Disclaimer: I am a technologist, not a literary academic; I married into the latter field.
You know how annoying it is when a non-techie gains insight into some aspect of technology and goes wild with their newfound knowledge, believing it has granted them an understanding of the entire field?
That's exactly what Mr. Morningstar has done.
To put it another way, he has been building dinosaurs. He looks at the pieces he's got, assumes they comprise the whole, and assembles them based on his interpretation of their function. Except he doesn't know anything about dinosaur bones, or about dinosaurs, for that matter.
The assertion that you can deconstruct anything into anything else is the remedial argument of one who doesn't understand deconstruction or its place within the greater field of literary and artistic criticism. He uses elementary logic and supposition to build his argument, while ignoring the actual facts of the field.
First and foremost: neither postmodernism nor deconstruction are the field of literary criticism, nor are they the field of academic humanities. They are tools of criticism that have evolved and taken shape as the community has broken with the methods and ideas of the past.
Deconstruction was the first of the literary theories, having been influenced by the deconstructive methods of Freud's psychoanalysis. It in no way promotes or validates Freud's psychology but, just as modern psychology, has borrowed much from Freud's methods. Deconstruction has since been demoted from a theory to a tool as I understand it. And just as Occam's Razor is very useful where appropriate, it is hardly descriptive of the field as a whole.
Which is why the field continues to progress. It keeps deconstruction as one of an array of tools for applying the various literary theories which now abound. Before deconstruction, all literary criticism was, "get in the author's head and figure out what he/she was thinking," performed in ivory-tower isolation. That is the mode of criticism that rests on being clever rather than being right. And this type of criticism still exists, this type of scholar has not been eliminated from the field, but is part of an aging minority.
And it's easy to see why. We cannot get inside an author's head, nor assert to have done so. The only way to defend such an approach is through ivory-tower isolation and exclusion--a detriment to constructive dialogue.
Furthermore, it is fundamental to our contemporary view of art that we can gain more and varied insights than its creators intend. First, because it reflects aspects of the artist's thinking that are the result of social and historical influences that are better understood in hindsight. Second, we interpret everything through our own experience and biases, which determines on a very fundamental level how we experience a given text.
Postmodernism, modernism, feminism (which is not the same as political feminism, but is more aptly framed as "women's studies"), gay/lesbian studies, racial studies, etc. These are the fruits of twentieth century progress. The old order ignored--no, categorically rejected context--historical, social, personal, etc. Rejected the significance of race, gender, belief: everything but the words on the page.
Literary theory incorporates all of these into it's processes. It is not about being right *or* being clever. It is about delving into the work itself and seeing what of value may be found. Scholars search for insight into the works, the times and events surrounding them, and ourselves and our time. The very use of the word "text" as something distinct from "work" is indicative of this shift. We study the text, among other things, in order to study the work.
This has resulted in the field, previously dominated by white men of letters, to become much more inclusive. And more importantly, it makes the work of the field much more accessible to those outside it. More significantly, the fruits of these change
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Disclaimer: I am a technologist, not a literary academic; I married into the latter field.
You know how annoying it is when a non-techie gains insight into some aspect of technology and goes wild with their newfound knowledge, believing it has granted them an understanding of the entire field?
That's exactly what Mr. Morningstar has done.
To put it another way, he has been building dinosaurs. He looks at the pieces he's got, assumes they comprise the whole, and assembles them based on his interpretation of their function. Except he doesn't know anything about dinosaur bones, or about dinosaurs, for that matter.
The assertion that you can deconstruct anything into anything else is the remedial argument of one who doesn't understand deconstruction or its place within the greater field of literary and artistic criticism. He uses elementary logic and supposition to build his argument, while ignoring the actual facts of the field.
First and foremost: neither postmodernism nor deconstruction are the field of literary criticism, nor are they the field of academic humanities. They are tools of criticism that have evolved and taken shape as the community has broken with the methods and ideas of the past.
Deconstruction was the first of the literary theories, having been influenced by the deconstructive methods of Freud's psychoanalysis. It in no way promotes or validates Freud's psychology but, just as modern psychology, has borrowed much from Freud's methods. Deconstruction has since been demoted from a theory to a tool as I understand it. And just as Occam's Razor is very useful where appropriate, it is hardly descriptive of the field as a whole.
Which is why the field continues to progress. It keeps deconstruction as one of an array of tools for applying the various literary theories which now abound. Before deconstruction, all literary criticism was, "get in the author's head and figure out what he/she was thinking," performed in ivory-tower isolation. That is the mode of criticism that rests on being clever rather than being right. And this type of criticism still exists, this type of scholar has not been eliminated from the field, but is part of an aging minority.
And it's easy to see why. We cannot get inside an author's head, nor assert to have done so. The only way to defend such an approach is through ivory-tower isolation and exclusion--a detriment to constructive dialogue.
Furthermore, it is fundamental to our contemporary view of art that we can gain more and varied insights than its creators intend. First, because it reflects aspects of the artist's thinking that are the result of social and historical influences that are better understood in hindsight. Second, we interpret everything through our own experience and biases, which determines on a very fundamental level how we experience a given text.
Postmodernism, modernism, feminism (which is not the same as political feminism, but is more aptly framed as "women's studies"), gay/lesbian studies, racial studies, etc. These are the fruits of twentieth century progress. The old order ignored--no, categorically rejected context--historical, social, personal, etc. Rejected the significance of race, gender, belief: everything but the words on the page.
Literary theory incorporates all of these into it's processes. It is not about being right *or* being clever. It is about delving into the work itself and seeing what of value may be found. Scholars search for insight into the works, the times and events surrounding them, and ourselves and our time. The very use of the word "text" as something distinct from "work" is indicative of this shift. We study the text, among other things, in order to study the work.
This has resulted in the field, previously dominated by white men of letters, to become much more inclusive. And more importantly, it makes the work of the field much more accessible to those outside it. More significantly, the fruits of these change