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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (48575)	8/3/1999 11:13:00 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

The only problem with the text is that it didn't really talk about the technique and goals of deconstruction, it talked about the jargon, but it was funny. So I am not sure whether you dislike the jargon, or whether you dislike the technique and goals. I agree with the writer that there is nothing more impenetrable than the jargon of a French philosopher, although Kant and Heidegger are no picnic, either. Deconstruction began as a reaction against structuralism, and semiotics, and I would be surprised if you like structuralism or semiotics. However, as a self-avowed feminist, and libertarian, I think there's a lot of good to be done by deconstruction, e.g., deconstructing the assumptions of heirarchy in texts, and further agree that texts don't have to have words. As I said before, I haven't been trained in the technique, so maybe I don't really understand it, but I think that I do. Here are some definitions from encyclopedia.com, although of course it's impossible to learn philosophy from a dictionary. deconstruction the exposure and undermining of the metaphysical assumptions involved in systematic attempts to ground knowledge, as in STRUCTURALISM. Deconstructionists tend to focus on close readings of texts and how the texts refer to other texts, to uncover what is left out, ignored, or silenced by the text, and reveal the illogical and paradoxical in what appears logical and stable. They also seek to disrupt hierarchical oppositions (speech and writing, truth and lie, being and nonbeing) in which one term is valued and the other denigrated and upon which texts depend. Because deconstruction is an attack on the very existence of theories and conceptual systems, deconstructionists shun logical definitions and explanations for such approaches as nonlinear presentations based on word play and puns. The term deconstruction was coined in the 1960s by Jacques DERRIDA, who extended the philosophical excursions of NIETZSCHE and HEIDEGGER to criticize the entire tradition of Western philosophy. In the U.S. deconstruction has been particularly influential in literary theory. structuralism general term for the analysis of aspects of culture as culturally interconnected signs that can be studied to reconstruct the underlying systems of relationships (e.g., the formal units and rules of a language, or the elements of myths and how they enable a society to frame an understanding of the world, as in the work of Claude LéVI-STRAUSS). No single item in such a system has meaning except as an integral part of a set of structural connections. These interconnections are said to be binary in nature and are viewed as the permanent, organizational categories of experience. Structuralism's modern origins are in the semiology (see SEMIOTICS) of Ferdinand de SAUSSURE. In France after 1968 this search for the deep structure of the mind was criticized by DERRIDA and other post-structuralists, who abandoned the goal of reconstructing reality scientifically in favor of deconstructing (see DECONSTRUCTION) the illusions of METAPHYSICS semiotics the study of an aspect of a culture as a formal system of signs; it is founded on the work of the American logician C.S. PEIRCE and French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure's recognition that the relation of words to things is not natural but arbitrary and that a language is essentially a self-contained system of signs, wherein each element is meaningless by itself and meaningful only by its differentiation from the other elements, was key to the development of modern semiotics. His linguistic model influenced literary criticism, contributing to a move away from the study of an author's biography or a work's social setting and toward the internal structure of the text and the text's relationship to other texts. Semiotics is not limited to language, however, as virtually any aspect of a culture (e.g., gesture, clothing, and toys) can function and be analyzed as a sign; see STRUCTURALISM.