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version seven. http://demongin.org |
Eikonoklastes v. the Theory Chicks
A rough taxonomy.
Friday, 2004-11-12 | Classic Gin, Literature, NPC Encounters, Philosophy, Social Studies
OK, so we've got these structures. Well, that's not entirely accurate; we've got the ruins of structures. The only evidence we have of their existence is their wreckage. They were built up, presumably, in order that we might destroy them and profit from the vandalism. What happened? Let's think about what might have happened--admire the ruins and appreciate what beauty inheres and what we might learn about the lost civilization that once found shelter under them.
A structure stands in space. It is constructed by human hands and exerts its own tension on the various fabrics of existence. Structures stand because certain hypostatic laws (laws concerning the intangible but observable things that underlie existence) allow them to--a table, for instance, stands because its four legs put pressure on the floor beneath them and allow the table to stand. In this way, structures are predicated on natural laws.
'Predicated' might not be the best word, but it'll have to do--it'll be our way of understanding that structures stand or fall because of the physics of the world around them. The table that stands on level ground won't stand on a severe incline or in an earthquake--physics permit or deny the efficacy of structures.
Structures can either exist naturally--as in, say, a grotto or a rocky ledge that forms a sort of pavilion--or they can be man-made. In the case of the former we can say that the structure has come to exist because of contingency, that the structure has come to exist without intention--naturally. In the case of the latter, we can say that the structure was created with some intention in mind. Now, in the way that natural structures are defined by how people come to use them, to stand under them, so do intentional structures. This is critical.
A given structure is not, I am saying, defined by what it was intended to do but, rather, how it is currently being used.
If we make the serious mistake of thinking that a structure is defined by its intention, a cave can never be a grotto and a rocky ledge can never form a pavilion. Similarly, a chair can never be used as a football and a church cannot be used as an operating theatre. This, of course, is sheerest nonsense. Therefore, we can say with certainty that intention or the lack thereof does not a structure make--structures are defined by use. Period.
Now, thanks to lucid argumentation, we live in a world were structures are all the same whether they have been constructed by human hands or by circumstances/contingencies. We also know that structures stand or fall based on their grounds; what rules and circumstances allow a structure to act as it acts. If we consider these things together, then, we know that (1) contingency makes or breaks structures, literally, and (2) structures exist when we use things as structures. How do we use things as structures? We simply stand under or on them, sit or lie on them and, voila, a structure is born.
Furthermore, we know from this that (3) structures exist transitorily--the rocky ledge becomes merely a rocky ledge when the rain stops and the chair becomes firewood when we get off of it and toss it into the fire.
This transitory existence of structures gives them ability to do what they do--it allows them to generate the tension that they generate when they do whatever it is that they do. What I mean to say is that the tension that allows a table to stand on its legs and support our martini glass is not the same tension that allows a table on its side to be a fortification against throngs of zombies. A structure changes its nature dramatically from moment to moment depending on what tension (and the tensions inhere) we use.
So what of the metaphorical structure? What of Structuralism and Poststructuralism and Deconstruction?
In that they each rest upon the metaphor of structure and the implications of that metaphor, they can all be said to depend on what we have just learned about the nature and rules of structure. The problem, however, with Poststructuralism and Deconstruction is that they rely upon a misunderstanding of the rules of structures.
In order for Deconstruction and Poststructuralism to do what they purport to do--analyze and undermine sociological and theoretical structures in order to understand how they obfuscate and complicate criticism--structures must not exist from moment to moment. Structures, in order to be the objects of Poststructuralism and Deconstruction must be things that have been lent a definitive intention that forever inheres in (and in doing so defines) them.
We see that this is a serious problem; it is quite irrefutable that intention has nothing to do with the construction of a structure and furthermore that intention, once lent to a structure, cannot last--it comes and goes with each different use. Since intention cannot last in a structure, it makes no sense to do Poststructuralism and Deconstruction as they are done by novices--novices look for an original and lasting intention in a given social or critical structure that entered into it upon construction and will inhere it in for all time. Novices seek to identify this (with semiotics or a similar methodological tack) original and lasting inteiton and point it out.
These we call Theory Chicks.
More accomplished Poststructuralist or Deconstructionist critics recognize that structures are neither defined nor described in this way. As the masters administer to the novices, then, they recognize
this and account for it. Towards this end, they construct various strawmen--structures that they can criticize in the way that they want to without having to deal with reality. These strawmen are hypothetical structures that mirror actual ones in most aspects except for the most important one--the inherence of original intention.
If you've been following me, then, it should be obvious what has happened. Our various Poststructuralist and Deconstructionist critics have built a number of structures. They're unlike actual structures in that they have nothing to do with the logic of structures but nevertheless they exist.
We look out, then, at a vast and wasted landscape. An advanced civilization of beaver-like, hive-minded feminists, socialists and liberal ironists long ago built vast, sprawling cities composed of various fantastical structures--structures that defy the very physics that generally support structures--and then destroyed the structures in a cataclysm that is only paralleled by the magnificence of the original act of creation. It's as if Dr Seuss was the god-emperor-cum-architect of a mighty civilization of builders and his successor was the Nero who set downtown Rome ablaze in order that he might be inspired to write a Trojan epic.
A chronology then: the logic of structures exists, Derrida invents his particular brand of Poststructuralism (which we use to destroy structures in which intention inheres), Roland Barthes invents semiotics (we use this to create structures in which intention inheres) and the two are taken up and become the one-two punch of Theory Chicks who, intent on avenging the injustice of their youth, want to demonstrate how the current state of affairs in no way mirrors the way things actually are.
In other words, we learn how to destroy a certain type of structure, then we learn how to build it and then we use the knowledge to make claims, as Marhsall Sahlins said, full of the sound and the fury but signifying nothing, except, of course, the speaker.
