DAVID
LEHMAN
231
Though he was the more embattled of the two at a subsequent
question-and-answer session, Kramer declared himself pleased with
the results. That "the neoconservative position should exercise such
a fascination" for his auditors cheered him, he said, because "as
Stalin once said of the Pope, we have so few divisions in your part of
the world."
Milling about in the corridors, meanwhile, critics could be
overheard wondering who put the
con
in
deconstruction
now that some
distinguished exponents of that esoteric critical theory-such as J.
Hillis Miller, the MLA's current president, and Jacques Derrida
himself-have migrated from Yale to the University of California at
Irvine. I detected a split in the ranks over the issue of religion; it
seems that Jonathan Culler, with his impeccable credentials as a
deconstructionist, has made "Down with the priests!" his battle cry
against "the Fryes, Hartmans, Blooms, Booths, and Kenners-our
most famous critics-who are in their different ways promoters of
religion." What, I wondered, does this tribal warfare imply? Is
deconstruction about to self-destruct? "Don't bet on it," a tenured
friend of mine advised me.
"If
you want to make it in the criticism
racket, you have to be a deconstructionist or a Marxist or a feminist.
Otherwise you don't stand a chance. You're not taken seriously.
You're on the fringe."
To while away an idle hour between sessions, some pals and I
repaired to a Marriott coffee bar and set out to define deconstruction
as a set of simple propositions. These are the six we came up with:
(l)Henry
Ford was right: history is bunk. (2)Humpty Dumpty was
right: words mean whatever he wants them to mean. Thus, in
Humpty's own example, "glory" can mean "a nice knock-down
argument." (3)It follows that language, not knowledge, is power.
"The question is," says Alice, "whether you
can
make words mean
so many different things . " "The question is," Humpty replies,
"which is to be master-that's all." (4)In an indeterminate
universe, "meaning" is a fascist. This one will take a bit of explain–
ing, I'm afraid. The idea is that the words of a poem, a speech, a TV
commercial-any discourse, in fact-constantly shift their meaning.
Everything depends on interpretation, and no interpretation is more
correct than any other. Thus, to insist that a given piece of discourse
means something specific and decided is, in the jargon of the day, to
"privilege" one meaning above all others. And that renders one
guilty of a dictatorial urge. Fascism, in short. (5)The author is dead.
Long live the text! (6)Plagiarism is hysteria. Again I'd better ex-
