Well at the end of class today relativism and nihilism were mentioned as things of which deconstructionists are sometimes guilty...
...and, deconstruction is reminding me a lot of phenomenalism (or what I remember as phenomenalism from Theory of Knowledge class in eleventh grade--that would be: the theory that includes the idea that one cannot be sure of the existence of anything unless there is evidence in front of him currently.)
Train of thought?: For a phenomenalist, it is impossible to know if something is "there" (if it still exists) unless it is actually there, physically present. So, if you were to leave a chair in the middle of the room and then leave the room, shut the door and walk away, you would have no way of knowing if that chair is actually still there and at rest in the middle of the room. Even if you turn around and open the door and see the chair, yes at that moment the chair is there, but you still can't know what it was "doing" for any of the time when you were looking away.
So back to deconstruction. Take a look at the linguistic turn: everything is a text, and nothing can be known about anything except what is written down/put into language about it. What is written down, or what is put into language, is the only available evidence. My thoughts are not available for you to interpret. Only the words I choose to express my thoughts with are available to you.
Language is the only thing that's there.
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I like the way you phrased that, Elizabeth: "Language is the only thing that is there." If this is the case, then doesn't that put those of us who study language at the front of the line for understanding the world?
ReplyDeleteFor Derrida's deconstruction of phenomenalism (also called phenomenology) see his book of essays, Writing and Difference. In it, he critiques the work of Husserl and Levinas, among others.