DeconstructionismA term tied very closely to postmodernism, deconstructionism is a challenge
to the attempt to establish any ultimate or secure meaning in a text. Basing
itself in language analysis, it seeks to "deconstruct" the ideological
biases (gender, racial, economic, political, cultural) and traditional
assumptions that infect all histories, as well as philosophical and religious
"truths." Deconstructionism is based on the premise that much of human
history, in trying to understand, and then define, reality has led to various
forms of domination - of nature, of people of color, of the poor, of
homosexuals, etc. Like postmodernism, deconstructionism finds concrete
experience more valid than abstract ideas and, therefore, refutes any attempts
to produce a history, or a truth. In other words, the multiplicities and
contingencies of human experience necessarily bring knowledge down to the local
and specific level, and challenge the tendency to centralize power through the
claims of an ultimate truth which must be accepted or obeyed by all.
A
technique
of literary analysis that regards meaning as resulting from the differences
between words themselves, rather than their reference to the things they stand
for. It is a technique that entered theology in the earlier 1980’s as
theologians who had been educated in Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and
Heidegger began to encounter the writings of French theorists, in particular,
Jacques Derrida. They emphasised the inability of theological discourse to speak
substantively about dogmatic, transcendental certainties. For them, after Hegel,
God had been poured into Jesus Christ without remainder and so they
believed theology should be expunged of any claims on metaphysics and focus on
the sensible realm.
Related Topics:
Contributed
by: CTNS and Richard P Whaite
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