HELP DECONSTRUCTIVISM
Juan A.
HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10 AND A HALF CHAPTERS or peter Ackroyd's
CHATERTON.
It would help at least to know the main characteristics of deconstructivism
MKlei...@aol.com
"Deconstruction", not "deconstructivism", by the way.
"deconstruction" and "post-modernism" are not to be confused. "Deconsturction
is a 'method' of reading that is post-modern.
I've not read the Barnes.
Some marks of "post-modernism" to apply to Chatterton:
Very simplified:
Post-modernism is concerned with "the text".
It dismisses the ruses of high realism, for example, high realism's "claim"
to be reflecting human experience of reality (and revealing "truth"). For
example, post-modernism dismisses realism's hierarchy of narrative elements,
where the characters are seen as ontologically prior to the plot. So the
common novelist's assertion "I created characters and watched what they did"
is dismissed as both silly and fascinating. Why do people buy this ridiculous
assertion -- I created characters and they behaved on their own? That
"character" and "behavior" and "plot" are not all just words on a page? This
is something explored by pomo, concerned, as it is, with ruse, forgery,
illusion, imposture.
Pomo is concerned with texts, artifacts, interpretations, forgeries, ruses.
Chatterton is a famous historical imposter, so Ackroyd announces right away a
pomo concern.
There are Chatterton myths: the impostor, and the romantic endymion-like poet
suicide.
Chatterton wrote "forgeries" -- poems purporting to be by a medieval monk.
They were "fakes" but nevertheless had great impact, contributing to the the
gothic revival.
In the Ackroyd novel, there is a possibly fake portrait of this famous faker,
suggesting a myth/history (of his suicide) is also a fake. Wheel within wheel
(pomo characteristic).
There is a scholar EATING BOOKS. Which has one meaning when thinking of him as
a "scholar", another thinking of him as what he is, a text, some words on a
page in a text by Peter Acroyd. Who in turn is an author comsuming other
authors, among them Chatterton (and Chatterton's "imaginary" alias). Wheel
within wheel again.
This character moves between narratives; he is a scholar eating books and
researching Chatterton; he is Chatterton (an imagined Chatterton). And
Chatterton was a "scholar" reading medieval literature, and Rawley, his
medieval alias, shuttling between his "modenrity" and an (unknowable) past.
Wheel within wheel again.
He is a scholar serving as amanuensis to a deliberatly falsifying memoirist;
another impostor (like Chatterton).
And what is a novelist but a conduit between texts he's read and texts he
writes, between the past and the present (and the future he hopes to "dupe").
What is a novel but something that has consumed previous texts and will be
consumed by others in turn.
In pomo works, texts within texts, often dubious, are common. In Chatterton we
have the fake memoir in the making, the fake Chatterton poems, the possible
fake portrait, and the novel itself as self-consciously a fake story about
someone writing, reading, and eating books.
How the past haunts the present, as tradition haunting creation, as language
haunting thought, as myth haunting history, etc etc is a pomo concern, and the
subject of this novel as well.
The elusive problem of "Authenticity" -- is this portrait "real"? How to
"read" it? -- is a preoccupation of pomo writing. Pomo works often revolve
around some newly discovered artifact which may be "real" and may be "fake"
-- and meticulous imitations of historical writing styles (Posession, by AS
Byatt is an interesting example, as is The Stone Virgin by Barry Unsworth,
both working in the British post-modern idiom like Ackroyd) as well as
someone trying (and failing) to write a memoir or a biography. In Ackroyd's
book one finds both these elements, interestingly patched together.
Pomo takes up the position that novel-writing is imposture one way or another.
It is creating meticulous forgeries -- of human experience, of history, of
other texts. The novels situate themselves as "dubious" accounts of reality by
including within the texts dubious accounts of reality which characters in the
novels have to address.
Hope this helps.
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Eric Gray
moderately well read in postmodern theory, but I have some reservations I
wonder if you or someone else could respond to.
The postmodern critique of modernism and realism--basically that both are
naive--seems justified. However, why is it that postmodernists consistently
fail to apply this criticism to themselves? Don't they (essentially)
assume that they are correct? I see this self-righteous condescension
everywhere in postmodern theory--earlier thinkers are, as you say,
"dismissed as both silly and fascinating." But even if modernists were
wrong, why should it follow that postmodernists are right? Don't they
essentially have a naive belief in progress, so that whatever is newer is
assumed to be better?
I'm assuming you're an academic, and as such you must have had experience
with profs who assumed that they were "correct," and saw their task as
guiding their students to those correct answers. A few examples of
postmodern answers that are assumed to be correct: all cultures are equal,
lack of a true center dooms all structures, power is evil, etc. This
assumption that the answers have been found leads to terrible criticism,
since what matters to postmoderns is not the quality of the argument but the
correctness of the conclusions. Think of Lyotard and so on.
This thought control is horrible, and it's endemic in academics today.
(And, no, I'm not politically conservative). I'm sure you've read as much
postmodern twaddle as I have--the journals are full of it. My feeling is
that postmodernism was not a reversal of modernism, it is a frightening
hyper-extension of modernism: postmodernism itself is the new structure, and
I pity the foolish academic who speaks outside of its boundaries.
Anyway, postmodern theory provides an excellent description of current
thinking, but why why why do we all have to assume that what it describes
should therefore be encouraged? Isn't that self-indulgence and nothing
more?
I'm not looking for anyone to agree with me. I genuinely feel that I must
be missing something.
Gray
>"Deconstruction", not "deconstructivism", by the way.
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