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Title: Semiological Reductionism: A Critique of the Deconstructionist Movement in Postmodern Thought
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Manufacturer: State University of New York Press
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| Semiological Reductionism: A Critique of the Deconstructionist Movement in Postmodern Thought by State University of New York Press Simply the Best | | There have been a number of critiques of semiotic/deconstructive thinking since it became the semi-orthodoxy of American cultural studies two decades ago, but most have been under-informed and/or tendentious, and very few have come from philosophers grounded in the continental tradition. Dillon, by contrast, is totally at home with the complexities of the last half-century, with a series of fime books on Merleau-Ponty and subsequent continental thinkers to his credit. His critique of Derrida and Co. is anything but the kind of one-sided frontal attack that deconstructors can brush off: by recreating key deconstructive readings of the tradition in an even-handed manner, he works his way into the fundamental (woops!) questions of presence, binary oppositions, signification, the unconscious and desire to show just where and when the semiotic approach passes from productive critique to an all-encompassing reduction of cognitive interests - as Hegel says, "the night in which all cows are black." While much of his argument is highly condensed, making for a slow but relatively short read, it never falls into the high-handed allusiveness that deconstruction has turned into a minor and annoying art-form. (See Julia Kristeva's novel The Samuri for a take-off on the latter.) Everything is laid on the table in dense but eminently clear language, guided by Dillon's overarching ethical concern that our alledgedly post-modern culture is losing more than it gains from the systematic dismantling of logos in favor of doxa, i.e., relativized interests over reasoned consensus. Only Gadamer and Habermas have engaged Derrida with comparable acuity and humanistic conviction, and Dillon has the distinct advantage of lining up his analysis in an elegant historical-thematic framework suitable for anyone from a grad student bucking current trends to humanists of whatever stripe who want an accurate sense of the options that remain open within our culture. Lesen Sie wohl! | | Semiological Reductionism: A Critique of the Deconstructionist Movement in Postmodern Thought by State University of New York Press Book Description | | This critical interpretation shows Derridian thought to be permeated by a semiology that reduces all meaning to the signification of signs thus challenging the philosophy of deconstruction at its roots. This book interprets Derrida and looks beyond deconstructionism. It is a critique that identifies a pervasive flaw in Derrida's thinking: the semiological reduction that permeates deconstructionist theory and postmodernism in general. The critique focuses on Derrida, but its conclusions may be applied to other major figures in the postmodern tradition who espouse the variant of Saussurean semiology that reduces all meaning to the signification of signs. This book challenges the philosophy of deconstruction at its roots, and does so on the basis of a diligent reading of central texts and an understanding of the tradition of Continental philosophy providing the context for Derridian thought. |
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