Re: Political Correctness and the Technical Com

[Bill Burns <WBURNS -at- VAX -dot- MICRON -dot- COM>]

LONG POSTING FOLLOWS

Dave Meek writes:

>>      A while back, I posted a humorous review of the Dr. Seuss story,
        "The Cat in the Hat."  The reviewer deconstructed the story to
        make it fit Freudian symbolism.

<AHEM> [steps onto the podium and ruffles his notes]...

I enjoyed that posting very much (as did my coworkers).  However, in
reference to the deconstruction of Mike LaTorra's statement, I think the term
may be broadened a bit too much.  The satire that Dave posted is an example
of pyschoanalytical literary criticism, particularly one stemming from a
Freudian viewpoint.  All that stuff about snakes as phallic symbols comes from
this school, whereas symbols, archetypes, and the collective unconscious stems
from Jungian psychoanalytic criticism.  (Then there's Northrop Frye's
offshoot, archetypal criticism, or various other revisions on the Freudian
theme.)

Deconstruction is quite distant from these methods of criticism.  It's an
antithetical development out of Structuralist theories based on the work
of linguists (Saussure), anthropologists (Levi-Strauss), semioticians, and
analytical philosphers.  This school (led by Jacques Derrida) purports that
discourse, by its very nature, contains oppositions such that any piece of
literature, any written tract, or any utterance can support mutually exclusive
possibilities.  Hence, an argument both supports and negates the proposition
that it intends to prove.

The act of deconstructing a piece of discourse involves seeking what are
called _aporias_ (points which lead to a contradicting thread).  Many more
traditional literary critics abhor this approach because they claim it lacks a
logical basis, undercuts any definitive meaning in written or spoken language,
and allows abusers to adopt an amoral perspective more traditional critics
consider to be dangerous.  (For more information on this, look up the debate
about Paul de Man's invovlvement in a pro-Nazi Belgian press.)  The intention,
as Derrida argues, is to overturn traditional hegemony by eliminating the
elitist valuing built into our language.  So in theory it's a rather
threatening method of analysis to the status quo.

What Mike LaTorra meant was that someone would read into his posting the
opposite of what he meant and use his (Mike's) words to support an opposing
viewpoint.  I think this is more along the lines of reading into his words
something he hadn't intended.  (That's not as much a deconstructive approach
as a reader-response approach.)

Someone noted the contemporary tendency in philospohy to prove negative
positions rather than positive positions (or to support the lack of definitive
reality rather than trying to prove an absolute).  Deconstruction was part of
this poststructuralist tendency, although it appears to have lost a lot of
support among critical theorists.

Bill Burns                            *
Assm. Technical Writer/Editor         * LIBERTY, n. One of Imagination's most
Micron Technology, Inc.               * precious possessions.
Boise, ID                             *
WBURNS -at- VAX -dot- MICRON -dot- COM                 *                     Ambrose Bierce