Re: Summary so far on DJUNO

[Mark Vines <vinesm@wholefoods.com>]

la .and. spuda la lojbab. di'e

> I personally doubt that the language could be made to
> embody deconstructionist ideas without ceasing to be
> usable as language.

la markl. spuda la .and. di'e

Yet you yourself seem to use English, & I have reason
to think that other people use French.  Derrida's essay
on "Plato's Pharmacy" makes it clear that deconstruction
is also compatible with Classical Greek.  His work on
Hegel & others implies the same of German.  Each of
these four languages appears to be "usable as a language".
Why wouldn't the same be true of Lojban?

I personally doubt that you understand deconstruction
even slightly.  You seem to be making the same foolish
equation of deconstruction with nihilism that so many
other authors have made.  Instead of spouting anti-po-mo
prejudice, let's review the method of deconstruction:

Deconstruction attacks the metaphysical privilege
accorded to speech by Western philosophy.  In the history
of ideas, that privilege has repeatedly involved a myth
which states that "the self is immediately present to
itself in speech".  Deconstruction points to linguistic
evidence which shows that speech is a structured
temporal sequence of signifiers, in which meaning is
deferred until the sequence is reasonably complete.
This should be obvious & noncontroversial, but it also
means that speech cannot "immediately" present anything
to anyone; the process of signification takes time;
speech is thus "text-like" in that its signifiers must
be traversed before its significance can be construed.

Deconstruction also attacks nihilism by asserting that
signification does occur, even in the questions asked
by those who doubt it, even in the denials issued by
those who disbelieve it.  Yet signification is not a
property exhibited by signifiers; signification takes
place in a kind of dialectic between the sign & the
consciousness of the beholder.  Things are not signs
in & of themselves; they're only signs when they're
read that way.  In Derrida's words:  "The sign 'is'
that ill-named 'thing' which escapes the instituting
question of philosophy."

Deconstruction asserts that no science, no logic & no
philosophy thus far has been free of the metaphysical
myth of immediate self-presence.  Deconstruction offers
a critique of that myth, & describes other myths which
have often been derived from it or allied with it in
the history of ideas.  Deconstruction therefore insists
on treating "scientific", "logical" & "philosophical"
statements as mythopoetic texts, to be evaluated by the
methods of literary criticism.

The primary literary-critical method employed by
practitioners of deconstruction is to search a text for
statements that conflict with the rhetoric in which
they are expressed.  For instance, Proust says that
metaphor is superior to metonymy, but he uses metonymy
instead of metaphor to make that claim.  This kind of
incompatibility between a statement & its own rhetoric
is sometimes called the "hinge" on which a text may be
"opened".  In "Plato's Pharmacy", Derrida uses such a
hinge to open the Socratic dialogues of Plato.  The
resulting essay is IMO one of the greatest intellectual
achievements of the century.

As classical scholar James Kinneavy - himself neither
a deconstructionist nor any kind of po-mo thinker -
expressed it:  "Derrida has asked cogent, powerful
questions about Plato & about the whole philosophical
enterprise that no one had asked before & that no one
has yet been able to answer.  To read Plato without
reading Derrida is really not to read Plato at all,
but to deceive oneself that Plato has been read."

I hope that this review makes it clear that po-mo
thinkers & deconstructionists are not _all_ drilling
in a dry hole, nor do they _all_ deserve the derision
& contempt which you seem only too willing to aim in
their direction.  Admittedly, a vast reservoir of
nonsense has been published, & still more uttered, in
the name of deconstruction.  But your attempt to
label the entire field as worthless is outrageous.

co'omi'e markl.