Deconstructive narrative moves from doubting one metaphor to doubting language itself

Evidence

If such a “theory” exists (if it is not, in other words, simply a question of a useful and portable opposition), then it consists in positing two distinct moments of the deconstructive narrative, the second succeeding the first and incorporating it at some higher dialectical level of complexity. First, the initial metaphor is undone — undermined as soon as it has been posited by some deep suspicion of this particular linguistic act. Yet in a second moment, that very suspicion washes back over the first and becomes generalized: what was at first only an acute doubt as to the viability of this particular resemblance and this particular concept — a doubt about speaking and thinking — now becomes a deeper skepticism about language in general, about the linguistic process, or about what DeMan calls reading, a term which usefully excludes general ideas about Language itself: The paradigm for all texts consists of a figure (or a system of figures) and its deconstruction. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 534

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines DeMan’s two-moment deconstructive narrative: suspicion of one metaphor generalizes into skepticism of all language.
• XREF: connects to: Collapsing theory into narrative destroys the critical distance rational critique requires — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 371; Derrida systematically replaces logic with graphic across his conceptual vocabulary — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 719; Intertextuality requires prior linguistic autonomy rather than fusion — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 620 (+2 more)