A Note on Deconstruction

Abstract

For example, Paul de Man: A deconstruction always has for its target to reveal existence articulations and fragmentations within assumed monadic totalities. He is telling us that language qualifies what it says. Deconstructionists, keen on sub-texts promoted by uncon scious, think it does this involuntarily. They don't give writer much credit. But literary language at its highest reach (poetry), often testifies against itself, wittingly too. Life, endlessly tangled, is poet's business, and questions it raises need yes-and-no answers. You won't catch de Man & Co. putting it that way, however. Still, hidden meanings part, though turning literary study into a parlor game, gets two cheers me. At least it improves on thus-we-see critics who make text redundant except for its punch line. Husserl, a spokesman for deconstruction's German wing, calls their ideational kernel Bedeutung. (Less sophisticated readers call it moral.) He and associates agree that its version meaning is partial. The opposite partial isn't plenary, though, not on their reading, and deconstruction's ideal text is amorphous. Derrida's Tours de (1985), evading rigid structures Bedeutung insists on, sponsors more meanings than we know what to do with. This plenitude, or rather surfeit, is post-structuralist exactly and sees to it that meaning dies of its own too much. Des is some, also from the or concerning, while tours, meaning towers, means twists and turns, including turns phrase. Put first two words in title together and they sound like detour, descriptive text. Babel is a place name, that is, itself alone, but signifies confusion tongues. You can't clear it up, either: no theorization, inasmuch as it is produced in a language, will be able to dominate Babelian perfor mance. But check out Derrida's approximation and see.