Blame it on Peony and Steven Riddle!

Well, not really, blame it on me, as I am the one who keeps dragging semiotics into everything. I know that I promised MUSIC analysis, but I keep thinking about this semiotics discussion and keep thinking that I could do better, could explain things clearer, could relate semiotics to Catholic theology better, so here is more of it:

Semiotics and Deconstructionism

Peony mentioned deconstructionism in a recent post on all of our discussions of semiotics, so I thought that I should take the opportunity to discuss this aberrant trend in academia. While deconstructionism borrows heavily from the language of semiotics, it is indeed a bastard step-child, looking not at ascertaining truth but in finding power relations in every aspect of human life.

Deconstructionism is based on the Marxist notion that all reality is socially constructed to maintain power relationships. Its practitioners search everything for hidden codes that exist solely to maintain the status quo. Certainly when taken in proper proportion to the search for Truth, Goodness and Beauty, there is some small validity to this search. For instance, what does the architecture of a public building say to us about the assumptions of the builders in regards to the role of the people and the role of the state, etc.? Perfectly valid [I left this document open on the desktop when I went to bed. Amália came by this morning and added her own annotations: vv, \\/. I am really not sure how to respond. I suppose she has a point].

Where it goes off the rails is when it assumes that all human discourse is inherently about the discourse of power. Often deconstructionists take a paranoid look at things, completely ignoring, for instance, the technological necessity or artistic fantasy that an architect may have had motivating him. A well-known example of this misreading is when modernist architects come up with a variety of goofy readings of meaning in a pitched roof. Pitched roofs happened because nature serves us things like snow and rain, which, if they had no place to go would place inordinate weight on the structure. They have nothing to do with the bourgeois aspirations at nobility.

In places where the climatic realities do not call for the forms used, we may suspect some sort of power discourse, but would probably find more profit in looking towards sentimental attachments towards past places and eras. Surely this nostalgic yearning can be a nefarious scheme to maintain an institutional hierarchy in enshrining some past ideal (the way Mussolini was trying to recreate an ideal terza Roma), but to look at that first and ignore the fact that a builder of a Californian pseudo-Tudor may be simply a Shakespeare fan is to completely ignore the complexity of human aesthetics and taste.

For a deconstructionist, however, a pseudo-Tudor is nothing more than an affirmation of Anglo hegemony, replete with sexism, racism and class oppression. Even an architecture that romanticizes peasantry is suspect, as, in the narrow minds of deconstructionists, such a romanticism must inherently be a power play to keep the poor content in their poverty.

In the case of pseudo-Tudors, there is often a nouveau riche desire to flaunt the rewards of material success, to attach the nouveau riche to the good taste of old money, etc. But what of the fellow who builds a pseudo-Tudor simply because he admires (for whatever reason) the sense of scale and proportion found in the English originals? Such a question cannot even be considered by the deconstructionist unless some psychological foundation can be established which agrees in lock step with Marxist class analysis.

The deconstructionist borrows the tools of semiotics only to point to the underlying Marxist ideology. If we find, through the tools offered by the discipline of semiotics, a compelling argument for an interpretation of the form of a building in Catholic theology, the deconstructionist will immediately assume that such theology only serves to keep the oppressed in their wretched state, since the deconstructionist cannot recognize Truth, Goodness, or Beauty as anything outside of social constructed norms designed to maintain the status quo. This is his disease and his curse.

The fact that Liberalism, the underlying philosophy behind laissez-faire capitalism and politicized sexuality, is diametrically opposed to Catholic theology is completely lost on the deconstructionist. A thoroughly Catholic building would still have to be seen as only serving capitalist masters.

Often in academia I have found intelligent Marxists, but not in the field of deconstruction. They are a pack of single-minded ideologues, who are utterly incapable of viewing the world outside of the blinders imposed by Marxian analysis. Because Marxism rests on completely unsound philosophy, deconstructionists rely heavily on jargon and grammatical opacity. Jacques Derrida, for instance, writes books of complete gibberish, gussied up in trendy jargon, intended primarily as an identifying badge to fellow Marxists and poseur art history majors who want to have some two-bit artspeak to adorn the walls of tomorrow’s flash in the pan exhibition.

To listen to a bunch of these posturing fools at a symposium is distressing. To see them be given a pass because most people are too lazy to take the time to dig into what they are saying to see that it is nothing but empty lingo is even worse. One of the horrific side effects of the maddening over-specialization of academia (which began as people learning more and more about less and less and has degenerated to people learning less and less period) is that many academics lack the fortitude to say that they do not understand what is being said. They assume that they do not understand because they missed it, not because there is nothing to understand to begin with. There was some story by some Dane about this phenomenon. “Well, Derrida has a PhD in this, so he must know what he is talking about.”

Hardly. Derrida is a fool, and I challenge anyone to go through one of his major works and mine any significant truth from it. Most of the times a careful reading of his work will show that he is saying nothing and using many words to get there. As I mentioned in the comments box, diagram his sentences. Substitute the antecedents for pronouns, replace arcane terminology with its definitions. Then tell me what he is saying. If he weren’t so respected among timid academics, the results would be nothing more than side splitting laughter. I would not have been allowed to get away with such sloppy, poorly thought-out writing in high school, let alone in the excellent Music Department at UC Santa Cruz (I imagine that Ann will mention a professor or two who would have fallen for it, but they would definitely be the exceptions to the rule, and the dullest of our faculty tended to error in other directions, so even they would not have allowed such balderdash to pass for analysis).

One thing to always remember when dealing with Marxists is that Marxism purports to being a “scientific” method of studying society and economics. Yet, just how this science is conducted is a baffling mystery. Science is centered around the careful comparison and contrasting of controlled elements and experimental elements, and nowhere do the Marxists actually do this. Instead they replace their dogma for other dogmas and enforce their own twisted orthodoxy, often by inserting their own jargon into as much academic discourse as possible.

As Catholics we need to follow the lead of our Holy Father John Paul II and reclaim the best of academia for the service of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. One of my complaints about certain Traditionalists is their insistence that we rely solely on Scholasticism (please note that not all Traditionalists are of this point of view). I am a huge admirer of St. Thomas Aquinas, but we cannot ignore the rigorous thought that has gone on in secular philosophy. We cannot even afford to ignore the not-so-rigorous thought that has gone on in secular philosophy, rather we must study it in order to refute it and to point out its flaws and lay its fraudulent premises bare on the cement, that they may bleed out and die, releasing their adherents to the search for Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Semiotics can yield great fruit to the Catholic literary critic or art critic or social commentator, and must be reclaimed for the real foundation of the liberal arts, namely that pursuit of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. It is why orthodox, bright young Catholics are needed at the large public institutions. We must confront the enemy wherever he may be, and the Fortress Catholicism approach is a grave error. Certainly there are young people who need the careful, sheltered formation that goes on in those various seminaries for the married vocation, but there is a profound need for us to invade each and every educational institution and to evangelize simply by witnessing to truth.

One of the most important things that we can do is to read Gramsci and familiarize ourselves with his tactics, as they are as brilliant as they are misguided. If we can turn the tables on the Left and use our knowledge of their tactics against the enemy, we will go far, as Truth is on our side.

In closing, let me offer this quote from the Introduction to the English edition of Umberto Eco’s Misreadings:

“I adapted these attitudes of overinterpretation to the most famous Italian novel of the nineteenth century. Most English-language readers will not be familiar with I promessi sposi (though an English translation exists, The Betrothed), but it should suffice to know that my Joycean reading is applied to a classic that dates from the early nineteenth century, its style and narrative structure recalling Walter Scott (for example)more than Joyce. Today I realize that many recent exercises in “deconstructive reading” read as if inspired by my parody. This is parody’s mission: it must never be afraid of going too far. If its aim is true, it simply heralds what others will later produce, unblushing, with impassive and assertive gravity.”