December 2, 2012
Late Discussion Leading
For my post this week I would like to take a step back and look at our first section and the term deconstruction. Due to the fact that I never shared this in class I would like to discuss it here instead. According to the Bedford Glossary, deconstruction is a word describing how texts can contradict themselves. For example, texts would say A and not A. They on the other hand DO NOT say A and not B. Basically, it is saying that there is no one possible meaning for a text. This term rejects the formal idea that literary works are unified from beginning to end or that they are organized around a single idea. Readers must look closer at a text and see if there is a subtext that is contradicting the main meaning of the essay. Basically, it seems that deconstruction reveals the inconsistent ideas that are in an authors work.
1 comment:
I've always look at deconstruction to be akin to undoing a large knot. You go to a main point in the essay and then slowly untangle it from the rest of the ideas (strings) until the only thing you are left with is the main point and all of the founding and supporting ideas. You continue to do this until there is not an essay in front of you but simply a set of ideas pathways. At that juncture you would be able to see exactly why the author was saying what they were saying you could even start building out into the authors own personal experiences to see where they would come to these conclusions.
I think that deconstruction is more than simply finding contradictions and inconsistencies in a writing pieces. It certainly is part of the deconstruction process, but to ignore the other possibilities of deconstruction would be to err. Deconstruction is a powerful critique tool and should be used as one.
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