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Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 12:06:16 -0500
From:         BROWNH@CCSUA.CTSTATEU.EDU
Subject:      Re: interllectual interpretation

I appreciate Pellervo Kokkonen's questions and comments, and at the risk
of boring others on the list I'll do my best to reply.

However, doing so is not easy, and I hope Pellervo will bear with me.
First, it seems to me that deconstructionism is hard to define in prac-
tice, for there is quite a range of perspectives following its banner,
and not all of them make happy bedfellows.  It seems also hard to define
in principle, for it apparently wants to make problematic any criterion
that would validate its own definition.  Often we have to rely on little
more than good will to permit a dialogue that does not inspect its own
starting axioms, including criteria of validation.  Sometimes, good will
is not enough, and discourse flounders on the rock of non-shared starting
assumptions (religion and politics are obvious examples).  I suspect
that agreement reached despite different starting assumptions is fragile
and fleeting.

This willingness to start out by giving the other person a sympathetic
hearing might be traditional, it might be gentlemanliness, it might be
part of class solidarity, I don't know, although I am rather fond of it.
_Some_ deconstructionists, though (I'm not implying Pellervo is one of
them), make a virtue of subsuming truth, logic, sympathy and logic under
rhetoric.  That is, successful persuasion is the sole validation of a
paradigm, although success might depend on certain methods or values
such as honesty, logic, empirical evidence, etc. As western culture
continues to decay into fascism, there is an unhealthy mean-sprited
aggressiveness afoot that is very unpleasant. Perhaps that infects some
who claim to be deconstructionists. I really don't know, but it makes
dialogue with people in the petit bourgoisie potentially very unpleasant.
I'll take the risk, though, for I'm confident the people on this list
are all people of good will.

I'm not sure what a "deconstructionist map" is either, and I was respon-
ding to someone who seemed to imply that deconstructionism was relevant
to map making.  I can only assume that a deconstructionist map is a map
that is not a "true" analog of the world about us, but one that satis-
fies certain validating rules that are honored by a certain scientific
community.  Sure, that scientific community might simply be cartogra-
phers, and if so, probably not too many would raise much of a fuss.
But suppose that "scientific community" consisted of western white
male petit bourgeois academics. Does not the extensive discussion of
the ideological biases of maps, such tied to various projections, suggest
there are different "paradigms," and these different paradigms address
the ideological interests of different communties? If so, then the ques-
tion must arise, what validates one scientific community rather than
another? The answer, I suppose, is the one that builds a sufficient
social base to win hegemony over scientific resources. Anyone without
the wealth and sophistication to dominate the means communication needed
to build and control the social base to validate its own paradigm and
invalidate all others, not because they are false but because they are
not predominant, is invalid.

All this makes me very nervous. My Golden Rule is, He who has the gold
rules.  I, the working class in general, the so-called Third
World, do
not have the gold, and so we don't rule. The capitalists rule, there is
no question of that, and I can understand that, but when simply invali-
dates other classes or people of color or people who are not of European
extraction, then I understand why some are inclined to call it implicitly
fascist.  Am I saying deconstructionists are fascists? No, of course not.
But it would be nice if they offered some basis upon which non-hegemonic
paradigms have some validity.  A classic way of doing this is to criti-
cize views as one-sided or as biased.  But if there is no truth, there
can be no bias, and paradiogms are either dominant or invalid.

Does deconstructionism imply subjectivism? This is not an easy question.
The issue, I think, is not examples so much as what we mean by subjec-
tivism.  For example, is an inter-subjective criterion of validity
(the consensus of a scientific community), if it is the only criterion,
inherently subjective because it resides solely in consciousness?  Or
does "subjectivism" mean the perspective of the individual in isolation
of any inter-subjective perspective?  I suppose either definition is fine,
but since I used the term I have to specifify what I meant by it. By
"subjectivism" what I meant was a reduction of an object of thought to
consciousness, whether it be personal or intersubjective, so that it
becomes relatively unconstrained by our experiences of the world beyond
consciousness.

To gain a little perspective, all this discussion probably makes little
practical difference in the short run.  But I suspect it can make a
great deal of diffrence in the long run.  In the fields with which I am
familiar, it seems to me that deconstructionism has not yielded the
nice "comprehensive" and "complementary" results Pellervo speaks of.
But perhaps I underestimate its positive potentials. Pellervo, can you
explain to an amateur just how deconstructionism makes cartography
more comprehensive or complementary.  Comprehensive and complementary
in what sense?

Haines Brown (brownh@ccsua.ctstateu.edu)
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