve in space."

The problem isn't that no one has defined deconstruction in this article, it's that no one has ever defined it at all (successfully), leaving no one with much of anything constructive to say. I suspect that, much like the philosophy of language, the entire field of deconstructionism is one gigantic logical fallacy, shrouded in the mists of increasingly obtuse terminology designed specifically to avoid the realization that everything its practitioners have ever done (usually with the best of intentions) has been undermined by faulty assumptions.

That said, I don't really understand deconstruction any better than I understand quantum computing or astrobiology, so who am I to pass judgment. 71.81.78.66 (talk) 23:56, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

You'll note that this page is for planning the wikipedia article explaining deconstruction not for debating the merits of the topic itself...but having said that I would like to respond on one point. Derrida's work emphasises the importance of the involvement of language when we are doing philosophy but language (and meaning and knowledge) are fundamentally metaphysical for Derrida. This is because they involve an appeal to a presence beyond themselves and are therefore tied up with questions of being and the basic transcendentalism of metaphysical thought. I'd therefore argue that Derrida is not operating in some kind of linguistic bubble constructed in false assumption, through circularity, as you suggest. Derrida's philosophy works intimately with questions of the real and of meaning and obviously operates with this concepts even while problematising them because (as you seem to imply) it would be difficult to philosophise or even write without these terms implicitly operating to a greater or lesser degree. If Derrida's questioning appears to denigrate the terms "real" and "meaning" more than you are comfortable with then this denigration as you see it does not originate with Derrida but with Husserl's phenomenology - where it is argued quite convincingly and, dare I say it, in an exceedingly analytic manner that all we know of the real and meaning is derived from our conscious experience...it is therefore the assumption of the supposed externality of the external world that one should reject first. If you are interested in logical fallacies then you could derive great enjoyment from Derrida's demonstrations of the aporia in pure philosophical thought (such as that in the purest of transcendental philosophical thought, that of an objective external world) but once again this manner of thinking does not originate with Derrida but with Kant - remember that Kant's text is titled the "Critique of Pure Reason". Seferin (talk) 10:42, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Say what? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 15:34, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

So try harder. Seferin (talk) 17:23, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for being a bit flip. I guess we just have different outlooks: my approach to writing is that the burden is on the writer to express himself clearly and concisely, rather than being on the reader to decipher sesquipedalian prolixity. Deconstruct that. ;-) Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry - but obviously it is easier to express yourself clearly when all you want to say is "The toast is on the table" as against trying to indicate to someone how they are subtly confused on a difficult topic. Not being able to understand the clarification could be considered part of their initial confusion and not necessarily part of my attempt to clarify the matter with limited space and time. If they already understood the clarification then they would not have been confused so some work is always required. My basic strategy was to demonstrate how much Derrida shares the concerns raised by 71.81.78.66 and indicate how the implied criticism of Derrida can actually be pinned on his predecessors Husserl and Kant (thinkers that no one ever derides as bullshit despite advocating some of the positions that are attributed to Derrida in the first place and the technical difficulty of their philosophical prose). [btw - love the thesaurus! I had to google "sesquipedalian" and "prolixity". So sometimes work is required to understand other people and our desire not to be confused is all that is required to take some responsibility for overcoming our confusion :0P ] Seferin (talk) 16:10, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

well, I have to admit I had to read your comment several times and I still don't understand it. Well, you are trying to say, that instead of cycling arguments, deconstruction somehow escape this cycle. Is this, what that term, deconstruction, mean? Or is it only a way to escape this cycle?

remember, I wrote, that I know nothing about this subject - and that's what encyclopedia should be for - to explain the term to me. There are many articles about nearly-undefinable terms. All I want to know is what deconstruction means, that means for example, what new it brings to philosophy.

it can use philosophic terms, but these should be explained - or linked to another article. Let's look at, for example, article Leaf node - it's explained in terms of CompSci, but these are all linked and explained elsewhere. .... I hope you get my point :) --89.24.72.230 (talk) 17:23, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry 89.24.72.230, I was replying to 71.81.78.66 rather than yourself. I'm sorry if you don't understand some of the words being used to explain deconstruction. I would love to be able to link to other articles that could explain the explanatory terminology itself that is being used on the deconstruction page but unfortunately a lot of those articles don't seem to exist yet. The page on structuralism might sound promising but it doesn't really help because Derrida refers to a structural mode of description in Husserl's philosophy that doesn't have its own article. Similarly there does not appear to be a page to explain what origin means in a technical philosophical sense that could be related to Derrida's use the term. I've linked to related terms like hermeneutics and immanent critique but these can't actually be expected to explain deconstruction merely by association. Perhaps one of the biggest problems is the lack of a page on the phenomenological reduction. Perhaps wikipedia is just stronger on CompSci pages at the moment than it is on continental philosophy?

Now it is complicated, but there is actually a serious amount of explanation on the page at this stage. Though maybe it can't be figured out without learning to philosophise at least a little bit. For example: Try asking yourself what is meant by methodology in the sense Derrida means when he states "deconstruction is not a methodology" and try to figure out what kind of methodology is leftover without that sense of methodology that Derrida rejects. If you can realise what Beardsworth means when he describes "a procedural form of judgement" and how that might be a problem then you have been prompted by deconstruction to think much more deeply about a fundamental tool of philosophy and your own interest of computer programming! (Since procedural judgement is the only kind of judgement that a computer programme can use) You will then have started to grasp some aspect of the significance of what deconstruction means. Figure it out in little bits at a time. I have barely a clue how deconstruction is related to Lacanian psychoanalysis because I've never read Lacan but I've a pretty clear idea of how it relates to Husserl's phenomenology...you don't have to understand absolutely everything all at once to get a sense of what the term deconstruction means and once you start to figure parts of it out you realise how exciting it is to begin thinking through the kinds of question it raises. Seferin (talk) 23:49, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Isn't this article and the discussion just a perfect example of the confusion that arises from deconstruction? The fact that it seems so difficult to even give a simple definition is crazy. Reading the article, I'm wondering if a true article on it would require multiple sections, side by side, lifting up opposing interpretations of each point of deconstruction. Of course you can't give a definition of it, if you could, a deconstructionist would show up and deconstruct it. Continental philosophy always gave me a headache - just seems like a moving target. Complex things are very hard to explain, but I do wonder, if you can't at least define something simply, do you really understand it? Maybe some of the folks trying to write this article should leave it to those who actually know what they're talking about. 12:12 5 January 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.82.215.197 (talk) 17:13, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Clarity

The lead of the article currently says: "In response Derrida clarified the situation by clearly stating what deconstruction is not."

I think that I and the writer of that sentence have very different ideas of what "clarified" and "clearly" mean. That sentence basically promotes the point of view that the issues surrounding deconstruction are "clear" and that any lack of understanding is the reader's fault. To make it neutral, I suggest changing it to: "In response, Derrida stated what deconstruction is not." rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 05:50, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Derrida's negative descriptions are clear in the sense that they represent a fairly direct thematic discussion of deconstruction designed to correct misconceptions surrounding the term. Derrida states that he is explaining "what deconstruction is not, or rather ought not to be". Derrida therefore considers the negative descriptions a clarification of how the term deconstruction has been critically received (for example by the Yale School). Derrida's clarifications do clear up the meaning of the term within this context of professional philosophers and critics working with the term deconstruction when Derrida's work was just being translated from the original French. It does however operate upon some kind of prior [mis]understanding of the term that is assumed to be in place (i.e. that the relevant texts have actually been read in the first place). It is clear in the sense of a clear clarification but it's not clear in the sense of a clear explanation for someone completely unfamiliar with the area.

The allegation that it is partisan to suggest that "the issues surrounding deconstruction are "clear" and that any lack of understanding is the reader's fault" is necessarily somewhat partisan itself because it implies that this is actually not the case and that deconstruction is by implication some kind of nonsense. The article should be NPOV and that means that we should try to avoid prejudice concerning the subject matter - such as falsely inferring from incomprehension that the subject matter is nonsensical (i.e. a failure to explain maths or poetry to a student does not mean that the equations or poems in question are nonsensical, merely that they have not been understood). I suggest rewriting the sentence as "In response, Derrida attempts to clarify the situation by stating explicitly what deconstruction is not." That should cover it. Seferin (talk) 16:47, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Rspeer, you reinstated the header tags for cleanup and confusion when some other editor had taken them out. Perhaps you can suggest some of the actual points of confusion so that one might try to solve them. Seferin (talk) 22:46, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, the article still contains sentences like this (this is from the Husserl section):

Derrida refers to this tension between the incompatible but equally necessary demands of origin and structure as the "structural problematic" and it is within this tension that deconstruction operates - raising questions of origin when confronted with structures and questions of structure when confronted with origins.

Who does what now? For all the verbs and nominalized verbs in that sentence, there are only two subjects, and one of them ("deconstruction") nobody knows what the hell it is anyway. When you dig through all the passives you find that apparently origins and structure, whatever they are, are in some sort of tension with each other. Should I look backward for clarification? No, that's just a lengthy account of who wrote what that also uses the word "genetic" in a quite perplexing way. Should I look forward? Nope, then there's a hideously unclear quote from Derrida where he seems to be chiding Husserl for not accepting "an eternal truth created by an infinite reason". Or maybe he's doing the opposite, but you can't tell if it's in a positive or negative context because there's an ellipsis in between.

I found all this in one paragraph. This is clearly not the only problematic paragraph. It would take an incapacitating lack of perspective to think that the article is now clear.

I understand the urge to blame the reader for not understanding -- it's easier than successfully explaining things, after all. It seems to be a widely-used strategy in literary criticism. But you can't make a good Wikipedia article by blaming the reader. When you say passively that the concepts "have not been understood", you're omitting whose job it is to make those concepts understood.

Finally and somewhat unrelatedly, NPOV is not "sympathetic point of view"; an NPOV article should not ignore the widespread belief that deconstruction is nonsense, and it certainly should not dismiss thinkers who say so as "somewhat mistaken" as it does now. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 05:07, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey Rspeer, thanks for indicating some points needing clarification in the Husserl section. It would be helpful to indicate other points needing clarification elsewhere.

You seem to be slightly confused in the first passage you quote by Derrida's seemingly odd personification of deconstruction as an agent that does things. I agree that to ascribe actions to what appears to be an abstract noun is generally considered poor grammar. The guidelines of good grammar are therefore perhaps more suited to describing everyday situations in which people are said to do things not abstract nouns! Let me assure you however that Derrida's ascription of powers of action to terms like deconstruction and differance is theoretically deliberate. It is not really that uncommon either - people often use phrases like "love conquers all" or "time changes everything" and what is meant in this cases is well understood despite the slightly unusual grammatical construction.

To understand why Derrida deliberately employs this slightly odd mode of description just consider what would happen if this was not the case. If a person is said to be the agency of deconstruction, if it was correct to say that "I deconstruct the text", then the deconstruction could be easily dismissed as trivial. Critics could say "You just go looking for contradictions in the text and look so hard that you actually create them! Your deconstruction is not important to people that really care for the philosophy you refer to." For Derrida deconstruction happens to a text because it is always the illustration of problems that were already there in the text. It is for this reason that the deconstruction of a text is not the trivial whim of some prankster but the illustration of real problems that are simply made more obvious to other people. This is why Derrida states that deconstruction is "always already" in the text. For Derrida the text is pregnant with the possibility of deconstruction and the philosopher that produces the deconstruction is a kind of midwife that just helps bring it forth. Deconstruction is very much a work of communication and of neutral description. This emphasis on the neutrality of description is derived from Husserl's insistence on the neutral description of the phenomena of conscious experience in phenomenology rather than the explanation of phenomena that always risks prejudice. I'm not sure whether it would necessarily improve the clarity of the section by inserting this lengthy explanation of a point upon which there could be confusion. If I was writing a paper I'd put it in a footnote. I'll see what I can do for the article to clear this point up but I don't think that its necessarily a good idea to clutter up the theory section further with another subheading and I do not believe it is possible to pre-empt all possible confusion in the introductory paragraph to the theory section.

It is actually much easier to qualify the latter point of confusion. Derrida is admiring Husserl and taking on his argument as a model for deconstruction when he notes that Husserl refuses to accept structures as "an eternal truth created by an infinite reason". Personally I thought that this was clear from the previous material of the paragraph but it can be clarified easily in the article. People like specific examples when they're confused by the abstract argument so this is straightforward - Husserl will not allow the structure of the mathematical system to be considered an eternal truth created by an infinite reason (there is always a history of how this structure originated) and this type of argument influences Derrida's deconstruction.

I'm not sure what you mean by asserting that "one of them ("deconstruction") nobody knows what the hell it is anyway". Are you making an empirical assertion? Do you want me to simply state that I understand deconstruction or point to someone more famous like Geoffrey Bennington that can more authoritatively be said to understand deconstruction? The idea that no one understands deconstruction is a myth promulgated by people who don't. It's not a matter of blaming the failures of the reader for all misunderstanding of the topic but a matter of pointing out that to expect passive learning in the area is to expect too much. Coming to understand deconstruction isn't infotainment. No one is watching Fox News when they read this article. They're trying to understand a difficult twentieth century philosophy that is heavily based in previous, equally technical, philosophies while carefully challenging some of the most commonly accepted intellectual practices of methodology, analysis, and critique. I'm patiently putting a lot of effort into explaining deconstruction in the article and on this talk page. Taking this honest and voluntary effort into account I am most certainly not responsible for what other people don't know in this area or others and it is unreasonable to imply that there is some kind of conspiracy of nonsense at work.

You're right that a NPOV is not necessarily sympathetic to the subject matter of an article but that doesn't mean that it's a vox pop either. There is the outline of a lengthy criticism section and I've already fleshed out the Foucault section considerably. I'll get round to the section on Habermas soon but if you look at the section on Derrida and Habermas on the Jurgen Habermas page you will note that misunderstanding did largely characterise their disagreement. Having said that I don't have a problem with your NPOV'ing edit until the details of the disagreement can be fleshed out. Seferin (talk) 10:50, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

undoing the oppositions?

The lede doesn't even make sense to a fairly educated person (me). What does "undoing the oppositions" even mean?

Seriously, this article needs to be cleaned up or cut back to a stub. Having an article that is unreadable by the common man is NOT the point of wikipedia. 141.212.111.116 (talk) 13:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I've thought a bit about what makes this article such a failure to communicate. Sure, it's a difficult topic to talk about, but that's not really the problem. The problem is the mistaken idea that to write about a topic such as this you need to write within it.

There's this common gag on Uncyclopedia (which parodies Wikipedia), where articles are written entirely from the perspective of the topic they're ostensibly about. For example, the introduction to Uncyclopedia:Apathy states "Just figure it out for yourself, or not. It doesn't matter." Uncyclopedia:Fourth Wall spends the entire time talking about "you", and Uncyclopedia:All of the Above is written as if it were a multiple-choice test. Hopefully the idea gets across that this is not a way to write an encyclopedia article.

But in this article, you see the same thing. It avoids making statements about deconstruction that would undermine themselves if someone were to come along and deconstruct them. It shies away from definitions and treats words as having mutable meanings, because that's the way everything appears to work in deconstruction. The main players like Derrida wouldn't define deconstruction, because "Derrida believes that the term deconstruction is necessarily complicated and difficult to explain since it actively criticises the very language needed to explain it."

But why do we, writing an encyclopedia article, care if "deconstruction criticizes" (there's that unspecified agent again) the language we use to explain it? If someone deconstructs a statement about deconstruction, why does it matter? This should be about as relevant to us as whether the Académie Française objects that our Académie française article is in English. Maybe Derrida is stuck inside the box he created, but we don't need to rely entirely on him.

The article briefly mentions secondary sources such as "Deconstruction for Beginners". I think that we need to rely much more on these secondary sources, because they don't have their meaning obfuscated by trying to fit themselves into the philosophy. Wikipedia is a tertiary source, and it works best when it provides an overview of secondary sources, not primary ones. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 15:46, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm getting the impression that the only people who actually understand deconstruction have been so scarred by the very concept that they're unable to write intelligibly about it. But yes, I agree. This article doesn't need to stand up to deconstructive criticism, it just needs to explain the concept to laypeople. Take a look at Britannica's article on Deconstrution. Just the first sentence already gives a clear idea of what deconstruction is about. After reading the entire thing, I still don't understand deconstruction, but at least it doesn't feel like it's trying to eat my brain. 80.101.36.43 (talk) 10:23, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

There is very little doubt that the above comment by 141.212.111.116 is in fact by a particular user who has a problem with that sentence and who has again deleted it. Presumably that person wanted to give a greater appearance of support for his or her position. I am the author of that sentence, and I continue to believe it is a perfectly good sentence and one necessary to the article. It is clear, however, that one particular editor is determined to excise it, and as its author I am not going to engage in any further campaign for its inclusion. A great problem for this particular Wikipedia article is that it attracts editors who have no knowledge or or even interest in the topic, but who nevertheless are very keen to exert their influence on the article. This is unfortunate. Until editors who actually care about the article learn to collectively resist these kinds of editors, it will be very difficult for the article to escape the parlous condition in which it finds itself (although I should add there has been quite some improvement in the last couple of months). Good luck to those genuinely interested in creating a good article on this topic. Mtevfrog (talk) 21:34, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

First of all, was any of that a response to me?

I'm going to have to agree with 141 and Jefffire (and I see no reason to believe they're the same person). "Undoing the oppositions on which it is founded"? Is that supposed to make sense to anyone? Is this a jargon use of the word "oppositions", or was it supposed to say something like "Undoing the positions on which it is founded"? rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 00:35, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

To Rspeer: I wasn't referring to you. I don't know anything about your knowledge of or interest in this topic. I look forward to the accurate, helpful, informative and encyclopedic version of this article that you help to write. Mtevfrog (talk) 02:52, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Derrida bias creeping in

As the article expands, I'm seeing more sentences that inherently assume that Derrida's views are correct and others are incorrect. For example, The Inoperative Community is described as "undeconstructable and therefore suitable for a philosophy after Derrida." This presupposes that philosophies that do not account for and avoid deconstruction are no longer "suitable".

There's also the sweeping statement that "By refusing to define deconstruction positively Derrida preserves the infinite possibility of deconstruction, the possibility for the deconstruction of everything." ...Or the possibility for the deconstruction of nothing, if you insist that words should mean things. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 04:44, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Rspeer, I don't think that the aspects of the article to which you refer can be properly understood as biases. In order to explain the material you have to explain how the arguments work and what the significance of those arguments is for Derrida. This isn't bias - its explanation. To place the burden of proof on Derrida (or on other thinkers like Nancy working with some of Derrida's philosophical terms) while trying to explain deconstruction is not the role of this wikipedia article. The point is to familiarise readers with some key aspects of deconstruction not to evaluate whether deconstruction is true or false, right or wrong. Such a decision is not ours to make and the point is surely that the reader can come to their own conclusions.

There is space for criticising deconstruction in the "Criticisms of Deconstruction" section and all meaningful criticism can be placed here to aide the reader coming to their own conclusion concerning the merit of the material. You can't prevent people taking deconstruction seriously - or conversely, taking the criticism of deconstruction seriously - through the medium of wikipedia. You certainly can't prevent Nancy's book from taking deconstruction seriously or wikipedians for reporting that he does. If you have a bone to pick with deconstruction then try putting some work into the "Criticism of Deconstruction" section by, for example, figuring out how to better explain exactly what John Searle's criticism of deconstruction is.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the statement "...Or the possibility for the deconstruction of nothing, if you insist that words should mean things." Are you under the misapprehension that deconstruction implies words mean nothing? Let me assure you that this is not the case. Derrida's theory of language effectively proposes an alternative theory of meaning not the absence of meaning. What Derrida denies is a straightforward theory of intentional meaning or the ability of the language user to make language mean exactly what they want it to mean. Meaning for Derrida is what is negotiated by the language user and the philosopher alike.Seferin (talk) 16:18, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't saying that deconstruction implies words don't mean things. I was referring to one particular word, which is "deconstruction", which this article is about. Derrida considered it a bad idea to say what deconstruction is (because an attempt to define it would be deconstructible, and I don't follow the logic here, but apparently that makes it bad). So he only says what it isn't. The article goes on to claim that refusing to define deconstruction "preserves the possibility for the deconstruction of everything", as if defining it would weaken it somehow. I was saying that because words mean things, you can't deconstruct anything unless deconstruction has a definition. If anyone can be said to deconstruct anything, it is because they know what they are doing when they deconstruct something.

This aversion to definitions is what I object to. It's apparently widespread among people who understand deconstruction, but such an aversion doesn't belong on Wikipedia, whose goal is to make information accessible to more people. So the "bias" I'm referring to isn't about whether deconstruction is "good or bad", it's about whether it should be defined or not. I'm not asking for a "burden of proof" from Derrida at the expense of explanation, like you say. Quite contrarily, I'm asking for more explanation, from a larger variety of secondary sources that can hopefully do a better job of grounding the term "deconstruction" in meaning.

My proposal (unless someone has a better one) would be to use definitions from such sources as Deconstruction for Beginners -- even though the article currently haughtily dismisses them as "problematic" with the uncited assertion that they are "academically criticized". These sources are likely to have the most straightforward definitions, and as long as the more "authoritative" sources are silent, the "problematic" sources are what we have to rely on.

(I have seen an issue like this from the other side, by the way. I am familiar with the area of voting theory, where a considerable amount of current research is unpublished. There are also some published pop-science books on voting theory, which promote ways of understanding voting theory that don't really hold up in the face of the current unpublished arguments. When working on such articles, I have accepted the fact that they will contain some explanations I don't think are entirely correct, which are sourced to the pop-science books, because at least it's a source. Meanwhile, I also try to present what I believe is the current understanding through its much rarer sources.) rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 04:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

This article needs clarity.

This article needs to be simplified. Consider writing at least the introduction and outline on a newspaper reading level and then proceed to the more complicated subjects in a systematic way. Outline the major tenets of the philosophy. There is no reason to use complicated wordage or obscure terminology when simple descriptions will suffice. Start by identifying what deconstructionism is rather than what it is not. If deconstructionism is a way to examine a piece of literary work and identify the bias and assumptions inherent in it, then explain in steps how that process is done. If the editors have a sincere desire to impart knowledge rather than to obscure a concept for the appearance of profundity, then a simplified explanation shouldn't be too hard. 74.131.134.143 (talk) 21:01, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

---

People repeatedly have commented that this article is confusing, self-contradictory and bad. I'll reiterate that and give an example:

Husserl's understanding of the necessity and problems associated with the demands for both genetic and structural description is the topic of Derrida's very early essay "'Genesis and Structure' and Phenomenology" and key to understanding the development of deconstruction.

That sentence is 38 words long and has ONE ACTIVE VERB, and that verb happens to be "IS." I know what the words themselves are supposed to mean as they're ordered now only because I'm familiar with the material. To a general audience, if the sentence were written well (with some active verbs, a coherent flow of dependent and independent clauses, etc.) it would only communicate something along the lines of:

In his work, Husserl talks about how genetic and structural description [of something] is both necessary for [some purpose] and how there are [some particular] problems with describing [something in particular] that way as well. Derrida wrote a very early essay titled "Genesis and Structure' and Phenomenology"on Husserl's work on this subject and that essay is important if one wants to understand deconstructionism. "

Given how vague that is, and that there are no wikified links, what the sentence communicates to an average reader is: Derrida wrote a very early essay titled "Genesis and Structure' and Phenomenology"on Husserl's work and it helps one understand deconstructionism.

Let's just stipulate that by editing this article, you want to communicate the things you know to people who don't know about them. You need to make sure you're actually saying something instead of just giving the vague impression you've said something deep to people who don't know enough to appreciate it. And that the subject is "complicated" or "hard to explain" can not justify just doing a really bad job. This is an encyclopedia article, not an excuse to pontificate.

Use short sentences with clear subjects and active verbs. When you refer to other authors, works, "big" ideas or jargon, provide links. If there's a big idea that needs context, explanation, or expansion, stub it out to another article and work on it there. Ossicle (talk) 14:04, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I think some of these criticisms are a bit unfair. Deconstruction is not a topic that the average reader will be able to jump into without a clear understanding of previous genres of philosophy and literary criticism, and thus it would be particularly tough to provide all the context necessary for the average Joe to catch without following twenty links. I agree that some of the sentences could be shortened and more links provided, but let us not forget what it is we are dealing with here. I will put this on my list of articles to work on, but be nice to the editors who have given this topic much work. It is a good article despite its flaws, and if editors have questions or need clarity on specific areas of the text, I would suggest asking those questions one by one and letting others answer them then find a way to clarify in the article itself. Mrathel (talk) 16:00, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

The article doesn't have to explain deconstruction in full detail, but it should give a layperson a good idea of what deconstruction is really about. So far, it just feels like this article is trying to eat my brain, and it's less than useless. Following twenty links is fine. Following twenty links is what wikipedia is all about. If understanding of a certain concept depends on the understanding of some other concept, then say so, provide a link, and after that link explain how it depends on the other concept. You can't assume that a reader has a strong foundation in literary criticism. In fact, you should assume he doesn't, and he's reading this article because he ran into the word deconstruction and wants to know what it means. An encyclopedia article needs to be a starting point for a layperson, not the definitive text on the subject. Start by a simple, short definition of what deconstruction is, or what it's about. If there is no such definition, then be honest and start out by saying that it is undefined, yet bandied about in discussions of a certain type. 80.101.36.43 (talk) 10:39, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you. But it is one thing to provide a clear lead with a simple definition of the term and its general use, and it is entirely another to have an entire article that attempts to give an overview of a complicated matter in a way that is easily understood by someone with little grounds in the subject. I am looking into it myself, and will probably get around to making some major changes this weekend that should help. I guess my point is that with such a term, putting it into clear context for the average reader will take a skill far beyond what many of us possess. Just as it is sometimes harder to write a short poem than a longer one, it is also much harder to describe a complex philosohy without being complex. I am just asking that we be a bit nicer to those who have tried so hard in the past :) Mrathel (talk) 13:33, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd be a bit more understanding, and thus use a somewhat less harsh tone, if the article were actually comprehensible or marginally readable. But it's not. Instead, it's terrible. And it's been that way for a long, long time.

And, again, saying it's hard or too complicated isn't any excuse for just doing a very poor job.

In an encyclopedia, the entry on "Deconstruction" isn't special in any way: it's not any more or less "complex," nor any more "context-dependent," nor any more "meaningful," nor any more "hard to explain" than the entry on "Petroleum." It's just an encyclopedia article, so write in a manner fitted to that purpose.

Use short sentences with clear subjects and active verbs. When you refer to other authors, works, "big" ideas or jargon, provide links. If there's a "big idea" that needs context, explanation, or expansion, stub it out to another article and work on it there.

Other articles on Wikipedia generally aren't just agglomerated nominalized vaguenesses. They say something in particular. They say it in clear, easy to understand language. They do so even if they happen to be talking about complicated subject matter. So, how about let's try to do that here, for a change?Ossicle (talk) 23:28, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I've come back to this article after leaving it alone for several months, to find that it has not improved one bit, even though the "cleanup" and "confusing" tags were silently removed by an anonymous editor and nobody has put them back. The net change in this article over a year and a half is that some paragraphs of pointless obscurantism have been replaced by others.

I'm going to put back the "confusing" tag; I'm pretty sure nobody could say with a straight face that this article has actually become informative. rspεεr (talk) 03:14, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Halfbred Native American author (US- pomo tribe)

So G. Vizenor is a Native American. Pedants might wish to add halfbred to complete this kind of essentialist description. It is also true, the backcovers have it written upon their very self. And this self does not bare deconstructive practices? That is what identity-politics does for you. But, it is nice to see that all this french deconstructive nonsense is not taken seriously by the authors and readers of the article. Still, Deconstruction seems to be a great successs, as the W. list of people influenced by it shows. Too bad the cute red bibles mutated into all those XXXL-sized Derridaean tomes.--Radh (talk) 08:38, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

History

The first sentence doesn't appear to make sense. Can anybody explain it? Rumiton (talk) 12:37, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

The point with deconstruction seems to be, that every statement/proposition, any "sense" hidden anywhere really --"dialectically" one would have said in the previously dominating school of philosophical romanticism, has or shows its own "non-sense", in fact expresses this negative space better and stronger than the text usually (trivially) understood. The plain sense expressed expressis verbis is boring or false, the de-constructed sense is IT.--Radh (talk) 17:41, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

aporia(gordian knot;juggernaut?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rommelram1lovr2 (talk • contribs) 14:10, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Current specific problems that must be resolved

Here is a small sample of the major issues the article has. Many of these I have brought up before, to no response.

The word "différance" is used extensively, but its initial definition in the article is nonsensical: "Crucial to Derrida's work is the concept of différance, a complex term which refers to the process of the production of difference and deferral. According to Derrida, all difference and all presence arise from the operation of différance." What exactly is being "deferred" here, or is the term "deferral" being used with a different meaning than its meaning in English? Isn't it a wild exaggeration to say that anything in literary criticism could account for "all difference and all presence", which would seem to require a physical Theory of Everything?

The text continues to say, without any sort of support from a source, that introductory texts on deconstruction such as Deconstruction for Beginners and Deconstruction: A User's Guide are "particularly problematic" because they are "academically criticized". This entire paragraph seems to consitute someone's opinion.

There is still a remarkable Derrida-centric bias, as I noted above to no satisfactory response. Consider the statement that The Inoperative Community is "undeconstructable and therefore suitable for a philosophy after Derrida". This implies that (a) it is possible to assert with confidence that something is "undeconstructable", (b) it is important and good for something to be undeconstructable, and (c) now that there's Derrida, any philosophy that doesn't take deconstruction into account is unsuitable.

The tag on the criticism section highlights this as well. Critical responses to deconstruction are condensed into a ghetto at the bottom of the article; the first 2/3 of the article act as if deconstruction were a universally respected idea.

But meanwhile, even the criticism section baffles 'em with bullshit: "Foucault's mention of 'crossings-outs' refers to the return to problematic terms under erasure (see the section on Derrida's negative descriptions of deconstruction). Foucault also alludes critically to the problematisation of presence in deconstruction as a reading of what isn't there in the text." Does that mean something, and if so, what?

Finally, the article has an unsustainable reliance on primary sources. Wikipedia is a tertiary source; its job is to compile the current understanding of a topic and explain it, not to create that understanding out of original research. Given that our job is to explain the basics of deconstruction to people who are not already familiar with them, why aren't we referencing secondary sources that aim to do exactly that, such as the "for beginners" books mentioned above? Is it just because one editor thinks they're wrong? Why, instead, are we constantly referencing Derrida? Given how many academics have failed at explaining Derrida, doesn't it constitute original research to attempt to go straight from Derrida to an explanation with no sources in between?

rspεεr (talk) 03:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Here's an update on my attempt to pin down an introductory definition in a secondary source. I found "Deconstruction: A User's Guide" on Google Books, and it's certainly not going to help as a secondary source. The entire first chapter is a struggle with the definition of deconstruction, which endorses without justification the idea that it's hugely important even though it doesn't mean anything in particular, and eventually settles on this definition:

deconstruction n. not what you think: the experience of the impossible: what remains to be thought: a logic of destabilization always already on the move in 'things themselves': what makes every identity at once itself and different from itself: a logic of spectrality: a theoretical and practical parasitism or virology: what is happening today in what is called society, politics, diplomacy, economics, historical reality, and so on: the opening of the future itself.

So much for that as a source. This author fell into the Uncyclopedia cliche -- that is, writing about a subject in the style of its subject -- as swiftly as Wikipedia did. I think we may have to rely largely on sources from linguists, scientists, and all the non-literary-critics who look at "deconstruction" from the outside, because they're the only ones willing to say something meaningful (and yes, what they say is typically negative). Those who write about deconstruction from within the field seem to be terrified of anything with an actual meaning, lest Zombie Derrida jump out from behind it and deconstruct them. They can't talk about the game without playing it. I'd be happy to see a counterexample, though. rspεεr (talk) 22:22, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Just a few comments on the above:

• I think the article's discussion of différance is pretty good, though maybe could use some stylistic changes, and the first quote is a little awkward. To answer your question, what is being "deferred" is meaning itself. All Derrida was saying is that when you try to point to something and identify its meaning, you are pointing in the wrong place, because that meaning is elsewhere within language--separated from it by différance. This also illustrates the operation of presence, because through différance, any presence of meaning is simply an absence in disguise.
• I wouldn't say that deconstruction is a "theory of everything". It's more like a "theory of writing", where writing includes everything.
• The "Derrida-centric bias" is mainly because most writing about deconstruction is actually writing about Derrida's writing. It's not that what Derrida said is the gospel--it's that what Derrida said is the alphabet and grammar for the language of deconstruction. As to the use of secondary sources, actually I think that most of the sources cited here are secondary sources--keep in mind that this also includes Derrida writing secondarily about Derrida. I don't think the primary source references are inappropriate, but to the extent that we can mix in secondary commentary about Derrida's statements too, that would be better.
• I agree there should be more critical material on deconstruction. We probably don't even really need a separate "criticism" section for that, because quite often, criticism of deconstruction is nothing more than agreeing with deconstruction. For example, a lot of people criticize the lack of seriousness and superficiality of deconstructive texts--but that's part of the whole point of deconstruction, to undermine the seriousness and profundity of all texts. So we should be able to cover such criticism all throughout the article wherever it is appropriate. We'll state what Derrida said, and then show how Derrida's opponents vehemently agree. (I'm only half kidding here.)
• As to writing about the subject in the style of the subject, I think it's possible to get away from this to some extent, but there is a limit to how much you can "dumb down" this particular subject matter. You probably wouldn't be able to effectively or accurately discuss a complex mathematical subject such as natural transformation using only simple English, without reference to certain mathematical style, conventions, and mannerisms developed over decades in the field. Deconstruction isn't quite as specialized a field as mathematics, but the same principle applies to at least some extent. As far as it can be done, though, I'm all for it.

COGDEN 12:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the response!

I recognize it's a technical field, but ideally, the reader should have some way of understanding what the article means. In the article on natural transformations, for example, you can follow links to explanations of what a functor and a morphism are, as well as an overview of category theory that introduces natural transformations in context.

But you can't find "différance" defined anywhere else on Wikipedia. And when the only explanation of différance says, for example, that it is the source of "all difference and all presence" -- a wild exaggeration if it's literal, and there's no hint that it might instead be a metaphor or analogy for something, or what it would be referring to if it were -- there is simply no way to proceed. There is some meaning being obscured here (unless what's actually being obscured is a lack of meaning, which would be worse), and such obfuscation doesn't belong in a Wikipedia article.

The Derrida bias I'm referring to is not just that the article focuses on Derrida. This makes perfect sense, given that the subject is so entwined with Derrida. In fact, I have to wonder if the Jacques Derrida article does a better job of describing deconstruction than this article does. No, the bias is that the article presupposes that we should all think of the world in the same way Derrida did, and that we should agree with him about what philosophical approaches are suitable or unsuitable.

And I think there is much more to be done to avoid writing about deconstruction in the style of its subject. Yes, we use mathematical terminology to define a natural transformation -- but we don't use a page with nothing on it but arrows. We refer to many aspects of French culture to describe the Académie française, but we don't have to write the entire article in French. So while it is likely to be necessary to refer to many other aspects of literary theory to describe deconstruction, it shouldn't be necessary to succumb to aimless wordplay that attempts to deconstruct itself or avoid deconstructing itself or whatever. (What makes this difficult is that it seems many secondary sources do succumb to aimless wordplay in describing deconstruction, like the one proposing the definition that began "Deconstruction, n. Not what you think".) rspεεr (talk) 07:51, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Anyone home?

Is there anyone left who cares about this article?

I mean, I care about this article, in the sense that I wish it weren't as bad, but I can't do much for it because it's not at all in my field of knowledge. Is there anybody who has the ability and inclination to address some of the problems with it? rspεεr (talk) 08:20, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

The Emperor Has No Clothes

No one knows what Deconstruction is. Every conversation on Deconstruction is just two people pretending to know what Deconstruction is. More people need to be honest about this. Prominence should be given to the clear critism of Deconstruction as nonsense from academics who are comprehensible, such as Noam Chomsky. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.243.37 (talk • contribs)

Well, if you look above, you'll see a conversation in which I make absolutely no attempt to pretend to know what deconstruction is. :) Chomsky would probably be a good source for this article -- do you have a particular writing by him in mind? rspεεr (talk) 23:19, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Potential vandalism

The do boy initially resisted granting to his approach the overarching name "deconstruction," on the grounds that it was a precise technical term that could not be used to characterise his work generally. Nevertheless, he eventually accepted that the term had come into common use to refer to his textual approach, and Derrida himself increasingly began to use the term in this more general way.

Do boy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.203.48.163 (talk) 23:35, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Folks, I'm kind of an outsider to this whole discussion, but I have valiantly tried to understand what this is all about and have utterly failed. Is this because the term is just indefinable, or is it because the article is just so laden with gobbledygook that only people "in the profession" can figure it out? If it's the latter then this whole thing needs a drastic rewrite, because it's incomprehensible to the average Joe, I suspect deliberately so. Thant’s fine for some English journal, but not for Wikipedia. Andacar (talk) 07:15, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

This article has won the internet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.169.131.14 (talk) 12:01, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Where to put this material

The following was in the section on Criticism in Popular Media but it really doesn't belong there: "Native American novelist Gerald Vizenor claims an extensive debt to deconstructionist ideas in attacking essentialist notions of race." Lawyer2b (talk) 13:48, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Top importance for Literature?

I've just set the assessment to mid importance for the Literature wikiproject. I'm unsure if the importance is actually high as for Philosophy.--Sum (talk) 00:38, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Where are the Binary opposites?

I just took a class in post-structuralism, and we discussed Deconstruction in detail. I tried understanding it before I took the class, and it was impossible.

But what made it possible for me to understand this is the preliminary discussion on Saussurean semiotics and the binary opposition by which semiotic structures work. The concept of binary opposition is crucial in making a definition of Deconstruction. Sadly though,the article doesn't even make mention of it.

What did I learn Deconstruction is, you ask? It's actually very simple.As I digression, let me explain it.

Ferdinand de Saussure, father of Structuralism, declared two things: that signs were composed of "signifiers" (things used to represent, i.e. letters, phonemes, etc.) associated with "signifieds" (concepts of things) and that these signs (on both signifier and signified level) are only part of structures that work in a system of binary opposition: signs convey meaning, and the only way they can be signs and they can mean something is if they are put beside those that are not them and that have meanings other than theirs. That which is not-X defines what X is. "Dog" refers to the animal because 1.) its signifier is "dog" and not "cat" (or any other signifier) and 2.) the signifier "dog" is attached to a signified other than that to which "cat" (or any other signifier) is attached to.

Derrida, in his lecture "Structure, Sign and Play and the Discourse of the Human Sciences" says "the center is not the center, the center is elsewhere." This means that in "dog" the dog is not found, only that which is "not-not dog" ("not dog" being the binary opposite of dog). That the signifier "dog" never completely "associates" itself with the concept of dog is what is called Différance.

Deconstruction happens when you observe that "dog" means "not-not dog," and point out that opposites in fact define each other. Good is only good with evil around (that's John Milton's idea). Men are only men with women around. Speech is only a distinct form of communication with text around. Presence is only presence when we realize that there is absence. This is where Nietzsche comes in: the cause can only be determined with the effect, and contrary to common sense, the former follows the latter. To complete the reversal, "man" is a type of "woman" because it is one with a negative concept attached (a "woman that is not"). What makes it "not an approach" is that it doesn't answer the question it poses ("what then will a sign be outside its structure?") but simply refuses (rather mockingly) to let either side "take control" of the "violent hierarchy." ("woman" defines "man," but "man" defines "woman" too...) It is not at all constructive, hence the name.

For a more thorough introduction, try Raman Selden's Introduction to Literary Theory. He has a section there on this.

I hope that cleared things up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.190.158.58 (talk) 19:27, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, binary opposites ARE mentioned -- but just once -- under "Not poststructuralist." The term is NOT tied to Saussure, however, as it should be. Again, the first big problem here is organization. Let's tackle that first, so we can then triage the whole article. 14.37.201.28 (talk) 17:13, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

intro

the last sentence in the lead paragraph either means nothing because of how it is worded, or means virtually nothing to the general public because of how it is worded. can this be changed by someone who understands the intent of the sentence? Murderbike (talk) 19:28, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

translation

I read the first sentence and decided to go no further with the article. Can the author please arrange for his/her text to be translated into standard English ? Thank you. Pamour (talk) 09:13, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

This article is all a joke. Right?

It's all made up, right? I mean, that gag has been done before. That is, seeing how long a paper of gobbledygook gets taken seriously before it's exposed. Is this one of them? I'm serious.

108.7.8.198 (talk) 22:31, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay okay, I wasn't completely serious. It's just that, for a reader doesn't know that D is a "real" thing, and who doesn't check other sources, and who knows that such gags have been done in the past, the article does have a whiff of the possibility of it being that kind of gag. The very first sentence (before I improved it) seemed like an immediate attempt at misdirection and intimidation, both of which aren't encyclopedic, and both of which are necessary for the gag to work. And so on...

108.7.8.198 (talk) 23:07, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Opening sentence is off topic.

While editing the first sentence for better clarity, I realized that it is not a description of what the thing is but rather an immediate digression into the history of the word.

I beseech anyone who knows the subject better than I do, and who can write simply and clearly, to fix this off-topic-ness in the introduction paragraph.

108.7.8.198 (talk) 23:07, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I just now saw (by scanning this talk page) that this not-describing-what-the-thing-is problem has been a problem since at least August 2008 (two years) - and I thought I was so clever to discover it!  :-)

108.7.8.198 (talk) 02:21, 17 July 2011 (UTC)