Login or »Register
« Username
« Password

» Forgot your password?
Translate this Page
Define a Word
Close Translator

Close Translator
 

James K.A. Smith on Derrida's Deconstruction

Who's afraid of Postmodernism? (Baker Academic, 2006), p19.
Deconstruction's recognition that everything is interpretation opens a space of questioning — a space to call into question the received and dominant interpretations that often claim not to be interpretations that have been silenced. This is the constructive, yea prophetic, aspect of Derrida's deconstruction: a concern for justice by being concerned about dominant, status quo interpretations that silence those who see differently. Thus, from its inception, deconstruction has been, at root, ethical — concerned for the paradigmatic marginalized described by the Old Testament as "the widow, the orphan, and the stranger." To put it differently: Wall Street and Washington both want us to think that their rendering of the world is "just the way things are." Deconstruction, by showing the way in which everything is interpretation, empowers us to question the interpretations of trigger-happy presidents and greedy CEOs — in a way not unlike the prophets' questioning of the dominant interpretations of the of the world.

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment.

Lest they devolve into the infantile comments on display at YouTube and elsewhere, comments require registration and are moderated, not for point of view but for quality. » Register or » Login