Two prefatory points:
1) What follows is going to be something new for me. Rather than constructing and thinking about a piece of writing, this is just going to be a straight copying from some writing I did a few weeks back. I just started writing and the body of this blog will be word for word from that. As such, there is less argument and more contemplation. I'd love to hear feedback/criticism.
2) I don't believe I've read any explicit deconstruction literature; but I have read a good deal of recent literature that has all the general tendencies which I perhaps incorrectly presume to be a part of the deconstructionist goals. In general, I'm sure I haven't read near enough on this subject. I also believe that some people who are labeled deconstructionists, don't like the term. This may point to something about their thinking.
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When one deconstructs, destabilizes, disfigures, fractures, delimits, or muddles the very concepts in question, what is left? More importantly, where is that person then left? On what basis can they discuss the given thing? By transfiguring the words, by doing all the things from the list above, what are they then talking about? Something new? What are they then critiquing? Can the deconstructionist talk? And thus, can the deconstructionist think?
Perhaps they are aware of this, and this is what leads to their abstruse rhetoric which obfuscates the reader into frustration, anger, and then dismissal. Their text leads to submission of the reader. Communication is relegated to a realm of errors and is thus done away with. This leads us back to the guiding question: how can the deconstructionist think. If its transmission, and thus logos itself, is unable to do its job, what does the intellect offer? Indeed, what progress is made from human discourse?
Perhaps something new is more appropriate. Let us hope progress is a concern. Correcting error is indeed progress, but to do away with so fundamental of an object, concepts themselves, is to do away with one's own progress. So the deconstructionists are inventive; forging ahead, and finding new concepts. They create a new form to human discourse. But can we then call it discourse? Earlier I mentioned there is a loss of communication. So maybe there is some vestige of discourse still present. At the very least, if there is to be any progress, there must be some resemblance to the former discourse and this new, "non-discourse".
Showing posts with label self-reference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-reference. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Monday, March 23, 2009
Misc. Post
Well I said my next post would be light-hearted, so this will be that.
First, I'd like to point out that I just noticed how many labels (at the bottom of my posts) I put on all of the posts and that only 3 of them have been repeated. This means two things: (1) - my blogs haven't had very many related themes and (2) - the three repeats are what matter to me most. I believe (2) is exactly right. "Human beings" and their "value", and "philosophy" are the most important things in my life right now.
Second, does anyone know why we have to quotation marks outside of punctuation? (See the last sentence of the previous paragraph as well as all of the quotation uses below) I understand following the rule when it pertains to dialogue, but why should that rule follow when you're just referring to a short phrase that you want set off by quotations? It has nothing to do with the sentence as a whole, so why should the punctuation have to fit inside of the quotes?
Third, earlier I mentioned that I had 3 labels which had been tagged two times. Here's the catch, I'm going to label (appropriately so) those three things for this post considering I mentioned them in this post. So as I typed it in the 1st paragraph, was incorrect for me to say the proposition that "those labels have been tagged 2 times"? I guess as I typed it, it was not, but as you read it, it is.
abstract form: I say, "A", followed by "this line contains one "A".
How can I form a statement over time when the very statement I'm trying to say defeats itself? My 2nd statement is true when I form it, but after it is formed, it becomes false.
Does this have ramifications for everyday life? Maybe and maybe not. Any ideas out there? Time and knowledge is a possibility for one of my papers coming up here so that is my particular interest in this subject right now.
Labels:
English grammar,
human beings,
human value,
philosophy,
self-reference
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