Econ 407 Paul Heyne

Making Sense of Deconstructionism

by Aran Murphy

Frenchman Jacques Derrida is a man who claims to have no doctrines. Yet amazingly his followers, called "deconstructionists," claim (or sort of claim) a school of thought, and their presence is felt all over the Western intellectual world. "The humanities have been taken over by deconstructionists", says a university professor, unsure whether this is a good or a bad thing. Some are more certain it is a bad thing. There is a debate in academia over the merits of deconstructionism, a debate The Economist (5-16-92) described as "the comic struggle between wholesome Anglo-Saxon common sense and the slurred, obfuscatory, garlic-and-sauerkraut-flavored verbiage of "continental" thought."

So what is deconstructionism? This is a slippery question, as the reader will see from the nature of the school. As far as this writer understands it, deconstructionism holds that every position is assailable, no objective knowledge is available. In an English class, this would boil down to students looking - not to the meaning of a particular story, for nothing absolute or intelligible about that can be said - but instead that we should play with the nuances of the author's language and the endless ways in which his words can be interpreted. Don't look to what is said, only look to the way it is said. In other words; think about form, don't worry about meaning.

I hope this is a fair characterization of deconstructionism. If it is, deconstructionism, as a method of literary criticism, is skepticism applied to art. Nothing can be known for certain, therefore don't bother with what the artist is actually trying to say. What is important is what you feel he is saying, or how his gender, race, or status as a Vietnam-era veteran has effected his perspective. For the same sentence in a book, there will supposedly be several interpretations, and we have no ultimate standard as to which is most correct. Stripped of its enigmatic and obfuscatory garb, deconstructionism is a refusal to acknowledge the existence of ultimate truths, and is thus merely a new variant of old-fashioned skepticism.

With this in mind, the debate between deconstructionists and the (loosely defined) objectivist camp can be effectively summed up in the question: Are the senses valid? Neither side may recognize this philosophical turning point as the crux of their debate, but I will argue that once this fundamental question is recognized and discussed, some constructive agreement may take place, or at least both sides might agree that they have some house cleaning to do.

The Skeptic

The skeptic's argument can't be beaten if it runs deeply enough, for the rabid skeptics will call into doubt our entire apparatus of knowledge accumulation and verification: The senses. As finite human beings, we've got nothing else left to us. I can show the deconstructionists how and why certain truths are certainties, how words can have a meaningful relationship to their referents in the reality, how there is a logic to grammar, and so on, all the way down to my assumption that the senses are valid. Given that premise, the rest can be shown to be true, and the deconstructionists may be satisfied.

This may be rather optimistic. I suspect that the deconstructionists would not grant me the validity of the senses. To this I would say "fine", I'll give a respectful bow to skepticism and then show the skeptics to the door. If they have chosen to exit the world of knowledge, that is their right, but that they insist on lingering noisily in the realm of intellectual endeavor I find hypocritical. For what do they seek there? If nothing can be known - and consistent skeptics would doubt whether they knew even this, the skeptic's credo - then scientific inquiry, intelligible art criticism, and any other intellectual pursuit is in vain.

To avoid running my bayonet through a straw man, I'll suppose that the deconstructionists aren't deep skeptics. Just how skeptical are they? Some people go so far as to argue a difference between epistemological and metaphysical skepticism, a "which came first, chicken or the egg?" kind of argument best set aside for now. We'll assume that the deconstructionists are neither epistemological or metaphysical skeptics. Their various literary interpretations, though shifty and difficult to pin down, are claims to some kind of knowledge, and, their claims are meant to speak of the external world.

Now, if the deconstructionists are merely attempting to show the objectivists a more realistic way of understanding the world, then no self-respecting objectivist can afford to ignore them. Deconstructionists may only be seeking a less biased, more universal perspective by trying to account for the context of artistic narrative. Note that implicit in this supposition is that the deconstructionists are merely seeking to improve a common means towards a shared end: Understanding reality.

If the deconstructionists are offering better rules of evidence, so to speak, then their attempts are to be lauded. Unfortunately, I'm fairly certain that deconstructionists would cringe at my attempted laudations - "more objective than currently used standards" are not likely to be on their agenda. From what I've read and heard, theirs is an acceptance of the idea that there is no ultimately knowable common ground - reality. All we have left to us is language, which is ambiguous and artificial, innately prejudicial and inscrutable to tests of evidence.

The Objectivist

And now to the other side of the coin: Those of the objectivist camp have yet to swallow the bitter pill of faith. "What?" an objectivist might declare. "Faith? Faith can not be part of a system of knowledge rooted in sensory evidence!" I would degree, up to a point. In my lexicon, faith is a vile word - yet I have nothing else to justify my belief in the validity of the senses. To use the senses to prove the senses is circular, and one is left with either an anchorless coherence theory or a fundamental leap of faith. After much deliberation, I see the fundamentalist "leap" as more plausible. This is intellectually problematic for me, yet I do not have an answer, nor do I see many objectivists seriously attempting one. I know that the senses are giving me information about the external world - Why? Because there is no reason for me to think otherwise. I have to think this. There is nothing left to me if I don't. For man's hierarchy of knowledge, the wiping out of the senses is the equivalent of a bullet in the brain pan, and serious discussion with those who have "wiped out" the senses will support this statement.

This, however, is not an argument for the validity of the senses. One cannot use the conclusion as the argument's premise. If logic is derived from sensory data, we cannot validly use it as a foundation for sense-data validity. Our entire edifice of knowledge stands on this Achilles' heel. Some might call this starting leap "axiomatic," which is fine. I'll call it that too, for a tautological starting point seems necessary, but I don't expect it to be a final and all-conclusive argument.

When discussing the validity of the senses with those who doubt them, many objectivists are apt to throw their hands up in the air, or be tempted to persuade skeptics of the world's existence with a blunt instrument of persuasion. This does not make for worthwhile discussion. The objectivists' failure to take the skeptic's criticisms seriously has led to an arid debate between the two camps.

To restate my main point, it would be very constructive if the debate between objectivism and deconstructionism centered on the philosophical crux - the question: Are the senses valid? If both camps agree to the question and to what qualifications are worthwhile (the typically offered Kantian "qualifications" are the equivalent of saying the senses are not valid), then fruitful gains towards a better understanding of the world can be made. Objectivists should always welcome a new and more apt way of understanding the world. The dialogue of the debate might even lead objectivists into some "ultra" understanding of the relationship between our sensory apparatus and the world, which could prove philosophically profitable. However, if the deconstructionists are determined that the objectivist "axiomatic leap" is not valid and could never be valid, and that the senses do not tell us about a common reality, then the deconstructionists should quietly excuse themselves from the world of knowledge and inquiry, dropping all pretensions as seekers or propounders of truth.

Would it not be a better world? Life would be much less confusing for the college student, who has come to university to learn something, not to "learn" nothing can be known. And for those who eschew the notion of objective reality - they can pursue their own interests off campus, in the coffee houses and espresso bars that surround every university. The deconstruct-niks and the post-modernvites can sit in their smokey lairs like spiders, pondering and reading "On the Road," "Finnegan's Wake," or "The Gallant Gallstone," pausing now and then to smile superciliously at the students hustling by with their book bags, students who, weary with long hours of work and study, dream of the bridges they are going to build and businesses they are going to run in this "unknowable" world. Both sides, I believe, would be satisfied with the outcome and would reap their just deserts.

"If you ask one of them a question, they draw out enigmatic little expressions from their quiver, so to speak, and shoot one off; and if you try to get hold of an account of what one meant, you're transfixed by another novel set of metaphors. You'll never get anywhere with any of them."

- An objectivist speaking about the deconstructionists? No; Socrates about the Heraclitians, as quoted in The Economist