Their agenda does not, however, call for a scholarly analysis of other cultures, but a harsh indictment of Western civilization. Columbia offers courses entitled, “Sex, Discrimination, and the Division of Labor” and “Gendered Controversies: Women’s Bodies and Global Contestations.” Yale instructs its students in “Sexual Diversity and Social Change.”

Perhaps most telling, however, is Amherst College’s Women’s Studies 14: “Ingrate Books: Chartering and Unchartering the Patriarchy,” which unmasks the Western canon as dubious. “We shall examine,” reads the course description, “how the subordination of female to male supports other ranked categories: mind/body, rational/irrational, public/private, heaven/earth, order/disorder. How do these hierarchies justify violence (rape, intra-familial murder, human sacrifice, silencing) in founding and maintaining the cultural order? How does the emergence of (homo) sexualities, ancient and modern, undermine the authority of this orderly, androcentric ‘nature’?”

Indeed, a new brand of “scholars” has emerged to assault Western culture and its achievements under the rubric of “postmodern skepticism.”

The entire premise of knowledge, in fact, is under assault or, in the popular phrase, being “deconstructed,” by a group of postmodern critics whose writing has proved infectious. Ideological postmodernism contains a broad assertion that the ideological system rooted in the Western tradition is inherently flawed.

Dangling from this theory is deconstructionism, a rather intangible philosophy loosely rooted in relativism. Deconstructionism’s central premise holds that literary criticism is entirely subjective — that all texts are relative to one’s personal interpretation, and what is important is whatever any individual reader thinks is important.

The most direct outgrowth of relativist theory has been “cultural constructivism,” which dictates that knowledge is inherently specialized to its particular culture and time. According to this view, moreover, no general science exists; social and political forces must be considered in every particular case.

Paul R. Gross, University of Virginia Professor, emeritus, of Life Sciences explains, “[Deconstructionism] is a uniquely disenchanted and crepuscular philosophy, carrying the reek of a decadent mandarinate that has seen everything once too often.” In several influential articles, Gross has detailed the phenomenon of “sci-tech-studies” (STS), a multidisciplinary program stemming from the humanities and social sciences. Increasingly prevelant at American institutions of higher learning, STS intends to “put science in its place.”

Some practioners of STS propose that science is simply a “social myth” constructed by a white, European, imperalist society that must now be “democratized.”

Jaques Derrida, the father of deconstructionist theory argues, “The Einsteinian constant [c ] is not a constant, not a center. It is the very concept of variability—it is, finally, the very constant of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of something—of a center from which an observer could master the field—but the very concept of the game.” Physicists, take note: the speed of light constant is bogus.

Deconstructionism’s ideological premises and framework have given intellectual sanction to a slew of ideologically narrow and overlapping literary philosophies. Along with deconstructionism has arisen Formalism, Linguistic Criticism, Structuralism, Semiotics, Psychoanalytic Criticism, and Marxist Criticism.

The spread of the deconstructionist ethic throughout academe has given rise to dubious new areas of academic research throughout institutions of higher learning. Scholastically suspect courses like Yale University’s “New York Mambo: Microcosm of Black Creativity” supplant more established curricula. Several critics have argued that deconstruction precludes the possibility of any merit standards being applied to any body of knowledge.

There is no value inherent in any body of work, only in the response it elicits. By the deconstructionist formula, Jerry’s Springer’s “Too Hot for TV” is of the same significance as Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. The University of California at Los Angeles’ course in “Chicana Lesbian Literature” can have, in Derrida’s analysis, equal literary merit to Shakespeare’s drama — if you think it does. In fact, as Duke Professor Terry Eagleton asserts, “literature is an illusion;” there is no real difference between literary texts and other texts.

Several commentators have found in the modern academy the lack of any sort of core body of knowledge. There is no shared intellectual experience for all students, they argue, and so academic discourse stems not from common ground, but from a myriad of specializations. In such an environment, a set framework of fundamental knowledge — indeed, any coherent conception of civilization — becomes impossible because, the deconstructionists insist, all standards are arbitrary and meaningless.

Dr. Steven Balch of the National Association of Scholars criticizes this view, “We are preparing people at our leading institutions to go forth into the world and be leaders. I don’t think we can feel very secure in the realization that our future leaders, whatever walk of life thay may happen to find themselves in, are not going to understand the fundamentals of their society and their civilization.”

Deconstruction has, perhaps paradoxically, achieved something constructive: by taking the war on standards to the extreme, the theory has made the defense of standards once again fashionable. Many have come to realize that without common ground, intellectual discourse becomes shiftless and inert. Indeed, deconstructionism precludes the goals of liberal education.

Professor Gross writes, “Life is short; the impulse to let asses bray is strong.” Yet, such inanity on college campuses is too outragous to ignore.

A Glossary of
Postmodern
Literary
Terminology

Editor’s Note: The following is a glossary of the overlapping terms of postmodern literary analysis, which holds the poltical deconstruction of a text to be more worthwhile than an investigation of its humanist elements. The impact of these theories, as their explanation reveals, is to raise the context of a work to a higher level than the text itself. — BCWW

Formalism: Asserts literature to be merely a collection of forms which do not necessarily correspond to any objective reality. Words, syntax, rhyme and other literary techniques are analyzed purely for their own sake, independently of the narrative end of the poem or book itself.

Linguistic Criticism: Argues that words are verbal constructs that do not reflect reality. All interpretation, from this school’s perspective, depends on the social identity, the class, the sex, the race of the reader. The text itself has no independent meaning.

Structuralism: Analyzes the relationships between words in the text. These relationships are considered independent of the work’s larger meaning.

Semiotics: Literally the study of signs. Semiotics explores the meaning of symbols in society. Objects from Exxon signs to the McDonald’s menu are held to have profound social meaning. (Each of these examples has been the subject of recent professional scholarship).

Pschoanalytic Criticism: draws largely on the works of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. It views literature as the product of the unconscious and subconscious motives of the works’ authors.

Marxist Criticism: views all literature as revealing elements of class conflict.

Deconstruction: Founded by Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man. De Man’s role in deconstruction’s formulation has been downplayed because of his pro-Nazi writings for a Belgian newspaper early in his career. This criticism denies any objective reality and holds that all texts are inherently subjective. No interpretation of a text is inherently superior to another, nor is any text superior to any other text. Implication — comic books are as worthy of literary investigation as Shakespeare.