According to Derrida as I understand him (which admittedly may be little) and our conclusions in class on Monday, fairy tales do not exist except as something that people (writers, readers, critics etc…) created. I asked Professor Chapman” what then do those critics and writers who study / write fairy tales do if their subject matter doesn’t exist? He answered, “I think Derrida would say they are doing the best they can with metaphysical concepts.” If I may take that previous question a little farther if fairy tales don’t exist because “the center is not the center”—who’s to say that “romance” exists? Or “drama?” Or any other genre / aspect of literature? Post-structuralism seems a little disconcerting in my view. How can deconstructionism hold itself up if it is arguing that everything unravels itself?
Emily F.
5 comments:
I feel like I've had this conversation before, meaning, I wish I had a quick easy answer to your question. But I don't. Who's to say that "we" exist? Aren't "we" (or rather "I") just another simplification of a larger more complex notion? He does mention that there is freeplay inside of the the "total form." For me, it seems this leads to a discussion of human ideas almost as an idea of space-time (where space-time is curved in the presence of matter "aka energy"). So in this case, maybe you are the energy, and general perception of the world is space-time, and your very existence molds the general space? Well, I'm no physics major, as you can tell, but it sure seems to make his idea of "freeplay" make some sense.
-Brian e.
The way I see it, we all make a set of assumptions when we work with literature, and genre is one of those assumptions. We group stories into different categories to make it easier to discuss them, to create a set of norms, and to make it easier to put them into sections at the bookstore.
You could argue that it isn't necessary to split stories up in such a way, that we could just put them all in the category of "Stories" and leave it at that, but then we'd lose the sets of norms that each genre has. And that'd be a shame, because without norms, there is no subversion of norms. It's not as if there would be no fiction without genres, but it would be more difficult to discuss, and more difficult to theorize, without them.
Emily’s post made me wonder: if deconstruction unravels everything, then can the system of deconstruction itself be deconstructed? As a deconstructionist, wouldn’t one have to say that yes it can? If the center of a fairy tale is not the center, then is the “center” of the ideology behind deconstructionism not the center either? Can we take apart a theoretical argument just the same as we took apart the genre of the fairy tale on the whiteboard in class? I would argue that yes we can. It would then follow that, just like a fairy tale, there are many aspects which make up deconstructionism and some of these can be found in other literary theories. But, like Joe said, “[w]e group stories into different categories to make it easier to discuss them, to create a set of norms, and to make it easier to put them into sections at the bookstore.” If we deconstruct genres, then we can deconstruct literary theories but we must keep in mind that these theories and genres do help us and, though it is possible to unravel them, it is also necessary to use their full forms to benefit literary reading and criticism.
~ Kristen
In grad school I took a class from a Famous Literary Theorist (he's in our anthology) in which I did precisely that--deconstructed an argument by Derrida. The FLT's marginal comments were interesting...I could see him getting more and more agitated until the end, where I discussed the impications of the strategy (and where he could see that I was in fact trying to make a point, not just deconstructing Derrida for the perverse satisfaction of doing so). At first I thought he was a little touchy on the subject, as in "no fair doing to us what we do to others," but when I reread the commments I could see that what he would really have been objecting to, if I hadn't turned out to have actually been trying to make a theoretical point of my own, was doing something too easy. Of course I could deconstruct Derrida; any discourse deconstructs itself in some way or another. But so what? As Derrida says, "There is no sense in doing without the concepts of metaphysics in order to attack metaphysics."
I suppose I was a smartass even then.
Wes
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