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Deconstruction Quotes

Browse 81 quotes about Deconstruction.

Deconstruction Quotes

“And still the text will remain, if it is really cryptic and parodying (and I tell you that it is so through and through. I might as well tell you since it won’t be of any help to you. Even my admission can very well be a lie because there is dissimulation only if one tells the truth, only if one tells that one is telling the truth), still the text will remain indefinitely open, cryptic and parodying.”

PhilosophyDeconstruction
Book:Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles/Éperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche
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“Let us being again. To take some examples: why should “literature” still designate that which already breaks away from literature—away from what has always been conceived and signified under that name—or that which, not merely escaping literature, implacably destroys it? (Posed in these terms, the question would already be caught in the assurance of a certain fore-knowledge: can “what has always been conceived and signified under that name” be considered fundamentally homogeneous, univocal, or nonconflictual?) To take other examples: what historical and strategic function should henceforth be assigned to the quotation marks, whether visible or invisible, which transform this into a “book,” or which still make the deconstruction of philosophy into a “philosophical discourse”?”

PhilosophyDeconstruction
Book:Dissemination
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“Still less, despite appearances, will it have been a collection of three “essays” whose itinerary it would be time, after the fact, to recognize; whose continuity and underlying laws could now be pointed out; indeed, whose overall concept or meaning could at last, with all the insistence required on such occasions, be squarely set forth. I will not feign, according to the code, either premeditation or improvisation. These texts are assembled otherwise; it is not my intention here to present them.”

PhilosophyDeconstruction
Book:Dissemination
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“Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring. This citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is not an accident or anomaly, but is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could no longer even have a so-called “normal” functioning. What would a mark be that one could not cite? And whose origin could not be lost on the way?”

PhilosophyDeconstruction
Book:Margins of Philosophy
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“An insipid voice message or an incongruent emergence from the “other” world may disrupt our whole thinking system. If we are not able to deal with the fragmentation of our self and assess the deconstruction of our identity, a corny incident could easily capsize our being. A misinterpretation of facts and expectations may perturb our awareness and unsettle our perception. When “I” and “me” don’t get along very well, the road to oneness may be very often bumpy. (“Alors, tout a basculé”)”

ThinkingSelfFactsVoiceAwarenessIdentityPerceptionExpectationsOnenessBeingCornyRoadEmergenceMeIMessageInsipidDeconstructionFragmentationMisinterpretationDisruptIncidentOther WorldAssessGet AlongDeal WithIncongruentPerturbUnsettleBumpy RoadCapsizeThinking System
Author:Erik Pevernagie
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“It goes without saying that these effects do not suffice to annul the necessity for a “change of terrain.” It also goes without saying that the choice between these two forms of deconstruction cannot be simple and unique. A new writing must weave and interlace these two motifs of deconstruction. Which amounts to saying that one must speak several languages and produce several texts at once. I would like to point out especially that the style of the first deconstruction is mostly that of the Heideggerian questions, and the other is mostly the one which dominates France today. I am purposely speaking in terms of a dominant style: because there are also breaks and changes of terrain in texts of the Heideggerian type; because the “change of terrain” is far from upsetting the entire French landscape to which I am referring; because what we need, perhaps, as Nietzsche said, is a change of “style”; and if there is style, Nietzsche reminded us, it must be plural.”

PhilosophyDeconstruction
Book:Margins of Philosophy
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“For the same reason there is nowhere to begin to trace the sheaf or the graphics of differance. For what is put into question is precisely the quest for a rightful beginning, an absolute point of departure, a principal responsibility. The problematic of writing is opened by putting into question the value of the arkhe. What I will propose here will not be elaborated simply as a philosophical discourse, operating according to principles, postulates, axioms, or definitions, and proceeding along the discursive lines of a linear order of reasons. In the delineation of differance everything is strategic and adventurous. Strategic because no transcendent truth present outside the field of writing can govern theologically the totality of the field. Adventurous because this strategy is a not simple strategy in the sense that strategy orients tactics according to a final goal, a telos or theme of domination, a mastery and ultimate reappropriation of the development of the field. Finally, a strategy without finality, what might be called blind tactics, or empirical wandering if the value of empiricism did not itself acquire its entire meaning in opposition to philosophical responsibility. If there is a certain wandering in the tracing of differance, it no more follows the lines of philosophical-logical discourse than that of its symmetrical and integral inverse, empirical-logical discourse. The concept of play keeps itself beyond this opposition, announcing, on the eve of philosophy and beyond it, the unity of chance and necessity in calculations without end.”

PhilosophyDeconstruction
Book:Margins of Philosophy
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“Too often when a person's experience and the standard interpretation of Scripture don't add up we immediately blame the person instead of interrogating our understanding of Scripture. It is far easier to believe that someone else is wrong or does not have enough faith than it is to face the truth that it's possible that our interpretation doesn't match how reality works.”

FaithBibleDeconstructionBible InterpretationProgressive Christianity
Book:Context
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“You wrote me and all these other people into a story that robbed us of our free will. These past few weeks, I felt like someone was forcing me to do things I didn't want to do, feel things I didn't want to believe. As if an unseen force was guiding my every movement. You turned us from people into characters with stories that you predetermined. You were playing with our lives without even knowing it. And you put us in terrible danger.”

FatePlotCharactersDeconstruction
Book:The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee
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“Marx was troubled by the question of why ancient Greek art retained an ‘eternal charm’, even though the social conditions which produced it had long passed; but how do we know that it will remain ‘eternally’ charming, since history has not yet ended? Let us imagine that by dint of some deft archaeological research we discovered a great deal more about what ancient Greek tragedy actually meant to its original audiences, recognized that these concerns were utterly remote from our own, and began to read the plays again in the light of this deepened knowledge. One result might be that we stopped enjoying them. We might come to see that we had enjoyed them previously because we were unwittingly reading them in the light of our own preoccupations; once this became less possible, the drama might cease to speak at all significantly to us. The fact that we always interpret literary works to some extent in the light of our own concerns - indeed that in one sense of ‘our own concerns’ we are incapable of doing anything else - might be one reason why certain works of literature seem to retain their value across the centuries. It may be, of course, that we still share many preoccupations with the work itself; but it may also be that people have not actually been valuing the ‘same’ work at all, even though they may think they have. ‘Our’ Homer is not identical with the Homer of the Middle Ages, nor ‘our’ Shakespeare with that of his contemporaries; it is rather that different historical periods have constructed a ‘different’ Homer and Shakespeare for their own purposes, and found in these texts elements to value or devalue, though not necessarily the same ones. All literary works, in other words, are ‘rewritten’, if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them; indeed there is no reading of a work which is not also a ‘re-writing’. No work, and no current evaluation of it, can simply be extended to new groups of people without being changed, perhaps almost unrecognizably, in the process; and this is one reason why what counts as literature is a notably unstable affair.”

LiteratureHuman NatureEssenceValueDeconstruction
Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction
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“Religious trauma resides in our bodies and nervous systems in the same way that trauma from war, developmental trauma, or sexualized trauma live inside us. Though the triggers and environment of the original trauma may differ, how religious trauma lives in our bodies, on a physiological level, is the same.”

StressTraumaPtsdDeconstructionCptsdReligious TraumaChronic StressTraumatology
Book:When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion
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“There are two ways suffering can change you. The first is by breaking you down, leaving you afraid, paranoid, and void of hope. The other is by breaking you open, leaving you with a wider heart, and expanding your capacity for love. Jesus, in his suffering, was broken open for us. When we share in Christ’s sufferings, we too are broken open and able to love others more than we could before. Because of the suffering you have endured in the past, you are able to persevere and endure even more suffering in the future. Each season of suffering prepares you for the next one. As you persevere in suffering, you become more resilient in the face of trials.”

SufferingChristianityChristian FaithDeconstructionChristian Suffering
Book:Walking Through Deconstruction: How to Be a Companion in a Crisis of Faith
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“In submitting to suffering, Jesus absorbs and transforms it into our salvation. Hanging on the cross, the sky went black, and Jesus absorbed the darkness of the world into his body and spirit. Overtaken by it, he lay in the grave for three days. On Easter morning, he was raised in victory over death, defeating the darkness that overtook him on the cross with the light of life. This is what it means to persevere. While suffering is the result of the evil and brokenness of the world, we, like Christ, absorb the darkness of suffering into our bodies, transform it, and release it back into the world as light. We absorb hate and release it back into the world as love. We absorb lies and release them back into the world as truth. We absorb death and release it back into the world as life. We don’t see ourselves as simply victims of suffering but as agents of transformation who mock death and scorn shame, knowing that God’s victorious rule and reign over all evil will be made manifest through our perseverance.”

SufferingChristianityChristian FaithDeconstructionChristian Suffering
Book:Walking Through Deconstruction: How to Be a Companion in a Crisis of Faith
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“I don't think things happen to us for a reason. I don't think there is some all-knowing force directing our lives so that we can learn a lesson and pass on that knowledge to others. I don't think I had to go through what I did to get this book into your hands. In fact, there were many other ways I could have learned those lessons—and they could have been learned without excruciating pain. Yet I cannot deny that somehow my experiences also turned me into who I am and resulted in this book being in your hands today. Multiple things can be true at the same time.”

PainLife LessonsLife QuoteFundamentalismDeterminismDeconstructionNuances
Book:When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion
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“Sin is no longer about having the wrong religious methods or customs. If that were true then Jesus was guilty of sin for breaking the Sabbath, breaking fasts, and breaking lots of purity laws by touching the sick, eating and drinking with sinners, and conversing with Gentile women. Jesus radically redefined sin in his day as simply that which is unjust and harms others.”

SinDeconstruction
Book:A Survival Guide for Heretics
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“If I had been more independent in my thinking then, I would have thought the matter through to a conclusion. But in those days it was easy for me to leave tangled thoughts knotted, their loose ends hanging. I didn't want to explore the treacherous mazes that such thoughts led into. I didn't want to reach the end of those mazes, because there, I knew, I would find myself and I was afraid I would not recognize myself after having taken so many confusing directions. I was beginning to suspect that I was not the person I was expected to be, and took it as evidence that somewhere I had taken a wrong turning.”

IndependenceAwakeningSelf DiscoveryComing Of AgeDeconstruction
Book:Nervous Conditions
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“The persistence of superannuated institutions in striving to perpetuate themselves is like the obstinacy of a rancid odour clinging to the hair; the pretension of spoiled fish that insists on being eaten, the tenacious folly of a child's garment trying to clothe a man, or the tenderness of a corpse returning to embrace the living. "Ingrates!" exclaims the garment. "I shielded you in weakness. Why do you reject me now?" "I come from the depths of the sea," says the fish; "I was once a rose," cries the odour; "I loved you," murmurs the corpse; "I civilized you," says the convent. To this there is but one reply; "In the past." To dream of the indefinite prolongation of things dead and the government of mankind by embalming; to restore dilapidated dogmas, regild the shrines, replaster the cloisters, reconsecrate the reliquaries, revamp old superstitions, replenish fading fanaticism, put new handles in worn-out sprinkling brushes, reconstitute monasticism; to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of parasites; to foist the past upon the present, all this seems strange. There are, however, advocates for such theories as these. These theorists, men of mind too, in other things, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a coating of what they term divine right, respect for our forefathers, time-honored authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy; and they go about, shouting, "Here! take this, good people!" This logic was familiar to the ancients; their soothsayers practised it. Rubbing over a black heifer with chalk, they would exclaim, "She is white" Bos cretatus. As for ourselves, we distribute our respect, here and there, and spare the past entirely, provided it will but consent to be dead. But, if it insists upon being alive, we attack it and endeavor to kill it. Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their shadowy substance, and we must grapple with them, body to body, and make war upon them and that, too, without cessation; for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal struggle with phantoms. A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash upon the ground.”

PhilosophyReligionSocietyExtremismAntiquityDeconstructionIsolationismReligious Fanaticism
Book:Les Misérables
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“Happiness is a flow between a playful construction and a painful deconstruction, undulating from a hampering past into a liberating 'now,' escorting a meandering flood of twists and turns, caressing the velvet sand of dreamy beaches or smashing sometimes into the rocks of reality. ("New York at arm's length of desire")”

PastHappinessDesireNew YorkFlowConstructionLiberatingDeconstructionTwists And TurnsThe Now
Book:Words of Wisdom: Selected and illustrated by his readers
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“The Book of the Law, the central scripture of the New Aeon, to a certain degree deconstructs itself explicitly, while the play of contradictions, or the refusal to ascertain veracity to any truth claim, constitutes an important epistemological principle of Thelema and its associated form of spiritual practice, magick. The Book of the Law resists interpretation on several levels but its central aporia is that it proclaims the law, which generally refers to a restrictive force, the message of which is freedom, expressed through a precept “Do what thou wilt” (AL I:40), while “The word of Sin is Restriction” (AL I: 41). The ‘key’ to the book, similarly, consists of the interplay between concepts AL, meaning God, and LA, meaning Not: the one negates the other, while both simultaneously coexist in the sate of coincidentia oppositorum.”

ParadoxPostmodernismDeconstructionThelema2008AporiaLiber Al Vel Legis
Book:Narodziny Nowego Eonu: Magija i Mistycyzm Thelemy z perspektywy ponowoczesnej a/teologii
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“Too often, we are told that anger has no place in the hearts of Christians. As a consequence, we don't know what we're allowed to feel in regard to the wolves that have infiltrated our flocks. EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN CULTURE HAS A WAY OF TRAINING US INTO TIMIDITY to protect the opinions & abuses of others.”

SpiritualityPatriarchyDeconstructionSpiritual AbuseExvangelicalPatriarchy Religion
Book:Fire in the Whole: Embracing Our Righteous Anger with White Christianity and Reclaiming Our Wholeness
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“Man may feel like a feeble and powerless pawn, at some moment in his life. This apprehension can come out of the blue, in the middle of the day, at the center of a public place, like a cerebral attack. Check mated by 'daily routine', he may feel trapped in a smothering set of circumstances and only a deconstruction of all impeding barriers can bring about a vital mental deliverance. ( "Check and mate" )”

LifeCircumstancesManBarriersTrappedMentalPowerlessMomentPlaceDeliveranceApprehensionPublicDeconstructionCheckmateVitalPawnFeebleImpedeDaily RoutineOut Of The BlueSmotheringBring AboutCerebral Attack
Author:Erik Pevernagie
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“(the pharmakon is neither remedy now poison, neither good nor evil, neither the inside nor the outside, neither speech nor writing; the supplement is neither a plus nor a minus, neither an outside nor the complement of an inside, neither accident nor essence, etc.; the hymen is neither confusion nor distinction, neither identity nor difference, neither consummation nor virginity, neither the veil nor unveiling, neither the inside nor the outside, etc.; the gram is neither a signifier nor a signified, neither a sign nor a thing, neither a presence nor an absence, neither a position nor a negation, etc.; spacing is neither space nor time; the incision is neither the incised integrity of a beginning, or of a simple cutting into, nor simple secondarity. Neither/nor, that is, simultaneously either or; the mark is also the marginal limit, the march, etc.)”

WritingDeconstructionSupplementSpacingHymenGramIncisionDifférancePharmakon
Book:Positions
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“Most Bible-readers of a conservative stamp will look askance at deconstructionism. But its proposed model is in fact too close for comfort to many models implicitly adopted within (broadly speaking) the pietist tradition. The church has actually institutionalized and systematized ways of reading the Bible which are strangely similar to some strands of postmodernism. In particular, the church has lived with the gospels virtually all its life, and familiarity has bred a variety of more or less contemptible hermeneutical models. Even sometimes within those circles that claim to take the Bible most seriously—often, in fact, there above all—there is a woeful refusal to do precisely that, particularly with the gospels. The modes of reading and interpretation that have been followed are, in fact, functions of the models of inspiration and authority of scripture that have been held, explicitly or (more often) implicitly within various circles, and which have often made nonsense of any attempt to read the Bible historically. The devout predecessor of deconstructionism is that reading of the text which insists that what the Bible says to me, now, is the be-all and end-all of its meaning; a reading which does not want to know about the intention of the evangelists, the life of the early church, or even about what Jesus was actually like. There are some strange bedfellow in the world of literary epistemology.”

Bible StudyPostmodernismDeconstructionHermeneuticsDerridaExegesisDeconstructionismNew Historicism
Book:The New Testament and the People of God
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“Deconstruction seeks neither to reframe art with some perfect, apt and truthful new frame, nor simply to maintain the illusion of some pure and simple absence of a frame. Rather it shows that the frame is, in a sense, also inside the painting. For the frame is what "produces" the object of art, is what sets it off as an object of art—an aesthetic object. Thus the frame is essential to the work of art; in the work of art. Paint a $5,000 abstract painting on a railroad boxcar and nobody will pay a cent for it. Take a torch, remove the panel of the boxcar, install it in a gallery, and it will be worth $5,000. It will be art because it is now framed by the gallery. But at the same moment that the frame encloses the work in its own protected enclosure, making it a work of art, it becomes merely ornamental—external to the work of art. Thus is the frame central or marginal? Is the frame inside the work of art, essential to it, or outside the work of art, extrinsic to it?”

PostmodernismDeconstructionDerrickThe Truth In Painting
Book:Derrida for Beginners
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“The females, in the terrifying, exhilarating experience of becoming rather than reflecting, would discover that they too have been effected by the dynamics of the Mirror World. Having learned only to mirror, they would find in themselves reflections of sickness in their masters. They would find themselves doing the same things, fighting the same way. Looking inside for something there, they would be confused by what would at first appear to be an endless Hall of Mirrors. What to copy? What model to imitate? Where to look? What is a mere mirror to do? But wait - How could a mere mirror even frame such a question? The question itself is the beginning of an answer that keeps unfolding itself. The question-answer is a verb, and when one begins to move in the current of the verb, of the Verb, she knows that she is not a mirror. Once she knows this she knows it s so deeply that she cannot completely forget. She knows it so deeply she has to say it to her sisters. What if more and more of her sisters should begin to hear and to see and to speak? This would be a disaster. It would throw the whole society backward into the future. Without Magnifying Mirrors all around, men would have to look inside and outside. They would start to look inside, wondering what was wrong with them. They would have to look outside because without the mirrors they would begin to receive impressions from real Things out there. They would even have to look at women, instead of reflections. This would be confusing and they would be forced to look inside again, only to have the harrowing experience of finding *there* the Eternal Woman, the Perfect Parakeet. Desperately looking outside again, they would find that the Parakeet is no longer *out there*. Dashing back inside, males would find other horrors: All of the Others - the whole crowd - would be in there: the lazy niggers, the dirty Chicanos, the greedy Jews, faggots and dykes, plus the entire crowd of Communists and the backward population of the Third World. Looking outward again, mirrorless males would be forced to see - people. Where to go? Paroxysm toward the Omega Point? But without the Magnifying Mirror even that last refuge is gone. What to do for relief? Send more bombing missions? But no. It is pointless to be killing The Enemy after you find out The Enemy is yourself.”

WarFeminismFutureRacismMirrorDeconstructionPsycologyMens RightsColonialsm Psycology
Book:Beyond God the Father: toward a philosophy of women's liberation
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“Today, Chanel sells nothing other than its griffe; the griffe is an absolute symbol for 'fashion' which, having become historical, is now able to sell this history better than it could sell fashion. Chanel's lasting success proves that fashion has become self-referential: the fetish of the mere name shows how it has begun to revolve around itself. The House of Chanel produces what Coco most abhorred: a thing of the past, dead. The visible, outwardly displayed griffe has become the opposite of individualized style: instead it confirms the latent uniform collectivity, which had always defined Chanel-wear; in the end, it signifies membership of an expensive club. The Chanel woman does not want to display her own taste, she wants to belong. In order to be certain, she is laden with Chanel signs and accessories, like amulets to protect against the evil eye; on the pocket, on the belt, on the dress buttons, on the watch, on costume jewelry, proudly stand the initials of the founder of the house, to which she knows she belongs.”

FashionTasteDestructionDeconstructionChanelGriffe
Book:Fashion Zeitgeist: Trends and Cycles in the Fashion System
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“So that to give a commentary on the text, such as we are attempting here, is to reinforce the illusion that a present meaning exists–that a text can be presented. When I try to present a commentary (as I am doing here), I necessarily resist the suction of the play of meanings which attempts to suck any such attempt–which it produces–back into a void. If I try to explain the text, I forget that the production of my explanation is already related to its dissolution, its disappearance into a textual void, a void between any two readings, a void which is always already producing another reading, and its dissolution.”

PostmodernismDeconstructionDisseminationDerrida1997
Book:Derrida for Beginners
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“It reminds me of a friend of mine who was very interested in a French philosophy called deconstruction. He advertised to me as one of deconstruction's selling points that deconstruction deconstructs itself. I couldn't help responding, if deconstruction deconstructs itself, why bother reading its long, boring books? Why not go for a jog instead, or reread one of Patrick O'Brian's tremendous tales of the sea?”

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Author:Eric Kaplan
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