How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

Yes, thank you.

I would like to point out then, that to this layman, "I would say that deconstruction consists most often of a micrological reading (that is to say, a very close reading of the actual words of the text, not not just the broad concepts) which takes into account the (usually unconscious) assumptions that the author is working within" sounds almost exactly like, "Decide what the text says. This can be whatever you want..." since we can't ever know what the unconscious assumptions are of an author.

The problem for application is in what time frame is it useful? In early biology just cataloging plants, bugs, and animals would be of little or no use to those not in those fields as all they were doing is developing taxonomies. The same might be said of those who started first watching the stars.

I think that Postmodernism may be a bit of a waste of time, but it's too early for me to know. Unfortunately they wish the public fund their work.

I have been studying continental philosophy for a few years now, mostly Kant, Hegel, Lacan and Heidegger. I think it's extremely interesting and rewarding and I recommend it to anyone who doesn't feel intellectually challenged. I read a book about Maurice Merleau-Ponty that included excerpts of his writing in both English and French, and I thought that the French was much clearer, even with my limited knowledge of the language, and it made me want to improve my French and learn German so that I can better understand what they're saying.

So foreign language is another barrier to entry that hasn't been mentioned yet. There are English translations, but often they aren't very good. My process for engaging with a philosopher is an iterative, multi-pass process - I start with several introductory texts or a biography before (very slowly) tackling a main text. At that point, I usually have a good idea about where the argument is going, but only a thin grasp of how we got there, so I go through the material once or twice more. This is complicated by the fact that these ideas don't stand on their own, they are part of a tradition, and it's not really possible to take one thinker and find out what he or she thinks, because it's filled with references to others. It's just not possible to pick up a main text and read it in a weekend and expect to get anything out of it - it's more like a lifetime project, something you'd add to a "Things to accomplish before I die" list. If "Learn French or German" is on there too, you have a head start.

One practical benefit is that reading a difficult text is like running with weights on. It feels like you're flying when you read something easier. And if you're looking for critiques or refutations of postmodernism specifically, continental philosophy is much more interesting than this link. Ironically, it's somewhat self-refuting, since in trying to critique the postmodernists, it unknowingly adopts an important (although distorted) postmodern point: the role of discourse in the production of power and authority. Although, of course, the author uses this to assert the superiority of his preferred rationalist, technocratic regime of truth. In other words, the claim is that postmodernism is an imposter, a bullshit pretender to the throne that Engineering should rightfully occupy. Postmodernists, under the influence of Derrida and Foucault, would say that this claim is "logocentric", a code word which ultimately means patriarchal, racist, colonialist, homophobic, etc. The demand that "postmodernism" present itself as a single well-defined and unified idea would also be seen in this light, which is probably why no postmodernists are here to defend themselves. To them, it's boringly obvious that software engineering is philosophically rooted in patriarchy.

Judith Butler had this to say on the subject...

A `Bad Writer' Bites Back

BERKELEY, Calif. -- In the last few years, a small, culturally conservative academic journal has gained public attention by showcasing difficult sentences written by intellectuals in the academy. The journal, Philosophy and Literature, has offered itself as the arbiter of good prose and accused some of us of bad writing by awarding us "prizes." (I'm still waiting for my check!) The targets, however, have been restricted to scholars on the left whose work focuses on topics like sexuality, race, nationalism and the workings of capitalism -- a point the news media ignored. Still, the whole exercise hints at a serious question about the relation of language and politics: why are some of the most trenchant social criticisms often expressed through difficult and demanding language?

No doubt, scholars in the humanities should be able to clarify how their work informs and illuminates everyday life. Equally, however, such scholars are obliged to question common sense, interrogate its tacit presumptions and provoke new ways of looking at a familiar world.

Many quite nefarious ideologies pass for common sense. For decades of American history, it was "common sense" in some quarters for white people to own slaves and for women not to vote. Common sense, moreover, is not always "common" -- the idea that lesbians and gay men should be protected against discrimination and violence strikes some people as common-sensical, but for others it threatens the foundations of ordinary life.

If common sense sometimes preserves the social status quo, and that status quo sometimes treats unjust social hierarchies as natural, it makes good sense on such occasions to find ways of challenging common sense. Language that takes up this challenge can help point the way to a more socially just world. The contemporary tradition of critical theory in the academy, derived in part from the Frankfurt School of German anti-fascist philosophers and social critics, has shown how language plays an important role in shaping and altering our common or "natural" understanding of social and political realities.

The philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, who maintained that nothing radical could come of common sense, wrote sentences that made his readers pause and reflect on the power of language to shape the world. A sentence of his such as "Man is the ideology of dehumanization" is hardly transparent in its meaning. Adorno maintained that the way the word "man" was used by some of his contemporaries was dehumanizing.

Taken out of context, the sentence may seem vainly paradoxical. But it becomes clear when we recognize that in Adorno's time the word "man" was used by humanists to regard the individual in isolation from his or her social context. For Adorno, to be deprived of one's social context was precisely to suffer dehumanization. Thus, "man" is the ideology of dehumanization.

Herbert Marcuse once described the way philosophers who champion common sense scold those who propagate a more radical perspective: "The intellectual is called on the carpet. . . . Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you."

The accused then responds that "if what he says could be said in terms of ordinary language he would probably have done so in the first place." Understanding what the critical intellectual has to say, Marcuse goes on, "presupposes the collapse and invalidation of precisely that universe of discourse and behavior into which you want to translate it."

Of course, translations are sometimes crucial, especially when scholars teach. A student for whom a word such as "hegemony" appears strange might find that it denotes a dominance so entrenched that we take it for granted, and even appear to consent to it -- a power that's strengthened by its invisibility.

One may have doubts that "hegemony" is needed to describe how power haunts the common-sense world, or one may believe that students have nothing to learn from European social theory in the present academy. But then we are no longer debating the question of good and bad writing, or of whether "hegemony" is an unlovely word. Rather, we have an intellectual disagreement about what kind of world we want to live in, and what intellectual resources we must preserve as we make our way toward the politically new.

Here I check out of this discussion, as I'm clearly out of my depth. Thanks for an interesting comment!