Derrida/Deconstruction: Seminar Notes Tracing ... - Whs.babienko.net

unquestionable natural or universal grounds for belief and knowledge.
• Deconstruction is not so much something we can do, but something we are in.
• But we can recognize the metaphorics of ideologies and beliefs and challenge real-world politics, policies, debates that pretend to justify their
rightness through a tissue of over-loaded metaphors that can't provide absolute foundations.
Masculine (gender)
Male (sex)
Mind/Soul/Spirit
Strength
Reason/Control
Machine
Form
Active
Sexual actor, aggressor
Aggressor
Feminine (gender)
Female (sex)
Body
Weakness
Irrational/emotions
Organic
Formless
Passive
Sexual receiver, prey
Pacifier
• How do these and other unacknowledged cultural constructs continue to play out?
• One result of working through deconstruction is Rorty's view that we need to use open debate and argument to find persuasive ways to bring
about a better world, not from absolute foundations, but from descriptions of what we want to embrace. (As he affirms in the title of a book of
his interviews, "Take care of freedom, and truth will take care of itself.")
Martin Irvine
irvinem@georgetown.edu
© 2004-2011
All educational uses permitted with attribution and link to this page.