Toddlers Are Deconstructionists
Feb. 25th, 2010 03:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_pretentiousIt's not just that my kid is contrary. He doesn't get that things can be true whether we argue against them or not. It's like Derrida claiming that nothing exists outside of discourse. I say we're out of Goldfish crackers, that we've finished off the last bag, and Gareth says, "No, we didn't!" I can show him the empty bag, the empty space in the cupboard where the crackers usually go, whatever. He says, "No, there are more in the bag!" Unlike the Deconstructionists, Gareth will probably grow out of his faith in proof-by-assertion. I wish I could hope that would happen before his third birthday, because this is driving me a little bit batty. Batty enough to imagine that the epidemic of Deconstruction that screwed up the whole field of literary studies for twenty years might have been cured by the judicious application of hugs, naps, and time-outs.
The empty cracker bag does not care that we might like more, the empty spot in the cupboard is not impressed by our ability to imagine it full. The wet diaper does not turn dry just because now is an inconvenient time for a change. Playing in parking lots is still not safe, even though we might like to play puddlestomp. Rain falls, snow falls, snow keeps on falling, and no, we will not drive to the park during a snow emergency. The wish-inflected mental model of the universe is not the universe.
Sorry, kiddo. We're still out of Goldfish crackers. Have an apple ring.
The empty cracker bag does not care that we might like more, the empty spot in the cupboard is not impressed by our ability to imagine it full. The wet diaper does not turn dry just because now is an inconvenient time for a change. Playing in parking lots is still not safe, even though we might like to play puddlestomp. Rain falls, snow falls, snow keeps on falling, and no, we will not drive to the park during a snow emergency. The wish-inflected mental model of the universe is not the universe.
Sorry, kiddo. We're still out of Goldfish crackers. Have an apple ring.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 12:16 pm (UTC)Since the Universe only exists as far as we can perceive it, we merely have to change our perception of the Universe to change it. A strong enough assertion, based on an atomic knowledge of what the Intelligent Designer would have intended had It thought things through properly, will allow Gareth to fill his belly with Goldfish crackers. as far as he knows.
Yes, this post is self-aware.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-26 08:51 pm (UTC)"Batty enough to imagine that the epidemic of Deconstruction that screwed up the whole field of literary studies for twenty years might have been cured by the judicious application of hugs, naps, and time-outs."
Can we do it to some of our antirealist politicians, too? I've been wanting a Congressional Granny with the power to stick politicians in a corner with their noses in chalk circles for years.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-27 05:45 am (UTC)Yeah, well, we have a LOT of snow and I am maybe not getting enough O2 with all the doors shut...
We seem to have gotten mine partially past the phase of wandering around with his pants about his ankles because it is quicker in the bathroom than putting them back on every time. It is possible that if I told him we were out of something and showed him the empty bag, that he might believe it. However, he thinks that covering me in yogurt and cement is a suitable punishment for my expecting him to fore go pbskids.org long enough to swallow some Kraft macaroni and cheese.
Yogurt and cement. For some reason, I am finding that pretty funny. And I think the politicians should also not be allowed desert if they are misbehaving, either...
Sarah, if we are past Deconstructionism, does that mean it is no longer a problem if I am not entirely quite sure what it thinks it is?
no subject
Date: 2010-02-28 05:08 am (UTC)Deconstruction appears, finally, to have gone out of fashion. Like the true believers in any fashion trend, they thought they would be in style forever, and now that they're so last decade, it's a terrible shock to them. Alas, enough of them got tenure before the intellectual hemlines changed, they won't be completely irrelevant until the last wave of them retires.
Here's my short and, admittedly, reductive take on what Deconstruction is. To get the basics you only need three terms: the signifier (a word, a symbol, a picture, whatever you use to signify what you're trying to communicate), the signified (the idea you're thinking, which you're trying to communicate by means of that symbol), and the referent (the real object/being/action/whatever that the thought and symbol are pointing to). The reason Deconstruction was interesting was that it exposed some ways in which the relationship between the signifier and the signified were messier than we like to imagine, and some ways we can get into trouble when we assume our communication with each other works smoothly. And sometimes, instead of pointing to a real referent, our signifier and signified are just pointing to some other signifier/signified pairing (just to pull an example out of the air, consider phlogiston, which turned out not really to exist, though scientists before Lavoisier talked about it all the time).
I can happily concede that communication is harder and weirder than we have to act as if it is if we want to get through the day. So far, so good. I can happily extend that by agreeing that we may never be able to know the world outside our minds in an unmediated, accurate way. Our senses, our brains' processes, our languages, and our cultures make it hard to be sure what we know, and easy to be mistaken about what we think we know.
Where the Deconstructionists went completely off the deep end was to conclude that, if we couldn't know the world outside our minds in an unmediated way, that must mean there was no world outside our minds, in which case the "chain of signification," which is manipulable by us, is all that exists or can exist.
And that's just nutty. That's the leap between epistemological humility and epistemological hypochondria.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-28 05:34 am (UTC)[A Bush White House] aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
The idea that a "reality" created largely out of wishful thinking and propaganda is just as true as a reality studied in a good-faith attempt at objectivity, well, that's classic Derridean Deconstruction.
Dave Barry had a column a long time back about the new departments he'd add to the federal government if he were president: the Department of Louise (a pragmatic housewife and mother of two who would say no to blatantly wrongheaded projects and anything bad for kids), and the Department of Two Guys Named Vinny (to enforce the will of the Department of Louise). Now if we could just get Dave Barry to run...
no subject
Date: 2010-02-28 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-28 05:36 am (UTC)How old was your kid when he started to be able to believe you when you told him things he wished weren't so?