Re: deconstruction

[bob@rattlesnake.com]

Mark V.  wrote a short summary of deconstruction.

Mark, please explicate more, since I do not understand *why* some of
your statements are important.

mark.vines@wholefoods.com wrote:

   ... Deconstruction points to linguistic
   evidence which shows that speech is a structured
   temporal sequence of signifiers, in which meaning is
   deferred until the sequence is reasonably complete.
   This should be obvious & noncontroversial, ...

Yes.  The full meaning of `I sent the book to ....' is not known until
I complete the sentence.  Is this what you mean?


   ... but it also
   means that speech cannot "immediately" present anything
   to anyone; the process of signification takes time;

Yes.  English has multi-word look ahead.  I have to wait until part of
the utterance is complete before it means something.  Is this what you
mean?

Are you contrasting English with Lojban, which has a shorter lookahead
(on account the parser used was limited)?

   ... speech is thus "text-like" in that its signifiers must
   be traversed before its significance can be construed.

Yes.  So far this is obvious to me and I would expect, noncontroversial.

My question is, why is this important?  Why should I spend time being
concerned with this?


   Deconstruction also attacks nihilism by asserting that
   signification does occur, even in the questions asked
   by those who doubt it, ...

Again, the assertion that "signification does occur" seems to me
obvious, even for the case that the question was asked by those who
doubt it.  If it did not signify something, they would not have asked
the question.  People do not remark on the insignificant.

So my question is again, why is this statement important?

   ... Yet signification is not a property exhibited by signifiers;
   ...

Yes, obvious, at least if I understand what you mean by signifiers,
which I take to mean symbols, such as marks on a computer screen.

   ... signification takes
   place in a kind of dialectic between the sign & the
   consciousness of the beholder.

This is controversial.  In my epistemology and metaphysics, signs,
such as marks on a computer screen, do not do anything on their own.
So they cannot themselves be part of a dialectic.  The part that can
be part of a dialectic is the mental process the signs
generate in the mind of a reader.  However, many people metonymically
refer to signs as standing for both the signs and what they induce.

   Things are not signs
   in & of themselves; they're only signs when they're
   read that way.

Right.  The map is not the territory.  This discovery was important a
generation or more ago, but I thought that most contemporary people
within our civilization now understood this, so it now appears
obvious.


   Deconstruction asserts that no science, no logic & no
   philosophy thus far has been free of the metaphysical
   myth of immediate self-presence.

This is not my experience.  I learned some years ago that some
meanings were deferred.  I learned that others had learned the same.

Are you really trying to claim that people thought
`I sent the book to ...' was a `complete sentence'?


   The primary literary-critical method employed by
   practitioners of deconstruction is to search a text for
   statements that conflict with the rhetoric in which
   they are expressed.  For instance, Proust says that
   metaphor is superior to metonymy, but he uses metonymy
   instead of metaphor to make that claim.

By metonymy, do you mean that figure of speech that uses a part to
signify a whole, an effect for a cause, a container for the thing
contained (I am paraphrasing Webster's)?  Do you mean for example,
saying, "I saw three sail" to mean, "I saw three sailing ships"?

By metaphor, do you mean that figure of speech that, in effect,
suggests simularities between otherwise different things or actions?

(Just checking to ensure we are talking about the same concepts.)

   This kind of
   incompatibility between a statement & its own rhetoric
   is sometimes called the "hinge" on which a text may be
   "opened".


OK.  So why is this analysis of different forms of rhetoric so important?

You say it is "...one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the
century.", but you have not given me any reason to understand why it
is important.  (Well, you have used a rhetoric of persuasion that is
based on a claim to your authority; this sort of rhetoric is
convincing to you, for obvious reasons, but not to me.  To persuade
me, you need to adopt a different form of rhetoric.)


   I hope that this review makes it clear that po-mo
   thinkers & deconstructionists are not _all_ drilling
   in a dry hole, nor do they _all_ deserve the derision
   & contempt which you seem only too willing to aim in
   their direction.

Well, I don't yet know what to aim in their direction.

So far, reading your message, I find things which I agree with you are
obvious.  I find one controversial statement, about when people
started to pay attention to incomplete statements.  And I find your
clearly heartfelt opinion that there is something important in all
this, but I myself cannot see its importance.

Just to be clear:  by `important', I mean, that which I should spend
time on now.  In the past, the notion that `the map is not the
territory' was important to me and I spent time on it.  I have no
motive to spend much time on the notion now.

Likewise, I think it is moderately interesting that Proust used
metonymy as a rhetorical device to argue that metaphor is superior to
metonymy for some purpose.

To return to my question: why is it important enough for me to spend
time following this form of discussion rather than, say, Bailey, "The
Tactical Uses of Passion", or Conley, "Rhetoric in the European
Tradition"?

--

    Robert J. Chassell           bob@rattlesnake.com
    Rattlesnake Enterprises      http://www.rattlesnake.com