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PARTISAN REVIEW
the something corresponds to reality or else to what the author
intended. The reader should try to recover this meaning correctly. The
deconstructor then undertakes a minute and rigorous analysis of a
particular text and shows that it in fact contains con tradictions which
make it impossible to project a single coherent meaning from it.
Instead of capturing a referential object or an authorial intention, the
text is entangled in the network of its own rhetorical organization.
It
obscures this entanglement only by the willful suppression of one term
of the contradiction it contains. The critic's task is to dissect the unique
way that a particular text accomplishes this obscuring, and thus
"deconstruct" texts one by one. Paul de Man puts his theory aphoristi–
cally: "every text is an allegory of its own unreadability. " When the
New Critics outlawed intentional fallacies, affective fallacies , and
heresies of paraphrase, the text was all that remained. They then
argued that texts were parables of their own creation, thus assuring
that the text was self-constituting as a unified totality, a meaning that
could not be rephrased, but could be directly experienced. Deconstruc–
tion eliminates this last refuge of meaning. There is no solid text, just
the unending free play of signs or figures of speech. Yet to one trained
up in New Criticism, this sounds very much like an extreme version of
the heresy of paraphrase.
Itis not easy to refute deconstruction as a theory. For one thing, it
describes accurately enough the naive and unexamined sense of "mean–
ing" nearly everybody works with most of the time. And ever since
Socrates, philosophers have had little trouble showing the logical
embarrassments of everyday opinion. Nevertheless, there are replies to
deconstruction, and I think Charles Altieri has stated them very
convincingly in a recent series of articles. Essentially, the reply runs, we
need not reduce ourselves to two choices: either words transparently
convey meanings or else engage in an endless freeplay. When skepti–
cism pushes naive theory into defending itself, both agree to accept the
exaggerated conception of rigorous meaning naive theory proposes in
its self-defense, when other views are possible. Thus, Derrida asks, "Is
it certain that
to
the word
communication
corresponds a concept that is
unique, univocal , rigorously controllable, and transmittable: in a
word, communicable?" The naive realist, sensing that if he denies this,
he will deny "communication," answers belligerently, "Yes!" But we
might also answer, "No, but why should you expect it to?
If
you
couldn't give one, would you be unable to use the word?"
But again, untangling critical theory from deconstruction will
require serious arguments not possible here. I will mention, though,
