Re: Before the Law

John O. said, first quoting me:
<< "You have suggested -- correctly, no doubt -- that people here would not
know what a deconstruction is if it were presented. This seems to me like
it ought to be a wholly and easily remediable malaise."

It's not. And I'm not sure why you think such things should be easy. But
more on that below. >>

I was under the impression (of which you still have not entirely dispelled
me) that it ought not to be difficult because no other idea I know of is
difficult to get a simple, perfunctory, simplified conception of. I am very
dubious that deconstruction has such a unique and extraordinary status as
that -- more subtle and complicated than any other idea in the world -- and
insistence that it is, in fact, impossible to give even what you would
consider a woefully insufficient conception of it without great pains
probably does little more than contribute to the notion that it is, in fact,
a chimera.

If we were presented with a deconstruction of a text, how would we know it?
What would characterize such a thing? Suppose we don't care to be experts,
but would settle for a measly 60% accuracy at correctly identifying a
genuine deconstruction, as you would consider it.

You then say, again beginning by quoting me:
<<You write:

"Most loosely, literature refers to anything written."

No, it doesn't. Not as the term is used by anyone I know. >>

I think you're wrong about that, unless your experience does not include
newspapers, periodicals, and the standard written and spoken dialects of
American English. The American government is currently dropping propaganda
literature over Iraq. If you're diagnosed with diabetes or are curious
about a computer operating system, you can learn more by going to a good
library and reading the relevant literature.

It seems to me that if not any (perhaps the small print on grocery coupons
doesn't count), then quite nearly any written thing can be called (and
appropriately called) literature.

And even if you don't like my definition of about four seconds of thought, I
can quote from a dictionary that gives four or five much more comprehensive
definitions. I've just read them -- and while they don't, in my opinion,
give a sense of the greatness of literature -- I'll be damned if I can think
of an example of literature that they don't encompass. If they were the
only knowledge I had of what literature was, I'm sure I would have a much
better than 60% success rate at identifying presented literature as
literature.

You then said:
<< But you add:

"More usually, though, it refers to something that is written with an ear
toward beauty and depth of meaning."

And now all you've done, besides continue to mislead your listener, is
complicate the matter, made your problem worse, since now you have to define
for your listener what the heck you mean by beauty, depth, and meaning. Oh
yes, this is working well. >>

You've reproduced quite exactly Meno's objection to a definition of shape
given him by Socrates (given as a model for a definition, not ever given in
the Meno, of virtue -- Aristotle later gives it as the mean between excess
and deficiency).

I made no effort to hide the insufficiency of the definition. My aim was
only to suggest something of the sense of it, which would require some
knowledge of the language, and would certainly need refining, but which is
preferable to a very mysterious word with no known meaning.

And then:
<< I would resist it no matter what term we were discussing. I actively
resist the basic desire for one sentence definitions of anything like this.
I resist that way of thinking in general. I think it is too often
accompanied by and even motivated by laziness and a penchant for
oversimplification and a lack of respect for complex ideas and the real way
words like this work. In fact, I think resisting the desire for one
sentence definitions in general is actually a worthwhile and even
politically appropriate gesture in these times. I think it is one sentence
definitions and the desire for one sentence definitions and a one-sentence
sort of understanding of complicated problems and ideas that causes not only
much of the misunderstandings all around us, both on the personal and scale
and on the global scale, but that produces some of the most tragic and
unpleasant moments in our lives and in our history. I think it is
dangerous. I think it is sloppy. I think it is lazy. I think it is bad
scholarship. I think it is bad thinking. And I will to continue to resist
it. >>

I don't think this is such a case. It doesn't seem to me that repeatedly
seeing the ostensibly sincerely-asked question, "What is deconstruction,
anyway?" and being disappointed when it is given non-answers, impossibly
cryptic answers, or suggestions to read thick books that will almost
certainly not be read, is anything at all like favoring sloppy and
unsophisticated understandings, generally.

Most people will not commit to reading long and difficult books to
understand better something that they do not know at all, even in the most
basic of senses. If someone does not have any idea (any idea!) of what
deconstruction is -- and I'm not just talking about a healthy Socratic
ignorance, but if he is so far from even any very primitive understanding
that he has no guesses and would fail utterly to recognize a deconstruction
as being such when it's under his nose, if he doesn't know if it can be used
as a verb or only a noun, if it refers to a method than anyone can learn or
something already over and recorded that won't happen again -- it is
extraordinarily improbable that he will attempt reading a few hundred pages
of Derrida to find out. If he has the gumption to try it, he is quite
likely to give up after a few pages, expecting the payout to be not worth
the effort, since he not only doesn't see the light at the end of the
tunnel, but doesn't even have the vaguest of notions concerning what sort of
thing the light will turn out to be.

Saying in a few words or a few sentences or even a few paragraphs, if not
what deconstruction IS something that will give a basic notion of what it is
LIKE, of what it LOOKS like, of some of its characteristics, should not be
seen as akin to endorsing childish world-views or of undisciplined thinking,
generally. Nor should it be exceptionally difficult, if doing such for the
most difficult ideas in every other field of human pursuit can be taken as
any indication.

I expect that deconstructions are actually something, and that you can
recognize them when you see them. Describing some of the defining
characteristics in plain language -- however incompletely or imprecisely --
that jump out from a genuine deconstruction ought to be a surmountable task,
and by no means a disrespectful or irresponsible one. Quite the contrary, I
think such reluctance does nothing but contrubte to the (mis?)conception
that deconstruction is an empty term loosely associated with bad philosophy.

-robbie
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Received on Sat Mar 8 19:57:37 2003