Magazine: Alberta Report / Western Report, April 10, 1995
Section: CULTURE

              BEHOLD THE DECONSTRUCTIONIST, WHO LIBERATES
                  LITERATURE BY CONFINING IT TO A CULT
                  ------------------------------------

Not so long ago I attended a "post-structuralist" conference in
Saskatoon; a town, it must be said, not particularly accustomed to such
gatherings. I was there told that a book cannot merely be read (perish
the thought) but must be disembowelled before it can be understood; if
indeed, it can be understood; if any book, any text, anything for that
matter, can be understood. There are no truths in art or life, the
lecture continued, and so-called great books of the past are redundant
because they were written in times of political oppression. A quarter of
those present were supportive, a quarter were ambivalent, a quarter were
asleep, and a quarter wished they'd gone shopping.

Those who identify with the last two groups need not be embarrassed.
Deconstructionist jargon is not particularly complex--much of it is so
callow as to be almost amusing. But it is without doubt deeply harmful
to literature and, quite simply, soporific. There is no mystery to the
appreciation of a good book, after all, and those who try to pretend
that there is have no genuine regard for literature. The written word is
a liberating rather than an incarcerating force; if we forget this we
forget the startling essence of language.

Much has been written, however, about deconstructionists Jacques Derrida,
Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and their somewhat soiled and spoiled
disciples, and much written by them about dissemination, grammatology,
counter-memory, Marxian dialectics and postcolonial acrobatics. The men
and their books are still eminently quotable in the United States,
though less so in Europe where they are now considered somewhat passe.
Canadian academics, falling victim once again to the trickle-down
syndrome, remain excited at concepts that Europeans conceived and
Americans perverted. This is one of the factors that has produced such a
poor state of morale amongst many professors and more students in our
university English departments.

It is extremely significant that two of the originators of this
malodorous wind of digression and silliness had one particular thing in
common. Foucault, born in 1926, and Barthes, born in 1915, grew to
maturity in a France that had lost most of its dignity when it collapsed
before German aggression, and abandoned much of its ethical stability
when part of it, Vichy, became a Nazi ally and the rest of the country
often collaborated to a gruesome degree. The ensuing moral vacuum in
post-war France began to fill with many detrimental tendencies, one of
which was a cultural nihilism. We did not fail civilization, argued many
French intellectuals; civilization failed us. We will have to start all
over again, and do the whole thing differently.

One consequence was the new literary criticism. Yet how ironic that
people who preached the "egalitarianism of the text" should in fact
become the supreme cultural elitists. They have created an esoteric
vocabulary that is supposed to clarify literature, but in fact serves
only to muddy superbly clear and sweet waters. These philosophers who
claim they wish to open up reading to the greater world, and to bring
literature down to ground level, actually seal it away in a tall and
unapproachable tower. That their activities are asinine and arrogant is
surely obvious to anyone who values truth above pose.

Reading is such a pleasure, such a gift and such a joy that its power,
its organic invincibility, can be frightening. There have always been
people who want the printed page to be controlled and regulated, which
in the past was achieved by censorship or was due to mass illiteracy.
Today instead we have clever and calculating people whose use of
obfuscaring language is merely a crass device to once again exclude the
common man or woman from the club.

These new censors, the deconstructionists, take the most luscious and
delicious apple and show it to a hungry person. They then seal the fruit
with plastic wrap and demand that the esurient victim enjoy its flavour.
It must not be forgotten that no post-structuralist work ever made
anyone cry, ever made anyone want to run or shout or dance or sing to
the heavens with love of literature or passion for life, or anger at its
injustices. Other writers did that, do that, will do that. For Dante
will always be Dante, Shakespeare will always be Shakespeare--and
Derrida will always be Derrida. Sorry, Jacques, you've been hoisted on
your own signifier.

On the whole, I'd rather have gone shopping.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): MICHAEL COREN

~~~~~~~~
By MICHAEL COREN
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Source: Alberta Report / Western Report, 4/10/95, Vol. 22 Issue 17, p36,
          2/3p, 1bw.
Item Number: 9505087552