Deconstruction *is* the "reducto ad absurdum." The problem with it is that if we take it at its word, it becomes ridiculous, but if we soften it, and try to salvage a kernel of sense, it doesn't say anything new or especially surprising.
The ambiguities and self-under-mining (self-subverting) aspects of language have been known long before Derrida arrived on the scene, especially by poets, and especially by some schools or poetry such as the Metaphysicals . . . If this is what we want to salvage from deconstructionism, well, in that case, it has contributed nothing new or noteworthy . . . that wasn't already clear to every student of Cleanth Brooks 30 years before Derrida appeared on the scene. What is new about deconstructionism is the willingness to go to extremes and to embrace extreme conclusions such as (arche-)writing precedes speech (Derrida) and to goof around with the meanings of writing and speech in various ways. Try reading Derrida's "Of Grammatology" to see how crazy this can get. Or Foucault's "'man' is an invention of the 19th C". If he means that a new concept of man developed at that time, OK, sensible - but certainly not revolutionary and worth paying attention to given how little historical proof he actually provides. Only if we read it in the extreme fashion - in the constructionist sense of 'man' actually being constituted in a quasi-ontological sense in the 19th C does it actually offer anything beyond a platitude. Best wishes, Ian Kluge -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of firestorm Sent: November 5, 2007 1:54 PM To: Baha'i Studies Subject: RE: Deconstructionism i an, we would deconstruct until we had...words. (a Word God seems Fond of, It being His First Creation) and stay away from ideas until we had kicked around the word. yes. there is a level of insanity that can be obtained by taking deconsruxtionism to the reduc5tio ad absurbam. i can do the same thing with hmmmm... kismet/portion/ etc. or with annnnything. or, we can deconstruct, as i did in an exchange once with sen mgglinn, the "meaning of "j" as in UHJ, and run it back to lascaux. at >>>some<<< point in time, a point has to be quanified to be as"sign"ed a value. derrida is imho not denying that. he is denying the permanence of the assignment. and again...tahirih/badesht. if "this is not a pipe" then tahirih is not a trumpet, either. but is. :"or even worse, do not believe that there is a truth to know in the first place? " that there is no knowable truth is not the same as no truth to >>experience<<. "i know the truth" of other than a witnessed expdereince always sounds to me like shirk, or shareek, depending on who i'm talking to. 'i cannot say what happened, but i know what i recall of what i saw" is a concept that has been in courtrooms for centuries before derrida...or that matter before the self-denying solipsism of rand, or, for that matter, einstein, planck and heisenberg noting that "events" are relative at the most directly physical level. from having a few definitions of words, as in "return" means "zyx" and "hell" means abc, and "heaven" means we can deconstruct the worldview of the Bab's uncle. indeed, we need to deconstruct it. becuaswe, imho we don;t talk in ideas...we use words to see if there is commonalities of internals that we call ideas, that are themselfves shadows of ....etc...back to the cave. 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