How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer
1–10 of 107 posts
Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer
#2I saw this here originally:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489199
Thought it was worth its own post - I actually gained a little more respect for deconstruction after reading the article. Before I thought it was entirely nonsense, now I see that it might have some validity if used in an intelligent and honest way. Credit to dmlorenzetti for commenting with the link, very insightful.
Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer
#3"ac.be" is captured as the hostname here, but that's a domain suffix (it should be ucl.ac.be). It might be worth switching the HN suffix list to the Mozilla's suffix list? http://publicsuffix.org/
Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer
#4While I should just shrug it off and say "haha, you got us, we're certainly stuffy", look at the things we often are trying to discuss in Literature.
Now, it's one thing to question the artistic merits of literature studied in academia, such as the almost impenetrable "Finnegan's Wake". It's not all because of its vernacular (I can't really read too much of it at a time because it blurs into almost gibberish after awhile and I lose track of stuff I'd just read a line prior), but because it seriously doesn't make any damned sense sometimes, which is common when alot of it is written stream of conscious.
But, I get the argument: literary criticism is self-perpetuating, self-congratulatory stuff in many cases. But, just as for every solid software developer who understands the art and science of software construction in the tradition of Fred Brooks or Steven McConnell, there is the spaghetti coder with terrible habits (pushing broken code to the repo, no code commenting, etc.). The same laziness and idiosyncratic behavior is rife in litcrit as well. For every Harold Bloom and James Wood, there's alot of hacks that toss off their "deconstructions" rife with tautologies and dense nonsense. It's part of any discipline to separate the good from the bad; the humanities is no different.
Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer
#5[deleted]
Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer
#6Deconstruction is not a method, and does not follow a formula, and pointing out the (numerous, outrageous) errors in this piece would take more time than I have.
I sympathize with the author's desire to make fun of that which he doesn't understand, but ultimately, it's a shallow game.
Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer
#7Here's Chomsky on the same issue: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernis...
A quote:
"It's entirely possible that I'm simply missing something, or that I just lack the intellectual capacity to understand the profundities that have been unearthed in the past 20 years or so by Paris intellectuals and their followers. I'm perfectly open-minded about it, and have been for years, when similar charges have been made -- but without any answer to my questions. Again, they are simple and should be easy to answer, if there is an answer: if I'm missing something, then show me what it is, in terms I can understand. Of course, if it's all beyond my comprehension, which is possible, then I'm just a lost cause, and will be compelled to keep to things I do seem to be able to understand, and keep to association with the kinds of people who also seem to be interested in them and seem to understand them (which I'm perfectly happy to do, having no interest, now or ever, in the sectors of the intellectual culture that engage in these things, but apparently little else).
Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I'm missing, we're left with the second option: I'm just incapable of understanding. I'm certainly willing to grant that it may be true, though I'm afraid I'll have to remain suspicious, for what seem good reasons. There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out."
Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer
#8Deconstruction is not a method, and does not follow a formula, and pointing out the (numerous, outrageous) errors in this piece would take more time than I have. I sympathize with the author's desire to make fun of that which he doesn't understand, but ultimately, it's a shallow game.
> Deconstruction is not a method, and does not follow a formula, and pointing out the (numerous, outrageous) errors in this piece would take more time than I have.
C'mon, this is Hacker News, we don't say "This is wrong, but I won't tell you why" here. For what it's worth, I'd actually like to hear your perspective if you take the time.
The article provided a coherent explanation of deconstruction that jives with what my eyes see, which makes it the best thing I've seen on the topic. But if you see holes in it, why not take the time to point them out? I'd like to understand more since this style of academia seems to be influential in universities these days.
Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer
#9It reminds me somehow of "Deconstructing My Car at the Detroit Airport" by Howard S. Schwartz. Originally published in "Organization Studies" 1993, Vol. 14, pp. 279-281.
Link to the pdf of the publisher:
http://oss.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/14/2/279
But it also found elsewhere, e.g.:
http://nzmera.orconhosting.net.nz/deconstr.html
Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer
#10While I should just shrug it off and say "haha, you got us, we're certainly stuffy", look at the things we often are trying to discuss in Literature. Now, it's one thing to question the artistic merits of literature studied in academia, such as the almost impenetrable "Finnegan's Wake". It's not all because of its vernacular (I can't really read too much of it at a time because it blurs into almost gibberish after aw…
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