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Gnomic Utterances. These are traditional, and are set at the head of each section of the Guidebook. The reason for them is lost in the mists of History. They are culled by the Management from a mighty collection of wise sayings probably compiled by a SAGE—probably called Ka’a Orto’o—some centuries before the Tour begins. The Rule is that no Utterance has anything whatsoever to do with the section it precedes. Nor, of course, has it anything to do with Gnomes.
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Date: 2007-06-08 02:01 am (UTC)I don't know that book
My issue with people who talk about deconstruction is the get the feeling that a lot of them think deconstruction will be endangered if it's not protected behind a wall of completely impenetrable jargon. Whereas I think it's incredibly useful tools for the world at large.
Here's my nutshell version of deconstruction: looking only at the text in front of you, figure out with the intention or the project of that text is (this is different from the author's intent, which is unknowable). Now look at the words, and look at all of the different ways in which the text undercuts or works against its intended project.
The important thing to remember and deconstruction is that the word is made up of both destruction and construction. Yes, you look closely at a text in order to take it apart -- but then you put it back together again and see something exciting and new.
My canonical example is always Paradise Lost. The intention of that text is to glorify God and condemn the Fall, but a close reading of the poem shows ways in which it glorifies the Fall and is strongly ambivalent about God. But in taking apart the text's intention, you replace it with something else, something different, something exciting. Of course, that something else *also* contains the seeds of its own deconstruction.
Clear as mud, right?