Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 16:46:22 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802182146.QAA25949@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: bob@rattlesnake.com Sender: Lojban list From: bob@rattlesnake.com Subject: Re: deconstruction X-To: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <980218130737.ZM3994457@thd_vinesm.wholefoods.com> X-UIDL: bea306fea4127607fdf3629f643f7ce9 X-Mozilla-Status: 8011 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Feb 18 17:51:53 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - 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