Against Deconstruction

by John M. Ellis

"The focus of any genuinely new piece of criticism or interpretation must be on the creative act of finding the new, but deconstruction puts the matter the other way around: its emphasis is on debunking the old. But aside from the fact that this program is inherently uninteresting, it is, in fact, not at all clear that it is possible. . . . [T]he naivet of the crowd is deconstruction's very starting point, and its subsequent move is as much an emotional as an intellectual leap to a position that feels different as much in the one way as the other. . . ". --From the book "Ellis's elegant and absolutely unsentimental book can serve as a sort of solvent in today's critical debates. Not much remains intact: binary oppositions, alternative logic, ' texts as play, ' and performance, ' are all subject to rigorous examination. In the process, Ellis lucidly restores Saussurean categories (so battered and reduced in contemporary criticism) to their original complexity. Appalled by the growth of a class of critics who appear to risk nothing when they take on a literary text, Ellis challenges every reader under the spell of new vocabularies to stop and think. Rarely has scholarly exasperation been put to better or more timely use". --Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

Genres: Philosophy, Literary Criticism

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Paul D. Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant takedown of one of the most pervasive intellectual fashions of our era. Anything worthwhile that postmodernism and deconstruction have to offer is readily available without the broader commitments of those movements. This book should be required reading for anyone who ever went to college. It is also a superlative example of how to conduct an argument and how to write clearly.

[Ahmed Elsherbiny · Rating 4 out of 5]

في البداية يلزم التأكيد على أن هذا الكتاب رغم جودته بإجمال، ورغم قيمته كمفتتح لمناقشة أكثر عقلانية حول التفكيك، إلا أنه يفشل بدرجة كبيرة في تقديم نقد فعال للأساس النظري للمشروع التفكيكي، أي التصور الدريدي للغة والخطاب، ويسيء في الحقيقة فهم هذا الأساس في أكثر من موضع. فالكاتب يقع في خطأ واضح عندما يعتقد أن دريدا يقوم، مناقضًا للوقائع التاريخية، بتقديم الكتابة على الكلام، بينما ما يقدمه دريدا حقًا هو الكتابة-الأصلية، وهذا مفهوم أساسًا قبل-لغوي، بالمعنى الضيق للغة، أي أن الكتابة-الأصلية تسبق الكلام، منطقيًا وتاريخيًا، كما تسبق الكتابة بمعناها الأضيق، أي الخط، الذي لا يوجد شك في أنه يأتي بعد الكلام. إن ما يجعل دريدا يلجأ إلى مفهوم الكتابة-الأصلية بالذات هو محاولته البرهنة على أن كل اللغة كتابة بالمعنى الذي طالما ميز الكتابة ماهويًا عن الكلام، كعلامة على علامة، أو كغياب لحضور يمكن له التمام من حيث المبدأ. وهنا يقع الكاتب في خطأ آخر إذ يعتقد أن دريدا يسيء فهم سوسير ويشوهه بعدم الفصل بين الكلمة والتصور العقلي والحضور الفعلي للشيء، بينما "سوء الفهم" هذا هو في الحقيقة الأساس الوحيد للمشروع الدريدي بأكمله.

وبينما يجب أن يتناول أي نقد العمق النظري لما يعزم نقده من ناحية (وثمة "نظرية" تؤسس "مشروع" التفكيك، ولا تصعب البرهنة على ذلك) والتوابع الفعلية لتبنيه من ناحية أخرى، وبالرغم من قلة توفيق الكاتب على المستوى النظري، والذي يمكن تفهمه بحكم همومه الرئيسة التي يشكلها انتماؤه لمجال النقد الأدبي أساسًا، إلا أن الكتاب يظل مهمًا من حيث قدرته على التأشير بوضوح، أولًا؛ إلى التناقضات التي يقع فيها التفكيك مع الممارسة النقدية الفعلية التي تظل أقرب لمفاهيم الحس العام، أو لمناهج تحليل الخطاب الأكثر تقليدية والتي لا تعتمد أبدًا في تطبيقها مفاهيمًا كاللعب اللانهائي للعلامات أو اللاماهوية المطلقة، وثانيًا؛ من حيث تأكيده على الطبيعة الرجعية، رغم تلبسها المظهر الثوري، لمشروع التفكيك، الذي بإسقاطه كل الفروق الجوهرية يجعل المركزي كالهامشي والقديم كالجديد، وكل محاولاته "الهدامة" وإن استندت في تطبيقها إلى ماهيات "مؤقتة" فهي لا تُعيد إنتاج مركز مغاير، ما سيُعد بالتأكيد تقدمًا، وإنما تعود لاستدعاء مرجعها النظري: انعدام الماهية المُطلق، فتقوم بإجهاض أي محاولة فعالة لزحزحة أي مركز، طالما ليس ثمة ما يميزه عن الهامش.

[Rhonda Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book requires close reading, but it is a clear and logical argument against the mental and linguistic contortions of postmodernist deconstruction theory. Every graduate student should read this. Undergrads too, especially anyone who's taking classes in the soft subjects.

[Chant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Critical look at the deconstructionism project and puts it to task in terms of what logic (if any) it works on and surprise surprise it for the most part is grounded on misinterpretation, which I find ironic.

[John Reis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this thirty years ago shortly after I graduated from DePaul. “advocates of deconstruction regularly make certain claims for it, both implicitly and explicitly. Most important is the claim that it is a bold, provocative, and innovative movement, which challenges the status quo with radical, disturbing ideas. A second claim is that it is heavily theoretical in nature and represents a more important place for theory in the critical scheme of things.“ but if I am correct none of these claims withstands closer inspection.

“Good criticism is stimulating rather than true, and since stimulation can occur in many different ways, that would make its character quite unlike that of the unitary scientific truth."

Deconstruction seems to be more interested in putting in question prior theories and works instead of offering new and better theories.

Derrida attacks traditionalists for being monolithic and staid but tradition was doing that long before the appearance of deconstruction. What had gone before was quite various and deconstruction seems to argue that it wasn’t.

Ellis makes the point that the United States was actually quite democratic in criticism whereas France had a single authoritative traditional opinion for all texts. It was indeed repressive. In this environment the deconstructionist found no difficulty in locating his single, superficial, received opinion to debunk.“ The second feature of the French scene is doubtless related to the first. By long-standing tradition, the French intellectual has defined himself by opposition to the dull-witted bourgeoisie and the official organs of the state. As a result, an outstanding characteristic of French intellectualism is an obsessive denigration of the bourgeois and all their manifestations.

This is a tough but worthwhile book to read.

[sologdin · Rating 1 out of 5]

not very useful. argues basically that deconstruction must be wrong because it offers no alternatives to what it seeks to unravel. (this is a fallacy, of course.) also thinks that derrida misreads saussurean linguistics, which is kinda a bizarre criticism--though at least it is in itself not scurrilous, unlike the rest of the text. that said, the reading of Saussure does not exhaust deconstruction, which is not really limited to that tidy corner of the intellectual universe.

[Özgür Doğan Birol · Rating 5 out of 5]

This clear set of statements indeed refutes the magical roots of deconstruction "Deconstruction is not a theory it is only a hypothesis." If you are in need to prove this to yourself, this work is for you. (I'm just a person with BS degree with no decent philosophical background but I always encountered with tested&verified postmodern structuralist thinking. And I raised doubts about it.)

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, even if deconstruction is still a useful tool.

[Chip · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, full of thoughtless presuppositions with garbled quotes.