/lit/ - Literature

>The theme that perhaps will most surprise at least some readers is that Derrida vigorously asserts the importance of the "canon," "the tradition," and rigorous academic discipline. He concludes that many critics have seriously misrepresented his ideas. Pointing to his own rigorous academic training, Derrida maintains that even as he seeks to deconstruct pedagogies and ways of thinking, he is "at some level true" to the "classical" training he received in the French educational system. He stresses that deconstruction "doesn't mean simply destroying the norms or pushing these norms to utter chaos." In fact, if what passes as deconstruction produces "neglect of the classical authors, the canonical texts, and so on, we should fight it."

>This theme recurred throughout the session, indicating how strongly he feels that deconstruction has been misrepresented and maligned. He is convinced that "if deconstruction is only a pretense to ignore minimal requirements or knowledge of the tradition, it could be a bad thing." Apparently, it is often supporters of deconstruction themselves who feed this misunderstanding: "Sometimes the most ferocious critics who react vehemently and passionately and sometimes with hatred understand more than supporters do." Those who "play at deconstruction, try to behave deconstructively" before reading "the great texts in our tradition" give deconstruction a bad name.

>Certainly, we need to open the canon, to broaden it, to question it,but we can' t do so before acquiring at least a "minimal knowledge of the basic foundations of the canon." Only then can we develop "a deconstructive practice."

>As if to warn supporters as well as to answer critics, Derrida insists, "If you're not trained in the tradition, then deconstruction means nothing. It's simply nothing."

>JD: After these preliminary cautions, I would say, very briefly, that the misunderstandings that I deplore most would be, in the broad sense, political and institutional. I think that the people who try to represent what I'm doing or what so called "deconstruction" is doing as on the one hand, trying to destroy culture or, on the other hand, to reduce it to a kind of negativity, to a kind of death, are misrepresenting deconstruction. Deconstruction is essentially affirmative. It's in favor of reaffirmation of memory, but this reaffirmation of memory asks the most adventurous and the most risky questions about our tradition, about our institutions, about our way of teaching, and so on.

>When people try to confine deconstruction in negative models as something nonpolitical, noninstitutional or as something confined to books, to speculative speeches, to what is in the library, when they interpret text as something which is written down and not in the generalized concept that I've tried to elaborate, I think it's a very serious misrepresentation. But it's the symptom of a resistance; it's not simply a mistake.