The Sacrifice of Language: Destruction and Assembly

Recall: We don't have access to absolute truth, because our thought processes depend wholesale on language, an arbitrary structure.

The Derridean syllogism:
1. Logic structures arise out of and find their application in language structures.
2. Language structures possess no intrinsic connection to absolute reality.
.: 3. Logic structures have no necessary connection to absolute reality.

No doubt, Derrida would balk at confining his ideas to logical form, so feel free to criticize me on principle (or form). This argument, as far as I can see, forms the kernel from which the whole deconstructive jungle springs.

The Derridean, having abandoned the throes of absolute truth, turns to the subjective significance of language and the systems built around it. Derrida didn't want to destroy meaning per se. He wanted to disprove the possibility of accessing absolute meaning. In this process, meaning becomes an activity, not an abstract idea. Language finds meaning in the delivery and reception. When you read a poem or hear a speaker, the meaning conveyed to your mind depends upon your subjective understanding of the individual words along with your subjective understanding of the context and implication of the words together as a whole. No interpretation can claim validity over another, because standards of validity are subjective to the individual. Cultural norms may form upon which to find some common ground for communication, but each individual retains a unique and valid "reality" from which to evaluate everything that is. If this seems strange or over-abstractual, read this perplexing definition of deconstruction, formulated by Nicholas Royle from Derrida's own words:

deconstruction n. not what you think: the experience of the impossible: what remains to be thought: a logic of destabilization always already on the move in ‘things themselves’: what makes every identity at once itself an different from itself: a logic of spectrality: a theoretical and practical parasitism or virology: what is happening today in what is called society, politics, diplomacy, economics, historical reality, and so on: the opening of the future itself. (Royle, p11)

Assembly finds place in the title of this post for reasons already mentioned: the deconstructionist, having disassembled the possibility of communicating absolute truth, assembles spectral meanings within an individual or cultural framework. This cleverly obtuse shift in philosophical paradigm has far-reaching implications for all of life.

Royle, Nicholas. "What is Deconstruction?" Deconstruction. Ed. Nicholas Royle. New York: Palgrave, 2000

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