Two Deconstructionists: The Critic and the Fool

Please correct me or feel free to nuance my definition, but I'm going to take a shot at defining literary deconstruction: Deconstruction is a process whereby the reader points out a text's internal oppositions for the purpose of showing how slippery meaning can be. Texts can often be used to argue seemingly opposing truths, and the deconstructionist's task is to show how this is so.

Unfortunately, I think that most of us have become too apt at deconstruction, or at least at this part of deconstruction. Students in particular like to pick an author apart and show why we should not bother hearing what he or she has to say. We have become specialists in aloofness, not postmodernists but ultramodernists, seeking pure, factual, accessible truth instead of working hard to understand the text on its own terms, slipperiness and all.

Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It particularly expresses the aloofness and loneliness of the critic. We are all likely familiar with the "Seven Ages Speech," or at least its first line: "All the world's a stage / and all the men and women merely players . . ." These words launch the critic, Jaques, into a melancholic deconstruction of human folly as acted out during life's seven stages. In his speech we are introduced to the reluctant schoolboy, the self-seeking judge, and the child-likeness of old-age. The trouble with Jaques' speech, though his analysis is spot-on, is that his criticism leaves him without any companion in the world. By judging the folly of humankind from above, the critic refuses to participate in humanity, and is forced into a solitary existence, as is Jaques at the end of the play.

Shakespeare offers an alternative to criticism in the "fool," a stock character in many of his plays. The fool is not blind to the incongruences of human activity, or for our purposes, human language; however, unlike his hyper-critical counterpart, the fool recognizes his place in the story of human folly. He uses his own folly as a tool to teach others instead of resorting to criticism. He suffers the consequences too, but, by choosing to participate in the folly of others instead of condemning it, the fool does not suffer alone.

Maybe it's time to add a little bit to my definition: Deconstruction is a process whereby the reader points out a text's internal oppositions for the purpose of showing how slippery meaning can be. However, the reader does not disregard the text for its incongruences; rather he or she seeks to incorporate this multiplicity into a paradoxical understanding of the text at a deeper level.

Maybe that's a little long for a definition; maybe it's a little wordy, but I think you catch my drift. Deeper reading requires us to approach texts with humility, giving the author the benefit of the doubt. It requires us to try to learn from authors who are wrong just like we are sometimes, and to assume that we are probably the ones who are wrong this time. It also requires us to laugh a bit, to relax, and to realize, like the students Appleman describes, that we might not know quite so much about the world as we think we do. We're all in this together.

Ship of Fools - Peter van der Heyden

"Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception, and ignorance, but it isn't–it's human."

-Erasmus

"Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless."

-Ecclesiastes

Whatever You Do, Don't Think About Black Cats.

"I concluded . . . that the best way to rescue poems like 'Dover Beach' was not to try to protect them from the critical controversies about their value, but to use those controversies to give them new life"

-Gerry Graff, quoted in Appleman

I think Mr. Graff makes a good point with his paradoxical embrace of the challenges brought on by Marxist and Feminist Theories. Good literature was never really in danger, nor was the study of good literature, he claims. Sometimes controversy and condemnation can revive an old classic, or even bring out new layers of richness and complexity–actually highlighting the author's skill. In other cases, controversy can be part of the democratically-driven re-envisioning of the literary canon, pointing out the failings of works that may have been too highly praised. 

Of course, it is the tyranny of that democracy which we all fear when it challenges one of our beloved classics, one of the books that has shaped us, challenged us, simply entertained us. Even more, it is the tyranny of the present that we must fear, as notions of progress validate the judgment and condemnation of the voices of the past according to the criteria of political correctness. In some Feminist circles, for example, or so I've heard, Shakespeare and Plato, among others, have been ignored or exiled, while self-censorship has gained a power that the inquisition never had. At least when books are banned, the result is often a heightened curiosity. Sometimes, for better or worse, the banning of books even leads to an increased readership. In this way, I think that Graff is mostly right. If someone tells you not to think about black cats, their bad luck is that one is guaranteed at least to cross your mind. Oftentimes, the Marxist and Feminist controversy around particular titles piques our interest in a similar way. And as concerns literary theory, we may even be lead to appreciate those texts in new ways. However, when theory gives way to dogmatism, and classics are left to lie in the dust, we lose a chance to learn from the past. Controversy is good, but its benefits require a delicate balance of power.

At the same time, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of a thought-police; I mean we are supposed to be challenging students, are we not? Socrates wasn't opposed to the idea either, though I think he might drink the hemlock all over again if he knew which side of it he was coming out on.

Jaques-Louis David - The Death of Socrates

"And if the student finds that [the reading] is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed."

-Flannery O'Connor

"Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."

-G. K. Chesterton

Are My Students Willing and Able to Embrace Confusion?

Gallagher raises a key question for teaching literature. I believe that the answer in most classrooms will be "no". Despite the persistent claims of some that times have changed, our world is as much as ever the product of a scientific enlightenment. The need for scientific fact undergirds our acceptance of anything as truth. This problem is compounded by the incessant stream of information that young people are required to sort through every day. From necessity, "fact" is reduced to whatever can answer this simple question in the affirmative: "does it make sense to me now?"

In response to this question it is all too easy for a teacher to attempt to remove confusion altogether. Is this not the nature of academic writing? I know that I myself am guilty of stretching patchwork theories over a much more difficult reality. Well-structured theories may present our subject matter to students in a more accessible, sensible way, but does it do justice to the truth we wish to portray?

The introduction of confusion into the classroom goes against the grain of the way we understand our world. Complex texts ask the reader to confront the world as it is, without dismissing it or even simplifying it. Often this confusion is not resolved; instead it is compounded by the further discovery of confusion in what once appeared clear. However, the reward for embracing confusion is great. When we are taught to embrace confusion (an embrace that includes both acceptance and struggle), we are brought into greater communion with the truth. Instead of reducing what is seen so that it fits within the constraints of ideology, or worse, dismissing it altogether because it is hard, good readers will embrace confusion for what it is on its own terms. 

Of necessity, as Gallagher points out, is that we embrace confusion along with our students. More is at stake than helping our students get through a hard book. To embrace confusion is to reject the notion that a teacher has sole access to the truth and instead to model a posture of humility and wonder that puts us in right relationship with a world that is not so easy to explain. Confusion allows us to find beauty in the things that once appeared both dry and simple, to feel worlds away in a world that is truly our own and to discover why we were attached to this place to begin with. 

Otherwise, we might as well read chemistry textbooks.

Van Gogh - Field of Spring Wheat at Sunrise

"Truths of all others the most awful and mysterious, yet being at the same time of universal interest, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all life and efficiency of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors."

- S. T. Coleridge

"The world shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder."

- G. K. Chesterton

If You'll Forgive a Slight Romanticization...

In Deeper Reading Gallagher points out the merit of tying a text to personal experience. Framing the text for students does more than make literature relatable; in Gallagher's words, "Literature enables students to experience a safe 'practice run' through the great issues confronting us, and having students reflect on their reading by connecting it to a contemporary point of view is essential" (20). Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reader response (as outlined in Appleman 2009) fills out Gallagher's assertion by emphasizing an interplay between the reader and the text. It is both the text and the individual who contribute to the meaning that is discovered.

While I am aware of the fact of this event when I read, I am rarely conscious either of my contribution to the text or of a "practice run" through anything in particular. So, reminded of these concepts by today's reading, I decided to take a second look at my bookshelf. Leafing through the pages of particularly meaningful, even life-altering books failed to produce any epiphanies. I put an anthology back on the shelf and sat back for a broader view. At once, as a series of impressions came Odysseus, Achilles, Oroonoko, and Lady Macbeth; King Lear, Marlow, Milton's Satan, all the Karamazovs; Othello, Lord Jim, The Underground Man, and J. Alfred Prufrock: a crowd diverse as any. Yet in each I found something relatable, whether negative or positive– maybe something I brought, maybe something they brought too. As a young man coming of age, these are the characters, the stories, the texts that have provided me with a dry run through what it means to be a man. Through these characters I have confronted and participated in death, sin, forgiveness, love, strength, weakness, and humility. There is no one to one correlation between experience and the text, but I at least cannot deny their mingling as I search out what it means to live according to wisdom, as the man God created me to be.

Henry Fuseli - Tiresias appears to Ulysses

                                                  ". . .The blow smashed 

            the nape cord, and his ghost fled to the dark. 

      But I was outside, walking with the rest, 

                                                     saying:           

                                               'Homeward you think we must be sailing

             to our own land; no, elsewhere is the voyage

Kirkê has laid upon me. We must go 

                  to the cold homes of Death and pale Perséphonê

  to hear Teirêsias tell of time to come.'"

-Odysseus, The Odyssey, transalted by Robert Fitzgerald