- - The original note follows - -
From: hleavitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Harvey Leavitt)
Subject: Re: DECONSTRUCTIVISM anyone?
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 06:26:33 GMT
Since my discipline is English, and I am only an eavesdropper on this news
group, I hesitate to enter in to the discussion because I don't know how
deconstructionism is being applied in architecture. But I believe that
you might find helpful insights if you made contact with the persons who
teach literary theory in the English department on your campus, or seek
out someone in philosophy who offers a course about or which includes the
work of Derrida. A quick quote from A HANDBOOK TO LITERATURE BY Holman
and Harman, a dictionary of literary terminology: "One recent effect of
deconstruction has been the undoing of the old order creation-criticism,
so that a number of academic critics....have been producing critical texts
that are, in effect if not in explicit form, Prose poems."
Maybe an equivalent act in architecture would be the act, by an architecture
critic, of producing another building as a means of offering critical
insights into the original object of the criticism.
Linguistically, deconstructionism seems to argue, or at least a facet of it
argues that what we have believed to be shared meanings of words, phrases and
other communication constructs simply doesn't exist to a large degree and the
message we are sending is arriving in the receiver's mind in a very different
condition from the sender's intent. There is a nihilistic quality in this
area of deconstructionism which seems to argue that the matrixes (matrices) we
depend on to communicate the methodology of a discipline from one generation
to another is much less precise, and maybe more nearly non-existent than we
care to believe. In the absence of shared meanings, we may examine shared
views of the constructs, or the linguistic event (translate into poem, novel,
short story) and spend our efforts on the differences in which we see the
construct, and what we used to call an event or a work of literature with
discernible meaning or meanings on which reasonable people might agree, or
perhaps pretend to agree for the sake of social harmony, or because we tell
the teacher what the teacher wants to hear, becomes a study in constructs
and how the different ways of observing the construct and the seemingly
unending subjective possibilities becomes the philosophical center.
In my view, I have always felt as though deconstruct....as applied to the
abstract humanities such as English and Philosophy, as contrasted to the
plastic arts such as painting, sculpting and architecture, which result
in a physical product, has caused the discipline to turn against itself,
to argue that the study of textual content as a social and scholarly
activity is no longer an important activity, and which asks students and
scholars to retreat to something which more closely resembles a personal
aesthetic which is unnecessary and perhaps unproductive as a product to
share with others. To subscribe to the full implications in my classroom
would seem to have the effect of making me voiceless, except as I offer,
perhaps, some means for observing constructs. We each live in a separate
subjective universe seems to be the ultimate outcome, and thus, what purpose
is there in communication?
Again, perhaps an architectural equivalent would argue that the universal
qualities people may agree on about the blueprints is the essential basis
for understanding the final products, and that to seek meaning from form
and content is an unworthy activity. This is likely too extreme, and I
think architects who embrace deconstruction may be using the term in some
other ways. In one sense, the term deconstruction may have become a metaphor
for any seemingly radical change in philosophic underpinnings or significant
change in direction for the discipline.
The discussion of deconstructionism reminds me of a line that I remember from,
I think, a book by Paul Kristelar on Renaissance Humanism. To paraphrase, he
said, Humanism is a swamp into which millions of words have been poured and
from which few definitions have risen from the muck. Deconstructionism seems
to be declining rather quickly in English, but it kept many scholars from
perishing over the past 15 years.
My gross oversimplifications and my misunderstandings of the opaque readings
of deconstructionism may define this posting as more of a personal diatribe
than an explication. I hope it starts a dialogue with other disciplines.
I have an amateur's love of architecture, though there is too little of the
great stuff here in Omaha. Perhaps you might start a dialogue with people
in English, Philosophy etc.
Harvey Leavitt
The University of Nebraska at Omaha
Standard disclaimers apply unless one of you seeks to award me a Nobel Prize.
From: hleavitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Harvey Leavitt)
Subject: Re: DECONSTRUCTIVISM anyone?
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 06:26:33 GMT
Since my discipline is English, and I am only an eavesdropper on this news
group, I hesitate to enter in to the discussion because I don't know how
deconstructionism is being applied in architecture. But I believe that
you might find helpful insights if you made contact with the persons who
teach literary theory in the English department on your campus, or seek
out someone in philosophy who offers a course about or which includes the
work of Derrida. A quick quote from A HANDBOOK TO LITERATURE BY Holman
and Harman, a dictionary of literary terminology: "One recent effect of
deconstruction has been the undoing of the old order creation-criticism,
so that a number of academic critics....have been producing critical texts
that are, in effect if not in explicit form, Prose poems."
Maybe an equivalent act in architecture would be the act, by an architecture
critic, of producing another building as a means of offering critical
insights into the original object of the criticism.
Linguistically, deconstructionism seems to argue, or at least a facet of it
argues that what we have believed to be shared meanings of words, phrases and
other communication constructs simply doesn't exist to a large degree and the
message we are sending is arriving in the receiver's mind in a very different
condition from the sender's intent. There is a nihilistic quality in this
area of deconstructionism which seems to argue that the matrixes (matrices) we
depend on to communicate the methodology of a discipline from one generation
to another is much less precise, and maybe more nearly non-existent than we
care to believe. In the absence of shared meanings, we may examine shared
views of the constructs, or the linguistic event (translate into poem, novel,
short story) and spend our efforts on the differences in which we see the
construct, and what we used to call an event or a work of literature with
discernible meaning or meanings on which reasonable people might agree, or
perhaps pretend to agree for the sake of social harmony, or because we tell
the teacher what the teacher wants to hear, becomes a study in constructs
and how the different ways of observing the construct and the seemingly
unending subjective possibilities becomes the philosophical center.
In my view, I have always felt as though deconstruct....as applied to the
abstract humanities such as English and Philosophy, as contrasted to the
plastic arts such as painting, sculpting and architecture, which result
in a physical product, has caused the discipline to turn against itself,
to argue that the study of textual content as a social and scholarly
activity is no longer an important activity, and which asks students and
scholars to retreat to something which more closely resembles a personal
aesthetic which is unnecessary and perhaps unproductive as a product to
share with others. To subscribe to the full implications in my classroom
would seem to have the effect of making me voiceless, except as I offer,
perhaps, some means for observing constructs. We each live in a separate
subjective universe seems to be the ultimate outcome, and thus, what purpose
is there in communication?
Again, perhaps an architectural equivalent would argue that the universal
qualities people may agree on about the blueprints is the essential basis
for understanding the final products, and that to seek meaning from form
and content is an unworthy activity. This is likely too extreme, and I
think architects who embrace deconstruction may be using the term in some
other ways. In one sense, the term deconstruction may have become a metaphor
for any seemingly radical change in philosophic underpinnings or significant
change in direction for the discipline.
The discussion of deconstructionism reminds me of a line that I remember from,
I think, a book by Paul Kristelar on Renaissance Humanism. To paraphrase, he
said, Humanism is a swamp into which millions of words have been poured and
from which few definitions have risen from the muck. Deconstructionism seems
to be declining rather quickly in English, but it kept many scholars from
perishing over the past 15 years.
My gross oversimplifications and my misunderstandings of the opaque readings
of deconstructionism may define this posting as more of a personal diatribe
than an explication. I hope it starts a dialogue with other disciplines.
I have an amateur's love of architecture, though there is too little of the
great stuff here in Omaha. Perhaps you might start a dialogue with people
in English, Philosophy etc.
Harvey Leavitt
The University of Nebraska at Omaha
Standard disclaimers apply unless one of you seeks to award me a Nobel Prize.