
How To Deconstruct Almost Anything (1993) - didgeoridoo
http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html
======
rmk2
Using deconstruction as a method is stupid, and misses the point entirely. At
the same time, this article makes me simultaneously mad and sad, though I am
sure it will serve to reinforce preexisting biases just fine, especially here.

Using deconstruction as a method, independent and decoupled of its own
genesis, does not make sense and will yield little of use. The whole point of
deconstruction is to oppose another strand of Western philosophy that,
depending on country, has reigned for centuries: idealism.

Now, I realise it's cool to "show" how much superior and empirical engineering
is, but idealism is a root of many causes. It has fundamentally shaped our
ideas of the University, of statehood, nation, authorship, race and the
sciences. Many of the subsequent movements, starting with Marxism, followed by
Nietzsche, the New Left, and deconstruction (which, really, is called
poststructuralism) are an undertaking to undo some of the damage idealist
reign has caused during its reign.

Deconstruction aims to undermine the very hierarchies idealist thought has
errected: the nation as the culture of a given, demarkated and distinct
people, university as a structure of educating state servants, authorship as
the translation of Geist into matter, science as the study of matter, leading
to the ultimate victory of ratio and empiricism.

If people talk about advanced programming techniques without knowing anything
about underlying compiler design, algorithms etc, they are ridiculed and set
in their place. If people talk about history of thought without having any
idea what they are talking about, they are applauded while people cheer for
their (and their own) ignorance. Why is that?

Deconstruction without its history is worthless. That, however, also suggests
that for a history of thought, for an understanding of our present,
deconstruction is indeed relevant.

~~~
rspeer
If Deconstruction were a meaningful thing, if there were actual ways in which
it is relevant that one could point to, then there would be a Wikipedia
article that says what it is and explains why it is relevant.

Say what you want about Wikipedia's internal processes (if you must), but it
does an overwhelmingly good job at _saying what things are_ , including
schools of thought and beliefs. Even through the edit wars, it can explain the
most controversial tenets of _religions_ , where the stakes are much higher
than poststructuralism and stuff.

But the Wikipedia article
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction)
has been an incoherent disaster for over a decade. It's not even much of an
edit war, just a stagnant mess. Everyone agrees that it is bad. Nobody agrees
on what to do about it.

The disagreement is not between literary theorists and sciencey types. The
disagreement is between literary theorists and other literary theorists, whose
only unified view is that sciencey types should not be writing the article.
Occasionally one of them will wholly rewrite the article, at which point
everyone else says, basically, "wtf did you just write", and the list of
problems gets longer.

My personal conclusion is that, while you criticize people who "talk about
history of thought without having any idea what they are talking about", the
people who _do_ have an idea what they are talking about on this topic don't
exist.

~~~
rmk2
> If Deconstruction were a meaningful thing

Deconstruction is not a "thing". Neither is "empiricism". They are modes of
enquiry. Both position you in a certain mode towards your surrounding
environment, be it political, social or scientific. They both open certain
modes of enquiry while excluding others. One conclusion that one can draw from
deconstruction (if we "apply" it onto itself) is that no answer one can ever
give will be without bias or will completely exclude any other option.

Jürgen Habermas coined, in his Systemtheorie, the notion of the nth grade
observer, where every degree of observer may observe another onlooker _and_
his specific bias and blind spot, yet each degree of observation always
introduces its own, new blind spot.

When Derrida talks about archi-écriture, what he says is that if there was
ever an all-encompassing entirety of meaning that only had one singly way of
interpretation, then this unity is a mythical one which cannot be recovered.
Every utterance, every decision has the inherent option of an opposition.

Derrida is Hegel upside down. If Hegel sees Geist as the unity of matter and
spirit, then for Derrida, this unity might have existed in an archaic past but
has since been lost and cannot be put back together. Hence, whatever we do
will not empty out all possible interpretations and views of life, there will
be no single answer to the meaning of life or some such. Instead, all that
remains is the fundamental idea that every utterance and every positions
carries within itself already the means to disprove it.

This is _not_ fundamentally different to the scientific method. The atom was
thought to be the smallest, inseperable unit (hence the name) before it could
be found. However, in finding the atom, we realised that it is, indeed, made
up of smaller parts, which in turn are again made up of smaller parts. What
was taken as an absolute minimum was, in fact, only the temporary minimum
before we could conceive smaller units. The same, just in reverse, goes for
the solar system, galaxies etc.

~~~
rspeer
Don't say that your belief system is comparable to science. Only the gullible
will believe you, and it makes you sound like you are preaching a religion.

~~~
rmk2
Where, exactly, have I talked about a "belief system"? Seeing deconstruction
as part of a historical history of thought does not mean I subscribe to it as
a quasi-religious belief system, so please stop pretending as much. In fact, I
would argue that my belief system is quite a bit further removed from any form
of religious thought than you might think, since I do not, in fact believe, in
infallible systems; I'd rather look at the systems in their environment, the
institutions establishing and supporting them and the structures underneath
which power them and which stand to gain from them.

------
forkandwait
Here is my take on deconstruction, based on an MA in anthropology from a good
university and some further interest and reading:

First of all, Deconstruction should be credited to Heidegger, not the French.
The French of the 50s and 60s read Heidegger, stole and (further) obfuscated
some good ideas, then wrote books without citing him for political reasons (he
was member of the Nazi party throughout the war, in good standing at the
beginning and bad standing at the end, but he never rebelled or retracted
publicly -- complicated person...) Then the students and readers of these
French guys think the (derivative) French guys invented the idea.

There are two ideas of deconstruction I find useful.

The first is basically Nietzsche, and I paraphrase it thus: Every metaphysics
hides an implicit morality of the universe, and every morality hides an
implicit and very down-to-earth will to power, and this will to power is a
good thing and the drive of Life itself manifesting in human ideas. N's big
example is Judeo-Christianity, and how by inventing a selfless morality a
bunch of folks took over Western Civilization in very concrete ways. So when
the Libertarians have an "objective" system that shows that markets are best
in an objective way, or the counselors/ psyches have an "objective" system
that shows that depth psychology is best, they are all just protecting their
jobs.

I extend this to our modern science loving era as: any supposedly scientific
system that explains things but can't be rigorously tested just becomes
wishful thinking to support the vested interests of a social group. This is
basically all the social sciences, from econ to psych to anthro, and in all
cases I think you can point directly to the group whose jobs or power the
supposed "science" supports. (Owners in the first case, counselors who want
more billable hours, locals fighting off outsider meddling, etc). And, yes I
know about multivariate regression and survey data, and all I can say is what
a joke.

Now that I have rambled too long, idea 2: I think one of the best things about
Heidegger (who is fucking brilliant if you can get through his ridiculous
prose) is that he asks us to question not whether something is an X or a Y,
but rather to get "meta" and start examining what makes it possible for us to
go through life assigning things too ontological categories (X or Y) in the
first place. Because the mechanism of ontology -- that everything has a
"being", that it "is" something -- is not a given, even though it comes so
naturally linguistically.

Anyway, I should get on with my life now....

~~~
tstactplsignore
>This is basically all the social sciences, from econ to psych to anthro

This is all too typical of the anti-scientific, anti-intellectual nonsense
that holier-than-thou techies exhibit towards fields which they have very
little knowledge of, and barely understand.

All of these fields are intensely focused on empirical evidence, statistical
testing, and sturdy experimental design. Yes, sometimes poor studies are
published (especially in economics and sociology; psychology and anthropology
tend to be far more rigorous), but there are poor published studies in all
fields, and generally authors comment on and make note of the flaws in their
studies, and present them at face value. To decry the validity of thousands of
scientists is not only arrogant, it is stupid.

~~~
forkandwait
I am about to receive Ph D in the social sciences, an MA in anthro, tons of
discussions with sociology students. I am sure that you wouldn't be satisfied,
but I am not in the "very little knowledge" category.

And I am very pro-science, which is why I am anti social science. THe latter
would be more intellectually honest to say "really, we would be lucky if we
were in the same place as the alchemists were in the 12th century". Instead
they fill journals with ideological crap that (in) directly supports their
power struggles.

> All of these fields are intensely focused on empirical evidence, statistical
> testing, and sturdy experimental design.

Yeah whatever. The use of regression as the end-all be-all scientific magic
that justifies a theory is the basic problem. What most sociologists don't
understand is the difference, in real science (Physics, say), between a linear
and a non-linear system. Most systems of any consequence, including orbiting
planets, are nonlinear; if we could actually model human interaction, it would
be nonlinear too. So a regression method _might_ be able to describe a very
local effect, but it has as much validity as a complete (global) model as a
straight line does in describing the elliptical movement of the planets -- ie,
none.

Furthermore, we have no real way yet to test social theories, which have too
many moving parts to get a clear signal in an experiment, much less get
consistent between repeating experiments. Without repeatable experiments, we
don't have science. Post-hoc regression is _not_ the same as an experiment. No
offense, but most of the "science" in these fields is, in my estimation,
nothing more than a Roman soothsayer making sure to get the incantations and
the colors of his robes just right. We just have no fucking clue why stuff
happens, for the most part, just like them.

~~~
rmk2
Why do we need to bother with repeatable experiments for social sciences?
You've read Heidegger, it seems ("who is fucking brilliant if you can get
through his ridiculous prose"). We are already _geworfen_ into this world, a
world that consists of _Mitsein_. This is your own _Dasein_ , which is a fact,
because it is the apriori of your _Sein_ and first enables you to ask any of
the questions you ask. Heidegger sees ontology as more fundamental, more basic
than any of the sciences, because they only describe the _Wie_ of _Dasein_ ,
not _Sein_ itself. We don't "need to have a fucking clue" why things happen,
because we are already involved in them either way. If you indeed subscribe to
Heidegger, then none of these questions are primary questions, they are
questions that you can only concern yourself with after you have understood
the conditions and structures of your own _Sein_. There is a good reason _Sein
und Zeit_ is a fragment, an aborted solution for the problem of ontology.
Heidegger himself notices that his line of enquiry does not solve the overall
problem of ontology, despite his optimistic start. Perhaps therein lies part
of the reason why ontology has been seen rather sceptically by many of the
people who followed him?

~~~
derleth
> Why do we need to bother with repeatable experiments for social sciences?

So we aren't lead into error by well-known cognitive biases and/or outright
fraud, both of which are known to exist as they can be demonstrated through
repeatable experiments.

------
networked
Note that Chip Morningstar, the author of this essay, was a key person behind
the first graphical MMO -- in 1986! The "graphical MUD" in question was called
_Habitat_ and ran on Commodore 64 computers. Access to it was provided as a
pay-per-minute service by Quantum Link, which later became AOL.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_%28video_game%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_%28video_game%29)

Be sure also to read his and F. Randall Farmer's paper on the subject [1] and
related collections of anecdotes [2][3] if you're at all interested in the
history of virtual worlds.

[1]
[http://www.crockford.com/ec/lessons.html](http://www.crockford.com/ec/lessons.html)

[2]
[http://www.crockford.com/ec/anecdotes.html](http://www.crockford.com/ec/anecdotes.html)

[3]
[http://www.crockford.com/ec/layza.html](http://www.crockford.com/ec/layza.html)

------
zwischenzug
Anyone interested in the arts vs sciences debate should read this fantastic
book as well as that fantastic article:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intellectual-Impostures-Jean-
Bricmon...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intellectual-Impostures-Jean-
Bricmont/dp/1861976313)

I've studied history, art history and computing science at graduate level, and
have to say I agree 100% with this engineer's statement: "The quality of the
actual analysis of various literary works varies tremendously and must be
judged on a case-by-case basis, but I find most of it highly questionable.
Buried in the muck, however, are a set of important and interesting ideas
[...]"

As a trolling aside, I found the computing science degree far easier than the
arts ones...

~~~
voyou
I'm not convinced a book in which two scientists attempt to polemicise against
humanities academics not understanding science, and end up demonstrating that
they don't understand a number of authors in the humanities, is a particularly
useful contribution to a discussion of the relationship between the arts and
the sciences.

~~~
zwischenzug
Any evidence for your statement?

This seems to be the opposite of the book's spirit. What's interesting is the
authors they leave alone...

------
pfortuny
Interesting issue: the Sokal affair:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair)

How to publish a lot of gibberish in one of the "important" philosophical
journal.

Not that this means deconstruction is 'stupid'. Only that one has to take it
with a grain of salt. At least one.

~~~
Homunculiheaded
The Sokal affair is a lot less shocking when you realize Social Text was not
peer-reviewed at the time and the article was for a special science issue of
the journal.

If you've ever had misfortune of having to review submission for non-major CS
conferences you would know that there is an amazing amount of bullshit even in
technical fields.

The only thing I've found shocking about the Sokal affair, or this article
(and the many others like it) is the obsession with 'proving' the humanities
to be bullshit. It is an incredible and intellectually lazy pursuit of the
idea that: If I don't know it, it's not worth knowing.

~~~
abalone
You're downplaying it too much. Social Text was a leading journal in the
field. You can't compare it to minor CS conferences. And Sokal's submission
wasn't some fluke, it was in the ballpark of a lot of the heady self-
referential fluff in that field.

Moreover, Sokal didn't target "the humanities", he targeted postmodernist
"critical theorists". As a scientist it pissed him off to see careerist
intellectuals appropriate the terminology of science (like the term "theory")
in an effort to lend weight and credibility to their work while utterly
vacating it of its scientific principles. You give way too much credit to
postmodernism in broadening it to all of the humanities.

~~~
slurry
Social Text received Sokal's piece, found it amateurish and unreadable, asked
him to make changes, he got cranky and insisted it run as is. They sat on the
piece. Later, they had a special issue on The Science Wars coming up, figured
an amateurish and unreadable contribution by a scientist would be better than
no contribution by a scientist at all, and ran it as a non-peer reviewed
contribution.

[http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html](http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html)

Retellings by Sokal fans make it seem as if they received it breathlessly as
great work and rushed to put it into publication. That is not what happened.
The Sokal Affair is less evidence for the fuzzy-headedness of litcrit and more
evidence that you can often get what you want just by lying, being a dick, and
having some kind of finished product for people to work with.

 _And Sokal 's submission wasn't some fluke, it was in the ballpark of a lot
of the heady self-referential fluff in that field._

Only if you're _very_ insensitive to tone, style, vocabulary and methodology
does the Sokal piece resemble any legit article in Social Text. From the
descriptions of it you'd think Social Text was full of maniacal gibbering
about how nothing is true, everything is permitted, and quantum mechanics is a
tool of the phallologocracy. But in fact, the quality of work is far more
pedestrian, if a bit wordy. Here's the table of contents for the latest issue
(articles behind paywall, abstracts are free):

[http://socialtext.dukejournals.org/content/current](http://socialtext.dukejournals.org/content/current)

Is it self-referential nonsense? Maybe! Does it bear a reasonable surface
resemblance to "Transgressing the Boundaries", if we're not being deliberately
obtuse? No to me.

 _the terminology of science (like the term "theory")_

The term theory pre-dates empirical science by a good bit, and the litcrit
usage is not really orthogonal to the scientific one anyway.

~~~
abalone
Your own citation proves you wrong. One of the Social Text editors was so
convinced of the legitimacy of the work that even _after being told it was a
hoax,_ "suspected that Sokal's parody was nothing of the sort, and that his
admission represented a change of heart, or a folding of his intellectual
resolve."

That is how disconnected they were from anything resembling a "methodology"
that could detect basic falsehoods nestled amidst pretentious language and
reverential citations of suitably fashionable authorities.

Scientific theories generally yield testable hypotheses. Name one testable
hypothesis that's ever come out of "critical theory".

~~~
slurry
_Your own citation proves you wrong. One of the Social Text editors was so
convinced of the legitimacy of the work that even after being told it was a
hoax, "suspected that Sokal's parody was nothing of the sort, and that his
admission represented a change of heart, or a folding of his intellectual
resolve."_

People don't like to admit they've been conned. Anyway, sincerity is a
separate issue from quality. The editors believed the paper was sincere, just
not very good.

 _That is how disconnected they were from anything resembling a "methodology"
that could detect basic falsehoods nestled amidst pretentious language and
reverential citations of suitably fashionable authorities._

Alternatively, they thought it was "a little hokey" but assumed sincerity, and
ran it because they had an opening and were too lazy to find another scientist
willing to write for a humanities journal.

 _Scientific theories generally yield testable hypotheses. Name one testable
hypothesis that 's ever come out of "critical theory"._

It's not that critical theory is necessarily good. It's that Sokal's prank
proves more about the efficacy of social engineering hacks than the badness of
critical theory.

~~~
abalone
If you can't name one testable hypothesis that's come out of "critical
theory", then I doubt you can name one scientific journal that accepts
submissions based on "sincerity".

------
daviddaviddavid
Several random points (from a dev with a background in philosophy and
linguistics).

First, from the standpoint of intellectual history, it's probably most useful
to cast conversations like this in terms of the split between analytic and
continental philosophy (esp. postwar developments). The fact that he doesn't
really mention the split and only talks of literary criticism is a very odd
omission.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy)

Second, I applaud the author for taking the tradition that he's poking fun at
as seriously as he does. There are scads of philosophy professors who simply
sneer at those from the opposing tradition. This is a shame.

Third, and related to the point above, it's a breath of fresh air to read
someone who can genuinely straddle the two traditions. Richard Rorty is
probably the best known philosopher that this can be said for.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty)

Fourth, anyone interested in the ideas that underpin deconstruction should
take a look at Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics". It's an utterly
fascinating read that forms the basis for a huge amount of work in both
contemporary linguistics _and_ postwar French Continental philosophy.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics)

Fifth, anyone who dismisses the techniques one of the world's greatest
mathematician/logicians as a "cheap trick" without so much as a winking
emoticon is immediately suspect in my book. ;)

~~~
dcre
Just for fun, here are a few more writers I think do justice to both sides:
Stanley Cavell, Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor, James Conant, Cora Diamond.

After writing them down, I'm noticing they're all analytic philosophers who
lean a bit continental. I wonder, what are some examples in the other
direction?

~~~
conatus
Ray Brassier and the speculative realist pseudo-group are trained continental
philosophers who also lean analytic. Becoming more and more common.

------
jgg
Every time an engineer writes a screed against the humanities, I feel like I'm
going to break out in hives.

 _Engineering and the sciences have, to a greater degree, been spared this
isolation and genetic drift because of crass commercial necessity._

Unsubstantiated bullshit. Most theoretical backbones of math and science were
discovered/formalized for anything but commercial reasons.

 _It is clear to me that the humanities are not going to emerge from the
jungle on their own. I think that the task of outreach is left to those of us
who retain some connection, however tenuous, to what we laughingly call
reality._

You could start with your own field(s), which are full of mediocre paper-
pushers milling around other people's theory, publishing uninteresting
observations which, as long as they are "logical" and "correct", are shit into
a godawful paper that no one will ever care about or read. "A Novel Method for
Applying a Trivial Modification of an Already-Known Algorithm to Some Type of
Specific Data" could be the title of about 35% of the CS papers in existence.

~~~
philwelch
> Most theoretical backbones of math and science were discovered/formalized
> for anything but commercial reasons.

And if they end up serving no practical use they end up discarded and ignored
by scientists and engineers (if maybe not pure mathematicians). The author's
point is that there is no such selective pressure on lit crit.

Also, poststructuralist lit crit is not the be all and end all of "the
humanities".

~~~
slurry
_And if they end up serving no practical use they end up discarded and ignored
by scientists and engineers (if maybe not pure mathematicians). The author 's
point is that there is no such selective pressure on lit crit._

Litcrit theory is actually a pretty big commercial success. Derrida et al.
sell quite well for academic books, and a Sexy Postmodernism Sex Theory Made
Accessible to Undergraduates type course is a reliably decent draw for English
departments, who need the enrollment.

Furthermore, if you consume entertainment products with shifting, non-linear
narrative like The Simpsons, Coen Brothers movies, or Inception, you're
exerting selective pressure in favor of postmodernism.

~~~
philwelch
I'm exerting selective pressure in favor of the Coen Brothers making more
movies in that style, maybe, but academics writing about "texts" that other
people create don't get a cut of box office so I'm not sure how it affects
what they output.

------
samatman
Worth mentioning for HN: There is a field of critical studies devoted to code,
called critical code studies. A friend of the author directed me to this
paper, which, somewhat unexpectedly, I found excellent:

[http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/367.php](http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/367.php)

Here's the abstract:

"This is an investigation into some aspects of the way the C programming
language creates meaning. In any formalized language, meaning is created by a
tension between a community of speakers and the language's formal definition.
In the case of C, this community preceded and presided over the formal
definition in such a way that the formal definition itself embodies this
tension. Because of this, C has a relatively unique view on how programming
languages work, and how language in general should work. Specifically, I will
argue that the 1989 ANSI C standard introduces the concept of abstraction by
ambiguity into formal language specifications. Paradoxically, this ambiguity
allows the knowledgeable programmer to be more specific than would otherwise
be possible, while retaining the extensional benefits of abstraction. This has
implications for philosophy of language in general, which I will briefly
address.

"This work is situated in the emerging field of critical code studies
(Marino). Although there has been related work dating all the way back into
the 80s and 90s (Knuth; Winograd; Landow; Kittler), most studies that self-
consciously look at code itself from a perspective that goes beyond computer
science are a very recent phenomenon (Fuller; Chun). If much of my
investigation seems overly broad, then, that's to be expected: just as a
Polaroid photograph develops with broad splotches of color, only acquiring
precision at the end of the process, likewise a new investigation must be
satisfied with the faith that its clumsiness will be turned into precision
with time. Many things herein are assertions with little corresponding
argument, yet assertions which nevertheless to me seemed interesting enough to
present for consideration in the hope that they might function as depth-
soundings for future navigation."

~~~
smsm42
>>> Many things herein are assertions with little corresponding argument, yet
assertions which nevertheless to me seemed interesting enough to present for
consideration in the hope that they might function as depth-soundings for
future navigation

Doesn't it just say "I am going to fire off some claims without any evidence
supporting it, but since the claims sound good somebody should go and check if
they're true just in case"?

------
dvanduzer
"Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right." \-- Donald Norman

"""

Engineers get paid for not being wrong.

------
lbarrow
The article totally lost me when the author called Godel's incompleteness
theorem a "cheap trick" used to "frighten mathematicians". That comment makes
it clear that despite his claims to the contrary, the author is very
comfortable dismissing ideas that he does not understand. For this reason, I
can't really trust the rest of the article.

~~~
candeira
I'm fairly sure that was a joke.

~~~
sramsay
I'm not convinced of that at all. "One or two volumes is all it takes, since
it's all pretty much the same."

Ah, so much time wasted on my English Ph.D. (studying under Richard Rorty, at
one point, starting the year before this was written). Could have just read
Culler (which, actually, I did), instead of the entire tradition of
continental philosophy going back to Kant.

I've also read Gödel, by the way. But really, that was all I had to do --
mathematics is all the same shit anyway.

I'm an English professor who occasionally teaches in the CS department. I am
fully capable of detailing the absurdities in computer science (as well as
great virtues).

Forgive the vent (which isn't directed at you); the article irritated the hell
out of me. I have to say I expected a lot of "Yeah, literary study is garbage"
in this thread. I was pleasantly surprised to see so much thoughtful
engagement.

~~~
igravious
Studied under Rorty? Ooh, do tell.

Funny thing, there is no way an average English Lit. major could tell if your
average research-level maths paper is nonsense or not because it would take,
you know, six years or more to get up to speed. Why it is that science and
engineering types think that all they need to do is read a couple of primers
and they're good to go is beyond me. I think it speaks to the arrogance and
elitism of the scientific method as The One True Path To Truth.

I'll tell you the truth about truth. How long you got?

Vent more I say, this crap has real-world consequences -- humanities budgets
are under fire. Whole flippin philosophy departments are being closed down
because, you know, who needs philosophy anyway. Grumble grumble.

------
nickthemagicman
This article is really hilarilous and so so true. I changed from English to
Biology when I took a Lit Theory class and they were talking about Freud's
theories like they were fact and I was like this is literally one of the most
rediculous things I've ever heard. It's like the guy was high on cocaine or
something.

------
tammer
Some perspective for those outside the Humanities:

A great article, but the basic ideas have been reiterated many times within
academia itself. The date is important - its currently almost impossible to
find an institution with a viable postmodern/deconstruction focus (outside of
individual courses framed as a historical perspective and some oddball schools
that aren't taken seriously in the field).

We've effectively 'moved on,' in many cases along with the critiques found in
the article, although we've ignored some. New tools have been developed,
yielding sometimes greater and sometimes lesser successes.

------
conatus
Some of the posts here do fairly decent justice to Derrida's concept of
deconstruction, but I always find it funny that that its still brought up as
being the cutting edge of continental philosophy.

In the UK at least Derrida couldn't be more unfashionable, pure toxic waste if
you want to publish and/or have a career as a philosopher of this school.

~~~
dcre
Very funny. I'd say this is he generally true in the US as well, at least in
philosophy departments. In English departments a little less so.

~~~
conatus
In the UK at least youthful continental philosophy could not be _more_
interested in the hard sciences. Even take someone like Badiou - probably the
"Derrida" of our age - who could not be more interested in getting the
mathematics that form the core of his thought right.

------
igravious
I grew up on a diet of science and spent 10 years in the IT industry. I'm an
auto-didact, I taught myself C for example. I went back to university and
studied math and philosophy. I mainly studied analytic philosophy which is
basically western philosophy from ancient to scholastic to modern up until
Hegel and then follows the Anglo/American tradition. Continental philosophy
follows the same path up until Hegel and then takes a Franco/German tack.

I say all this because the writer fails to mention that the tradition he is
having a go at is essentially continental philosophy. Contrary to
forkandwait's assertion in this comments page deconstruction is attributed to
Derrida, not to Heidegger. Derrida was influenced by Heidegger (and says as
much himself I believe) but Derrida is credited for this whole deconstruction
lark. Literary critics working in the continental philosophical tradition will
employ stuff like this. Others won't, it is worth pointing this out.

Now then.

Analytic philosophers have a hard time decoding continental philosophers. So
it is no surprise that people coming from even further afield have difficulty.
I had a hard time initially, it took me a couple of years.

My take on deconstruction is that it is the technique of finding an internal
contradiction in the text you want to refute and basically letting the text
undermine itself. If it is anything more than this I'd like to know. I
generally would never use the word deconstruct as it is too trendy and has
become too intellectually charged for my liking. I prefer plain language. But
I will use words like ontological when they need to be used but only then, if
you see what I mean.

Finally, onto the claim of bogosity. I think maybe yes at times by certain
windbags and lesser practitioners but mostly I think that no. In Derrida's
case I would say no. I say this is the back of having read "Plato's Pharmacy"
by Derrida and let me tell you it blows a lot of other philosophy out of the
water. It is telling our man read a secondary source on Derrida, and did not
drink straight from the fountain.

It irritates me immensely that someone believes they can read a couple of
secondary texts and then claim to know enough to rubbish an entire swath of
thinkers in the history of ideas. Continental philosophy gets most of the
brunt of this because of the prolixity and verbosity of their texts. But I ask
you, why has our chap not read Derrida for himself? Hmm? Because then he would
have to read all of Derrida's influences. And be aware of the currents of
thought in which Derrida was swimming. And so on, back and back until you
reach the ancient Greek thinkers. I mean analytic philosophers (less now than
before) have reacted in very adverse ways to philosophical texts from
continental philosophers so Chip has company. But you know, try harder I say.

One little final point. I think the reason the word "problematic" is used as a
noun is because it is used as a noun in French. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm actually getting pretty tired of the condescending attitude from the
science/engineering crowd. Some bits of philosophy are formal in the way that
logic or maths is so it will never be empirical. And. So. What? Big deal that
natural language is ambiguous but that's part of its beauty as well. I say if
you approach what I do in such bad faith so frequently then it is your fields
that are suspect, not mine.

~~~
carlob
> One little final point. I think the reason the word "problematic" is used as
> a noun is because it is used as a noun in French. Correct me if I'm wrong.

It is but this [0] says it comes from a translation of _problematische
Urteile_ in Kant. At any rate it wasn't used as a noun in French before 1936

[0]
[http://atilf.atilf.fr/dendien/scripts/tlfiv5/search.exe?23;s...](http://atilf.atilf.fr/dendien/scripts/tlfiv5/search.exe?23;s=451225815;cat=0;m=probl%82matique;)

~~~
igravious
Thanks for that.

This is what I thought. Story goes. Key French texts are translated into
English. They used "problematic" as a noun. Diligent students read texts,
learn to use "problematic" as a noun and so it goes. Language changes, get
used to it. I've seen tons of papers where someone argues about the
problematics of this or that. I wouldn't use it so myself. But it may
inevitably be on the way to assuming this new mantle.

My pet peeve is "foregrounds". Grr. I've a few more, I've always meant to make
a list.

------
kghose
I'm surprised no one in this crowd has yet drawn the parallel to Feynman's
adventures in philosophy class (as set down in Surely You are Joking)

------
JonnieCache
The comparison to Godel is absolutely priceless.

Describing the incompleteness theorem as "a cheap trick to frighten
mathematicians" is hilarious as well.

------
anaphor
Related:
[http://stfucontinentals.tumblr.com/](http://stfucontinentals.tumblr.com/)

~~~
bcoates
If the question of what it's like to be a plant is the most egregiously
pointless thing a school of philosophy has ever considered, I'd say they're
doing pretty good. Apparently the book being reviewed isn't terribly good --
maybe it needs to be approached from the direction of fiction, like Watership
Down but with plants.

~~~
derleth
I'm a p-zombie. When is anyone going to write a book about what it's like to
be me?

------
spikels
My definition of Deconstructionism: you can misunderstand anything if you try
hard enough!

------
badman_ting
A good way to make another person seem stupid or crazy is to just repeatedly
declaim how you can't understand them. Because it's not your fault you can't
understand them, it's theirs.

------
olalonde
Related: this video of Derrida is simply absurd:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nmu3uwqzbI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nmu3uwqzbI)

