Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1997 13:50:01
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: Louis Irwin <lirwin1-AT-ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: BHA: deconstruction vs immanent critique


Concerning Howard's and Colin's interpretation of the metaphor, I did mean
it differently.  I was not viewing the house as an appearance which covered
an interior, which deconstructionists putatively expose as empty.  It
strikes me that that interpretation is one with which a deconstructionist
might be happy.  A house is not simply its exterior, it includes its
interior.  My revised version of the metaphor captures better what I was
driving at: a deconstructionist is like someone who tears down a house to
prove it was not well built.  This is even better expressed by Colin's:
"one tears down the house to reveal a torn down house."  Anyway, a metaphor
is like a joke: if you have to explain it, it's not very good!  

I am baffled by Colin's comment that "the concept of a house is itself
dreadfully essentialist": are anti-essentialists unaware of houses or think
them non-existent?  Howard's comment is well stated: "any science is about
discovering the generative tendencies which account for appearances.
Deconstructive techniques can be a useful way to unpeal appearances.  On
the still other hand, if you have another left, if there is nothing but
appearances, then technique gets lost in a maze, feeds on itself, etc.  In
the end isn't it 
depth realism that gives bite to the method?"

Louis Irwin

At 09:33 AM 10/11/97 +0100, you wrote:
>Like Howard I think Louis' metaphor of the tearing down of a house is a
good one, but I'm not sure that it's the right one for deconstruction, at
least in it's more extreme variants.
>
>If Howard has got Louis right and the metaphor is about tearing down a
house to 
>show that the four walls surrounded nothing, then this does indeed imply a
commitment to depth realism: there was an appearance of a house but once
pulled down it is revealed to really be walls surrounding nothing. 
>
>I tend to view deconstruction as its own rationale. That is to say,
insofar as the Yale crowd of deconstructionists espouse ant-realism (all is
appearance, or performativity, as Butler might say), then deconstruction
does not _reveal_ anything but is the something. In this respect
deconstruction is the point of deconstruction. Or, as Wittgenstein might
say, the meaning is in the use. The metaphor then becomes that one tears
down the house to reveal a torn down house. But of, course, none of these
metaphors really work terribly well with deconstruction, because the
concept of a house is itself dreadfully essentialist. 
>
>Anyway, if all meaning is indeterminate, and any structure requires a
supplement in order for the structure to be, then what's at the centre of
deconstruction that gives it meaning? This, BTW is a political question. I
guess my answer would be Rorty's freewheeling liberalism, an horrific thought.
>
>On the issue of Foucault's 'happy positivism'. Well there's the obvious
quote, which I don't have at hand, where he claims that he is an empiricist
(this always really gets up the noses of my Foucaultian friends who try to
get off the hook by saying, 'oh, he's been ironic'. Arrgghhh, what an
answer! There is also the issue of his nominalism, and phenomological
ontology (a good reference point here is Kolakowski's account of
positivism, which locates nominalism and phenomenalism as cornerstones of
positivism). Also the whole attack on the poor old 'subject' (why does
everyone hate this poor old wretched creature so much?) was done much
better by the positivists, who, of course, tried to banish all traces of
subjectivity from the "scientific enterprise". Then there is Foucault's
claim, most brutally put, I think, in the intro or preface to the Birth of
the Clinic, where he states that he is not for or against any particular
form of medicine, but simply telling things the way they are. Facts
divorced from values perhaps?
>
>Anyway criticism is the sincerest form of flattery and I personally can't
be bothered to continue to flatter the more rampant forms of postism. I've
got work to do.
>
>Thanks,
>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Colin Wight
>Department of International Politics
>University of Wales, Aberystwyth
>Tel: (01970) 621769
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
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