New Perspectives on Structuralism, Poststructuralism et al

Among the contemporary alternative critical
readings on structuralism and poststructuralism
that stand out are the following:-
1 Wendell V. Harris: Literary Meaning - Reclaiming the Study
of Literature (New York Univ. Press, 1996)
2 Wendell V. Harris (ed): Beyond Poststructuralism - The Speculations of Theory and the Experience of Literature (Penn State University Press, 1996)
3 Leonard Jackson: The Poverty of Structuralism
(Longman Group UK Ltd., 1991)
4 Eugene Goodheart: The Sceptic Disposition -
Deconstruction, Ideology, and Other Matters
(Princeton Univ. Press, 1984)
5 J. Arac, W. Godzich, W. Martin, (eds.): The Yale Critics -
Deconstruction in America (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1983)

Prof. Harris' book on Literary Meaning is impressively cogent in
tracing crucial flaws in the deconstructionist argument; as he explains
in the introduction to his book:
Deconstruction is no longer the magic word, many a recent essay and
review tells us, and Derrida no longer the infallible prophet. For those
of us who have felt that the trick of turning lead into gold is interesting
but hardly profitable, that is good news.
However, eristic strategies and fallacious forms of argument to which
deconstruction and related movements have accustomed us continue to
litter the intellectual landscape. One finds the same journals that announce
the decline and fall of deconstruction still cluttered by deconstructive
vocabulary and tricks of argument. I make no apology for wishing to
contribute to the unfinished business of pushing certain intellectual debris
out of the way. (Literary Meanining, 1996: 5)

His book on poststructuralism is a collection of essays penned by a number of prominent literary scholars providing a wide-ranging antidote to the "disabling confusions of current literary theory" serving to hasten the decline of poststructuralist dominance.

Literary Meaning

It might seem obvious that literary meaning is different from meaning in scientific writing in the sense that emotive responses to the text would be considered not only irrelevant but misleading in scientific writing while contexts in which the communication is made would appear to have little or no bearing on its meaning; the idea is to get at the meat embodied in the words - (to use an old analogy) the words are simply a vehicle delivering the goods so to speak, which would be considered to be detachable from the vehicle. Thus the dependence on formulae - which would deliver the highest level of accuracy for scientific communication. It might seem less obvious that even in the humanities the gap between say, historical writing and literary writing is almost as great. This becomes clear when we assess the historical account of a significant event; do we not expect a suspension of authorial prejudices that often tend to colour the account ; do we not agree that Macaulay's account of the French Revolution is weakened by his penchant for taking sides and being emotionally involved? Do we not rate him as an interesting writer but a bad historian? In other words the expectation is that historical writing should hold the emotions in abeyance if it is to be taken seriously as an attempt at arriving at the truth. We are thus looking for the pure truth unsullied by emotional attachments...
However, we all know that whenever we use language there is no escaping
a) the accompanying emotional moss derived as a consequence of usage over long periods of time - much of it inherited and beyond the control of specific individuals. &
b) the context which provides for a perspective from which to view the communication. In addition to the emotional layering derived from associations based on cultural context as well as individual experience, there is the question of literary form - whether one writes an ode, a haiku or employs a rhyme scheme, all these will have an impact on the kind of communication being made through the literary work. In fact, it would be a misnomer to see the work as expressing a message. Literary meaning occurs when you perceive the work as a whole addressing all
aspects of the textual experience: emotive content, conceptual substance, formal and visual signage...Literary meaning is when the vehicle is the message.

One can therefore conclude that literary meaning is much more complex
a creature than that encountered in the extraction of meaning in the other
disciplines of the humanities or in the sciences - where we don't have to
contend with questions like "Is meaning what is intended by the author?"
or "Is it created and contained by the text itself" or "Is it created by the
reader?" Literature is all inclusive: the intentions of the author are certainly
not entirely irrelevant; the text is also the starting point in the generation
of meaning; and finally, the reader through his response to the
text participates in a significant way in its creation...

The above point of view implies, of course, that there is a reality
beyond language - which might be contested by some; while
understanding that the gap between that position & the one we are
advancing here, it might suffice to point out that that view is as old
hat as Bishop Berkeley's position.
Consider this question: if the whole of humanity disappeared due to
a global Tsunami, would the world disappear since there would be
no more languages? Of course the world would still exist even
without humanity although one would have to agree that the world's
existence would be of no account to humanity any more...

Philosophers on Postmodernism & Deconstruction

Hugh Mercer Curtler and Denis Dutton in particular have come out strongly against the core concepts governing the Postmodernist thrust. Curtler's book Rediscovering Values: Coming to Terms with Postmodernism (1997) delineates the ways in which Postmodernism is wrong-headed:
1 It is anti-rational - attacking the very foundations of any attempt to establish truth through the process of claim, counter-argument & production of evidence; indeed, truth itself becomes a meaningless proposition since anti-rationalism cuts the ground from under any attempt at establishing the validity of the perspectives taken by Postmodernists as well.
2 It is anti-values - leading to the untenable situation where every
response is as valuable as any other (consigning to impotence the
Deconstructionist perspective itself). Discernment in aesthetics
becomes a lost art (a situation that might perhaps help produce
an efflorescence of bad art which, under normal circumstances,
would have been edited out). To quote from Curtler:
Today we find ourselves surrounded by
intellectuals who cannot distinguish sentiment
from sentimentality, truth from opinion, or fact
from fiction... (Curtler, p.23)
3 It sees knowledge as subjective and thus dependent soley on one's
perspective not realising that
we can agree ... that knowledge is perspectival - without
accepting the view that reality is a construct made up of
individual perspectives. (Curtler, p. 39)
4 It is reductionist in its approach to language seeing in it 'nothing
else than relationships of power and control' not recognizing that its
power is delimited by the fact that meaning is determined in part
by reference to our shared world.
Denis Dutton in a review entitled 'Debunking Deconstruction'
(http://www.denisdutton.com) indicates, perhaps tongue-in-cheek,
that the reasons for Deconstruction's wide appeal is that it has
1 The '... odd sort of prestige that attaches to philosophy' (p. 4) -
especially among humanists. In other words, critics are under the
impression that they are raising profound issues re. 'the very foundations
of thought, meaning, value...'.
2 The simplistic ease with which opponents' arguments are dismissed;
there is no attempt to engage them on the level of complex & serious
argument. In confronting the opposition,
the deconstructionist does not move in the realm of claim and
counter-argument. This fact is implicitly recognized in the way
that, in the popular vocabulary of deconstruction, theories are
said not to be refuted but to be displaced by other positions:
the language (borrowed here from Freud, but it might as well be
Thrasymachus) is not that of argument and evidence, but of
hogging space, getting attention, repressing or getting even with
the enemy. It's all power and desire. (p.5)
It must be admitted that the strategy is in line with its anti-rationalist
stance; the deconstructionist disables the opposition by pulling out
the plug rather than arguing the case in court...

Both Curtler and Dutton have shown acute insight into the rather
chilling implications of the rise of Postmodernism vis-a-vis scholarship
in the humanities and it would do well for academia to come to terms
with the observations they have articulated with so much cogency and
passion. Fortunately, the past decade has thrown up a number of
ripostes to poststructuralism, the most formidable of which is -
undoubtedly - Beyond Poststructuralism: the Speculations of
Theory and the Experience of Reading (1996) ed. by Wendell Harris.
The book is a collection of essays which focus on various aspects of the
"disabling confusions" which are seen as characterizing poststructuralist
thinking. The interest in theory itself as opposed to the experience of the
text, the disappearance of the author, the problem of intentionalism,
the attack on artistic unity, canonicity and multiculturalism, feminist
criticism, the place of history in interpretation... all these and a host
of related considerations provide us with a substantial arsenal for
confronting the remaining bulwarks of extant poststructuralism...

Deconstructing Deconstruction

John Ellis' Against Deconstruction (1989) began it; Denis Dutton's review article (http://www.denisdutton.com) added further fuel; another book from Ellis - Literature Lost: Social Agendas & the Corruption of the Humanities (1997) kept the fire going although it appears to be far from a raging inferno since the halls of literary academia in many countries still resound with deconstructive activity, oblivious to the shortcomings of Derridean theorizing... I wonder at the impact of Ellis' call for a return to rationality; a call which should be highlighted because of the major flaws in deconstructive thinking which media writeups on Derrida - assuming that it is still fashionable to be Derridean - show little awareness of.
Among these are:
1 The fact that deconstruction introduces impossibilities in
the implementation of the evaluation of the work; for
instance, how do we compare texts when there are an
infinite number of texts arising from the original?
Ranking texts as major or minor, good or weak would
be irrelevant since the text resides in the responses
of individual readers; we would be embarking
on the quixotic exercise of comparing an infinite
cluster of texts with another infinite cluster of
texts. The work of English departments would
be rendered irrelevant...
2 Again, the ossified traditional critical account
that deconstructionists look for in order to provide
the counter critical account would be impossible to
locate since there is no convenient single traditional
account to select as there is a multiplicity of accounts
to contend with.
3 Derridean thinking simplifies the opposition
seeing it as upholding the single interpretation as the
ideal when the'consensus of critics for some time has
been that literary texts are inexhaustible' & do not have
single meanings.
4 The extraction and reification of the prose content of
the literary work - which reduces art to a political,
historical or sociological tract. Art is reduced to content or
message which implies that a distinctive literary meaning is
non-existent - which in turn implies that reading a literary
text is not much different from reading a history, geography
or social studies text which eventually means that literary studies
as a separate discipline would no longer be viable... although this
would not appear to be a relevant consideration in this context.