>>Cackle<< You oughta change your sig line to read, " Preview is for the Bold" 
Come on, Scylla. Your argument is reductio ad absurdum. Any philosophical position, moral stance, or method of analysis can be disproved by like that.
Try again.
I would agree that deconstructionism as a technique of literary criticism is not very useful. My favorite intro to literary criticism web site has some interesting things to say about Derrida and deconstruction which I think you’ll appreciate, Scylla.
I’m strictly an amateur when it comes to literary theory (and a big fan of Harold Bloom, to make matters worse), but I was under the impression that deconstruction has been falling out of favor among literary scholars for some time now. I would hope that by now this sort of discussion would be flogging a dead horse.
I’m not 100% certain that deconstruction is the primary mover of the PC movement, but it has been at the root of several other flawed movements. I seem to recall some offshoot of deconstruction being partly responsible for the ideas that led to the wishful thinking “whole language” approach to teaching kids to read. My local public schools were still proudly boasting that they used this system just a few years ago (and they may still be using it now) despite the mounting evidence of this methods failures.
Well, you would think so, wouldn’t you?
Fortunately for my argument I had anticipated your response.
You see, I did this same thing with the Fisher Price Little People not so long ago, just not as obviously toungue and cheek.
That seemed to be accepted just fine.
The only difference was that that was a little more serious.
I could go back and deconstruct Hop on Pop in a way that would be possible to take seriously to prove my point.
The tactics though are really the same. You can use deconstruction to make anything mean anything you want it to.
So, I don’t think it’s absurdity at all.
The other nifty thing about deconstruction is that it’s a misnomer.
When you deconstruct something, what you are really doing is reconstructing it to place your own message in it.
That’s my other problem with PC word replacements, and attitude adjustments. They are not just taking unkind errors out of language, they’re installing new messages.
Here ya go:
Okay, now my daughter is crying because her Seussian friends lay smoldering in a carbon heap in our fireplace.
To be precise, there are two things at work here: deconstruction and deconstructionism. Deconstruction is simply the recognition that since everyone has a slightly different usage of language (“idiolect”, as we ling-weenies would say), anything other people hear is a less or more precise approximation of what you meant. This has been known for quite some time now.
Deconstructionism, on the other hand, is the idea that because this is so, communication is wholly impossible, nobody can hope to convey a particular meaning, everything is open to interpretation in any ludicrous way they care to come up with (“What does she know? She only wrote it!”) and therefore, that a deconstructionist literary critic or professor is a necessary intermediary between writer and reader. Oddly, professors who believe that language is meaningless never seem to have any trouble assigning A’s, B’s, and C’s to their students’ papers.
Folkie - that’s a confabulation based upon actual events. What actually happened was that Art Buchwald, with permission from Dr. Seuss, adapted the tone, meter, and much of the words of Marvin K. Mooney, and wrote a column entitled “Richard M. Nixon, Will You Please Go Now?” (The details above are IIRC - I last read the column about 15 years ago.)
It’s a classic piece of political satire from the modern master of political satire - everyone should go back and read Buchwald’s columns to get a truly original take on American politics during the Cold War.
Sua
Where do you get that? I agree with you about deconstructionism, and I agree that PCism, once it moved past calling for simple politeness, went too far, but I don’t think you can argue that deconstructionism is the primary motivation behind PCism. A connection certainly exists, but I would posit that it is much more tenuous than you assert.
Sua
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/3199/catinhat.html
The greatest deconstruction of Seuss ever.
The only point missing from the criticism in Twisty’s link is the blatant disapproval for and the inherent dangers in mothers working outside the home.
(I spent last semester taking a Literary Criticism course and I chose Dr. Seuss for every one of my critiques from deconstructionist to Freudian to gender criticism.)
::Knowing Look:: Yes, you’ve just alluded to the boundlessness of interpretation.
Or so one of my college friends once told me.
I seem to recall the delight of certain deconstructionists in establishing contradictory interpretations: so Horton is both an advocate for the oppressed whovillians as well as a lacky of the post-capitalistic superstructure.
Finally, I contest the assertion that deconstructionism is a primary mover of anything. It’s more of a sideshow in that intellectual backwater known as literary criticism.
Why, just this morning, I read Ted Geisel’s own explanation of Yertle the Turtle: “Yertle the Turtle is Adolph Hitler.” Simple enough.
What a fascinating coincidence! Every time I see one of those yo-yo’s wandering around in a ‘Cat-in-the-Hat’ hat, I get the urge to ‘deconstruct’ them in the most non-constructive manner possible. Why do you suppose that is?
The problem with people who mock political correctness is that it does not always seek to instill new messages. The idea of changing obviously offensive terms to make them more palatable or accurate is not in itself a bad idea.
Emergency doctors now use the term “motor vehicle collision” instead of “motor vehicle accident” to convey the idea that car crashes are avoidable and thus not accidents as such. This is a neutral sort of change: most accidnrs are avoidable and just who are they trying to convey this message to, anyway?
Using a term like “handicapped” instead of “frigging, useless gimp” does do something to add dignity to the lives of people who already suffer. This is clearly a positive change. The problem is the administrators and others who take this to extremes which can be easily mocked. Calling short people “vertically challenged” does not instill a new message, but it sounds pretty pompous and should be used only when easier terms are likely to cause obvious offence, i.e. those cases where the challenge is obviously severe.
The examples usually used to mock political correctness seem to be invented for that purpose and are not usually used in widespread parlance. Words have always been used to change the meaning of terms and instill new messages… how does this differ from when Reagan tried to characterize communists as “the Evil Empire?” or when politicians who are mouthpieces for big business use purple pose prose to claim lobby reform is not in the interest of the people?
Your take on Dr. Seuss is wrong. Perhaps you are unaware of his lesser known works including “Nazi Supermen Are Our Superiors” and “Pimps, Wimps, Gimps”. These would imply that he, like you, is also mocking political correctness as opposed to seeking to invest these attitudes in the hearts and minds of American youth.
Shame on you. I sing “Kumbya” in your general direction.
And here I always thought the admonition, “Stop! You must not hop on Pop.” was a stern warning against incest.
[hijack]This discussion reminds me of the movie “Closet Land”. In it a young woman in a modern totalitarian state is interrogated under torture because her children’s books have been deconstructed as anti-government propaganda, when in fact they are reflections on her memories of child abuse.[/hijack]
Not being American, the Dr Seuss oeuvre isn’t such a cornerstone of my cultural values/childhood memories (haven’t read a single one, in fact) so I’ll believe everyone else when they say that the form of the OP is funny.
As to the content, I think that if there is a large set of people who espouse both Decontructionism and Political Correctness as movements then these people are making a fundamental error.
Deconstructionism, as pointed out above, allows the listener to place an entirely separate interpretation on the speakers words from that which the speaker intended. PC relies on the belief that by encouraging people to express themselves in “suitable” language then a) they will adopt internal attitudes in tune with their language and b) they will cease to offend others. In the case of b) the conflict with Deconstructionism is obvious: Deconstrucionist listeners can choose to be offended by any statement no matter how carefully worded, as they entirely dismiss intent. In the case of a) I would say the contradiction holds still insofar as the PC language is someone else’s term for what the speaker wishes to say, and although they may adopt those terms, they will place their own interpretation on them, and thus merely cloak their opinions, not alter them.
Or more succinctly, Deconstrucitonism relies on words having flexible meanings, PC relies on words having fixed meanings. And never the twain should meet.
A
Good lord, Dr. Seuss is one of the few bits of American culture that we Yanks can export with pride. I strongly recommend you take a look-see.
Sua
*Originally posted by tourbot *
I would agree that deconstructionism as a technique of literary criticism is not very useful…I would hope that by now this sort of discussion would be flogging a dead horse.
I don’t know how much deconstructionism or post-modernism or whatever is still taught in colleges today. I do find it seriously disturing that parents (like myself) pay $125,000 tuition so tht our children can be trained to reason badly.
**I’m not 100% certain that deconstruction is the primary mover of the PC movement, but it has been at the root of several other flawed movements. I seem to recall some offshoot of deconstruction being partly responsible for the ideas that led to the wishful thinking “whole language” approach to teaching kids to read. My local public schools were still proudly boasting that they used this system just a few years ago (and they may still be using it now) despite the mounting evidence of this methods failures. **
Like Tourbot, I couldn’t precisely define the relationship between the various movements. However, I do know that criticism of the “whole language” method goes 'way back. In the 1950’s, Rudolf Flesch had a best seller called, “Why Johnny Can’t Read.” The book explained that the reason why Johnny couldn’t read was because his teachers were using the whole language method.
I could never trust a Doctor who reccomends Green Eggs, anyway.