Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:20:55 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802181820.NAA11711@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: mark.vines@wholefoods.com Sender: Lojban list From: Mark Vines Subject: Re: Summary so far on DJUNO X-To: LOJBAN@CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: And Rosta "Re: Summary so far on DJUNO" (Feb 18, 4:35pm) X-UIDL: 9be8f42a4bd1cad20aa4ff7ec7124b4c X-Mozilla-Status: 8013 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Feb 18 16:07:23 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - la .and. spuda la lojbab. di'e > I personally doubt that the language could be made to > embody deconstructionist ideas without ceasing to be > usable as language. la markl. spuda la .and. di'e Yet you yourself seem to use English, & I have reason to think that other people use French. Derrida's essay on "Plato's Pharmacy" makes it clear that deconstruction is also compatible with Classical Greek. His work on Hegel & others implies the same of German. Each of these four languages appears to be "usable as a language". Why wouldn't the same be true of Lojban? I personally doubt that you understand deconstruction even slightly. You seem to be making the same foolish equation of deconstruction with nihilism that so many other authors have made. Instead of spouting anti-po-mo prejudice, let's review the method of deconstruction: Deconstruction attacks the metaphysical privilege accorded to speech by Western philosophy. In the history of ideas, that privilege has repeatedly involved a myth which states that "the self is immediately present to itself in speech". 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, but it also means that speech cannot "immediately" present anything to anyone; the process of signification takes time; speech is thus "text-like" in that its signifiers must be traversed before its significance can be construed. Deconstruction also attacks nihilism by asserting that signification does occur, even in the questions asked by those who doubt it, even in the denials issued by those who disbelieve it. Yet signification is not a property exhibited by signifiers; signification takes place in a kind of dialectic between the sign & the consciousness of the beholder. Things are not signs in & of themselves; they're only signs when they're read that way. In Derrida's words: "The sign 'is' that ill-named 'thing' which escapes the instituting question of philosophy." Deconstruction asserts that no science, no logic & no philosophy thus far has been free of the metaphysical myth of immediate self-presence. Deconstruction offers a critique of that myth, & describes other myths which have often been derived from it or allied with it in the history of ideas. Deconstruction therefore insists on treating "scientific", "logical" & "philosophical" statements as mythopoetic texts, to be evaluated by the methods of literary criticism. 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. This kind of incompatibility between a statement & its own rhetoric is sometimes called the "hinge" on which a text may be "opened". In "Plato's Pharmacy", Derrida uses such a hinge to open the Socratic dialogues of Plato. The resulting essay is IMO one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the century. As classical scholar James Kinneavy - himself neither a deconstructionist nor any kind of po-mo thinker - expressed it: "Derrida has asked cogent, powerful questions about Plato & about the whole philosophical enterprise that no one had asked before & that no one has yet been able to answer. To read Plato without reading Derrida is really not to read Plato at all, but to deceive oneself that Plato has been read." 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. Admittedly, a vast reservoir of nonsense has been published, & still more uttered, in the name of deconstruction. But your attempt to label the entire field as worthless is outrageous. co'omi'e markl.