The philosophy side of my poor, fractured psyche doesn't much care for poststructuralism, though. In fact, that particular part of my brain actually rebels at several poststructuralist ideas. The idea that all systems must be based entirely within language doesn't bother me at all. The idea that because of this "center-less center" nothing we attempt will be free from previously enacted linguistic constraints and tendencies is alright, I suppose, but why analyze if truth (or even accuracy) is not available to analysis?
I understand that the lack of any truth separate from language allows for multiple interpretations of reality to be equally subjectively valid, and for all intents and purposes, even objectively valid. That doesn't actually bother me. What bothers me is using this idea to perform analysis. Or rather: its sweeping success in performing analysis over and above other, *equally valid* modes of interpretation.
Perhaps this is a misunderstanding on my part. Maybe poststructuralism doesn't actually suggest that almost an infinite number of interpretations are available and valid; maybe it withholds that from other theories. Or maybe it does suggest it, and in fact actually allows the validity of other theories. (I suspect this will be the most argued for position.) But it seems to me that, at least in part, contemporary criticism favors poststructuralist ideas over other theoretical models.
This isn't even really a problem: I'm all for making appropriate use of the best available theory, even when it means leaving other theories in the dust. What seems problematic is that by becoming hegemonic over literary analysis, poststructuralism and especially deconstructionism have undermined their own argument completely by accident. If the best literary critics in the world are all deconstructionists (which is a silly example, but I'm throwing it out there anyway) then we do not see a nearly infinite number of equally valid interpretations. Instead, we see the group that knows what they're doing favoring one interpretation, or a set of interpretations, and thereby we also see that one set of interpretations is, if not more valid, at least far more useful and embraced by experts.
Now, there are ways out of this purely hypothetical situation that I have drawn out for far too long already. But "the ways out" kind of bother me too. For example, maintaining that deconstructionism is not a structure does remove some problems, but also introduces others. One the one hand we might be left frantically disguising systematicity, and pushing the center-less center's origin back into the past indefinitely; and infinite regression is not a nice way to begin any theory. On the other hand, however, we could end up engaged in a never-ending, quasi-Maoist revolution: told by the dominant power to rebel in ways that the dominant power prescribes, and reassured that it is in this perpetual (and meaningless) revolution that culture exists.
Obviously, this all comes with the rather glaring caveat: I don't know quite enough about current literary criticism to make competent judgments. Maybe these problems have been handily solved. Maybe they are simply disregarded for the pragmatically excellent quality of the results. I''m totally thrilled if that is the case. I really want poststructuralist theory to work. It is such a powerful philosophical framework from which to interpret literature that I can't help admiring it. But I have lingering fears that the whole thing is built on air, and that it could all come crashing down at any time. I'm afraid somebody will point out that the emperor doesn't have any clothes, and that all along he was only wearing a great deal of tragically flawed theory.
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