Deconstructionist, Deconstruct Thyself

From Randall Smith on The Public Discourse (Dec. 22, 2021):

I heard a talk not long ago about how modern commentators are “retelling the history” of John Henry Newman, believing that his Apologia does not reveal “the whole truth” about him.

They seek to know the “historical” Newman—not the one created by previous historians, nor Newman as he presented himself in his writings—and then to reinterpret all his works in light of that “real” Newman: his true intentions, doubts, or worries that he never expressed directly. They ask, for instance, whether Newman was a closeted homosexual, especially toward the men with whom he was “good friends.” If he was, passages in his works that seemed innocent or pious before look very different.

Such “deconstructionism”—“unmasking” the real author by reducing him to his cultural and psychological influences—is all the rage in the academy. Many scholars are continually trying to unmask past writers to understand them better than previous readers allegedly could. In the end, however, deconstructionism is self-negating.

Historicism’s Self-Refutation

The approach of deconstructionism is very Freudian: an author writes something thinking he has one intention, but the deconstructionist psychiatrist unmasks subconscious motivations that the author is hiding from himself. (I had an English professor who insisted that only after Freud could anyone understand Shakespeare’s plays, meaning that even Shakespeare didn’t understand Shakespeare’s plays.) Everyone requires an expert to reveal why he does anything. Often one’s alleged motive ends up being something like working out problems one didn’t resolve with one’s mother or reasserting one’s masculinity against one’s sexual repression.

One cannot deny that subconscious influences act on us. But we must not reduce all actions to epiphenomena of our impulses and external influences. I am certainly influenced by the culture in which I live, but I am not reducible to it. I am not the sum of forces operating on and within me. Some part of me, perhaps at times through great effort, transcends those influences. By it I can know some things to be objectively true and choose to act accordingly.

It would be very odd if we were not free and could not know the truth. When we make choices, we act as if we were responsible for them. When we write and argue, we appeal to truths that, we believe, we have not created and that our interlocutors could recognize as well. Centuries of readers have believed they can read the works of authors from radically different cultures of earlier times and recognize truths that apply to their own lives.

Even if by some further improbable oddity all humanity has been deceived in such beliefs, it would be impossible for anyone, including the deconstructionist, to recognize that deception. From what transcendent perspective could a deconstructionist rise above the forces that he believes control everyone? If authors before him can be reduced or deconstructed, why not he? If all written works are merely products of cultural forces and historical contingencies, then so are all his critiques, including his claim that all writings are merely products of historical contingency.

As C. S. Lewis points out in his wonderful essay on “Bulverism,” such people “have sawn off the branch they were sitting on.” If Freudians and Marxists say that all thoughts are tainted by history, ideology, and self-interest, then, course, “we must remind them that Freudianism and Marxism are as much systems of thought as Christian theology or philosophical idealism. The Freudian and Marxian are in the same boat with all the rest of us, and cannot criticize us from outside.”

Honesty and integrity demand that deconstructionists turn their critical eye on themselves and inform their readers of their own cultural biases, such as their esteem for Freud, Derrida, and other postmodern thinkers. Perhaps they investigate the sexuality of Newman and take it be so important because they live in a culture that has become besotted and obsessed with sex. They may be ignoring the possibility that many people in Newman’s society, and Newman himself, were simply not obsessed with it. Perhaps some want Newman to be a homosexual because they are. Might it be that modern interpreters of Newman are eager to see Newman as motivated more by social dynamics than a deep concern for religious truth because they live in a culture that doesn’t take religious truth seriously? [read more]