I promised in a previous post that I would have more to say about Jacques Derrida. With the amount of stuff going on in the political realm lately, this topic had slipped my mind, but I thought I’d finally return to it.
Plus, according to Craig, I “used to go on about Derrida” in what was, apparently, a less than clear and concise fashion…
At its most basic, Derrida’s goal was to take apart the idea that by examing a given text closely enough, we can get at its “true meaning.” For Derrida, close examination of a text revealed that there is no such thing as a true meaning. Rather, there are just more and more interpretations of the text, piled one on top of the other.
Out of Derrida’s works and ideas, then, came the notion that any text (even those held to be canonical and sacred) is open to interpretation, criticism, and analysis. Want to do a Marxist reading of Aesop’s Fables? Have at it. Feel that Busby Berkley musicals should be viewed through the lens of radical veganism? You’re welcome to do so. Read Plato’s Rebublic as a reflection on the merits of butterscotch pudding. Criticize the US Constitution for its approach to fax machine repair. Demolish the the Bible for its implicit assumptions regarding the physical geography of Henderson, NV. All of these interpretations are fair game, as far as Derrida is concerned.
Obviously, this sort of approach can be (and often, in my opinion, has been) taken to extremes that are not productive in any practical fashion, and Derrida has taken a lot of heat as a result. Moreover, his theories are frequently blamed for opening the floodgates of moral and cultural relativism. The texts that have been held most sacred (and therefore most exempt from questioning or interpretation) have often provided the ripest targets for deconstruction, and that’s the sort of thing that really pisses off the defenders of the Western Canon.