/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6311693]

What does lit think of deconstruction?

[Anonymous No.6311699]

useless semantics and pedantry

academic circlejerking

[Anonymous No.6311702]

must...deconstruct....everything

[Anonymous No.6311757]

>>6311693
Pretty neat concept, fun to play around with and illuminating in many aspects. Can get tiring after a while, though.

[Anonymous No.6311780]

Often confused with being logocentric when it is in fact the argument against logocentricity.

[Anonymous No.6311812]

pisses off nincompoops, great

[Anonymous No.6311835]

>>6311693
I've had people explain derridas ideas to me, and I've read some summaries and such.

I think I have a pretty good grounding on a lot of his ideas, but deconstruction seems to be the one idea of his that doesn't seem to be able to be defined.

Can anyone give me or point e to a decent explanation of what deconstruction is? How could you identify someone that uses deconstruction, what are the key features and that

[Anonymous No.6311861]

>>6311835

His writings on the difference between 'writing' and 'speech' with reference to Plato is a pretty good example. It certainly clarified things for me

[Anonymous No.6311872]

>>6311861
ah perfect, thanks a lot.

[Anonymous No.6312136]

>>6311835
>deconstruction seems to be the one idea of his that doesn't seem to be able to be defined
It's not "an idea" of his, it's a general name for his philosophy.
And it can't be defined, that's the whole point.

[Anonymous No.6312914]

>>6311693
>countless of posters fawn over Stirner
>derrida is dismissed as obscure and pointless semantics

deconstructive techniques are essentially an attempt to dismantle spooks in their presence as discourse, I genuinely don't see why people are unable to see their congruency

[Anonymous No.6312927]

>>6311835
It's worth reading Saussure's course in general linguistics, as well as J.L Austen's essay on performatives. A lot of Derridian philosophy falls somewhere in the crossovers between the two

[Anonymous No.6312941]

How to learn to deconstruct?

[Anonymous No.6312946]

>>6312914
Because Stimer is a troll

[Anonymous No.6312962]

In my women's studies class the TA said I'd deconstructed a advert. I corrected her, saying that I reject the term deconstruction as an illegitimate technique fabricated by pseudointellectual charlatans and based on nothing and accomplishing nothing and that what I'd really did was analyze the advert. She then accused me of not understanding what the word patriarchy meant (had nothing to do with the discussion--I think she was just calling me a man). I explained to her that I know what a lot of words mean. I proceeded to destroy her and everything she believes. The prof eventually stepped in and stopped the debate because she felt "it wasn't conductive to the purpose of the class." The TA stopped coming to class after that. I got an B in that class even though I deserved an A and got straight As in all my other classes. What a waste of time that bullshit was. Feminists belong in gas chambers.

[Anonymous No.6312965]

>>6312941
they need to do way instain signifiers> who disrupt thier structures. becuse these structures cant frigth back? it was in the paris social text this mroing a philosopher in ar who had deconstruct her three hierarchies. they are taking the three hierarchies back to heidegger too lady to rest. my différances are with the analytics who lost their truth: i am truley sorry for your lots

[Anonymous No.6312976]

>>6312962
Even Judith Butler?

[Anonymous No.6312989]

Love it.

[Anonymous No.6312990]

>>6312962
Nice copypasta.

[Anonymous No.6312994]

>>6312989

Me too.

[Anonymous No.6312998]

>>6312994

So do I.

[Anonymous No.6313019]

>>6312965

Are you tripping?

[Anonymous No.6313035]

>>6311693
i dont know but derrida is one handsome fucker, i hope im half as handsome as he was when i am a famous philosopher

[Anonymous No.6313044]

>>6312962
>deconstruction as an illegitimate technique fabricated by pseudointellectual charlatans and based on nothing and accomplishing nothing and that what I'd really did was analyze the advert
the process of 'analysis' implies interpretation of values/structures (interpretation being an entirely subjective inquiry as the very divide between sign and reality), which is necessary for deconstructive practises. how are you supposed to form any kind of 'scientific' framework surrounding your investigation if those structures are indefinitely in flux from individual to individual? I feel as though people who dismiss it usually haven't really made any attempts to understand it beyond simple summaries

[Anonymous No.6313060]

>>6312989
>>6312994
>>6312998

[Anonymous No.6313078]

>>6312989
>>6312994
>>6312998
deconstruction is different from destruction you retards

[Anonymous No.6313096]

>>6313044
lol move out your parents' basement and find yourself the Transcendental Signifier and you'll see how embarrassing this deconstruction nonsense is.

[Anonymous No.6313154]

>>6313096
>actively looking for the transcendental signifier
Oh dear, looks like someone misunderstood Derrida again

[Anonymous No.6313161]

>>6313154
I didn't find God. God found me.

[Anonymous No.6313164]

>>6311693

I took a course that included a segment on deconstruction. I didn't understand it :(

[Anonymous No.6313177]

>>6313164
You're not supposed to. It's obscurantist bullshit.

[Anonymous No.6313210]

>>6313161
God found you because you interpreted the transcendental signifier as congruent to the definition of God, however inadequate that term may be in rendering God exactly as he exists in reality. The incomplete definition doesn't invalidate the possibility of God, in fact deconstruction looks at what is an intrinsically human system - god doesn't even come into it. Deconstruction is part of the process which seeks to determine the trail of oppression left by discourses established by institutions such as the church, but deconstruction can never deny the possibility of a god.

[Anonymous No.6313228]

>>6313096

stupidest, most useless post I've read in a while

read a book

[Anonymous No.6313242]

>>6313177
>i can't boil down a concept to a single sentence
>clearly it can't be understood
>i must campaign against it

[Anonymous No.6313249]

If there is one essential fact to know about Derrida before going in, it's that Derrida is one fucking expression/version of an extremely widely distributed mentality and collection of methodologies.

Don't Deify Derrida. Dicks.

[Anonymous No.6313261]

Can anyone describe what derrida is doing to me in at least somewhat plain language?

I don't mind if some is lost in translation, I just want the gist.

Even the wikipedia article is near impossible to understand.

[Anonymous No.6313277]

>>6312941
One doesn't deconstruct. Deconstruction is always already at work within the work. One simply approaches the work and pulls the thread and observes as the structure unravels itself.

That was written as somewhat of a joke.

In reality, Derrida's post-structuralist philosophy, of which deconstruction is a key part, is a move that builds upon Ferdinand de Saussure, who argued, in short, that language was arbitrary and it was the opposition of terms that produced meaning. Man is the opposite of woman, white is the opposite of black, and so on. Man only means what it does in relation to other words in a system. There is no necessary reason that seeing the arrangement of the three letters into the signifier "man" should point beyond itself and represent, well, a man. Hence, the arbitrariness of language.

Deconstruction looks at these binary oppositions within a text and considers how they function to produce meaning, because it is assumed that this structure is how meaning is produced. Oppositions like black/white, man/woman, and so on tend to form hierarchical relations wherein one is privileged over the other. Deconstruction shows the inherent contradictions within texts and destabilizes these binary oppositions.

The point is to show that language is not always as certain as we assume and that on the surface a text may put forth one meaning, but on closer examination it can be subverting that.

Basically just close read and question everything.

I know this is nowhere near a perfect breakdown, but it is difficult to condense Derrida. Start with the Greeks, OP.

[Anonymous No.6313309]

>>6313277
I am familiar, at an amateur or "OK I think I get it.." level, with Saussure and the history of 20th century postmodern/poststructuralist stuff, to the point that I can at least mostly understand your post. The only thing that confuses me is:
1) How central is the "binary opposition" thing?
2) Why is this such a big deal?

The binary opposition thing (language is arbitrary + some terms implicitly assume their negation or opposite) is interesting, definitely, but it always seems to me more like a *nuance* of the broader "LANGUAGE, MAN!" mentality at best. So I guess my question is: To what degree and on what basis does Derrida make it absolutely central to the generalised "LANGUAGE, MAN!" argument of the post-Saussure niggers, and why should I care more about it than other systems which don't focus on it so much?

Basically, why is Derrida QUALITATIVELY interesting, as opposed to quantitatively interesting or just nuancing the existing Saussure/post-Saussure concept?

Sorry if this post is incoherent I'm drunk as fuck and eating chicken nuggets

[Anonymous No.6313315]

>>6313261
Very very broadly speaking, Derrida mostly concerns himself with the nature of language as a system of signs. Derrida builds off Saussurean semantics in that the sign is constituted in the relationship between signifier (the representation of a concept) and signified (the concept itself). He essentially argues that, instead of signs having a fixed and determinable meaning, the meaning is deferred. Signifiers do not signify a truthful and accurate representation of the world, but instead only gesture towards other signifiers through metonymy and metaphor, an inadequate attempt to render reality within language.

[Anonymous No.6313411]

>>6313277
So is that what some people are writing against when the complain of gender binary?

[Anonymous No.6313413]

>>6313277
Are deconstructionists inherently against hierarchical relations or do the just wish to study them?

[Anonymous No.6313443]

>>6313413
Strictly speaking they just wish to study them but they're against them in the sense that they don't think any can ever be capital-t True because that still relies on metaphysics of presence; privileging presence over absence. In other words, there will ALWAYS be room for re-interpretation.

>>6313411
Who do you have in mind? Derrida would surely say there is no sharp distinction but he was in no way as whiney as his fanboys. He wasn't judgemental at all as a philosopher. He called things as he saw them.

>>6313309
>1) How central is the "binary opposition" thing?
Very central to the history of philosopher. Just look at it, there are distinction made all over the place.
>2) Why is this such a big deal?
It's just the metaphysics of presence. (which, Derrida said later on in life, isn't necessarily bad)

[Anonymous No.6313581]

>>6312962
lol you sure owned that ta

[Anonymous No.6314527]

>>6313411
Who is writing against what?

I see people who critique the idea of a gender binary because it is thought that people can identify outside of that binary as other than male or female, yet this binary way of thinking is ingrained in Western thought all the back to the Greeks: being/non-being or becoming, good/bad, just/unjust, etc.

I think disrupting or deconstructing the idea of a gender binary would allow for meaning and being outside of the opposition in which meaning is thought to be created. Returning to Derrida, his observance that these oppositions tend to form hierarchical relations (male>female) doesn't bode well for those who aren't signified by the dominating term.

[Anonymous No.6314543]

intellectual equivalent of stalling

[Anonymous No.6314548]

>>6313261
In his best and perhaps later works (after of G. which is too obscure) Derrida's point is not to establish any philosophy of deconstruction. All his work is close reading criticism of philosophical texts as if they are unaware of yet express the failure of their own ideologies. This makes him different than most others he is grouped with, Saussure, Foucault, Lacan (in fact he attacks both of the latter wonderfully) etc. -- and I think, better. He is simply a deep reader at all times. Often the deepest.

[Anonymous No.6314562]

>>6314548
I really enjoyed Specters of Marx.


Imagine 1990s /lit/, people would have posted:

Where were you when Fukuyama got BTFO?

[Anonymous No.6314580]

>>6311693
A mental exercise, but as a philosophy, absolutely useless. It's like playing with legos for philosophers. If you like it great, but it doesn't have much point outside the game.

[Anonymous No.6314705]

>>6314580
>It's like playing with legos for philosophers.
I really don't think you quite get deconstruction

[Anonymous No.6314723]

>>6314527
People mostly critique gender binaries because they distinguish physical sex from gender, the latter being understood as a performative quality and one which doesn't accurately fit into the two binary divisions of 'boy' and 'girl'

>these oppositions tend to form hierarchical relations (male>female) doesn't bode well for those who aren't signified by the dominating term.
I simply cannot stress enough how important Hegel's master-slave dialectic is for making sense of just how those hierarchical relations are artificial. The very notion of the differentiation between 'I' and 'you' establishes a hierarchy from the very outset

[Anonymous No.6314812]

>>6314580
More like logos

[Anonymous No.6315105]

>>6312965
How is differeance formed???

[Anonymous No.6315144]

>>6314548
Where did he BTFO'Lacan and Foucault?

[Anonymous No.6315175]

>>6311702
:^)

[Anonymous No.6315195]

>>6312962

This story is so fedorable.

How euphoric were you?

[Anonymous No.6315982]

>>6313078
Is it?

[Anonymous No.6316024]

>>6313210
God comes into everything.

>>6313228
Why would I or anyone for that matter even bother to read a book at all if deconstructionism is true?

>>6313581
Yeah, I did. She turned from anger to being visibly upset and the prof only stepped in to stop her from crying or screaming at me or something.

>>6315195
I'm the opposite of a fedora. I'm a humble servant of Christ waging a crusade against the godless apostates who have infected and overtaken the sacred academy and instituted Satanic bullshit like feminist women's studies and critical theory and what have you. If it were up to me the entire system would be burned to the ground and I would dance around the ashes pissing on them and then we'd have a chance to start again.

[Anonymous No.6316092]

>>6313309

> eating chicken nuggets

tenders, chicken tenders

[Anonymous No.6316097]

>>6313277

This binary thingy sounds like Hegel dialectics, or i'm drunk?

[Anonymous No.6316136]

>>6316024
*tips jesus hat

[Anonymous No.6316161]

>>6316024
if god comes into everything why aren't there more jesuses

check and mate

[Anonymous No.6316260]

>>6311861
sorry for being retarded, but where do you find this?

[Anonymous No.6316291]

>>6311693
Fine in theory, but what ends up happening more often than not is that people begin to see things in a text that simply aren't there. I blame deconstruction for the "all interpretations are correct" mentality.

[Anonymous No.6316325]

>>6316097
It has something to do, it's usually recomended to have read some Hegel before reading Derrida. Same with Foucault but it's more of a "this two mix together nicely" more than "needed reading"

[Anonymous No.6316368]

>>6316291
If you want something funny, look up that one far rightwing philosopher who uses deconstruction and finds all these neoreactionary things everywhere. I wish I could remember his name, but he must piss the hell out of critical theory types if they ever step outside of their echo chamber and give him a read. Hilarious.

[Anonymous No.6316385]

>>6316161
>why aren't there more jesuses
>why aren't there more prophets
>who is mahomet?
>who is hegel?
>who is wittgenstein?

[Anonymous No.6316440]

>>6312962
How do we know this is bullshit? Because when you're working with a TA it's either in a discussion section or otherwise outside of the professor's lecture. Why the fuck would the professor be around to jump in?

[Anonymous No.6316449]

>>6316291
>see things in a text that simply aren't there
there's nothing outside the text

[Anonymous No.6316487]

>>6316024
>God comes into everything.
If you believe he does, yes, but not in any directly empirical sense and only one interpretable to yourself as subject. One should only really speak of him as the transcendental signified, at least that term takes into account the limits of human comprehension

>Why would I or anyone for that matter even bother to read a book at all if deconstructionism is true?
For someone so devoted to a belief originating in an ancient text requiring interpretation and analysis, you really don't understand what deconstruction is. It is a genuinely beneficial practise to reading

>instituted Satanic bullshit like feminist women's studies and critical theory
Again, why are you so certain that deconstructive practises threaten the sanctity of your God? No deconstructive text aims to dismantle the concept of God, only how linguistics shape our understanding of what some people call 'God', and others by all kinds of different names. What makes you so certain God isn't compatible?

[Anonymous No.6316496]

>>6316291
>people begin to see things in a text that simply aren't there
That's kinda what deconstructive practises seek to prove and address, how are we to be certain of Truth and meaning if both can be understood differently while reading?

[Anonymous No.6316505]

>>6316024
Yet you paid to take that women's studies class. What was the point if you went into it with that mindset anyway?

[Anonymous No.6316585]

>>6316136
M'Jesus

[Anonymous No.6316871]

>>6316368
That sounds like a good time.

[Anonymous No.6316891]

>>6316496
Using facts is a nice start.

[Anonymous No.6317012]

>>6316891
Depends on how you define a 'fact'. There are very few statements that can be made concerning the exact nature of reality other than directly scientific knowledge. In order to differentiate between fact and unsubstantiated claims one would have to dismiss so many as to render the operation useless. History is moments of truth rendered within a wider frame of semi-fictional ambiguities, a series of events interspersed with assumptions that one particular event necessarily followed on from another by an allegedly 'self-evident' sequence of cause and effect, without any true evidence demonstrating the empirical connection. When so much of history is reserved to the metaphysics of presence - the defining principle of 'self' - how are to we to find the history of the self-conscious 'other' outside of its relation with ours?

[Anonymous No.6317119]

Madoka was a deconstruction.

[Anonymous No.6317374]

>>6316136
M'siah

[Anonymous No.6317414]

>>6316260
bump/ second, if you please, anyone.

[Anonymous No.6317418]

>>6314812
Zing

[Anonymous No.6317505]

>>6316449
The actual translation of Derrida is "there is nothing outside of context" which is far less dramatic

[Anonymous No.6317514]

>>6317119
i will perform deconstruction on kyoko if you know what i mean.