> I was in graduate school at UCB when the deconstructionist mafia
came
> rolling through. I did a certain amount of reading...Derrida, DeMan,
> others, but the more I read the more I was conviced that this was
basically
> a reactionary movement which came through at just about the time
that
> students in the humanities began to question very seriously (as a
result
> of the Vietnam war and other international and social wars of
liberation)
> the character of western culture, imperialism, the cannon, "reason,"
etc.
> In place of this real deconstruction, carried out in the vernacular,
the
> intellectual elite (and those who aspired to join them) proposed
another
> "deconstruction," a kind of denatured Marxism, full of dialectical
moves
> and intellectual chicanery, but, most importantly crucially
dependent on a
> new lexicon of privileged terms without which this dicussion could
not be
> carried out and which was accessible to maybe .1% of the population.
==========
A lot of this may have to do with the curious admixture of the quest
for novelty in intellectual pursuits [witness the Shakespeare
industry] and comparative advantages in academic turf wars via
neologisms etc. It's a boredom/saturation/redundancy aversion complex.
For some, to think and act in the world in novel ways just is to
change it, especially if it catches on.....how fads become orthodoxy
and all that......
Ian