JOLLY DAYS

Holden Caulfield, Deconstructionist

John Searle on the gimmickry of Deconstruction:

Deconstructive prose tends to be systematically evasive…Crucial words are put in quotation marks so as to suggest an ambivalence in the author's stance toward them…Or central theses are imbedded in subordinate clauses and not stated directly…In this way the deconstructionist can make implausible assertions while appearing not to…

I believe anyone who reads deconstructive texts with an open mind is likely to be struck by the same phenomena that initially surprised me: the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial…There is an atmosphere of bluff and fakery that pervades much (not all, of course) deconstructive writing. What becomes even more surprising is that the authors seem to think it is all right to engage in these practices, because they hold a theory to the effect that pretentions to objective truth and rationality in science, philosophy, and common sense can be deconstructed as logocentric subterfuges. To put it crudely, they think that since everything is phony anyway, the phoniness of deconstruction is somehow acceptable, indeed commendable, since it lies right on the surface ready for further deconstruction. Thus, the general weaknesses of the deconstructive enterprise become self-justifying…

Searle is describing the adolescent affectation of depth of much modern theorizing in the arts; the result, a detachment that is fundamentally lazy, and honed to aggrandize the bloviator.