> It's almost like this is what is going on here -- where you're asking
> for the author to appreciate Shelley or something. Am I wrong on this
> point? I'm not sure, but it seems that these are two different
> enterprises. I am reminded of when I mentor/tutor had to explain the
> difference between a book report and a book review -- because I'd
> turned in a report, not a review. two different things, though I
> suppose a review might contain a brief report.
What Jerry and I are both saying is that the pomo examples given so far demonstrate the fact that "deconstructionism" does not help us see anything more about literature than did previous theories and analytical techniques..
Deconstructionism is a mix of structuralism (derived from Anthropology and Linguistics) + Marxism + Psychoanalysis + "close reading." It takes certain techniques and assumptions from these theories and applies them metaphorically to a world discovered to be "textual." And, just as it loses the material basis from which these various theories took root (and against which they could be criticized) so it loses any but a metaphorical sense of the notion of text, which is a historically determined datum.
HEREFOREXAMPLEISTEXTASTHECLASSICALWORLDSAWITBECAUSETHEYCOULDONLY THINKOFTEXTASDISCOURSETHEYHADNOTYETDISCOVEREDTHATINORDERFORTEXTTO REPRESENTDISCOURSEITWOULDNEEDTOREPRESENTPAUSESANDHELPTHEREADERDETERMINE THESENSEOFDISCOURSETHROUGHTHECREATIONOFSENTENCES.
There is the text of illuminated manuscripts. There is the text created in the Middle Ages without which all written communication would look like the paragraph above. There is the text of telegrams. There is the text of emails. To say that all this is "Text" is sloppy at best.
No surprise that deconstructionism has done best focusing on works dating from the Renaissance forward when some kind of modern text could be assumed to exist. Its absurdities are more obvious when applied to medieval or classical productions and, therefore it tends to skirt those periods.
What it did offer was a whole new "code" in which to conduct literary analysis, which meant that a whole generation of academicians could put the literary corpus through this theoretical meatgrinder so as to have something "new" to say. We are questioing the value or newness of this new.
Joanna