Poststructuralist Deconstruction of Meaning as a Challenge to the Discourse of Theism

Abstract

Although it became customary to warn against confusing postmodernism with deconstructionism (deconstructionism having narrower focus), it seems plausible to suggest that their central agendas are not dissimilar. Moreover, from the philosophical point of view, it is the idea of the 'deconstruction of meaning' that can be said to constitute the foundation of postmodernism understood here as an intellectual movement. It is true that grounded in the poststructuralist language analysis, deconstructionism seeks primarily to challenge the attempts inherent in the Western philosophical tradition to establish ultimate meaning in a text. However, as one might have anticipated, the deconstruction of meaning of texts (especially philosophical texts) provided a basis for a large scale project leading to deconstruction of all 'truths', as conceived in the mainstream philosophical tradition. And it did it by questioning the coherence of the very concept of 'truth'. Eclectic as postmodernism is, it can be recognized by the fundamental assumption (with a clearly deconstructionist overtones) that there is no common denominator (like 'nature', 'truth' or 'God') that guarantees the one-ness of the world, or the possibility of objective or neutral thought. This assumption would suffice to make one expect that postmodernism will challenge the very foundations of any metaphysical or religious system of beliefs. And so it does. In this paper I would like to ellucidate just one way this challange may be construed, poiting to the example of Don Cupitt, the leading exponent of the 'antirealist' critique of the discourse of theism.