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familiar themes from Romantic and post-Romantic literature. In
Deconstruction and Criticism
de Man proves at length what everybody
knew, that Shelley despaired of conveying his meaning or "vision"
through the imperfect medium of language. By implication, decon–
struction courageously faces what poets have always known, as though
Shelley's romantic cliche were a universal truth. In a long-winded and
archly written commentary on some narratives by Maurice Blanchot,
Derrida usefully makes explicit Blanchot's themes and techniques,
though he recognizes that some of his interpretations have no support
in the text. But again nothing justifies leaping from Blanchot's
narrative theories or practice to the universal claim that "all organized
narration is 'a matter for the police,''' that is, an "authoritarian
demand" imposed by coercive social institutions.
De Man and Derrida exploit a confusion between a tendentious
thematic commentary and the assertion of general doctrines which
could only be established by quite different arguments.
If
a text delivers
no single doctrine, as de Man and Derrida think, then their readings
have no special authority over other, more traditional interpretations,
and cannot be cited as proof of any general theory. What stands in
place of argument is a specious " logical diction." We are repeatedly
told that the deconstructor is laying bare what "all writing" has
"always" done, what "every utterance" must be, what "no word" can
do. We are assured that terms are being taken "in a rigorous sense,"
that "necessary" consequences are being drawn, that the deconstructor
merely spells out "the law" which is manifest in a text or that he shows
us " the truth that is announced" there. But these are forms of self–
congratulation, not arguments. Deconstruction willfully ignores the
variety both of language and literature.
If
a proposition like "the cat is
on the mat" is too narrow
to
serve as a model of all language, so is the
rhetorical figure of irony or the "Cretan liar" paradox. What is wrong
with deconstructive reading may be suggested by an analogy I borrow
from Stanislaw Lem's novel
The Chain of Chance.
A half-tone
photograph is printed by varying the density of black dots .
If
you
enlarge the photograph to examine a detail, the "picture" disappears,
leaving only dots. Deconstructors pride themselves on their close
scrutiny of texts, which "takes seriously" their language and rhetoric.
But in fact they simply isolate fragments and embed them in an alien
discourse, whose presuppositions and dogmas are hidden behind a
smoke screen of word play.
Derrida's
Spurs,
badly translated and disastrously proofread, is a
sixty-page commentary on various remarks by Nietzsche on "woman."
A quotation will give the flavor:
