Logics of Disintegration: Post-structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory

by Peter Dews

Over the last two decades, contemporary French philosophy has exercised a powerful influence on intellectual life, across both Europe and America. Post-structuralist strategies and concepts have played an important role in many forms of social, cultural and aesthetic analysis, particularly on the Left. Despite the widespread reception, however, there has still been comparatively little analysis of the basic philosophical assumptions of post-structuralism, or of the compatibility of many of its central tenets with the progressive political orientations with which it is frequently associated.

In this book, Peter Dews seeks to remedy this situation by setting post-structuralist thought in relation to another, more explicitly critical, tradition in the philosophical analysis of modernity – that of the Frankfurt School, from Adorno to Habermas. Logics of Disintegration will be of interest to readers across a wide range of disciplines, from literary criticism to social theory, which have felt the impact of post-structuralism – and to anyone who wishes to reach a balanced assessment of one of the most influential intellectual currents of our time.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory

352 pages, Paperback

First published December 17, 1987

Reviews

[Alex Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a well written but terrible book because it is written as an introduction to post-structuralism but is completely misleading simply because the author doesn't seem to understand what the point of post-structuralism is.

When I first started this book I was excited. Dews said he read post-structuralism for decades and wanted to write this book to encapsulate what he learned and help clarify these difficult authors. While he started off promising, what quickly happened was it became clear that Dews not only kept bagging on the authors (mainly Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard -- but also some Deleuze) for not doing something properly... it was clear that he also didn't really understand what he was reading.

To some extent, Dews does seem like a fan. For example. He loves philosophy. He recognizes that Derrida is very logical. He seems to be excited, at the beginning to be discussing the topic at all. But Dews does something very strange. He doesn't really read one philosopher in isolation. He is constantly comparing them and then reading them off one another... which is okay if you want to explain a philosopher with well known other philosophers...

BUT this is a completely confusing way to introduce TWO UNKNOWN philosophers. It's almost like he wants to confuse the reader....

But then again... Dews may not really care about post-structuralism. For instance his title Logics of Disintegration he gets from Adorno -- who isn't even a post-structuralist. He relies on Adorno to provide a framework to read post-structuralists. He then accuses them of being narcissists following Adorno's framing (which is really to critique a society that is too complex to function for its members)... in this sense it makes me wonder if Dew is capable of coming up with ideas on his own or if he needs someone's ideas as a baseline from which to make sense of a given philosophy.

It seems like he needs someone else's ideas... because he constantly is reading one philosopher off of another to the point where the contradictions that he claims a philosopher has, are often only contradictions if one accepts the terms given by the other philosopher.

I won't do a laundry list of Dews' complaints of Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard because then I would basically be citing the majority of the book. But Dew's complains about these post-structuralist guys (he is only talking about these three... in place of all post-structuralism -- and he is only referring a few of their works, not the entire corpus, at least in the case of Derrida and Lyotard -- it seems Foucault is much more approachable for Dews) -- Dew's complaints are really that

1) these post-structuralists don't offer some kind of framework/method for finding truth (despite their writing about it, or at least towards it often) -- and

2) while they are seeking the emancipation of subjectivity from the "image" of what subjectivity should look like -- they fail to provide any grounding for what this emancipated subjectivity should be like.

If you know what post-structuralists are after, that is, on the terms by which post-structuralism operates and on what grounds post-structuralism "carves" a space for itself -- then you'll understand that Dews is basically criticizing post-structuralists because they aren't modernist metaphysicians who operate under some kind of transcendental idealism.

That's basically like Ayn Rand (or Slavoj Zizek) misreading a philosopher (Rand misreading Kant or Zizek misreading Deleuze) because they are less interested in exploring the ideas of that philosopher... and more interested in using that philosopher to talk about how great their own ideas are.

Don't get me wrong. Dews is a great writer. He writes well. He has some pretty interesting angles on how to read the three (Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault)... but he is basically saying they are bad philosophers because they are post-structuralists -- NOT that they are bad philosophers because the philosophy they are creating is incoherent.

So while I think Dews' writing deserves more recognition... (say a 3) the book itself on how it was blatantly written as a kind of, perhaps (innocent), attack piece really pushes it down to a 2.

There's something to be learned here, about how to explore philosophy. But that's kind of only apparent if you know something about these authors and are able to compare them to what Dews continually harps on. He also dismisses Deleuze claiming that it is a "naive naturalism" which is a pretty terrible reading.

The reason why I think he is innocent and not doing this out of spite is because it seems like his enthusiasm is genuine... and because he continues to misread consistently... he doesn't seem genuinely able to make sense of Deleuze at all, which is possibly understandable given that Deleuze's framing of things is completely different from what I think Dews' framing is.

Still, Dews is doing a major disservice by adding this bad confusion to the mix of what is already difficult to understand. I also think that if he was looking to write something that was purely malicious that he would have hidden his agenda more carefully. His conclusion is effectively parroting a philosopher not really mentioned in the book that much (Adorno) to then say that post-structuralists fit Adorno's negative dialectical critique because... Dews imagines they fit Adorno's description... there honestly isn't much evidence otherwise.

What makes Dews really awful is that he can't seem to separate his interpretation from what he is reading. He never seems to ask, is there more? What are they trying to say? Instead he assumes, that philosophy should look in this particular image X, and so, how does a philosopher fit X? If they don't fit X why not (because these are where they are bad philosophers)

If anything that attempt to enforce a particular image/narrative is exactly what post-structuralists were protesting. Should post-structuralists try to provide item #2 (what an emancipated subjectivity should look like) then they would be contradicting their own goals. Additionally, they did provide item #1 -- but within their own approaches, and their own problems... for instance, Derrida analyzed philosophy and texts in the limited manner he did -- as a philosopher. He wasn't looking for some ultimate truth, like Descartes or Hegel. He didn't provide an overarching system in this manner, because philosophy during Hegel (and before) made no distinction between science and philosophy. Natural philosophers (who people would call scientists today, like Newton, and Descartes) had various approaches which were uniquely their own. Those who saw fit to write extensive books explicating on how they did what they did, came to be known more as philosophers... but the distinction between science and philosophy was not made in that time whereas it is made today. So to answer Dews' idiotic question, seeking truth in that manner is dated. Maybe Heidegger still did it. But Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard were not operating with such a wide scope, so they didn't attempt to speak about a METHOD FOR TRUTH the way philosophers/scientists did in the past when there was no such thing as a difference between science and philosophy.

Some philosophers, like Zizek still write as if they lived in the grand style of someone like Hegel, but I think that's because they are caught up in the image that philosophy needs to look a certain way and feel encompassing in a certain way for it to matter... again, a kind of aesthetic ideal that limits what philosophy is allowed to do; something that post-structuralists were seeking to illuminate.

Dews totally misses the point with his inquiry. What was really annoying about his chapter on Lyotard is that he mostly focuses on one of Lyotards earlier, more obscure works. If he read the differend, Dews might have noticed that he was encountering one in his reading of post-structuralists simply because he was reading them under the wrong genre, instead of with the constraints and concerns that they had.

The danger of reading something with the wrong genre is that if you do so, then you will never really understand what the point of that thing is; you may find yourself trapped within the genre of your choosing, believing that it is solely the only way to see the world instead of seeing the world as it is... which is what philosophy, originally, is all about.

[Andy Posterick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why can't someone make a book on this subject that is easy to read?

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that deserves another read. I have to admit that midway through the thing I developed an acute disgust for post-structuralism and, to a lesser degree, critical theory. Why even bother? I asked myself as I entered a week-long intellectual crisis regarding my future with the university. Although the arguments are presented rather clearly, I was not entirely familiar with certain figures and ideas, I had to re-read many passages toward the end of the book. I think that this is where my frustration originated. Still, I recommend it for anyone who has a serious interest in critical theory, political theory, etc. simply because it lays out the contradictions and (perhaps) paradoxes of post-structuralist thought that threaten to undermine it in addition to connecting, quite informatively, developments in 19th-century German philosophy to that in some cases addressed the very same issues that their 20th-century French and German heirs made so popular.

Anyhow, it takes a strong constitution, but the book's worthy of a recommendation.

[Karlo Mikhail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard-hitting but nuanced critique of foundational post-structuralist thinkers from a Marxist Critical Theory lens.

[Griffin Duffey]

“…the rejection of the claims of an integrated critical standpoint in post-structuralism, in the mistaken belief that such a standpoint implies repressive totalization, is far from providing a more decisive liberation from the illusions of philosophy…” (244)

basically Dews does his best to lay out the projects of Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, and Foucault while anachronistic relating them to past and future thinkers (he does more of the later than the former.) it’s not unhelpful, but it was unexpected for me. the clear boogeyman of post-structuralism for Dews is intersubjectivity, which is why there are two thinkers he seems to (unsurprisingly) prefer to write on that are none of the four above: Adorno and Habermas. the book basically ends up being an articulation of how Lacan theoretically solves the problems of a philosophy from subjectivity (i.e. phenomenology) but falls short at the level of the social. I think a pointed book about ^that that didn’t take the quasi-genealogical approach of post-structuralism as a whole might have been better, but I nevertheless enjoyed this and it’s relating of various philosophical movements (German Idealism, linguistics, phenomenology, etc.) with post-structuralism is something that will be very generative for me.

I’m a broken record, but it’s truly amazing how Kant opened up all of the issues we still swirl around.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent assessment of the major representatives of post-structuralism from the standpoint of critical theory. The readings are often uncharitable, but never sloppy or ignorant; Dews does a nice job of thoroughly criticizing post-structuralism without falling prey to the hysterics that so often accompany such critiques (cf. Sokal, etc.). In the process, he makes a novel contribution to the (seemingly endless) "Derrida vs. Lacan" debate, and perspicuously places Derrida back within the context and tradition of Western philosophy.

If there's anything lamentable about this book, it's that Dews manages to present a general overview of French philosophy in the 60s and 70s from which Althusser and his students are conspicuously absent. Althusser obviously falls outside the focus of this specific study (even moreso than Deleuze and Guattari; and so we could say that Dews' apology for their absence can also be applied in the case of Althusser, Balibar, Badiou, etc.), but Dews too often makes it sound as if the only two schools of thought attempting to contribute to Leftist political theory in the second half of the 20th century were French post-structuralism and German critical theory. (Perhaps, though, his contribution to Elliott's Althusser: A Critical Reader will make up for this...?)

[A L]

A thorough and powerful survey. It elegantly captures the post-structuralist sequence in two splits: against the positivism of structuralist method (Derrida and Lacan), then against pure semiotic and other closed systems (Lyotard and Deleuze). His arguments that Foucault's and Nietzche's pluralism and conceptions of truth, knowledge and power are infertile for political practice and sterile for theory succeed. His long, thoughtful paragraphs show off his command of the material.