Kenneth Burke wrote in "The Virtues and Limitations of Debunking" in _The Philosophy of Literary Forms: Studies in Symbolic Action_, 3rd ed. (1st ed. published in 1941, Berkeley: U of CA P, 1973):
***** I think that the typical debunker is involved in a strategy of this sort: He [sic] discerns an evil. He wants to eradicate it. Hence, in order to be sure that he is _thorough enough_, he becomes _too thorough_. In order to knock the underpinnings from beneath the arguments of his opponents, he perfects a mode of argument that would, if carried out consistently, also knock the underpinnings from beneath his own argument....
...[I]n order to shatter his opponents' policies, he adopts a position whereby he could not logically advocate a policy of his own. And then, since there comes a point at which he too must advocate something or other, he _covertly_ restores important ingredients of thought that he has _overtly_ annihilated.... (171)
...Of late, we have been hearing so much criticism of government by "blue prints," you might be led to think that architects no longer used blue prints...."Go two blocks north, and then one block east." The "two blocks" and "one block" are the "policy," the "north" and "east" the "principles." And let no barrister's indictment of the "priestly" mind...lead you into thinking that you can locate things any differently. (182)
...These "advantages [that debunkers think they gain]," of course, would be gained by outlawing any attempt at reasonable discussion. (186) *****
Burke's sympathetic criticism of the debunking strategy (noting both its laudable motivation -- abolishing an evil -- and its ending up with an inability to advocate anything practical in place of the rhetorically abolished evil, this inability often covertly corrected later through a substitution of another term ["the Councils" or "going by what I read in the _Wall Street Journal_"] for the one inveighed against ["the plan" or "authority"]) applies to an entirety of postmodern philosophy, or "a struggle against the plan," or a struggle against "authority."
Yoshie