Deconstruction Mythology and the 19 Year-Old Literary Geek
Published January 10th, 2009 | 
What is called “deconstruction”. . . has never opposed institutions as such, philosophy as such, discipline as such . . . .
— Jaques Derrida
So I got this submission the other day — an “experimental” prose piece from this young, 19 year-old kid who referred to himself as “a poststructuralist deconstructionist pontificater.” Wow! That’s a mouthful. Also, sounds like gibberish. In fact, his story/essay/prose poem/whatever was gibberish.
It occurred to me reading his writing that he was confused about the definition of the terms of post-structuralism and deconstructionism. That somehow those terms meant “lacking structure.” While I really don’t want to get into a heavy discussion about Jaques Derrida and Foucault, etc. because that shit gives me a headache, I do want to emphasize the fact that writers whose work is closely associated with deconstructionist philosophy do not abandon structure. Rather, they turn the established order on it’s ear to reconfigure it — usually to point out the absurdity of the established order. That’s not the same thing as writing a story/essay/poem/whatever, etc. that has absolute no discernable structure at all.
When I think of deconstructionist writing, the late, great Kathy Acker comes to mind and can anyone who’s ever read her work deny that she had a strong command of structure? Truly, if I’m mistaken about that, I’d really like to hear that argument. I’m mean, read Blood and Gut in High School fer Christsakes!
No. Let me see if I can come up with an analogy to explain what I’m getting at. . . let’s see. . . okay, let’s say to have a stack of fertilizer you want to store away for the season. You can store it in a building made of dry wall or you can store it in a building made of steel. Which do you choose? If you’ve ever seen what happens to dry wall in a flood, it’s an easy choice. Steel buildings will more likely than not, protect the fertilizer from the elements. A deconstructionist writer doesn’t abandon the steel — what he will do is take the building apart and redesign the building using the same steel and fashion it in such a way that it looks like drywall. Think of it as a kind of reverse engineering. In this sense, a deconstructionist actually has to understand structure very well indeed.
So, to this young man, I offer this advice:
1. Loose pieces of drywall do not a building make.
2. Drywall is a bad choice of materials anyway.
3. Learn to build with steel before you try to take it a part.
