>It has disturbed me for quite a while that deconstruction/ism seems
>to have generated such vitriol. When similar ideas were brought forth
>in Physics (Bohr & Heisenberg), and in Mathematics (Goedel & Cantor), there
>certainly was shock amongst scholars but in a rather short period of time
>the fundamentals of uncertainty and doubt became intergrated into the
>way mathematics and physics are percieved. Why all of this fear from
>Literature and Architectecture? Does it have something to do with the
>fear of being laid bare the science is? I really don't get it?
>
Well, I don't think the physicists & mathematicians were deconstructionist
in the sense that you mean. In a certain important sense, only incorrect
mathematics can be "deconstructed;" other than that one can only add.
Physicists, on the other hand, continues to hold to the idea of an absolute
reality, however difficult or ill-understood it is; the idea that it is
unknowable, or that all one can know is oneself, is anathema to these
masters of the physical.
As an outsider to deconstruction--Foucault is the only "post-modern" I have
a strong interest in (and he denied the title)--it seems to me that the big
push in this area is the criticism of philosophical modernism. That, while
Derrida's work may express (intellectualized) "love, compassion, spirit,
soul, and play," the business of deconstruction is the trashing of, as it
were, over-designed philosophies which attempt unification at the expense
of all human qualities. Certainly, if there is a failure of 20th-century
philosophy, that is it--both state socialism and fascism, as well as
rampant materialism embody this, at a terrible human cost. Rather to my
surprise, I find I agree that this does have architectural value; I've
often felt a stifling sense of conformism in the "planned" suburbs and the
glass and steel towers of financial districts. I do think, though, that
criticizing design, an essentially negative enterprise, has to part of a
broader positive enterprise. Deconstruction seems to set a certain
playfulness as a goal; while this strikes me as a good beginning, I feel I
need something more.
Randolph Fritz
Software engineer, network wizard, and architecture student
randolph@xxxxxxxxxx
Mountain View, California, Earth
>to have generated such vitriol. When similar ideas were brought forth
>in Physics (Bohr & Heisenberg), and in Mathematics (Goedel & Cantor), there
>certainly was shock amongst scholars but in a rather short period of time
>the fundamentals of uncertainty and doubt became intergrated into the
>way mathematics and physics are percieved. Why all of this fear from
>Literature and Architectecture? Does it have something to do with the
>fear of being laid bare the science is? I really don't get it?
>
Well, I don't think the physicists & mathematicians were deconstructionist
in the sense that you mean. In a certain important sense, only incorrect
mathematics can be "deconstructed;" other than that one can only add.
Physicists, on the other hand, continues to hold to the idea of an absolute
reality, however difficult or ill-understood it is; the idea that it is
unknowable, or that all one can know is oneself, is anathema to these
masters of the physical.
As an outsider to deconstruction--Foucault is the only "post-modern" I have
a strong interest in (and he denied the title)--it seems to me that the big
push in this area is the criticism of philosophical modernism. That, while
Derrida's work may express (intellectualized) "love, compassion, spirit,
soul, and play," the business of deconstruction is the trashing of, as it
were, over-designed philosophies which attempt unification at the expense
of all human qualities. Certainly, if there is a failure of 20th-century
philosophy, that is it--both state socialism and fascism, as well as
rampant materialism embody this, at a terrible human cost. Rather to my
surprise, I find I agree that this does have architectural value; I've
often felt a stifling sense of conformism in the "planned" suburbs and the
glass and steel towers of financial districts. I do think, though, that
criticizing design, an essentially negative enterprise, has to part of a
broader positive enterprise. Deconstruction seems to set a certain
playfulness as a goal; while this strikes me as a good beginning, I feel I
need something more.
Randolph Fritz
Software engineer, network wizard, and architecture student
randolph@xxxxxxxxxx
Mountain View, California, Earth