Reflection 8: Things Fall Apart
I have a confession to make: I have now read the chapter on deconstruction in Deborah Appleman’s book Critical Encounters in High School English three times, and I still don’t get it. It seems to me that deconstruction is only about finding contradictions within a text…is that it? Don’t we do that with every literary theory? Isn’t that what literary analysis is all about…finding the contradictions and making sense of them? But I guess with deconstruction you don’t have to make sense of anything; you find the inherent flaws or contradictions and that is enough. I think I agree with Rachel from the text, who is very upset about deconstruction. She says, “Here I am at the end of my high school education, and now it seems as if everything I was trying to do is worth absolutely nothing. Nothing means anything. Is that what I’m supposed to believe?” (Appleman, 2000, p. 112). I wouldn’t know how to respond to Rachel…I mean, I think she has a point. Life is full of contradictions; I feel like that’s the point. Is that the point deconstruction is trying to make? Is it trying to say, “there are contradictions—see they’re everywhere!”? If this is deconstruction, maybe I do get it. But I still don’t know if I would feel comfortable teaching it. Does anyone know of more resources for using this theory? What else can I read that will help me get a better grasp on this theory?
March 31st, 2008 at 2:25 pm
You’ve hit the nail on the head. The key to deconstruction is th seek out and expose the contradictions. If you find a contradiction, you jam your deconstruction crowbar in the cleft and pry the gap in meaning wider and wider, until the dichotomy of meaning becomes so stark that there is no way the modes of thought can be reconciled to one another; at this point, the meaning of the text becomes undecidable and you achieve aporia. Indeterminacy reigns and the totalitarianism of absolute meaning is swept away…
I have to admit, I didn’t like the idea of “undecidable meaning” when I first started reading about deconstruction theory. I have embraced the concept, however, and I encourage you to consider this aspect of deconstruction; this theory encourages the natural inclination in teenagers to rebel against the established meaning of text. As they try to find ways to pull down the meaning of a text, they may inadvertently learn something new.
–Ludlow