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Title: Against Deconstruction by John Martin Ellis ISBN: 0-691-01484-1 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 February, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.78 (9 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: A ghost haunts scholars, the ghost of deconstruction
Comment: Ellis' critic asserts to his own arguments, but overall is highly misleading. At a first glance, it shows that not matters how hard he tried to put his prejudices aside on analysing his opponent's system of beliefs he succeed in filtering them with his own bias and frameworks. On a deeper level, he honestly, tries to go about it as if he were dismantling the contradictions of his opponents in their own terms. Regrettably, it can never be in their terms for the simple fact that John M. Ellis doesn't agree with those terms.
However, John M. Ellis achieved the illusion of disarming his opponents in their own terms almost to perfection. Disappointedly, though understandably he only managed to believe in his opponents' terms provisionally. His way about those terms is executed by making them contradict his own mind frame, which he insists, are those of common sense and of a proper rational thinking as if he, in fact, were using them without contradicting himself.
John M. Ellis writes in his book and I am quoting page 95:
Imagine a conference on cancer research at which the general sense is that recent research is going nowhere. A deconstructionist rises to tell the conference that it must look at hitherto marginalized, thus neglected, ideas. A researcher, intrigued by the possibility of a new idea, asks what specific suggestion or suggestions the deconstructionist has in mind. But the deconstructionist replies only that the field must question its concept of what is central to cancer research. Evidently, replies the researcher, but just what aspect of the current consensus on centrality is the problem, and which of the thousands of currently neglected chemical possibilities is the one that the deconstructionist is recommending? If now the deconstructionist replies that is recommending a general strategy, not a concrete proposal, the audience will conclude, correctly, that he has nothing to say after all. For what he has just said is rather like saying, "Have a good idea." That is not even a strategy for finding new ideas, much less a new idea in itself.
To reply to John M. Ellis I use his own lines in this way:
Imagine a conference on deconstruction research at which the general sense is that recent research on the subject is going nowhere. John M. Ellis rises to tell the conference that it must look at neglected ideas by the deconstructionists. A researcher intrigued by the possibility of a new idea asks what specific suggestion or suggestions John M. Ellis has in mind. But John M. Ellis replies only that the field must question its concept of what is central to deconstruction. Evidently, replies the researcher, but just what aspect of the current consensus on deconstruction is the problem and which of the thousands of currently neglected deconstructional possibilities is the one that John M. Ellis is recommending? If now John M. Ellis replies that he is recommending a general strategy, like considering deconstruction a dismissible crackpot, the deconstructional audience will conclude, correctly, that John M. Ellis has nothing to say after all. For what he has just said is rather like saying. "Have a good idea." That is not even a strategy for finding new ideas, much less a new idea in itself.
Other examples like this can be found throughout Ellis' book. No matter how hard he tries to be in a dialogue with his assumed opponents he fails at each time either by misleading them or by falling trapped of the same contradictions he places on them.
John M. Ellis keeps on insisting on the fact that deconstructionists have nothing new to offer. He however, fails to understand that from a philosophical viewpoint deconstruction has never been worried about creating anything new, but recreating old general question that come back to us with new lights. To reduce Derrida's heritage to the socio-political situation in France is interesting but not enough to understand Derrida's ideas. Ellis' dismissal of certain philosophical tradition is also understandable considering his own stands. However, to considered deconstruction as unsound is part of his own strategy of opposition that has nothing to do with deconstruction soundness and it is just another proof of his inability to step out of his own credo.
Even when John M. Ellis sounds Wittgenstein-like, he never managed to grasp the fact that deconstructionists might sound illogical not only because they seem to contradict in themselves, but because their assertions belong to organized sequences of signs outside their fallibility. Unfortunately, John M. Ellis sees the deconstructionists' infallibility as their own failure to admit contradicting themselves. But it is the fight to be fallibly accepted against our seemingly infallibility, what Ellis' logic has a hard time to digest.
To summarize, the new ideas that John M. Ellis demands so much from deconstructionists are nowhere to be found in his book. I wouldn't doubt that John M. Ellis tried to be seen as a new, original interesting proponent against deconstruction, but his own arsenal of tools betrayed his enterprise.
Rating: 4
Summary: A European Abroad....
Comment: Back in the 1970's and the 1980's the early writings of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida exerted considerable influence on literary studies at some of America's better universities. Professor John M. Ellis does not think this was a good thing and, in this little book, he tells us why.
Almost everything of interest in this text is contained in the lengthy chapter entitled "Deconstruction and the Nature of Language". It's here that Ellis states and defends three theses:
1) Derrida's claims that "there is no linguistic sign before writing" and "the concept of writing exceeds and comprehends that of language" are pretty much untenable no matter how charitably they are construed; 2) the speech/writing opposition deconstruction makes so much of has nothing to do with the main thrust of Derrida's thought, which is his advocacy of an anti-essentialist view of language (which is tenable, but neither original nor radical); 3) Derrida's description of language as "a system of signifiers" and his claim that "signifieds" can be in the position of "signifiers" betrays either a gross misunderstanding of Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of linguistics or a willful, and unsubstantiated, mutation of the same.
In his remaining 100 pages Professor Ellis abandons close reading and careful discussion of Derrida's texts in favor of a more general examination of the rhetorical strategies often employed in deconstructionist literary criticism as practiced by Derrida's disciples (for example, Ellis shows that a sexy categorical slogan such as "all interpretation is misinterpretation" is either obviously false or, at best, trivially true). While interesting, a little bit of this goes a long way--I found myself skimming the last couple of chapters.
...
Rating: 4
Summary: Against Derrida ?
Comment: I am not a specilaist ion the field and I purchased this book to undertand deconstruction and its problems better. I was not disappointed in Ellis' exposure of the fallacies of deconstruction; however, I think he focused excessively on Derrida, while there are others such as Lacan, kristeva to mention a few that also deserve some 'attention'. I found the chapter on Language to be the clearest and most useful; however, I stress that I'm not a specialist and admit that reading this volume was somewhat difficult due to its emphsasis on logical reasoning and arguments. Nonetheless, I do think that its criticisms of deconstruction - and especially its misguided applications in the US - were very clear and convincing. Indeed, I find that Ellis' is strongest when he describes the intellectual climate out of which deconstruction was born, that is the stale monolithic character of french literary criticism of the 50's and the nned to supplant it with radical aideas that ultimately turn out to be just as stale. My only criticism is the the writing style that may put off the non-specialist. accordingly for thsoe like me I recommend the beautifully written The Reckless Mind by Lilla, which also exposes the fallcies of Derrida and other deconstructionists.
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Title: Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities by John M. Ellis ISBN: 0300075790 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Illusions of Postmodernism by Terry Eagleton ISBN: 0631203230 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: December, 1996 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: A Primer on Postmodernism by Stanley J. Grenz ISBN: 0802808646 Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Pub. Date: February, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: A Homemade World: The American Modernist Writers by Hugh Kenner ISBN: 0801838398 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 1989 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education by Roger Kimball ISBN: 1566631955 Publisher: Ivan R Dee, Inc. Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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