Talk:Deconstruction

Huh?

"Process of reading texts against themselves"--what does that mean? When defining terms used by people who are famously obscure, Tom, it is not a virtue to use obscure terminology yourself!  :-)

This goes for the article itself. It is frankly in dire need of editing. I happen to know what it is trying to say, but that is only because I had to suffer through some of this stuff in my philosophy training. But for anyone who does not already know what deconstruction is, this article is, I'm afraid, useless as an introduction to the topic.

Please set aside your post-modern, deconstructionistic tendencies and approach the topic in a good old-fashioned straightforward way. That's the nature of an encyclopedia, and, sorry, I disagree with any notion that the encyclopedia article about deconstruction should subtly "deconstruct" the notion of an encyclopedia article. Please write a clearer exposition, that is, an exposition as clear as the topic permits. I submit that deconstructionism as a topic is not itself so obscure as to be incapable of reasonably straightforward exposition. Of course, it is not lost on me that in giving a reasonably straightforward exposition, one is thereby not living up to the spirit of Derrida. I propose that, as far as that goes, we spit in Derrida's face.

"One way to describe Différance: The difference of difference is Différance." Derrida himself said things like that. It sounds Very Deep, I am sure, if you like that kind of thing. While you amuse yourself with the question that that means anything at all, let me say that it clearly does not add to the article: all it conveys to me, and to most educated readers, is that deconstruction is laughably pretentious nonsense. If you must state such nonsense, then at least try to give a gloss of it of some sort. If you think it cannot be given any gloss, that is exactly a good reason to remove the statement from the article, isn't it?

I'll give those who care about this topic a few days to work on it...after that, I'll gut it myself. It won't be pretty. --Larry Sanger 12:16, 3 October 2008 (CDT)

Absolutely, it's not a good article and needs a significant slice up. I'll have a little think about how we can replace this version with something useful. For the record, I am not a postmodernist - more Bertrand Russell or David Hume than Jacques Derrida. I happened to be wandering through Category:Need def and found this article in need of a definition so just re-un-de-constructed one out of the article's text. May I suggest you inspect the page history before accusing me being some kind of paid-up member of the Derrida fan club. ;) —Tom Morris 17:54, 3 October 2008 (CDT)