DECONSTRUCTION
Deconstruction is a concept central to post-modernism. Deconstruction is a process of rigorously
analyzing and making apparent the assumptions, judgments and values that underlie social
arrangements and intellectual ideas.
Jacques Derrida developed a form of semiotic analysis known
as deconstruction. Jacques Derrida's work was labeled post-structuralism
and is also associated with postmodern philosophy.
Derrida rejects the idea that there is any correspondence
between texts and truth, suggesting that texts (the writing of Marx or Plato) have no
objective links to external events.
Postmodern Deconstruction Of Newtonian
Science: A Physical-to-social Transposition Of Causality, L. Frederick Zaman
III, Neural Engineering Research & Development
Abstract: A postmodern 'deconstruction' of basic physical theory is made possible through
a physico-social transposition of the Newtonian-based 'event causation' of physical bodies
(passive objects), whose inertia, accelerative force, and action-reaction become the
'agent causation' of social beings (active subjects). This deconstruction is a
counterfactual that perhaps can validate Steven Lukes' 'three faces of power' in the
natural sciences.
Realism, Deconstruction and the Feminist Standpoint -
Caroline New
Feminist Standpoint Theory claims that by virtue of their social positioning women have
access to, or can achieve, particular and/or better knowledge of gendered social
relations. The epistemology, various versions of which are reviewed in the paper, has been
criticised for over homogenising women. In its simplest form this critique claims that
women's diversity rules out communality and collective interests, and that FST unawarely
takes white middle class Western women as representative.
Narrative after deconstruction: structure and the
negative poetics of William Burroughs's 'Cities of the Red Night.'
Style, Spring, 1995 by Daniel Punday
William Burroughs's recent writing poses problems for critics. Traditionally Burroughs is
known for a negative poetics that assaults the word and all continuity for the sake of
breaking down social controls. Burroughs and other writers can be seen as working through
the deconstructive impulse that dominated writing of the 1970s and searching for some way
of reintroducing narrative structure without rejecting that deconstruction wholesale.
Because Burroughs's writing was, perhaps, more radically deconstructive than any of these
other writers, his movement towards a narrative continuity is more pronounced and promises
to be particularly revealing.
Something Old, Something New...: Sociology and the Organisation of
Psychiatry
David Pilgrim, Anne Rogers
Whilst sociology has taken a consistent interest in psychiatry, theoretical and
methodological approaches have varied. This paper summarises three versions of the
sociology of psychiatry (social causationism, interpretive micro-sociology and
structuralism). These are then contrasted with the more recent post-structuralist emphasis
on deconstruction.
CONTESTED BOUNDARIES AND EMERGING PLURALISM
T. K. Oommen
The rise and fall, construction and deconstruction of different types of boundaries -
biological, psychological, geographical, cultural, social, political, economic - make up
the very story of human civilisation and of contemporary social transformation. Drawing
from a wide variety of contexts, this paper shows how new boundaries do not replace the
old ones but rather they tend to co-exist.
Deconstruction in a `Thinking' Science: Theoretical
Physicists at Work
Martina Merz, Karin Knorr Cetina
We apply the laboratory study approach of the new sociology of scientific practice to a
`thinking science': theoretical physics. To specify the work and accomplishments of
theoretical physicists we choose the notion of `deconstruction'. Deconstruction involves
the expansion of a concrete object, such as an equation, into a series of other objects
upon which the `hardness' of a problem can be shifted and distributed. In solving an
equation, however, the determinate path of a deconstruction method needs to be
supplemented by the exploration of clues and guesses, trials and tricks. We trace a series
of devices, and iterations thereof, which physicists mobilize in dealing with hard
problems: formal deconstructions, detours and tricks to identify a working deconstruction,
variation, `doing examples', modelling and, finally, thought alliances between subjects.
Philosophy: Re-marking Deconstruction
Peter Davio
Abstract: In this paper, I discuss the French philosopher Jacques Derrida and his practice
of deconstruction in relation to the age-old tradition of Western philosophy, and the
current practices of conceptual analysis. Though difficult and sometimes obscure, I argue
that Derrida's work is not irrational, nonsensical, or nihilistic. Through a close reading
of his essays and a critical examination of the logic of deconstruction, I suggest several
ways in which we can re-mark deconstruction as a philosophical practice.
Codes of Power. Deconstruction of institutional discourses
Abstract: The text introduces the semiology as method in the analysis of Sociology as area
of authoritarian social discourse. In opposition to an "empirical" description
where the "fact" is described as if it was not "social" but a fact
"of nature" the deconstruction of the Power discourse shows that the
"fact" is produced as definition or description, i.e, the Power-discourse works
as Code which through strict controls of human behaviour, thought and language
"produces" a particular form of "Reality".
Men in the Public Eye: The Construction and Deconstruction of Public Men and
Public Patriarchies. by Jeff Hearn
Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 1994), pp. 104-105 - doi:10.2307/2074908
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