Deconstruction's Place in Western Thought: Philosophic and Figurative Language
Graduation Date
Spring 1999
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program Name
Humanities
First Reader
Aaron Winkelman, OP, PhD
Second Reader
Philip Novak, PhD
Abstract
Deconstructive writing comments on other texts, showing the ways in which the language of those texts turns against itself, usually by playing on the contradictory relationship between the literal and figurative levels of the text. The history of the uneasy relationship between the literal and figurative levels of Western texts is perhaps best understood in terms of the curricular battles which began with Plato’s proposed program of educational reform. The contradictory or “undecidable” relationship between a text’s literal and figurative levels can be explored across disciplines as various as literature, linguistics and philosophy. Theories resulting from the study of narrative, poetry, speech acts, and historiography examine the relationship between literal and figurative levels of meaning in texts. Reading Western texts in an interdisciplinary manner to identify their figurative levels offers new possibilities for textual inquiry and recovers an aspect of the classical Greek education: the rhetorical paideia, or training in two-sided argumentation.