Number 90
For all you English majors out there, here are a few book reports from my recent reading.
Years ago, when I returned to college after an eight-year hiatus with the idea that I'd get a Ph.D., I was confused in a couple of my classes, not just because of my time off, but because I didn't understand some of the things I heard and read, and one professor in particular refused to answer questions. Something had happened in English lit, and the humanities in general, in those eight years. I found out later (after I gave up the Ph.D. quest, for other reasons) that what it was, was deconstruction. I haven't read any whole articles or books on this subject. I thought the reason deconstruction was incomprehensible was my own lack of critical and philosophical background. Not necessarily so, as I've learned from some anti-deconstruction books. At one time I wouldn't have read these books because superficially they seemed to represent uncongenial ideas, politically and philosophically. For example, Tenured Radicals would have sounded to me like a knee-jerk reaction against all politics that could be labeled liberal, left, progressive, radical, etc., and which encompassed valuable and necessary movements such as civil rights and feminist activism. This is why it's so important to get past those labels (like left and right), that change colors in time, and which can prevent examination of specific issues.
That said, let me briefly introduce you to four interesting books that examine the intellectual and political changes that have occurred in academia in the last couple of decades under the influence of deconstruction. It may be unfair to report only on these books without giving equal time to deconstructionist icons such as Derrida, Paul de Man (embarrassingly discovered to have been a Nazi sympathizer), etc., but sometimes I learn backwards.
I've learned some of the basic vocabulary of deconstruction, such as privileging, demystify, subvert. You may think you know what these words mean, but they're used in a different way by deconstructionists. As I understand it, deconstruction has to do with taking apart literature to show it means something other than what it seems to ~ to demystify privileged ideas and subvert obvious, accepted meanings. When I was an undergraduate, we talked about symbols in literature, which were common or at least comprehensible in literary or popular culture (e.g., a rose isn't just a rose, it also suggests love and beauty). Deconstruction says that the only meanings in any literature are political, and the only legitimate way to read any work of literature is as a political critique of the dominant paradigm, the government (most governments), religion, reason, and all classic humanist ideals. A "privileged idea" is one that is generally believed, I suppose in the sense that a person with worldly advantages is "privileged." Deconstructionists say that "all readings are misreadings" or "all interpretation is misinterpretation." Except theirs, of course. There is no objective reality or "truth."
This thinking gives no leeway for individual artists' expression of their experiences and perceptions through art. In fact, the concept of "individual" is suspect in deconstruction. But why bother reading literature, if it's all really about the same thing, and you know in advance what to think about it, that is to agree or disagree with its real or imagined political stance on race, gender, or class?
Deconstruction methods do not apply only to literature now, which is easy to fuzz up. Kimball illustrates the deconstruction process with Professor Michael Fried's analysis of "The Quarry," a hunting scene painted by Gustave Courbet in 1856. Fried explains that it's all about the painter and the process of painting, not about hunting. Also, the principle that what is not shown is more important than what is shown means that the dead deer's unshown genitals represent violent sex, which the hunter is not looking at; so somehow it's all about castration. Of course a roe deer is a female.
In 1996 Alan Sokal caused a bit of a scandal when he submitted a parody article to the journal Social Text ~ which the journal published in all seriousness. "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" included quotations about physics and math by French and American intellectuals. Fashionable Nonsense shows how the "postmodern" intellectual trend says there is no objective reality, and scientific theories are all socially agreed-on constructs. (By the way, I also learned from these books that quotation marks as I used them around "postmodern" are "scare quotes.")
For more fun reading along these lines, try The Pooh Perplex and Postmodern Pooh by Frederick C. Crews (PO 30), and The Painted Word and From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe.
On TV the other night someone started to say "slown down," then corrected himself and said "slowed down." It's an understandable mistake. Why don't we have "slown" when we have "flown" and "blown"?
The U.S. Postal Service comes in for a lot of complaints, but consider this report from one of my Mexican students: She was stunned to learn that it's OK to mail a check to pay a bill here in the U.S. In Mexico, big companies rely on private carriers like DHL or UPS to deliver bills. The post office there is unreliable and mail is subject to theft. And one of my Venezuelan students asked me if it was safe to put a letter in her mailbox with the flag up so the mail carrier would take it. Our post office isn't perfect, but it's pretty good. Thanks, Frank.
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