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Deconstruction and Epistemology: Bachelard, Derrida, de Man

Deconstruction and Epistemology: Bachelard, Derrida, de Man In what follows I shall challenge certain widespread misunderstandings in regard deconstruction and its (supposed) affinity with current antirealist and cultural-relativist schools of thought. This issue is posed most directly in Jacques Derrida's 'White Mythology: metaphor in the text of philosophy', an essay—I should add—that has very often been construed as a full-scale exercise in the rherical deconstruction of such 'logocentric'notions as truth, knowledge, reason, and reality.1 My purpose is therefore refute the idea of deconstruction as a priori committed an extreme ('textualist') version of the argument that reality is a purely linguistic construct, that 'all concepts are metaphors', 'all science merely a species of instrumental fiction', and kindred quasi-deconstructive idees recues.2 It is also demonstrate that these claims turn out be strictly unintelligible—or self-subverting—when confronted with the very different kind of sceptical rigour that deconstruction brings bear in raising such questions. So can there be—is science capable of delivering or philosophy of conceiving-—what Derrida (no doubt 'rherically') calls 'a truth of language which would say the thing such as it is in itself, in act, properly'?3 Not if we construe this claim on the basis of a straightforward correspondence-theory, or on the model of a one--one guaranteed http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Paragraph Edinburgh University Press

Deconstruction and Epistemology: Bachelard, Derrida, de Man

Paragraph , Volume 21 (1): 69 – Mar 1, 1998

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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
0264-8334
eISSN
1750-0176
DOI
10.3366/para.1998.21.1.69
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In what follows I shall challenge certain widespread misunderstandings in regard deconstruction and its (supposed) affinity with current antirealist and cultural-relativist schools of thought. This issue is posed most directly in Jacques Derrida's 'White Mythology: metaphor in the text of philosophy', an essay—I should add—that has very often been construed as a full-scale exercise in the rherical deconstruction of such 'logocentric'notions as truth, knowledge, reason, and reality.1 My purpose is therefore refute the idea of deconstruction as a priori committed an extreme ('textualist') version of the argument that reality is a purely linguistic construct, that 'all concepts are metaphors', 'all science merely a species of instrumental fiction', and kindred quasi-deconstructive idees recues.2 It is also demonstrate that these claims turn out be strictly unintelligible—or self-subverting—when confronted with the very different kind of sceptical rigour that deconstruction brings bear in raising such questions. So can there be—is science capable of delivering or philosophy of conceiving-—what Derrida (no doubt 'rherically') calls 'a truth of language which would say the thing such as it is in itself, in act, properly'?3 Not if we construe this claim on the basis of a straightforward correspondence-theory, or on the model of a one--one guaranteed

Journal

ParagraphEdinburgh University Press

Published: Mar 1, 1998

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