> I should point out that the author here is completely wrong when he writes "Step 2 -- Decide what the text says. This can be whatever you want...." This is egregiously incorrect. In fact, one of Derrida's main points is that we do not decide at all what the text says. (As an aside, decidability is actually a term of art within deconstruction, so the author's abuse of it here is particularly irksome. If he had say "figure out" instead of "decide" he'd have been less wrong on several counts.)
To me at least, it sounds like perhaps what you are talking about is legitimate, sincere deconstruction, whereas the author is talking (correctly, in my opinion) about an "evil twin" so to speak (ie: conservatives --> neo-conservatives).
>If he had say "figure out" instead of "decide"...
I think that statement illustrates the disconnect...."figuring out" is what should be done, but "deciding" is what is often actually done. To me it seems you are talking about the uncompromised (correctly implemented) theory, whereas he is talking about what the theory has typically become, in actual practice. If that makes any sense.
To me at least, it sounds like perhaps what you are talking about is legitimate, sincere deconstruction, whereas the author is talking (correctly, in my opinion) about an "evil twin" so to speak (ie: conservatives --> neo-conservatives).
Perhaps I am; where does this evil twin reside?
I am speaking of the work of Derrida, and the work of his followers that is (for the sake of simplicity) published by university presses-- because that's what I read.
If the "evil twins" are undergrad posers, well, I don't really know or care what they're up to these days.
I think that statement illustrates the disconnect...."figuring out" is what should be done, but "deciding" is what is often actually done. To me it seems you are talking about the uncompromised (correctly implemented) theory, whereas he is talking about what the theory has typically become, in actual practice. If that makes any sense.
It makes sense, but it's not what I was getting at.
My point was a Nietzschean one (which Derrida concurs with).
We don't consciously choose how to interpret a text.
Here's a link to an old Usenet post I wrote, which collects a few Derrida quotations, one of which is precisely on this subject:
The evil twin is the John Locke quote above. Anything that consists of spending more time on your internal jargon, codes and scaffolding than on the insights that they produce.
About 70% of the humanities papers I've ever attempted to read had a much lower insight:word ratio than the newspaper. The humanities aren't fundamentally technical in the way physics is - they're always making subjective judgments, and everything's up for interpretation. So just say it, then, don't give me a bunch of stupid .25 cent word padding. I have a good vocabulary, I know those words, and I'm not impressed. If your idea can't be distilled to a simpler formulation than most of the crazy crap I saw in my friends' reading when I was an undergrad, you're probably not saying much of import.
PS your excellent summary above was a case of good writing. You could have made the same point using 4X as much words and a bunch of crazy but still-technically-grammatical-therefore-smart sentence structures, and that would have been the evil twin. Usually, when someone resorts to the silly-season writing, it's a good indicator that they don't actually have a point.
To me at least, it sounds like perhaps what you are talking about is legitimate, sincere deconstruction, whereas the author is talking (correctly, in my opinion) about an "evil twin" so to speak (ie: conservatives --> neo-conservatives).
>If he had say "figure out" instead of "decide"...
I think that statement illustrates the disconnect...."figuring out" is what should be done, but "deciding" is what is often actually done. To me it seems you are talking about the uncompromised (correctly implemented) theory, whereas he is talking about what the theory has typically become, in actual practice. If that makes any sense.