Deconstruction: Formalism's "Evil" Twin?

Barry points begins his section on Post-Structuralism with the obvious connections to Structuralism. The Post-Structuralists accept the Structuralists' claims about language but attack those beliefs with a philosopher's skepticism, so that where the Structuralist maintains a belief in language as a successful orderly system of communication, a truthful rendering of the world (to the extent it allows for truth), the post-structuralist disowns language as a valid vehicle for the communication of meaning entirely (Barry 62). Indeed in a textual reality (62) Nietzsche's statement "there are no facts, only interpretations" becomes literally true, as all texts are subject to interpretation in the very act of being read. Thus reality itself becomes not only difficult, but impossible to understand, subject to the interpretation of each individual just as a novel is.

Post-Structuralism then, as a reaction to and against Structuralism, is concerned in the long run with things that extend far beyond the text. Any literary criticism from a Post-structuralist is simply the means to an end not an end in itself. That end being the further proof of the impossibility of knowing the nature of our reality due to the slipperiness of language, the medium through which we perceive the world. The deconstruction aimed at in "applied post-structuralism" (68) is not the deconstruction of the text except as a means to a greater goal: the deconstruction of Western civilization itself, or at least of the Western world view (63).

However, in practice a deconstructive reading has far more to do with Formalism (liberal humanism) than Structuralism. While structuralism is focused on getting beyond the text as quickly as possible to larger patterns and shapes of meaning etc., Deconstruction turns to Derridas's famous statement that "there is nothing outside the text" (qtd. in Barry 66). While I grant that this is taken out of context (as Barry himself warns [66]), it sounds intriguingly formalist. In fact, I would argue that, approaching from extremely different vectors, Formalists and Post-Structuralists arrive at the same point: nothing matters but the text; it exists alone in a vacuum, or at least should be treated as if it does because of the impossibility of knowing what surrounds it. Barry goes on to state that a deconstructive reading (at least in the initial stages) "is very similar to ... more conventional forms of close reading" (71). In fact, it applies the same means and techniques to different ends. While Formalism "demonstrates an underlying unit" even in texts that are "fragmented and disunified," Deconstruction looks for disunity, showing that "what...looked like coherence and unity actually contains contradictions" (74). The interesting thing to me is that the two versions of close reading would seem to turn on the same points of emphasis within a piece. If we need any proof that we are finding what we look for, here it is! The Formalist, as formalism was taught to me, (and I grant here that I do not have the texts from that course, and while this idea could be inferred from Barry, it is not presented by him as such) looks especially for apparent contradictions in the text and explains them in such a way as to make them essential points in support of his or her reading of the piece. In effect arguing that the what are apparently the weak points of their argument are in fact key points in favor of the reading they are positing. Deconstruction would seem to focus on the same points: "contradictions/paradoxes; Shifts/Breaks in: Tone, Viewpoint, Tense, Time, Person, Attitude; Conflicts; Absences/Omissions; Linguistic Quirks; and Aporia" (70). Even at the second and third levels the Post-Structuralist essentially pursues an Anti-Formalist reading, using larger patterns and linguistic quirks within the text itself to prove its disunity (72-73).

So while Formalists argue "Hey now, slow down and look carefully, the poem doesn't really contradict itself here, in fact..."the Deconstructionist argues, "Come now. The author says that they're doing thus and so, but look right here...." If they were engaged in live debate the argument might take the form of "Apparent contradiction? It is a contradiction. It says right there..."

Deconstruction then is only tangentially in dialog with Structuralism. It is far more fundamentally in dialog with traditional formalism, attacking the tradition, and the intellectual basis which formalism seeks to preserve, and using its very own techniques to do so. Hence my post's title...Although, reconsidering, perhaps (since deconstruction is more like a mirror image, raising a left hand to formalism's right, and occasionally slipping into fun house distortion), if we accept its philosophical basis, it might have been titled "Formalism's Honest Twin..".