Understanding Woke Tactics Pt. 6: Deconstructing Deconstruction (pt.2)

In our last installment of Woke Tactics, we discussed what deconstruction looks like in the real world. Now that we know what deconstruction is and what it looks like, we can answer the questions that we are left with: how do we deal with deconstruction? How do we push back on it when we see it, and what tools do we have at our disposal to prevent the slide into relativism and nihilism that deconstruction pulls us toward? I am going to answer these questions today.

In order to understand how we deal with attempts to deconstruct our concepts, ideas, thoughts, arguments, texts, words, and other meaningful bits of language, we need to have a recap of what exactly it is that deconstruction does.  Deconstruction always makes its attack at the level of MEANING. Deconstruction attacks arguments, claims, assertions, ideas, texts, concepts, distinctions, and anything else that might be used to communicate, and it does so by bringing its attack at the level of MEANING. What this means is that deconstruction does not attack by engaging with the substance of the communication, deconstruction is going to try to dissolve the meaning of the communication.

In his book On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Sturcturalism” Jonathan Culler says:
”To deconstruct a discourse is to show how it undermines the philosophy it asserts, or the hierarchical oppositions on which it relies, by identifying in the text the rhetorical operations that produce the supposed ground of argument, the key concept or premise”¹

What he is saying here is that the goal of deconstruction is find out how the meaning of the (text, book, argument, idea, concept, etc,) functions, and to then seek to find ways in which the meaning can be undermined. What he is looking for is ways to subvert the meaning of the things to be deconstructed, rather than to show that what is being asserted is wrong, false, misguided, or incorrect. In other words, the deconstructor is looking at the way the meaning of a communication has been put together, and then look for ways to dissolve that meaning.

The Philosopher John Searle describes deconstruction in this way:

“What are the results of deconstruction supposed to be? Characteristically the deconstructionist does not attempt to prove or refute, to establish or confirm, and he is certainly not seeking the truth.[2] On the contrary, this whole family of concepts is part of the logocentrism he wants to overcome; rather he seeks to undermine, or call in question, or overcome, or breach, or disclose complicities. And the target is not just a set of philosophical and literary texts, but the Western conception of rationality and the set of presuppositions that underlie our conceptions of language, science, and common sense, such as the distinction between reality and appearance, and between truth and fiction.”²

Do you see the point? Deconstruction is not going to try to show that what is being asserted, claimed, argued, demonstrated, or suggested is false. Deconstruction is going to try to undermine, undercut, subvert, and otherwise attack the MEANING of whatever has been asserted, claimed, argued, demonstrated, or suggested. They want to take the wind of meaning out of the sails of concepts, ideas, claims, arguments, texts, books, and anything else the communicates something that the deconstructor disagrees with.

As I wrote in Part 4 of my series on woke tactics:

”Deconstruction operates by attacking at the level of MEANING. What gets deconstructed are words, ideas, ideologies, concepts, discourses, art, texts, symbols, etc. Whatever can be used to MEAN something or communicate gets deconstructed.

Like all societies, in our society there is a certain set of ideas, concepts, values, morals, norms, and philosophies which we have elevated to a higher status. There are things that we have lifted up and said “these things are better than other things.”Every society has a blueprint made of ideas that society has thought is right, good, and better than other ideas and it is those elevated ideas that make up the blueprint for the society. The ideas which are elevated become POWERFUL  in that they are able to convince people, move people, inspire people, influence people, and move people toward cooperation and action as they participate in society.  Deconstruction is used to attack such ideas because if you destroy the MEANING of ideas you can suck the power out of those ideas. You can take the wind out of the sails of those ideas. Deconstruction is a way to knock those ideas off the pedestal that they were placed on so that they lose their power to inspire, motivate, move and influence. And, here’s the thing: if ideas lose their power whatever is held together by those ideas (in this case our society) will begin to come apart.”

This is what deconstruction is doing. As a result, when someone is attempting to deconstruct what you have communicated it very often looks like they are nitpicking the words you used to express your ideas with the goal of missing the point that you were trying to make. This is because they are looking for some way to attack the meaning of what you said so they can subvert, undercut, and undermine the MEANING of what you have communicated.³

With that brief review of deconstruction in mind, we now turn to the question, what do we do about this?

There are times in which the context in which a communication can leave the meaning of what has been communicated open to different interpretations, and there are times when we can dismiss a claim, assertion, arguments, etc, on the grounds that it is unclear or that it contradicts itself. If a something contains logical contradictions, or is unclear, then we are well within our right to dismiss it on those grounds. What deconstruction does is to invent many creative interpretations of what has been communicated, and in doing so they will both create interpretations which contradict each other, and generate enough interpretations to claim that the meaning of the communication becomes blurred.

Those who would defend Deconstruction at the academic level would no doubt object to the way I characterize deconstruction. That said, I am not interested here in giving a deep dive into the various technical distinctions at work in deconstructive philosophy. For this essay I am interested in describing what deconstruction does at the popular level, and discussing ways that we can push back against it.

The great weakness of deconstructive philosophy is this: if you can make your point sufficiently clear that the average person can understand what you mean perfectly well, deconstructive attempts to attack the meaning of what you said will be exposed for the nonsense they are.  Deconstruction can look clever when the meaning of a text is plausibly in doubt. However, when the meaning of a text is startlingly clear, then attempts by deconstructors to reinterpret the text with the goal of attacking the meaning will backfire and come across as bad faith pedantic nitpicking.

Our goal then is to blunt the force of deconstructive attacks by making the meaning of what we communicate so startlingly clear that it becomes obvious that any attempt to “deconstruct” our communication is exposed as an obvious attempt to undermine what we said without dealing with the substance of our argument. This methods is effective, but it requires that we communicate in a way that is startlingly clear. We need to communicate in such a way that blurring the meanings of what we said becomes nearly impossible. This is difficult, but it can be accomplished if we follow a few simple rules.

First, we must be really clear about what we want to say before we say it. If we are not completely clear about what we want to say before we say it, then we will end up communicating vague ideas that can easily be attacked. We do not want to leave any of our communication vague because that makes us vulnerable to bad faith interpretations.

Secondly, when we communicate we must avoid, as often as is possible, technical jargon that can be confusing. If we use to much technical jargon we will be unclear and the deconstructor who interprets us uncharitably will be able to make trouble by misinterpreting us.

The third thing we want to do is make sure that we do write and speak as though what we say will be put on a billboard in times square and be read by a wide variety of people. If we make our communication with only one specific audience in mind this can lead to us using words, phrases, metaphors, aphorisms, and examples which might be clear to our audience, but can be easily misinterpreted by other audiences.

For example, it might be tempting for a chemistry professor to use a chemistry analogy when explaining himself in public, but doing so opens him up to being misinterpreted by people who do not know chemistry. As such, if we are going to use examples and metaphors from specific areas of interest we must take care to explain such examples in a clear way that it cannot be misinterpreted. Because this is difficult I urge people to use examples and metaphors from every day life so that it makes them more difficult to misinterpret.

What we want to do is use simple examples drawn from things that are well understood by the general public. If we do this the our examples will not be open to being hijacked and misinterpreted by those who wish to attack the meaning of what we are saying.

In all of this our goal is to be so clear in our meaning that when we release our communications into the world the meaning of those communications will hold together in spite of the attempts of our opponents to deconstruct them.

Finally, there is one specific mistake that we want to avoid; we want to avoid over explaining ourselves. This is a mistake because if we over explain ourselves we can end up saying so much, and saying it in a way that is confusing. If we spend all our time trying to preempt all the way in which we can be misinterpreted then we will end up saying so much that our communication can become unclear. Communications that are beset by too many attempts to preempt objections or misinterpretations run the risk of dying the death of a thousand clarifications. This is a mistake to avoid.

To conclude, the best weapon against those who want to blur our meaning is to make our communication so clear that the attempts to deconstruct what we have said don’t get traction. By making ourselves very very clear attempts to blur our meaning will be seen for what they are: attempts to subvert the meaning of what we communicate without engaging with the substance of our communication.

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Wokal_Distance.

1. Jonathan Culler  On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, Cornell University Press (Ithica, New York, 1982) P. 86

2. John R. Searle, The Word Turned Upside Down, New York Review of Books, Volume 30, Number 16, October 27, 1983.

3.  James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity - and how This Harms Everybody. Pitchstone Publishing (Durham North Carolina, 2020) P.37