Talk:Deconstruction

for older discussion, see Talk:Deconstruction/Archive1 and Talk:Deconstruction/Archive2

This page is here for discussion on what needs to be done to clean up this entry, which is already a lot (which is also to say: more than enough). In accordance with the soapbox policy, please abstain from arguing the general validity of the subject matter, as this page is here to argue nothing more or less than edits to the article, which are currently in need of a guiding program for a rewrite. Buffyg 18:56, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've also moved the article revision immediately preceding my rewrite tag into Deconstruction/Archive1. Buffyg 21:40, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A few coments on the to-do agenda just posted by Buffyg: first, there's an awful lot there, and it's not all of the same priority. Let's concentrate on producing a readable article first, even if limited in scope, and then addressing its shortcomings. Second, it fails to address the major problem with the current article, which is less philosophical than practical -- it is very wordy and syntactically muddy, and needs a thorough copyedit from someone who both understands the topic and is able to write simple Strunk-and-White-style prose. (I hope that neither Buffyg nor COGDEN will take this personally, because their contributions have been full of useful content, but the article's prose is in need of drastic simplification.) Third, and perhaps most importantly, several portions of the to-do list seem to me very close to asking for original research. The article should not "set aside commonplaces" but report them; it should not "argue" the relations of deconstruction to other fields but instead present a summary of others' accounts of those relations; and it should not attempt its own identification of the most "indispensable" sources. Please, let's stick to reporting well-sourced and accepted ideas here; part of the reason the current article is so muddy, it seems to me, is that it attempts to argue for ideas which stray a little too close to original work. -- Rbellin|Talk 20:36, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Brief response: the comment you make about the major revision of the article's cluttered style is exactly why I propose that we need an editor for the re-write. Someone needs to reign in the sort of complicated sentence structures that tend to be my hallmark. Most of the items I've laid out tend to be from what I take the be the strongest secondary literature on deconstruction (e.g. Gasché, Bennington, Spivak) and therefore can be to some extent synthesised rather than originally researched.

I tend to think that wikipedia tends to report a lot of commonplaces without offering critical offsets, which often amounts to encouraging people to swallow them whole and thereafter redeploy them polemically — that's why I think these should at least be shown to contested or at best pedagogical generalisations that ought not be overstated as to their veracity or authority. I also believe that a cogent account of deconstruction's positioning in a disciplinary framework is unavoidable, as any understanding of deconstruction would be severely impaired without it. I will have to admit that, at the end of the day, it is hard to draw out these differences without to some degree adopting a deconstructive perspective, which raises in turn the extent to which deconstruction can be bracketed or otherwise suspended in any robust account of it. So, yes, I recognise that the program statements I've proposed will need POV guidance. Buffyg 21:12, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It's been a while since I read the Derrida article, and I have to say, Buffyg, it's getting to be really good, particularly in its historical context of deconstruction. If we could end up with something like that historical context here, I'd be very pleased. One thing I think we need to end up with in addition to the above list is a good set of examples of deconstruction, and I think some of the best examples of deconstruction are connected to the concepts Derrida explored in relation to his new lexicon of such terms as (différance, trace, écriture, pharmakon, etc.) Of course, I don't think the article should just be a dictionary of Derrida's terminology, the way section 4 now reads, but I think these terms can be framed as good examples of deconstruction, much more so than the example of Derrida's reading of Lévi-Strauss (which now composes section 5). COGDEN 21:33, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty new to Wiki - just feeling my way and looking around - but having been looking at Truth, Discourse (by the way, it's worth noting also the confusion of spelling in Wiki with Discource,) and Foucault could I suggest that a historical approach would also help. 15 years apprenticeship with Foucault and then a falling out over the understanding of text and truth puts deconstruction into a copmprehensible wider context for the general reader. I am also deliberately showing my interest in the work by writing here, though I am not a specialist and may be unreliable with my time and enthusiasm: I simply don't know yet, till I test myself by working collaboratively with others. Jeffrey Newman 09:03, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Definition, etc

As a "civilian", I thought I should chime in. I am an engineer and a modernist, and I suppose I see things from what you would consider a drastically different world view. I think three things should be added to the to-do list:

1. An affirmation that this article should be accessible to the typical reader. I agree with Rbellin that readability is paramount.
2. A concise definition. Even controversial articles like abortion and religion start with such definitions. I seriously doubt that there is anything special about the deconstruction article. If something is truly not-definable, it can't be recognized for study, and thus does not deserve an article. People are recognizing and studying deconstruction and it does merit an article, thus it must have a definition.
3. That the Criticisms of deconstruction section should survive relatively intact. There is no mention of it in the to-do list, so I am curious if it is slated for removal, or is already good and in need of no improvement. Since deconstruction-ist beliefs are uncommon among and resisted by the mainstream, this section is of great importance.

-Casito⇝Talk 03:30, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Umm... exactly what "mainstream" are you referring to? I'd guess about 95% of the population of America has never heard of deconstruction, much less formulated a position on it. Also, can you explain exactly why you don't think the following qualifies as a "concise definition":

"Deconstruction is a strategy of critical analysis closely associated with Jacques Derrida, which aims to expose unquestioned metaphysical assumptions and internal contradictions in philosophical and literary language."

Someone dosn't have to know what something is called in order to dislike it. I suspect that much more than 5% of Americans have had exposure to deconstruction-ist arguements or ideas and form opinions about them, even though they can't identify them as deconstruction. Regarding the definition: The first sentence dosn't even begin to tell the reader what deconstruction is and how to recognize it. 3 paragraphs are needed to tell the reader what it is, after reading through multiple conflicting definitions, editorial comments on both of them, and statement about how the term can't be defined. I am particularly troubled by the sentence "...it is all but impossible to describe deconstruction in a perfectly satisfactory way." Again, anything that has been studied has to be defined. -Casito⇝Talk 18:22, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Also, as far as your quasi-argument about the necesssity of defining things, part of the idea of deconstruction is that definitions are bullshit--that you can never really arrive at and pin down the meaning of a word (in the way that a definition is supposed to). I personally think this idea is slippery, to say the least, because it leads to this sort of weird linguistic nihilism where nothing really means anything, which gets problematic fast since "deconstructionists" are still using language themselves (although Derrida, if you actually read him, tries to get out of this with friendly little "traces" and "cinders"--whatever the hell those are supposed to be). Still, that doesn't necessarilly mean I have the grounds to reject the idea outright.

All I'm really asking here is that you take a moment to consider what decontstruction is/isn't saying, before you return to repeating your assumptions. What's it saying/not-saying? That the transparency of language you and I find so important might be an illusion. If you can get that into your head, even for just a few seconds, you might see why it doesn't make sense here to assume that everything good, decent, and studyable must be definable. Perhaps, nothing is definable.

It's not that definitions are bullshit, or that nothing is definable. A more correct statement would be that all definitions are examples of deconstruction. The root meaning define is the idea that you are finishing something, or bringing it to a finite end. But the minute you "kill" a word by defining it is also the minute you give birth to a new definition. So, the difficulty with defining any word is that a definition is both "the final word", and "the origination" of what is to be defined. Thus, it's not that "nothing is definable", but rather, a definition is kind of like Schroedinger's cat: it's in a state of both life and death. And the word deconstruction is especially difficult to define, because the definition has to reflect the meaning of deconstruction on two levels: (1) it has to say what deconstruction is (or is not), and (2) the definition has to illustrate the definition of deconstruction by example. Any definition of deconstruction that claims to be The Final Word, without acknowledging the irony of that statement, and explaining why it is ironic, is incomplete. COGDEN 21:07, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

Right. Thanks for the much more elloquent and accurate response (although I still think we're saying roughly the same thing... If a definition is always giving "birth to a new definition" etc etc, then definitions in the sense that Casito is thinking of them--as "The Final Word"--are bullshit).

Are definitions imprecise things that require assumptions to me made? Definitely. Does that mean that they are worthless? Definitely not. Consider this analogy: It is impossible to make wrenches the exact size of the bolts they are to turn. Toolmakers don't throw their arms in the air like you have, since they know that a wrench of slightly incorrect size will still work. Similarly, we have designed power-plants, spacecraft, computers, and much more using our imprecise definitions and "nontransparent language" (not to mention lots of other assumptions and approximations). What have these semantic games that postmodernists play given us? The point is that definitions are a pragmatic necessity, and that is why they have their prominence in Wikipedia. -Casito⇝Talk 16:58, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't think anybody is against defining deconstruction, because all writings about deconstruction are an attempt to define it a little more. It's just that there is no such thing as a short definition of deconstruction which is both accurate and easily-understood by someone without the appropriate background in phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, etc. COGDEN 17:18, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your responce. I understand your arguement, and I think that we are finally on the same page. I think I have found a solution to our definition problem: Consider the article Von Kármán vortex street -- it is about a very technical subject in my field, and a precise definition would require a huge amount of background information. While there are other unrelated repeating patterns of swirling vortices in nature, the definition gives a lay-reader enough relevent information to know what the rest of the article is talking about. Furthermore, the word swirling seems redundent to someone who has worked in the field, but it really helps out someone unfamiliar with the concept of a vortex. Lastly, examples are given (visual in this case) that would allow someone to easially identify the phenomonon if observed in nature.

Regarding deconstruction, (I hope I'm not accused of re-inventing the wheel) a concise and correct yet imprecise definition with context clues, followed by a concise example or two would probably be the best way to go. -Casito⇝Talk 19:42, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

In response to Casito about an easy to understand definition. The average person would not understand this definition but 'does' know what deconstruction is. I will give an example of a definition that I believe would be understandable, and fit with the definition of most people who have been exposed to it. (other than deconstructionists themselves) :)

• Deconstruction is attempting to find "hidden meanings" in text which is otherwise quite obvious, many times the meanings are so hidden that the original author would be surprised and dismayed. However, deconstruction's detractors define it as "Making obscure shit up so that you can sound smart when speaking with other people who also make up this sort of shit."

Fascetiously yours,
--Darkfred ^{Talk to me} 17:00, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

• Also just a footnote; Would it be possible to work the phrase "mental masturbation" into the definition somewhere, i think this would make it a lot clearer. Thanks :) --Darkfred ^{Talk to me} 17:03, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

While the tone is less than perfect, I agree that some articles are so far from the mainstream that they need to include a criticism in their definition (eg. Flood geology, holocaust denial). I think that deconstruction verges on that threshold. Perhaps it can only be understood by the layman when crizicized. I'll take a machete to the first few paragraphs with this model in mind.⇝Casito⇝Talk 22:02, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I think there are some good things about these edits. But you've also introduced some inaccuracies. If you have more edits to make, I'm willing to wait until you are done before making changes. For example, I really don't think we should be comparing deconstruction to ad hominem arguments in the first sentence. And you can't really say that deconstruction is far outside the mainstream, while still admitting that there are an "alarming number" of them in academia. COGDEN 02:08, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

The recent edit by Casito mostly looks like POV-pushing to me, as does the overblown rhetorical comparison to Holocaust denial. Problems with it include calling Derrida a "literary critic" rather than a philosopher and the addition of unsourced editorializing on the creeping menace it represents to unnamed "scientists" (see Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words). In response to Darkfred's comments, I'd like to remind all editors once again to work on the article rather than putting forth their opinions about its subject. -- Rbellin|Talk 02:56, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

POV-pushing was not my goal, however I agree with Cogden and Rbellin that certain parts of my edit were probably not as tactful as I could have made them. I have made the suggested changes, and I invite any editor to fix any other parts that were clearly influenced by my modernist point of view. I hope you understand that improving the accessibility of the initial paragraphs was my goal.

• I fixed the article by replacing literary critic with literary critic and philosopher, to parallel the Jacques Derrida page. Since deconstruction relates to both, I think this is quite appropriate.
• I mentioned holocaust denial because it is essentially a case study in the limits of NPOV that has been brought up in numerous discussions, and even has a mention on the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view page itself. I never intended to compare deconstruction itself to holocaust denial, I was only listing references to other articles well known for dealing with minority points of view. I am sorry that my wording was vague.
• Regarding the ad hominem comparison, I was providing a link for readers' reference to a very notable case where something other than the author's argument is criticized. While I added it for the purpose of clarification, in retrospect I can see that it was tainted by my point of view, and I am sorry for not recognizing that while editing.
• Something can be alarming even if it isn't mainstream or common. If a hundred people in the US had smallpox it would be very alarming, but the disease would be far from mainstream or common in a country of 300 million.

⇝Casito⇝Talk 04:39, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

R.M. Bharanitharan

No indication that such a scholar exists as previously cited or that his opinions are notable and competence in the subject matter established. The only result for the last name and linguistics on Google is this article. Broader searches point to such a person studying for a Ph.D. in ESL instruction at Bharathiar Univeristy, Tamilnadu, India, with a further interest in English grammar. Even with a citation, I'm tend to think notability needs to be established. I believe this is intended to be vandalism by way of a subtle hoax. I will note this on Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress page and the talk page of the user who made the edit. Buffyg 19:25, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Re the Sokal Affair

Alan Sokal, and countless other benighted physicists, would be very "relieved" to learn that that which he wrote about quantum gravity was not actually nonsense.

Compare Sokal's text to the nonsense generated by the postmodern generator listed in the article and you'll understand. Did you actually read Sokal's article? It was garbage, sure, but it had to make some sense in order to get published. The stuff coming out of the postmodern generator is true nonsense.--csloat 17:28, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Looney links

• How To Deconstruct Almost Everything by Chip Morningstar
• Deconstructing Deconstructionism, by Robert Locke (2001)

There is nothing to justify the selection of these links. Wikipedia is not a web directory; there is no obligation to include links that purport to be about a particular subject. These links are written by people with no demonstrable understanding of the subject; in fact, these are links by people either complaining that they do not understand deconstruction or documenting that this is the case. Take the following quotations from the Locke essay:

Deconstructionism originally came from France in the ‘70s. It is also known as poststructuralism, but don’t ask what structuralism was, as it was no better. It is based on the proposition that the apparently real world is in fact a vast social construct and that the way to knowledge lies in taking apart in one’s mind this thing society has built. Taken to its logical conclusion, it supposes that there is at the end of the day no actual reality, just a series of appearances stitched together by social constructs into what we all agree to call reality. But not agree voluntarily, for society has (this is the leftist bit) an oppressive structure, so we are pressured to agree to that version of reality which pleases the people in charge. (If you specialize in studying this pressure, you are a member of the Michel Foucault school of deconstructionism.)'

The deconstructionist account differs from the Marxist one in that, while Marx believed that what we think is a product of our role in the economic system, deconstructionism prides itself on recognizing that there are lots of other systems besides economics forcing us to think this way and that. But in practice, it is very easy to write deconstructionist analysis that just harps on the economic angle, so much of deconstructionism is just cultural Marxism. Cultural Marxism (what Tom Wolfe calls Rococo Marxism) is to be distinguished from ordinary Marxism, which is about revolutions and socialism and boring things like that. Cultural Marxism is way too cool for that. It is popular with hip young academics who have read Solzhenitsyn, seen the Berlin Wall come down, like shopping at Crate & Barrel, but still want a philosophy that will distance them from bourgeois society and all those tasteless squares. (The sight of Marxists worrying about tastelessness would have reduced Lenin to a fit of giggles, but that’s another issue.) Cultural Marxism enables one to simultaneously sneer at popular culture, satisfying one’s elitist impulses, while taking a populist attitude towards it, because pop culture isn’t the fault of the populace but of the Big Bad Bourgeoisie, or in a more sophisticated formulation, of the system of which the BBB is the leading element. So Marxism tends to be a toy that deconstructionists pick up and put down at will. (If you emphasize the way in which the system has a mind of its own that is bigger than the BBB who run it, you are a member of the HardtNegri school, as epitomized by their wildly popular new book Empire.)

You may wonder how leftwing all this is, if these people are busy critiquing our consciousness of reality rather than trying to overthrow the state or achieve equality. In fact, some deconstructionists are apolitical, and serious leftists have been known to complain about this. They accuse the deconstructionists of playing abstract intellectual games while there is revolutionary work to be done. Intelligent leftists like Alan Sokal, a cardcarrying Sandalista physicist at New York University, have belligerently attacked deconstructionism because it leads, if taken seriously, to the conclusion that leftism is just another social construct to be deconstructed. It seems leftist to start with, but it eventually devours itself. The deconstructionists ran afoul of him by straying into what can only be described as the literary criticism of physics, an endeavor which ended up making physics as much a rat’s nest of opinion as the most gaseous poetry criticism. He got a parody of deconstructionist analysis, "The Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," published in a deconstructionist magazine, Social Text, without telling them it was a parody just to prove how stupid this all is.

So that's the origin of the Sokal hoax. This isn't criticism, this is howling at the moon by someone who read a book by someone who read a book by someone who obviously doesn't like deconstruction.

Then's there's Morningstar:

It is not generally claimed that John F. Kennedy was a homosexual. Since it is not an issue, why would anyone choose to explicitly declare that he was not a homosexual unless they wanted to make it an issue? Clearly, the reader is left with a question, a lingering doubt which had not previously been there. If the text had instead simply asked, "Was John F. Kennedy a homosexual?", the reader would simply answer, "No." and forget the matter. If it had simply declared, "John F. Kennedy was a homosexual.", it would have left the reader begging for further justification or argument to support the proposition. Phrasing it as a negative declaration, however, introduces the question in the reader's mind, exploiting society's homophobia to attack the reputation of the fallen President. What's more, the form makes it appear as if there is ongoing debate, further legitimizing the reader's entertainment of the question. Thus the text can be read as questioning the very assertion that it is making.

Deconstructionism is obsessed with finding contradictions in our sociallyconstructed picture of reality. It takes these contradictions as proving that reality is a social construct, because if our picture were actually true, it wouldn’t contradict. (Marxists say that contradictions in the organization of our economic system produce these contradictions in our thinking and that the process of working out these economic contradictions will eventually work out the intellectual ones.) Deconstructionists who devote themselves to ferreting out how deeply these philosophical wrinkles are embedded in the structures of thought belong to the Jacques Derrida school. Martin Heidegger (a Nazi party member and author of books with titles like What is a Thing?) makes his appearance here as the grandmaster of ferreting out deep metaphysical contradictions in our structures of thought.

This may be a cut above (he read Culler, then some unspecified other works, then alt.postmodernism; I suspect that the latter source is where some of the bizarre bits above come in). Still barking as far as far as his account of deconstruction goes.

Since when does Wikipedia authorise these in its external link policy? I'll tell you what part of the policy wouldn't cover these:

High content pages that contain neutral and accurate material not already in the article. Ideally this content should be integrated into the Wikipedia article at which point the link would remain as a reference.

As for the following:

On articles with multiple Points of View, a link to sites dedicated to each, with a detailed explanation of each link. The number of links dedicated to one POV should not overwhelm the number dedicated to any other. One should attempt to add comments to these links informing the reader of what their POV is.

These links do not further substantiate any point of view presented in the article, and their POV is not given any critical commentary. It could be reasonably argued that what is being discussed in these links is not the subject of the deconstruction entry, including the criticism. To the extent that it represents rather than misrepesent anything in the article under the heading of criticism, it represents so poorly as to bring it discredit, which appears to me POV-injection by straw man argument. Buffyg 22:35, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree that these links don't belong in this article, for the simple reason that they are ill-informed and often factually incorrect about its subject. The extracts Buffyg quotes above are good examples of these sources' utter ignorance of deconstruction (though, I fear, this is not as obvious to a non-specialist reader as Buffyg hopes). These pages might well be interesting primary sources for an original study on misperceptions about deconstruction, but this is well outside Wikipedia's purpose; as sources about deconstruction, they are not just unhelpful but actively misleading. -- Rbellin|Talk 23:30, 14 September 2005 (UTC)