DESTRUCTION AND DECONSTRUCTION

I want to talk about a silly word, which is used to do something that is not good. GOOD is a social word: it and "gather" come from the same root, and mean the same thing. "Together" is an intensified version of "gather." And something that holds together--or holds us together--is GOOD.

One of the things that hold us together is language. Communicationis another social word, and language, as verbal communication, is socially important. Communion is a word that probably comes not from com+unis ("one together") but from com+munis. Munis is a curious word that means both "gift" and "duty"--and it gives us words like "common," "communion," and "community." All of those words have to do with or gifts to each other or our duty to each other.

Good things hold us together.

In our language a structure is something built. If I destroy it, I destruct it: un-build it. Construction is something built complexly, out of parts, put together, to make a new structure.

When we read we put things together, to understand them. We read words in sentences, we read maps, some of us read tea-leaves or the lines in palms. Sentences, maps, tea-leaves, the lines in palms are all, in a sense, constructions. A single line on a sheet of paper is not a map, nor is a single line in the palm of a hand. Nor is a single word.

Suppose I say--aloud--the word there. Did I say "there," or "their," or "they're"? You don't know. So I add another word, merry. Did I say "merry," or "Mary"? I add and Tom. That doesn't help, except that I can forget about "merry." If I add, then, who, you have to wait again: I might be saying "There Mary and Tom, who are young, eat. . . ." Or I might be saying "Their Mary and Tom, who are young, are older than my Mary and Tom." Or maybe I'm saying "They're Mary and Tom, who are young."

The words work together, constructing sense. And the structure of the sentence lets me understand what the words mean, together.

But if I destroy that structure, I can't make sense of those words. Destroy is the act of destruction: which is not a good thing.

We have another word, deconstruction, used these days by people who don't care to read, who don't value communication, who aren't intertested in community or goodness.

A deconstructionist looks at a sentence--let's have a new one: "When I offered the small boy a cookie, he held out his hand, like a Catholic taking communion from a priest, then--trusting me--popped it in his mouth without even thinking that it might be poison." That's clear enough, isn't it?

But the deconstructionist ingnores what the sentence says, and instead focusus on and "priest" and "poison." Ha! he says. "Priests poison young people with what they pretend are gifts." And before you know it, we will be talking about religious prejudice and pedophilia and parental responsibility and safe streets.

Deconstructionism is an egotistical practice. It lets the deconstructionist ignore what someone has said, in order to talk about what the deconstructionist wants to talk about. It uses and abuses what other people say. It is a formalization of the attitude that lets some people say, "What I hear you saying is. . . ."

Deconstructionists pretend to be interested in language. But they aren't any more interested in language than they are in the act of communication--the gift and duty of communication. If they were interested in language, they wouldn't use a word like deconstruction. They would use the word destruction instead.