Deconstruction can be read as Ideologiekritik rather than Nietzschean irrationalism.
Evidence
Whether one finds this a tenable position depends partly on one’s broader theoretical objectives. Lentricchia in his devastating critical survey of Derrida’s American followers has shown how the notion of deconstruction can legitimize a genuine idealism narcissistically preoccupied with an endlessly self-generating textuality. But this is not the only available version of textualism. Thus Norris offers a reading of deconstruction as, not ‘a species of Nietzschean irrational ism’, but as, in the hands of Derrida and de Man at least, a form of Ideologiekritik whose ‘point of departure is to argue with the utmost logical rigour to conclusions which may yet be counter-intuitive or at odds with common-sense (consensual) wisdom’. One might indeed regard this interpretation of textualism as an example of such a procedure, since Norris tends to present deconstruction as a form of close reading bearing a strong resemblance to the methods of analytical philosophy — a conclusion which certainly accords ill with the natural response particularly to Derrida’s more extravagantly literary texts. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 316
Categorization
- XREF: Norris’s reading of deconstruction-as-Ideologiekritik directly parallels the book’s own rescue project: recasting poststructuralist/postmodernist moves as critique rather than irrationalism. Connects to Jameson’s reading of the postmodern as ideology. — connects to: Deconstruction is a demand for a new hermeneutic model, not a rejection of interpretation. — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 264; Deconstruction differs from exposing error and treats justice as its aim. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1229
Broader Connections
- Deconstruction is a demand for a new hermeneutic model, not a rejection of interpretation.
#qualifies(0.72) — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 264