From How to Deconstruct Almost Anything

From How to Deconstruct Almost Anything--My Postmodern Adventure by Chip Morningstar. While written nominally as a tongue-in-cheek humorous critique it is actually a very substantive discussion with solid conclusions but delivered with respectful wit. Well worth reading.

So, what are we to make of all this? I earlier stated that my quest was to learn if there was any content to this stuff and if it was or was not bogus. Well, my assessment is that there is indeed some content, much of it interesting. The question of bogosity, however, is a little more difficult. It is clear that the forms used by academicians writing in this area go right off the bogosity scale, pegging my bogometer until it breaks. The quality of the actual analysis of various literary works varies tremendously and must be judged on a case-by-case basis, but I find most of it highly questionable. Buried in the muck, however, are a set of important and interesting ideas: that in reading a work it is illuminating to consider the contrast between what is said and what is not said, between what is explicit and what is assumed, and that popular notions of truth and value depend to a disturbingly high degree on the reader's credulity and willingness to accept the text's own claims as to its validity.

Related to The Authority of a Book. Also relevant to Steven Den Beste's discussion of materialism versus teleology in Government by Wishful Thinking.